An evil grin flicked across Rebecca's face as her icy glare drilled into Tam. There was a stir of hushed astonishment from the Colonists that the minor child had dared to speak, but not the smallest indication from the Styx that anything out of the ordinary had taken place.
To say Tam was staggered would be a rank understatement. Was he really supposed to respond to this mere child? When he didn't answer right away, she repeated the question, her hard little voice as sharp as a whip crack.
'WE SAID, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?'
'I do, Tam muttered, 'only too well.'
Of course, it wasn't a final ruling by any means, but it meant he would live in limbo until they decided either that he was cleared or… well… the alternative was too horrifying to think about.
As a surly Colonist officer escorted him away, Tam couldn't help but notice the smarmy look of self- congratulation that passed between Rebecca and the Crawfly.
Aroused from his sleep by the booming sound of the television, Will sat up in the armchair with a start. He automatically groped for the remote control and clicked down the volume a couple of notches; it was only when he looked around that he fully realized where he was and remembered how he'd gotten there. He was home, and in a room he knew so well. Although he was surrounded by uncertainty about what he was going to do next, for the first time in a long time he felt that he had a measure of control over his destiny, and it felt good.
He flexed his stiff limbs and took several deep breaths, coughing sharply. Despite the fact that he was ravenous, he felt a little better than he had the day before; the sleep had done him some good. He scratched, then tugged vaguely at his matted hair, its usual whiteness discolored with dirt. Clambering out of the chair, he stumbled over to the curtains and parted them a couple of inches to let the morning sun into the room. Real light. It was such a welcome sight that he pulled them wider.
'Too bright!' Cal screeched repeatedly, burying his face in a cushion. Bartleby, roused by Cal 's cries, flicked his eyes open. He immediately shied away from the glare, his long legs propelling him backward until he tumbled off the rear of the sofa. There he remained, hiding from the light and making noises somewhere between hisses and low meows.
'Oh, yikes, I'm sorry,' Will stuttered, kicking himself as he hurriedly yanked the curtains shut again. 'I completely forgot.'
He helped his brother into a sitting position. He was moaning quietly behind the cushion, and Will could see that it was already soaked with tears. He wondered if Cal's and Bartleby's eyes would ever adjust to natural light. It was just one more problem Will had to contend with.
'That was so stupid of me,' he said helplessly. 'I'll… um… I'll find some sunglasses for you.'
He began to search through a chest of drawers in his parents' room, only to find that it had been emptied. As he was checking the last drawer, he picked out a little bag of lavender languishing on the cheap Christmas gift wrap that his mother had used as a paper liner and held it up to catch the familiar scent. He closed his eyes as the smell conjured up a vivid picture of her. Wherever they'd sent her to recuperate, she'd be lording it over the other patients by now. He was willing to bet she'd commandeered the best chair in the television room and had cajoled someone into bringing her regular cups of tea. He smiled. In a way, she was probably happier now than she'd been for years. And maybe a little safer, too, if the Styx decided to pay a visit.
For no reason in particular, as he rummaged through a bedside cupboard, he thought of his real mother. He wondered where she was right at that very moment, if indeed she was still alive at all. The only person in the long history of the Colony ever to evade the Styx and survive. He set his jaw with a determined look as he caught his reflection in a mirror. Well, now there were going to be two more Jeromes with that distinction.
On a high shelf in his mother's closet he found what he was looking for, a pair of bendy plastic sunglasses she wore on the rare occasions she ventured out in the summer. He went back to Cal, who was squinting at the television in the darkened room, completely absorbed by the midmorning talk show on which the perma-tanned and obsequious host, oozing sincerity, was comforting the inconsolable mother of a teenage drug addict. Cal 's eyes were a little red and still wet with tears, but he said nothing and indeed did not shift his gaze once from the screen as Will placed the glasses on his head, looping an elastic band around the arms to hold them firmly in place.
'Better?' Will asked.
