“Where are you going?” Will asks.
“I’m calling an emergency Council meeting to find out what the devil is going on.”
Then he slams the door so hard that the window glass rattles in his wake.
He doesn’t come home until breakfast the next morning. When he bursts through the front door, his eyes are bloodshot. At the sight of him Mrs. Cliffton immediately sets down her coffee cup and stands. He kisses her cheek, then gestures for us to follow him into the library.
“Clearly something significant has happened,” he says, wheeling out a chalkboard. He searches along the rim for a slice of chalk.
“Husbands and wives can’t hear each other anymore?” Will asks.
“That was our first theory.” Dr. Cliffton pushes his glasses up his nose, looking weary. “It evolved as the night went on. While the phenomenon was happening to most spouses, it wasn’t true for all of them. And then we’d discover it was happening among other sets of people who were seemingly unconnected.”
For Mrs. Cliffton’s sake he writes in a quick, methodical hand, “All three Sisters reporting inability to hear voice of person they love.”
He fiddles with the chalk in his hand and turns back to us. “Romantic love,” he clarifies.
“So it is a Disappearance,” Will says, aghast. He sits down heavily, as if someone’s shoved him.
“Yes.” Dr. Cliffton nods and clears his throat. “It does appear that way.”
“But it hasn’t been seven years yet!” Miles protests, stomping his foot at the unfairness of it all. “It’s not following the rules!”
Dr. Cliffton scrawls for his wife, “Town in uproar.”
“It’s causing all kinds of additional chaos,” he tells us. “Mrs. Doyle can hear Mr. Doyle, but he can’t hear her. Mr. Stevens can’t hear Mrs. Doyle, but he can hear his own wife.” He drags his hand over his eyes and groans.
“Will,” Mrs. Cliffton says, “ask your father how we will communicate.”
Will relays the message, and then his father’s answer: “Lip reading? Carrying a pad of paper everywhere? We can learn sign language. We’ll devise a system. Until I can find a Variant.” Though Dr. Cliffton looks exhausted, he says, “I’ll start looking now. This very morning.”
Mrs. Cliffton’s lips tighten, and her eyes fill with tears. “Another one? Another rabbit to chase?” She plays with her wedding band, twirling it around her finger. “This is never going to end, is it?” she murmurs, and the look on her face gives me the same tumbling feeling as though I’ve just missed a stair.
“I’ll find it, Matilda,” Dr. Cliffton says, his brow creasing. He takes her arms and holds on to them as though he’s tethering her, as if she otherwise might simply float away. “I promise,” he says fervently, tilting her chin up toward him. “I won’t stop trying until I’ve found it.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help, too,” I say. “Me too,” Miles says. “And I will, too,” Will vows, his jaw clenching. I clasp my hands together, hard, in my lap and put up a front of bravery for the rest of them. But I’m thinking that if hope has escaped even Mrs. Cliffton, now there is really reason to be afraid.
“A new Disappearance is bull manure,” George mutters the next morning in Digby’s lab. He halfheartedly measures a blue-tinted liquid into a beaker. The room around us is quiet, with students huddled wordlessly over their experiments or speaking in voices so subdued they blend with the scratching of pencils on paper. I sit on my stool and watch the dust sparkle across a sunbeam.
“Things don’t just happen for no reason,” George insists to Beas and me. “Something’s changed. Something set this off.” He looks up at us for acknowledgment.
“Maybe you solved the music Variant too quickly,” Beas whispers sardonically. She draws a music note that has the base of a skull. “Maybe the Curse didn’t think we had suffered quite enough.”
“I suppose that could be a possibility,” George says thoughtfully. “I mean, it is another auditory Disappearance. Maybe we’re supposed to take that as some sort of warning.”
George swivels to grab a glass slide and knocks the edge of the beaker with his elbow. It tumbles to the floor in slow motion and shatters.
For an endless moment we all just look at it.
The room has fallen so still that we can hear the sudden ricochet of steps moving down the hallway. They grow louder and faster as they approach, and then the door to Digby’s lab bursts open and Chase Peterson enters.
“Mr. Peterson, excuse me—” Digby begins, turning from the chalkboard.
“Have you heard?” Chase says breathlessly. “The Disappearances have hit a fourth town.”
A sudden gust of air sends Dr. Digby’s stack of papers to the floor, scattering in large white tiles. George rises, slowly, from where he has knelt to sweep the glass. It crunches like gravel under his weight.
Dr. Digby’s voice is strained. “Class, you are dismissed.”
