During those earliest days, while Ramola dutifully filled out the reams of paperwork and participated in countless interviews and hearings, she daydreamed about the various ways in which the final “no” would happen. She felt a mix of guilt and an existential relief at the prospect of failing to keep her promise yet being able to say to herself and to the Natalie she keeps in her head, “I did my best. I tried.”
Ten years on, Ramola is still trying and doing her best.
* * *
When Ramola wakes alone in her bedroom, in that liminal dead-of-night space where one exists and where one doesn’t at the same time, the surgery Ramola performed often replays in her head so vividly as to demonstrate part of her is still there in that farmhouse. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the surgery is instead a part of her, connecting wings and floors within her memory palace and it will do so for as long as the structure stands. Accompanying will be a memory of who she was before that day changed her. On these nights, which occur with varying frequency, Ramola sometimes gets out of bed and splashes cold water on her face and does her best to stubbornly bury that which won’t remain in the ground, or she walks aimlessly, haunting the hallways and rooms of her childhood house—the one she never wanted to move back to—or she stays in bed and allows herself to wallow and wade deeper into those dark waters, indulging in the loss of her friend and the loss of who Ramola used to be and who she will never be again.
Ten years on, Ramola is still trying and doing her best.
* * *
Lily’s bedroom is in the converted attic. She closes the door quietly. Gran would ask [her ask is a demand] that the door remain open unless she is napping.
The walls of Lily’s small bedroom are covered with travel posters from cities and countries she’s never been to. The first set was a gift from Auntie. Apparently, they had once hung in her American flats. Lily has taken over the collection. She also has a globe on which she places pushpins. Boston has a green pushpin because she has been there, even if she doesn’t remember it. Red pushpins represent the cities she wants to travel to with Auntie, and they include Athens and Los Angeles. The blue pins are stuck into the farthest-away places [Easter Island, New Zealand, Antarctica] she’ll go to on her own when she’s older.
On her unmade bed, waiting patiently by her pillows, is an ancient stuffed-animal fox.
Lily runs across the room and plops heavily into the seat at her wooden desk, undermining her earlier quietness when shutting the door. She can only be quiet for so long.
She wakes her sleeping tablet and inserts earbuds into the bowls of her ears. With a tap and swipe of fingers, she opens the streaming service and then navigates to a private set of recently uploaded audio files.
What Robert said about her sounding different rings in her ears. The very thought of him attempting to take the piss scrunches up her face. There’s also this: maybe she does want to sound different. Maybe that’s who she’ll be.
Lily stares at the list of files on the screen and whispers, “I’m mad at you,” but there’s no real anger behind it. Only a complex longing and wonder at once what was and will never be.
She opens the first file and presses the Play button symbolized by a triangle fallen on its side.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Erin Stapleton and Dr. Jeff Kolodny, for their invaluable research help. Any medical inaccuracies are mine, either through error or convenience. (Don’t judge me.) My awesome sister, Erin, especially went above and beyond with this book. First I made her house spooky in A Head Full of Ghosts and then I put her to work with this novel. Sorry, Erin?
Thank you to my friends and first readers, Lydia Gittins and Stephen Graham Jones. Their input was invaluable. Extra thanks to Lydia for shepherding me on side trips to South Shields, the Newcastle Castle, and of course, to the Vampire Rabbit. She also didn’t laugh at me when I ran the original what-if by her: can a zombie give birth to an uninfected baby?
Thank you to friends Nadia Bulkin and John Langan, who listened, advised, and helped along the way.
Thank you to Stephen Barbara and Jen Brehl, for your guidance and help smooshing this thing into a thing. Thank you to everyone at William Morrow and Titan Books for all you do.
Thank you to friends and family for their love, support, and patience.
And thank you for reading.
About the Author
PAUL TREMBLAY has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and Massachusetts Book awards and is the author of Growing Things and Other Stories, The Cabin at the End of the World, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, and the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland. His essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly online, and numerous year’s-best anthologies. He has a master’s degree in mathematics and lives outside Boston with his family.
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Also by Paul Tremblay
GROWING THINGS AND OTHER STORIES
THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD
DISAPPEARANCE AT DEVIL’S ROCK
A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS
NO SLEEP TILL WONDERLAND
THE LITTLE SLEEP
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance
