It had taken a week for the lump on the back of Ephraim’s head to recede. He could still feel it when he reached back and rubbed it, as he did while standing outside his parents’ bedroom. His mother had told him to go check on his father, though what he was checking for, he was not sure.
He hesitated, tucking his hand into his pocket and rubbing the engraving on the watch. Since they had moved to the castle nearly two weeks before, he had hardly seen his father. His dad could not walk. He could not speak. He sat in his room. Sometimes Brynn read to him, her voice a steady cadence. Their mother spoke with him, and asked him questions as if he could answer. Even Price went in and helped to move his father’s limbs, saying that exercise could help the brain. Ephraim, though, stayed away, unsure of what he could do to help his father.
He put his hand on the decorative doorknob, the whirls and patterns pressed into his palm. Then he pushed open the door.
The room was dark, slashed through with large rectangles of light from the windows. It took him a moment to locate his father in the corner of the room. He sat in a rocking chair, guided there by Ephraim’s mother. His IV stand was next to the chair, giving off a faint glow. Ephraim shivered, then took a few steps into the room. “Hello,” he said. “Hi, Dad.”
The bands of light between him and his father made his father seem to be moving, rocking in the chair. It was wooden and oversized, the back reaching up above his father’s head, making him look even smaller.
“I, um, I just came up to check that you were okay.” He went over to the IV monitor and looked at the dials, as if he had some idea how to operate it. “Was there anything that you needed?”
He paused, though he did not expect his dad to say anything.
Ephraim ran his palms along his jeans. “I just, well, I hope you are doing okay.”
Okay? Okay? Why couldn’t he think of a word other than okay? Clearly his father was not okay. He was as far from okay as a person could be.
Ephraim took a few more steps. The skin on his father’s face was pale and slack. His hands, which had been able to do such fine work with a paintbrush, lay flat on the arms of the chair.
This was not his father. This could not be his father. His father told corny jokes. His father drew pictures for Ephraim and his siblings of strange creatures like two-headed squirrels. His father sang opera off-key. His father laughed. This man was a shell: a taxidermy like the animal heads on the first floor.
He rubbed his head again. He had not yet told his father about the accident. How could he? He didn’t want to have to tell his dad that after Ms. Little had brought him to the nurse, none of his classmates had come to check on him. Once Price had gotten a concussion on the soccer field and it was like the whole school took up a vigil outside the nurse’s office. Ephraim had only had Mallory there, tapping her foot and telling him that her father was waiting to take them home.
Then again, his father had always been the only person he could tell these things to.
And suddenly the red rage came over Ephraim. It wasn’t fair. Fair was such a little word, but there it was. He needed his dad to talk to, and that was one thing his father couldn’t give him.
He wanted to tell his dad how the past weeks had been. How all the kids seemed to think he was dumb. It started with his not knowing who stupid Admiral Peary was, and it was cemented when the Geiger counter deemed him radioactive. They still tried to be polite, especially Ian, but now Ephraim knew that Ian was just one of those people who wanted everyone to like him—even if he didn’t like them very much in return.
He wanted to tell his father about how Will had hated him, even before their family had arrived, though Ephraim wasn’t really sure why. Will certainly thought he was an idiot and had maybe tried to kill him. Now in science class Will basically did the work for both of them with minimal conversation.
He wanted to tell his father how he’d been mean to Mallory and how it made him feel small inside, and yet he couldn’t manage to apologize or make himself any nicer since she was so prickly herself.
He wanted to tell his dad how he ate lunch outside every day and it was a little cold, but the sun was beautiful and the light was clear and how those things made him think of his dad and when they used to go outside to paint: their dad with his easel and oil paints, Ephraim and Price sitting on the ground with watercolors. Brynn had been too little.
But his father wouldn’t hear and the words would just be lost in the air.
Ephraim started to cry, and then ran from the room.
He ran right into Brynn, who asked, “Do you hear that noise?”