by Anne Ursu
Iris looked at the step. “Sorry.” She didn’t mean any of it as an insult. It was just the way of things, that was all: Lark lost things and Iris found them. Lark was too busy making campfires on the moon to keep track of things, and it was better to be the person who made campfires on the moon. Anyone could keep track of stuff.
“Why were you so late? I’ve been out here forever.”
Iris opened her mouth. Why was she so late? Because they’d talked about London in Pod Time and then Jin had planted a seed, and because they’d played a get-to-know-you game at Camp Awesome and she was Indecisive Iris. She was late because she’d wanted to be in a place where the clock stopped for a while, and because she’d been looking at a book of old facts that weren’t facts anymore at all. She was late because she felt like a pinball being bounced around against her will, and pinballs cannot control when they get home.
“Camp . . . went late,” she said.
Lark squinted at her and Iris looked away.
“I was worried,” Lark said quietly. “You’re supposed to be home before I am.” Her voice tightened. “I thought you must have gotten hit by a car, or—”
“No, no. No.” It felt like something was grinding up her stomach. She was supposed to be the one who made Lark feel better, not the one who left her locked out of the house and terrified. Everything was all wrong.
“Can we go inside, please?” Lark asked.
Iris pressed her lips together and nodded, blinking away tears.
“See? No key,” Lark said when they got inside, motioning around the kitchen.
“It will turn up,” Iris said.
Lark whirled around and glared at her. The grinder in Iris’s stomach slowly churned.
“I have homework,” Lark muttered, and turned on her heel and went upstairs.
Iris collapsed into a chair and put her head in her arms.
When her mom came home a half hour later, Iris had removed her head from the table and was trying to do a math worksheet. It actually made her feel a little better—these were problems she could solve, over and over, a whole worksheet of them.
Though apparently none of that showed on her face.
“What’s wrong?” her mom asked, settling in at the kitchen table.
Iris looked at the table. There was nothing to do but just say it. “Are you and Dad getting a divorce?”
“What? No! Why would you ask that?”
Iris folded her arms around her chest. “Would you tell me if you were?”
“Honestly, honey, I can’t even answer that because I have no idea what I would be doing.”
For some reason, that was the most reassuring thing her mom could have said. “Okay,” Iris whispered.
“Where did you get that idea?”
“Someone at school. He thought if Dad was in London you guys might be getting divorced.”
Her mom’s lips disappeared. After a moment, she said, “Well, it is an unusual situation. But your father had to go. I can see why you might worry that something was really wrong, and we should have worked harder to make that clear. I’m sorry.”
Iris didn’t know what to say. She’d spent so much energy being mad at her parents lately, and now her mom was acting perfectly reasonable and even apologizing. What was she supposed to do with that?
“Did you tell Lark you were worried about this?” her mom asked.
Iris shook her head.
She leaned back. “Good. She’d spin it into this whole Parent Trap thing where your dad took you to England and I kept her here and you didn’t see each other ever again until you both mysteriously ended up at the same summer camp.”
“Wait, why am I the one going to England with Dad?”
“Because Lark would send you to the interesting place.”
This was very true. “I have another question.”
“Shoot.”
“Is there stuff you learned at school that you found out later wasn’t true? Like everybody believed one thing and they were wrong?”
“Well”—she blinked at Iris—“sure. I mean, you know about Pluto, right?”
Yes, Iris knew about Pluto. Once upon a time there were nine planets in the solar system, and schoolkids memorized them in order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. And then, a little before the girls were born, it was announced that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore. There are eight planets, that is all. That hunk of ice out there? Pay no attention to it.
“Also,” her mom added, “as far as anyone knew, there were only, like, five dinosaurs. Five kinds, I mean.”
“Which ones?”
“Oh, let’s see . . . the T. rex, of course. Stegosaurus. Triceratops. Pterodactyl. And the brontosaurus. Which was always my favorite. And I think doesn’t exist anymore?”
Iris shook her head. “I don’t think there’s a pterodactyl, either.”
“Really?”
“No. They’re called pterosaurs now. And I don’t think they’re really dinosaurs at all.”
“Hmmpf.”
“So . . . when you learned these things weren’t true, did it bother you?”
“Well, I just learned about the pterodactyl, so I’m going to need time to adjust to that.” She tilted her head. “The Pluto thing was weird. It was just in the newspaper one day: Scientists Declare Pluto Not a Planet Anymore. I guess I never thought that that was a mistake you could make, you know? But then you realize the whole idea of a planet is made up by a bunch of people in a room anyway, and . . .” She shrugged. “And I did like the brontosaurus. It seemed like the nice dinosaur amidst all the ones with the teeth and claws and spikes, like if you got accidentally sent back to dinosaur time, that would be the one that you’d want to run into.”
“But . . . isn’t it weird?” Iris pressed. “That all of these things you learn can be wrong?”