'Much better, yes,' Cal said, adjusting them. 'But I'm really hungry,' he added, rubbing his stomach. 'And I'm so cold.' He rattled his teeth together dramatically.
'Showers first. That'll warm you up,' Will said as he lifted his arm to sample the accumulated odor of many days' sweat. 'And some clean clothes.'
'Showers?' Cal peered at him blankly through the sunglass lenses.
Will managed to get the boiler fired up and went first, the hot water stinging his flesh with painful relief as the clouds of steam enveloped him in an ecstasy of forgetfulness. Then it was Cal 's turn. Will showed his fascinated brother how the shower worked and left him to it. From the closet in his bedroom he dug out clean sets of clothes for himself and Cal, although his brother's needed a little adjustment to make them fit.
'I'm a real Topsoiler now!' Cal announced, admiring the baggy jeans with rolled-up cuffs and the voluminous shirt with two sweaters on top of it.
'Yeah, very trendsetting,' Will said with a laugh.
Bartleby was more problematic. It took much coaxing by Cal to even get the shivering animal as far as the bathroom door, and then they had to push him for the rear, like a recalcitrant donkey, to get him in. As if he knew what was in store in the steamy room, he leaped away and tried to hide under the sink.
'Come on, Bart, you stinker, into the bath!' Cal ordered, finally running out of patience, and the cat grudgingly crept into the bath and looked at them with the most hangdog of expressions. He let out a warbled, low whine when the water first trickled over his sagging skin, and, deciding he'd had enough, his paws scrabbled on the plastic of the tub as he tried to get out. But with Will holding him down they managed to finish the task, although all three of them were completely drenched by the end of the exercise.
Once out of the bath, Bartleby ricocheted around the bedrooms like a whirling dervish while Will took great pleasure in ransacking Rebecca's room. As he chucked all her incredibly neatly folded clothes onto the floor, he wondered how in the world he was going to find anything that was remotely suitable to dress a giant cat. But in the end some brown legwarmers were cut down to size for the animal's hind legs and an old purple sweater took care of his top half. Will found a pair of Bugs Bunny sunglasses in Rebecca's desk drawer, and these stayed in place on the cat's head once a yellow-and-black-stirped Tibetan hat was pulled firmly down.
Bartleby looked quite bizarre in his new outfit. Out on the landing, the two brothers stood back to admire their handiwork, promptly falling into hysterics.
'Who's a pretty boy, then?' Cal chuckled between outbursts of breathless laughter.
'Better-looking than most around here!' Will said.
'Don't you worry, Bart,' Cal said soothingly, patting the peeved animal on the back. 'Very… uh… striking,' he managed to say before they both lapsed once again into uncontrolled laughter. Behind the pink-tinted lenses, the indignant Bartleby watched them sideways out of his large eyes.
Fortunately, Rebecca, much as Will cursed her, had left the freezer in the utility room well stocked. He read the microwave instructions and heated up three beef dinners complete with dumplings and green beans. They wolfed these down in the kitchen, Bartleby standing with both paws on the table, his tongue rasping against the plastic dish as he hungrily devoured every last scrap of the meat. Cal thought it was just about the best thing he'd ever tasted, but claimed he was still hungry, so Will retrieved another three meals from the freezer. This time, they had pork dinners with roasted potatoes. They washed this down with a bottle of Coke, which sent Cal into fits of rapture.
'So what happens next?' he said finally, tracing the rising bubbles on the side of his glass with a finger.
'What's the mad rush? We'll be all right for a while,' Will replied. He hoped that they would be able to hole up there, even if for just a few days, to give him time to figure out their next move.
'The Styx know about this place — someone's already been here, and they'll be back. Don’t forget what Uncle Tam said. There's absolutely no way we can stay put.'
'I suppose so,' Will agreed reluctantly, 'and we could be spotted by the real estate agents if they show people around.' He gazed in an unfocused way at the net curtains over the kitchen sink and spoke decisively. 'But I
