Page 46 of Chaos

Shane grunts unhappily. “Who puts beets in taco soup?” He still polishes off his bowl and Auden’s, who opts to stick to bread and butter.

I study Yorke from the corner of my eyes. I have to tell him about the maybe-baby, but trying to find words feels impossible.Maybe the condom didn’t work.That seems like the least relevant detail.I’m probably pregnant.That’s the one that matters most.

But every time I look at him, I see the jutting cheekbones, the hollows under his eyes, the hesitancy as he focuses on me, and it’s very clear that my being gone didn’t happen only to me. He beat men nearly to death. He sent soldiers out to look for me, and some of them died. He burned the town. I was the one in the basement, but I wasn’t the only one in hell.

Why terrorize him if I’m not even sure?

When Auden’s eyes go droopy and he’s barely spoken in the last five minutes, I ask, “Can I do bedtime?”

“Yeah,” Yorke talks like he’s walking on eggshells. “We could put in some time refilling shells in the armory, if that’s okay.”

I want to ask questions about the pigeons and what Ben and Ephie said, and how Wendell is doing, and if anyone knows where Renata went. Is she out there in the frozen woods with Charlotte Rose? But Auden’s listening.

It’ll have to wait.

Yorke and Shane rise simultaneously. “You good here for an hour or so?”

I like it better when he’s comfortable enough to be blunt, but that’s the mess of unspoken things between us, keeping him unsure of the right move, keeping us off balance.

“Yeah,” I say.

He joins Shane at the armoire, reholstering handguns and knives, stepping into shoes. Shane’s are still slip-ons. The last month still hasn’t given him the dexterity needed to tie laces.

I prod Auden’s underarm. “Up, childman. Bedtime.”

He yawns. “I’m up. I’m up.”

ITAKE ABSURD COMFORTin the routine acts of brushing our teeth, washing our hands and faces. One of Auden’s upper front teeth is wiggly.

He picks out a juniper-and-sage soap, and we pour water into the basin of one of the sinks, using a pitcher Yorke and Shane brought up along with dinner.

He touches the cuts on my fingers gently as we drain the sink, his gray-green gaze straying up to the bruise on my forehead where I hit the stair when Straggle knocked me over. “Do they hurt?”

“A little. But they’ll heal.”

His lower lip pushes out, but he doesn’t ask anything more, just wipes his face down with a washcloth in silence, then heads into his bedroom, where he pulls out the Spider-Man jammies that we packed up at his real house so long ago.

They’re faded and full of holes and come down to his calves now, reminding me how much he’s growing.

While he changes, I go to the room I share with Yorke, open the doors to my closet, and find all my clothes right where I left them. I pull out flannel sleep pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. They’re so clean after a month of living in filthy jeans, it feels wrong. I put them back, instead grab one of Yorke’s worn, unwashed shirts.

The smell of him instantly comforts me.

Auden falls asleep halfway through his selected book, Beast at the foot of the bed, and even though my plan is to talk to Yorke when he comes back, my eyes get heavy.

I wake to the odd disembodied motion of falling, and my first thought is that I’m joining the soldiers in the waterfall sky place when I’m supposed to be a tomato particle, before a blinding memory rips through me of Ben’s hand in my hair, yanking, tugging, Scraggle’s voice grating out that hateful, dreadful word.Yet.

I go rigid, my bandaged hands coming up instantly, curling into fists.

“Sssh. It’s me.”

“Yorke?”

“Yeah, fuck, I keep doing that. I’m sorry.”

I’m not falling.

I’m not back there.

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