“Sure! I mean, when I was a kid you were supposed to eat margarine, which was like . . . fake butter. It was supposed to be so much better for you. And then one day it was like, no, this is basically death in a stick. And suddenly we were supposed to eat butter again. So you can be doing what everyone tells you to do to be healthy, and then that’s the thing that’s bad for you.”
“So what do you do?”
“I guess . . . we just do the best we can with the information we have, you know? And stay open to the idea that there’s a lot we don’t know.”
Iris didn’t have any trouble being open to the idea that there was a lot she didn’t know. Every day was about all the things she didn’t know.
It would just be nice to be able to believe in the things she did know.
“Honey, what’s this about?”
Iris swallowed. “Weird day.”
Her mom leaned in and took her hands in hers. “You can tell me anything, okay? And ask me anything. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Iris said quietly. Her mom squeezed her hands, and that, at least, felt true.
Later, Iris knocked on Lark’s door softly. Her sister was on her bed, Esmeralda on her chest, reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for possibly the hundredth time.
“Hi,” Iris said.
“Hi,” said Lark hesitantly.
“I’m sorry,” Iris said. She was. Very sorry. She shouldn’t have been so late, and she shouldn’t have dismissed Lark. She was supposed to be the one person who didn’t do that kind of thing. “I’m really sorry.”
Lark put down her book. “It’s okay,” she said.
“Can I come in and read with you?”
“Yeah.”
A minute later Lark had scooted over on her bed and Iris had tucked herself in next to her. And here, again, was a place where time did not seem to matter, a pocket in the world to crawl into.
Chapter Eighteen
The Edge of the World
There is one more story I should tell you.
When baby Iris and baby Lark were both finally home from the hospital, their parents were given strict instructi
ons to keep them inside and isolated as much as possible until the end of April. There was some particular virus that flew around in the winter that caused most people to get bad colds but could be devastating for a premature baby’s lungs. Consider it like a quarantine, the doctors said.
So for five months the girls and their mom stayed inside, only leaving the house for their doctor appointments. Lark had to go more often because of a condition that meant sometimes her lungs and heart just stopped working for a little bit. So she was attached to a monitor that beeped every time she stopped breathing or her heart stopped beating.
“We were supposed to wait to see if your body would figure it out and reset itself,” their mom said when she told the story, “so when the alarm went off we were supposed to count to ten, then wake Lark up.”
“What do you mean, wake her up?” Iris asked.
“Oh, well. Gently at first. Like, rubbing her face. And if that didn’t work, maybe squeeze her arm.”
“And what if none of it worked?”
“Then . . . we were supposed to do CPR.”
“How do you do CPR on a baby?” Iris asked.
“Very carefully,” her father said.
Their father could never manage to wait the full ten beeps before waking Lark up. “I made it to four once, though,” he told them proudly.
The alarm used to go off all the time. The wires got crossed or the leads fell off and the thing would start beeping and Iris—herself a fully functioning something-is-wrong-with-Lark alarm—would shriek and both parents would run to their bedroom and find the machine broken but Lark was fine and eyeing them curiously, as if making scientific deductions about the effects of repeated loud beeping noises on fully grown humans.
Everyone wanted to come over and see the new babies, and no one seemed to believe that the doctors’ warnings could be legitimate. Oh, I just have a little cough, they’d say. You guys are so paranoid!
Their dad escorted his own aunt out of the house after she sneezed on Lark and insisted it was just allergies.
“It was a long winter,” their mom said.
When the girls were two, that cold virus hit and got into their delicate lungs and the girls began to cough and wheeze, and they were both whisked off to the emergency room. There, a nice doctor with long, curly brown hair listened to their lungs and gave them each a small heating pad shaped like an animal—Iris a gray bunny, Lark a calico cat. Two hours later Iris and the bunny (named Bunny) were sent home, but Lark and the cat (named Esmeralda) were admitted and kept overnight. It happened again when they were four—each girl got a mask strapped about her nose and mouth and inhaled some medication that tasted like tinfoil. And Lark was admitted again, bringing Esmeralda with her.
Iris didn’t remember much of any of this, though she knew that Great-Aunt Carol used to talk a lot about how her allergies flared up in winter. Iris remembered her parents standing over Lark with a stopwatch counting her breaths—they must have done it for her, too, but she had no memory of that. And she remembered the emptiness of their room when Lark was in the hospital overnight, of crawling up into the top bunk to go to bed and feeling like without Lark there on the bottom it might just float away. And the painfully barren feeling of a Larkless house, as if her sister had just disappeared into thin air. She remembered that whenever she got a cold, her parents would splash disinfectant everywhere. Be so careful not to give it to your sister. She remembered that when Lark was at the hospital, one parent was always home with her, and Dad (or Mom) would sit on the couch with Iris and they would read books or watch movies and Mom (or Dad) would tell her that her sister just needed a little help getting better, but she would come home so soon.
By the time the girls were in elementary school, colds were just colds, and they could all go around sniffling without getting doused in disinfectant.
Until they were eight.
