And most of all, I notice his obsessive tidiness. Always, the tidiness.
When I slough off the old paint that curls like hangnails around the door, he joins me and hands me a lukewarm bottle of soda. “What did you want to be when you were young?” he asks.
“An inventor.”
“You like school growing up?”
I blink out at the ocean, gray and churlish, but I am picturing my wheelchair. Seeing myself as a young boy, watching the seasons go by from the window. Sketching birds. I imagine that Phineas and I spent the same years looking at the outside world, dreaming of different kinds of freedom.
“I never went to school. One year, I got far enough to be fitted for a uniform, but then influenza swept through.” I hesitate. “I . . . wasn’t well growing up. My legs haven’t always been so good.”
“What’s wrong with your legs?” he’d said. “They look fine to me.”
“They’re much stronger now. I don’t even limp anymore.”
“Did you have an accident?” he’d asked. “An illness?”
“Just a runt. Born too early.” I’d tried to keep my voice light, but instead I went and made it uncomfortable. Bringing up the day Mother died. I took a long swig of the warm soda, and his gaze slid away from me, the way people’s always do when I realize too late that I’ve said the wrong thing.
“But I’ve always been good with my hands.” I quickly reach into my pocket to show him the wooden bird I carved as a teenager. He takes it and runs his thumb along the curve of its back in the exact way I always do. It is the first echo of myself I see in him. A motion I’ve already done so many times that the grain there is like silk.
I’d forgotten about the school uniform I never got to use. How I used to fall asleep holding on to its sleeve, scared that it would disappear in the night. Remembering how, when the influenza epidemic was done, that uniform didn’t even fit me anymore.
And then I burned it.
Phineas, I almost say then. Something disappears for me every seven years. I don’t know why, or how to get it to stop. But don’t worry. I’ve learned how to live with it.
Instead I take another sip, until the swell of my courage fades away. It’s too much of a risk. The Disappearances could scare Phineas off. Take away the only thing I want. To stay here and listen to him talk about unimportant things as I tune the radio to our serial programs. So many chances like this have already passed by that it’s become something too big to tell.
Just like one of Juliet’s favorite riddles:
“What needs darkness to grow instead of light?” she asked me one night when we were younger.
“I give up,” I finally said.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Her eyes flashed more silver than gray. “Secrets.”
Chapter Eleven
By Friday morning I’m starting to get the hang of things, and I am absurdly triumphant when I find Digby’s laboratory by myself.
Beas moves her violin case, and I slide into the seat next to her. Today, instead of assigning an experiment, Dr. Digby lectures on mitosis. George diligently takes notes, and Beas appears to be writing music, which she then folds into her violin case. When Digby pivots toward the chalkboard, a boy with oil-slicked hair at the table in front of ours turns his head and mouths hello at me. I smile, flush, panic, and start to furiously scribble notes across my paper.
Beas nudges me. “Are you rationed?” she asks in a whisper. “Anybody special waiting for you back in Gardner?”
“Oh.” I shake my head. “Um. No.”
Beas smiles wryly. “Then have you taken your pick here yet?”
She nods toward the boy in front of us. He’s turned back around to rest the tip of his pencil in the hole of his notebook so it looks like he’s writing. Instead he lays his head down on the desk and prepares to take a nap. It all makes me miss Cass in a sudden, fierce wave. She would have guffawed at the idea of taking my pick of boys. I can almost see her, her eyes squinting shut, grabbing a pillow to her stomach, laughing her truest, gulping laugh—?the one that always ended in hiccups.
Instead, there is just Beas, her eyebrows arched, unaware of just how unprecedented this situation is.
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “I’ve been here for three days.”
“Exactly,” Beas says, and closes her notebook. “You’re something new,” she explains matter-of-factly. “They know what the rest of us looked like in pigtails. You’re . . . mysterious.”
“Right,” I whisper. “They missed the bloody nose era when I was nine. Ruined any crushes that might have been,” I tell her. “And all my favorite dresses.”
