Chloe came over today. Logan is still in the hospital for observation, and Mom is with him. I guess I just wasn’t thrilled about being alone in the house, so I invited her over, supposedly to celebrate the beginning of summer vacation. I don’t think I managed to look convincingly celebratory.
Even with her there, I found I didn’t really want to be inside. It feels oppressive. So we sat on the porch, watching the cottonwood fluff drift around the neighborhood. I still can’t get over how weird it is—not just a bit of fluff here and there, but sheets of it on every flat surface, laid out like quilt batting. It’s hard to get used to.
After a bit, Chloe got bored and decided she wanted to harass Raph. I told her I didn’t think that was a great idea.
“Why?” she said. “I thought you guys hung out. Wasn’t your mom, like, planning your nuptials?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking awkwardly of my last meeting with him, in that darkened apartment filled with boxes. “Pretty sure the wedding is off.” I told her about Raph’s strange behavior and his sinister warnings, but I don’t think she really got the full extent of it. Somehow, when I speak, people always hear what they want to hear. I had hardly finished the story before she was bounding down the porch stairs toward his door.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to see Raph.”
“But—”
“The way I see it,” she said over her shoulder, “there are two possibilities. Either that last time was a fluke, and he’s fine now, and so it can’t do any harm to see him.”
“Or?”
“Or . . . he’s not okay. He’s got some kind of problems. In which case it’s basically a good deed to check up on him, isn’t it?”
I turned this over in my head. There was certainly a logic to her words, but still . . . I remembered his face last time, when he had told me to stay away from him. As if he was . . . not exactly threatening me. Warning me, maybe. But I still couldn’t make any sense of it. What could he possibly be warning me about? Did he think *he* had caused Logan’s seizures? Or all the other weird stuff in the house? That seemed unlikely. I don’t know why, but I was pretty sure that if there was something up with the house, it was something dead or supernatural causing it. Not a perfectly healthy college boy (a.k.a. a semi-healthy ex–college boy). Still, it seemed rude to intrude on him again, after he had been so anxious around me last time. On the other hand, I *was* curious about what was going on with him. I hesitated a moment longer, then followed Chloe to his door.
Chloe knocked confidently, and Raph opened it almost immediately with a smile on his face, as if he had been expecting us. Or expecting someone. His smile fell a bit when he saw us, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Oh,” he said. “You guys. What’s up?”
I expected Chloe to speak, but she seemed unaccountably tongue-tied, given her boldness only minutes earlier.
“We just, you know, wanted to say hi,” I tried, smiling nervously. “And check in on—I mean, see how you’re doing. I mean, say how are you. How are you?” Ugh, will I ever not babble like an idiot in front of this boy?
Raph nodded knowingly. “So this is what, a welfare check? Want to see if I’ve started carving the names of demons into all the walls of my apartment?”
“Oh my God,” said Chloe, finding her voice. “Have you? That would be so metal.”
Raph stepped aside and extended an arm, inviting us in. Chloe went in first and spun around, taking in all the walls. “Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. I followed her and saw what she saw: totally normal walls, nothing spooky carved into them at all. What’s more, the place looked really different from the last time I had been there. For one thing, the curtains and blinds were open, and the sun was shining in. Also, all the boxes were gone, and the surfaces all around the apartment were neat and clear.
“What happened to all the boxes?” I asked. For a moment, I flashed back to my last session with Dr. Clyde, and was struck with a cold panic that I had imagined my whole last interaction with Raph. But no, I had taken that weird pamphlet back with me, and even shown it to Chloe. I couldn’t have just made all that up. In any case, Raph dissipated my fears with his next comment.
“Gone,” he said. “We took them back to the library.”
“We?” said Chloe.
“I did,” he said, blushing a little. “I mean, someone helped me. A friend helped me. It was a lot of boxes.”
“You have a friend?” said Chloe incredulously, which seemed kind of mean. But it was true that I had never seen anyone come to visit Raph, other than his mom and the delivery drivers. Raph’s expression showed that he felt the slight, but he didn’t respond to it.
“The place is a lot clearer now, isn’t it? It was . . .” He laughed awkwardly. “It was annoying, having all those boxes everywhere.”
“What were you doing with them?” I asked.
“Just . . . research,” he said.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” said Chloe.
“No,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”
“No,” he said. “It’s a good thing. I mean, it’s . . . sometimes, when you’re doing research, you’re trying to prove something. A hypothesis. But if you don’t find evidence, that’s good too. Sometimes even better.”
Chloe and I exchanged a glance. It would be an exaggeration to say Raph was acting *normal*—he was still talking in riddles and not making a hell of a lot of sense, for one. But at least he seemed . . . happy. And his apartment certainly looked more normal. All in all, the signs pointed to an improvement in his mental health. So why did I feel so edgy?
“But it still means you were wrong, doesn’t it?” said Chloe.
“Yeah,” said Raph. “But sometimes wrong is exactly what you want to be.” And he let out a slightly unhinged giggle.
“You were researching Pronoica,” said Chloe.
She had hardly said the words before Raph’s expression shifted. The happiness and relief exchanged for a flash of that haunted look I had seen on his face last time we spoke. “How did you know about that?” he asked sharply.
“I’m sorry,” I said, shooting daggers at Chloe for selling me out. “That was me. I happened to pick up one of the pamphlets you had lying around last time and I showed it to her.”
Raph knitted his brows and his face darkened again. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said, and I was revisited by the chill I had felt during our previous conversation. But he seemed to catch himself and he relaxed his face as he said, “I mean, all that stuff belongs to the library. You can’t just walk off with it.”
I told him I’d bring it back, but he seemed more interested in Chloe now. “What do you know about Pronoica?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Not much. Just that it was some kooky cult, basically. Except, it wasn’t even real . . . The whole thing was done through the mail, right? My grandpa told me once that the reason the post office in this town is so big is because of Pronoica. That guy, Frank Williamson—they called him the Mail Order Messiah. He used to take out advertisements in the backs of magazines, promising power and enlightenment to any sucker who sent him ten dollars.”
“And people fell for that?” I asked.
Raph shifted his gaze away from us. “You sure they were suckers?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “What, so you’re saying Williamson sent people supernatural powers through the mail?”
Raph rubbed his knuckles against his scalp thoughtfully. “You guys want some tea? My mom just brought me a new teakettle, and now I drink tea constantly.” Without waiting for our answer, he ran the kettle under the kitchen tap. It did not escape my notice that he’d changed the subject again. Chloe looked like she was going to ask him more about Pronoica, but I shot her a warning glance. We let him chatter on about tea varieties for the rest of our visit.