Chapter 28

28

I was in a cocoon. It was fuzzy and dark. I had absolutely no idea where the hell I was. In the tall grass of a magical land?

I blinked and rearranged the world. I was in a bedroom, sleeping on two fuzzy green beanbags. All the lights were off, but there was a glow over to the side. Riki was sitting up in bed, her face lit by a tablet screen. She looked ethereal.

"Hey," I said. My voice was croaky. Maybe I'd inhaled more smoke than I realized.

"You're awake."

"What time is it?"

"Eleven."

"Which eleven? Morning eleven or night eleven?"

"Night," she said.

"Is it still today?"

"Yeah."

This helped make sense of things. We'd been taken off the island in the midmorning, I remembered. We'd all been checked again at the hospital, then we were questioned. We never saw April again. My parents were called. I would go home at some point, but for now I was staying with Riki's family. I had come here, the beanbags were lumped together, and I got in them and fell asleep.

"Where did you get that?" I asked. Her stuff, of course, was gone. Burned up.

"It's Juhi's."

There was a sound outside the door, then it opened, pouring light inside. I lurched back. Juhi poked her head in, then opened the door a little more.

"What?" Riki snapped.

Juhi held out two compostable clamshell trays.

"Crab cakes, god," she said. "I heard you talking so I brought up the food we got. It's crab cakes and fries. Do you eat crab cakes? We also got shrimp, and we have other stuff."

I couldn't remember if I ate crab cakes. I couldn't remember anything about myself. It took effort for my mind to assemble the mental image of a crab cake—a roundish thing, covered in breading. Maybe I ate those. I nodded blankly, and Juhi handed me the containers and left the room, eyeing us both.

The aroma of deep-fried food pushed away the smoke. Things began to focus again.

"What," Riki said, "the actual fuck do we do now?"

She had a good point. We had it . The treasure of Ralston Island. The answer to the mystery of the Ralstons. Lacking a better idea, I pushed a container toward her.

"I guess we eat these crab cakes," I said.

As soon as I opened mine and the steamy goodness of the fried food hit my nostrils, I was ravenous. The portion was huge, but I could have eaten two more full containers like it. The food revitalized us.

"I feel like I have to apologize to Clara," she finally said. "I really thought she did it. Everyone kind of thought she did it. But why did Benjamin bury the truth? Literally? Not just bury it, but wrap it in plastic?"

"What could he even do? They were all dead."

"He still could have told the world what happened," Riki replied. "Or he could have burned the letter. But he buried it. He even told people what he'd done. He said he was burying treasure. It was like he wanted someone to go looking for it."

"That sounds like the answer," I said. "He didn't know what to do. Unity was his sister too. Maybe he thought it was for someone else to tell."

"So leave it with your papers. Put it in a safe deposit box. Tell your lawyer to release it after your death...."

"You sound mad," I said.

"I'm not... I'm..." She struggled to find the words. "I couldn't have gotten this letter and put it in the ground."

"You didn't live his life. All his siblings died. Maybe he just couldn't."

I poked my finger around the bottom of the container, searching for any remaining fried crumbs. Maybe it was the grease from the food. Or the smoke still in our lungs. Just the general feeling of being alive after all this. Or the simple fact that Riki Rajpac was sitting next to me on the floor in a dimly lit room, and we'd solved a crime together. Two crimes. Maybe six crimes. It was getting hard to count. Whatever the case, the stillness came over us again, like it had that morning after we broke into Dr. Henson's room. This time, though, I felt myself lean in and I saw her do the same. This time, I knew what was about to happen. Our faces tilted toward each other and...

"Wait," she said.

I waited.

"Call her."

"What?"

"Call her. Call Akilah."

I leaned back to look at her. Her face was so beautiful, and so serious.

"The whole time you've been here," she said, "you've had a look on your face like a lost puppy. I wanted to get your attention. I was trying to... interest you. But your head was somewhere else."

"She broke up with me after the fire."

"Did she? You said she got another job. That's not the same thing."

"She quit because I set a fire."

"No," she replied, the sharp edges of her patience chipping the smooth edges off the end of the word. "What were her actual words?"

"She said she was going to work at the Cheesecake Factory because the tips would be higher, but..."

"And why was she going to do that?"

"To get a new keyboard, but..."

"Did it ever occur to you," Riki said, "that she was telling the truth? That she got another job to make more money and get a keyboard? That it had nothing to do with you or the fire and she was just trying to tell you?"

"Then why was she so quiet?" I said. "Why didn't she say anything afterward?"

"Why don't you ask her?" Riki replied. "I really want to make out with you. I've been wanting to all this time. But you are thinking about her because you are in love with her, and you should be sure about what's going on. Because... I just... call her ."

I was stunned speechless. It had all been a lot. I took my phone and got up. My body was sore. I walked out of the room, down the steps, and crept out of the house by the front door. Outside, it was still raining. It would rain for days more, but not like it had. This rain felt fresh, and the world smelled of, yes, petrichor. The smell of a flying dinosaur.

Akilah picked up immediately. This time, there was no clanking. Our connection was solid.

"Marlowe! Are you okay? Was there a fire ?"

"It wasn't me," I said.

"It was on the news? Your boss died? Something about a body?"

I had to reassure her a few times that I really was okay, and that the story was long.

"I need to ask you something," I said. "When you left Guffy's, you were, not breaking up with me, because we weren't..."

"Oh my god."

I couldn't make out what that meant.

"Marlowe," she said, "did you think... I wasn't breaking up with you. I just applied for that job because it paid more and I need to save for a new keyboard to take to college next year."

"But we never talked after that. Or, barely."

"I thought you were upset! I didn't want to bring up that night because you seemed really sad and scared and I wanted to give you space."

"But I was so bad with the fire," I went on as the wall tumbled before me. "I thought you were mad because I just stood there."

"You were in shock. I've been waiting for you to talk to me for weeks , and then you called last night talking about lipstick...."

"Oh, that," I said. "I found a tooth. That was in case I died. I didn't. It's fine."

"What?"

"It's fine," I said again, knowing full well that April had done this to me too. Except, it was fine. I wasn't lying. I am Marlowe and I was fine.

"So are we..." I didn't know what to ask. "I mean, I guess I'm coming home. My job burned down. That's not going to look good."

"When will you be here?"

"I don't know? When they let me go? Soon?"

There was a pause.

"I get an employee discount," she said. "At the Cheesecake Factory. Do you want to split some wings?"

As we got off the phone, which took a while—we were going back and forth and having a conversation that I'm embarrassed to repeat—I saw that Riki had come out of the house and was watching from the front step, just under the awning. I'd never let anyone down before. I came and sat next to her.

"Yeah," she said. "That's what I thought."

"I'm sorry," I said.

She shrugged. "You know what? We're not dead. That's tonight's win."

"It's a good win."

We sat and listened to the rain for a bit, breathed deep.

"Listen," I said. "Have you ever had a hot bottom?"

"What?"

"Life-changing," I said. "Tomorrow. I'll show you."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Trust me."

"Trust you?" she said.

She playfully whacked at the ends of my hair.

It would be all right. We had done it, after all. We had escaped Morning House. We knew things that had been unknown, and we would figure the rest of it out in time.