“Come in,” I call groggily, not moving from the warmth of my bed.
He slips through the door, then stands next to it, squirming.
I squint toward him. “Do you need to go to the bathroom or something?”
He ignores this. “Do I have to go to school today?”
“Of course. Don’t be silly.” I flip the pillow over to find the side not heated by my skin. But I look up at the sound of his sigh and catch the flicker of something in his face.
“Come here, Miles.” I sit up and pat the bed beside me. “Why don’t you want to go to school today?”
He sighs again, his small shoulders raising and falling. Sleep is crusted at the edge of his eyelashes. “Some kids say things about Mother,” he says, scowling. “That she was a witch and she’s the reason things are bad here.”
I pull my hair up into a knot, not bothering to hide my ear from Miles. “Yes,” I finally admit. “People say things to me, too. But you know it’s not true, right, Miles?”
I think of Eliza’s confident smugness about Mother being an orphan.
At least probably not everything they say is true.
He shrugs, but his shoulders lose some of their angled stiffness.
“That’s all that matters,” I continue. “We knew her. They didn’t. So what they say doesn’t count. Not even a little bit.”
He does something strange with his mouth, twisting his tongue all around while he considers this. There’s a gap where a tooth should be.
“Heya!” I say. “Did you lose something?”
He reaches into his pocket, and then the white stump of a tooth is nestled in his palm.
“It came out last night,” he says. “I woke up, and it was in my mouth. I almost choked on it.”
“Yuck.” I wrinkle my nose. And then he laughs.
“Aila?” He starts to squirm again. “Mrs. Cliffton says nobody is supposed to have dreams.” He rolls the kernel of tooth in his hand. “But last night, I had one.”
I keep my face blank, but my stomach rolls. Will’s words return to whisper in my ears. Your mother was different than everyone else.
I bite down on my lip.
“What was the dream about?” I ask, to buy myself more time.
“It was a nightmare,” he admits. “It’s going to sound embarrassing when I say it out loud. I don’t even know why it scared me.”
“I used to have night terrors about a black cat that wore jewelry,” I say. “So . . . proceed.”
“There was a little bird,” he says, “and I knew that it was sick. It was living in a dark room all day long, with the curtains closed. And there was a beautiful, healthy little bird there, too, who flew in and out. But the sick bird hated the healthy one. And then they switched places, and the healthy one died in the bed, and the sick one grew stronger and came to our front door, and—” He reddens. “I don’t know why, but it made me afraid.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m glad you told me.” I give him a half squeeze, half pat on the shoulder—?not quite a hug. “But don’t tell anyone else about it yet, Miles. You and I will figure it out.”
“I know that. I’m not a dunce.” He pauses. “And I’m not supposed to say anything about the Disappearances to Father?”
“Just for a little longer,” I say. “It’s too difficult to explain in a letter. And we don’t want him to worry. We’ll tell him one day.”
Miles actually turns and grins at me then. His cowlick sticks up. His smile is less familiar because of the gap left by his tooth. “It’s not that hard, is it?” he says. “Pretending?”
“No,” I agree.
Pretending is the finishing word.