They both got the cold—really, the whole second grade had it. The girls stayed home from school for three days, sleeping and reading and playing board games and trailing Kleenex everywhere. Their mom doled out spoonfuls of orange medicine and sympathy. On day four, they both went back to school a little sniffly, but no cough.
Then that evening Lark complained that her head felt like it was going to explode. She had an impossible fever and could not look at lights and could not touch her chin to her chest, and these were emergency symptoms and required her dad packing Lark up in the night and taking her to the hospital while Iris and her mom waited at home.
And then Lark wasn’t coming home; she was staying there. The emergency symptoms belonged to an actual emergency, and one that would not be over soon.
They’d left for the hospital so quickly they’d forgotten Esmeralda, and on the morning of the first day Iris took the stuffed cat from her sister’s bunk in order to give it to her mom to take to the hospital.
But she squeezed it to her chest and it smelled like Lark. So she grabbed Bunny and gave it to her mom to bring to Lark.
Two days came and went and Lark was still not back. They did not know when she would be home. A dark shadow circled around their house and held everyone tightly. Their parents spoke in bright words to Iris, as if the shadow weren’t there, but it was clear that something terrible had wrapped its slithering way around them and begun to squeeze.
It was meningitis, caused by an infection that had slipped in while her body was busy with the cold, like the shadow that had slipped into their house while no one was looking.
Meningitis was an inflammation of the brain, caused by either a virus or an infection. It could be fatal. No one had ever explained any of that to Iris, though; she’d had to look it all up herself.
It was the end of the world. You always know when it’s the end of the world, no matter how bright people try to make their words. Iris knew. And she did not understand why her parents were pretending it wasn’t. Did they know the truth and were they keeping it from her, or did they just not see it?
And which was worse?
What do you do when the world is ending and the adults are acting like it’s not happening?
They sent Iris back to school, and she tucked the stuffed cat in her backpack to keep her company all day.
Day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6. No, you cannot visit. I’m so sorry.
Day 7, day 8, day 9.
Her mom would be at the hospital during the day, her dad at night. Before he left he’d sit on the bottom bunk with Iris (he did not trust the top bunk) and tell her stories. Iris would listen, clutching the stuffed cat close.
One night her dad told her the story of the Pied Piper, a musician who was called into the town of Hamelin to rid it of a snake infestation. The piper played his pipe and led all the snakes away, but when he asked for payment, the townspeople refused. So he played his pipe and led all the children of Hamelin away. No one ever saw them again.
That night Iris had a nightmare of a townful of children disappearing into thin air—everyone but her. She ran through empty houses calling for her friends, but no one answered. They were all gone.
The nightmare warped, got worse. The Pied Piper played his pipe and all the children marched out of the town and off the edge of the world. Sometimes Iris marched with them; sometimes she could only watch; sometimes she knew what was coming and couldn’t do anything to stop it; sometimes the edge just came. No matter what, she woke up terrified.
It was not the only nightmare. From the night Lark was rushed off to the hospital, Iris had dreams of robbers in black stocking caps and masks and black-and-white striped shirts scaling the walls of her house and climbing in the windows, of a fire blazing through the house quicker than they could run, of monsters under the bed and in the closet and just outside the door, of long dark slithering things hissing at her. She dreamed of vampires, of zombies, of werewolves in the bright full moon, of real wolves circling and baring their teeth, of monstrous birds, of bone-fingered witches reaching for her, of demons slipping under her skin and taking hold of her.
And then Lark came home, clutching Bunny close.
It was over.
She would be fine.
But she looked as if something had tried to sip the life from her. It wasn’t a monster; Iris knew that. It was just biology.
Because things like that happen. Sometimes the world is monstrous. Sometimes, for whatever reason, an infection slips under your skin and takes hold.
Wash your hands. Cover your cough. Keep your hands away from your eyes and mouth. Douse yourself and people near you in sanitizer. Don’t share food. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Don’t go outside with wet hair. Get lots of sleep.
These things are supposed to protect you. Except sometimes they aren’t enough, and that is when the monsters come.
Memory tells us funny lies sometimes. Iris remembers her nightmares as a fact of her childhood, can’t remember a time without having them, a time where falling asleep at night didn’t feel like jumping into a pit of rattlesnakes.
But it’s not true. These nightmares started the night Lark went to the hospital.
And when Lark came home, Iris’s nightmares did not stop, though her sister was keeping the bottom bunk weighted down where it was supposed to be, and one night in the middle of a dream where every child disappeared from the school but her, she heard the sound of Lark climbing up the bunk-bed ladder.
Iris told her the story of the Pied Piper and the children of Hamelin, and how they just walked out of town and never came back again.
So Lark rewove the story. “But when they got to the edge of the world,” she whispered in Iris’s ear, “that’s when they grew wings and flew away. The Pied Piper could only watch. The children couldn’t go home again, but they lived in the sky and the birds kept watch over them. The end.”
It was a good story. Maybe it was better to have wings and hang out with the birds than to be in a town with people who’d cheat someone out of money. Maybe the kids would have grown up to be that sort of people too, but now the birds would help them be different.