Ephraim called a meeting after school in which he explained what had happened the night before.
“It was stupid,” he said. They sat on a crest in the lawn of the garden, their backs against the base of a large sculpture. “I was stupid.” He held the bottle in his hands. He’d brought it out to show them.
“It wasn’t stupid,” Mallory lied.
“You had a good reason for believing,” Will said.
“My mom said she doesn’t know what to do with me,” he said. She had cried when he’d told her how he’d planned to solve the mystery of the fountain and save his father. She’d held him so tightly that he wasn’t sure if she would ever let go; maybe they would be frozen there like the statues on the lawn.
Price had told Ephraim that he didn’t know why he was even surprised anymore. “Ever since Dad got sick, all you’ve done is made a mess of things. Grow up, would you?” And then Price stopped talking to him altogether, which was even worse.
He wasn’t sure what Brynn thought, but she had been avoiding him, and he didn’t think that was a good sign.
“Can I see the bottle?” Will asked.
Ephraim handed it over. “It’s just water,” he said. “Just plain old stupid water.”
Will spun it around in his hands. “I’ve been looking through the notebooks. I haven’t found anything. They seem to go in one direction and then another. There’s lab notes from experiments. There are strange conversations recorded. Nothing is really complete, but I’ll keep looking.”
Ephraim thought he should tell him not to bother.
Mallory had the copper key around her neck, and she pulled it from side to side on the chain. “People get better from strokes,” she said. “On their own, I mean. Over time they just get better.”
“A little. But not all the way.” Ephraim tugged on the laces of his sneakers. “It’s best if they get treatment right away, and my dad was alone for hours after the stroke. My mom told us not to expect too much.”
“Anything is possible,” Mallory said. She tried to make her voice sound hopeful, but it just fell flat.
“It all made such perfect sense when I was thinking about it. We’d get the water. We’d get it to my dad. He’d get better and we could go home. Simple.”
“Your judgment was clouded,” Will said.
Brynn would not have made this mistake. Or Price. Or Mallory or Will. Only Ephraim. And that was the real problem, he was starting to see. He thought that this place was magical because everyone seemed so smart and talented. There had to be something happening to them, he had reasoned. The truth was, he just didn’t measure up. He couldn’t save his father; he might not even pass sixth grade.
“It’s like he has this big hole in his brain. I just want him to be whole again,” Ephraim said.
The words hole and whole reverberated in Mallory’s head, reminding her of her own fractured family. Whole and hole. They had learned about homophones in elementary school, but now the near-opposite words that sounded so much alike were painful and profound. “I know what you mean,” Mallory said.
“Me too,” Will agreed.
The sun was fading and the air cool, but none of them moved, their circle providing just a small slice of warmth.