The row at Dr. Lambshead’s mansion between Rack and his sister became epic once Danny had dropped her bombshell. Even Alice stepped aside, leaving them alone to sort through the wreckage.
For his sins, Jonathan tried to mediate, during a break in the action.
“She’s the same person she was an hour ago,” Jonathan said. “The exact same person.” Except she wasn’t. Except she was. Jonathan hardly felt like himself anymore, for that matter.
“No,” Rack said. “She’s an effigy, a doppelgänger, a total cipher. Where’s my real sister? Has someone kidnapped her?”
“I’m not a cipher,” Danny said. “I’m not an effigy. I’m not a freaking doppelgänger! But you’re definitely a tw—”
“Well, you’re something else, all right. And you, Jonathan”—Rack circling back to an argument fresh half an hour before—“this means your friendship with Danny is a sham.”
Jonathan sighed. It wasn’t that he didn’t sympathize, didn’t understand. He did. But perhaps he was just more practical, or didn’t see it in black and white. Especially given the enormity of Alice’s revelations.
“What about my friendship with you?” he asked Rack.
“Well, that’s genuine, of course. I didn’t know anything about this.” Except he hadn’t shared parts of Dr. Lambshead’s memorized letter with Rack, but certainly didn’t think Rack would have anything but a low opinion of “bird children.”
“How can I be sure of that?”
“I vouch for it.”
“How about you, Danny? Is your family a sham now? Is Rack no longer your brother?”
“My family is not a sham,” Danny said through clenched teeth. “Rack will always be my brother.”
“Rack, you really didn’t have a clue? Not a single clue?”
Rack’s response was thunderous, and no amount of capital letters or exclamation points could capture its volume or anger.
“That my sister was a member of a secret society devoted to guarding doors to other versions of Earth! No, I didn’t have a clue.”
“Oh, give it a rest,” Danny said. “It’s not like I know much at all. I only went across a few times as a child. You hadn’t joined the family yet. Daddy said not to tell you, to keep you safe, and Mummy agreed, and I did as they said. And he’s dead now and he can’t explain anything and she’s dead, too, and can’t be reached, either. I just did what I was told. Which was that Jonathan was a friend of the family. To keep an eye on him. Make friends if you can.”
This was as agitated as Jonathan had seen Danny, and it bothered him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d relied on her the past year to be a rock. Good old dependable Danny. The direct one, the one who told it like she saw it.
“That’s supposed to make it all right? You did what you were told?”
“Seemed like the best call at the time,” Danny muttered, looking at the ground. “I stand by it.”
“The best call at the time,” Rack echoed. “You stand by it. And you”—turning on Jonathan as if trapped between the two of them—“are you a zombie? You act as if this is all perfectly normal.”
Jonathan took a breath, tried to think of bunnies cavorting in a meadow. No hawks overhead, just blue sky.
“It was very clear to me that someone had told you or Danny or both of you to take me under your wing. For all I knew it was the headmaster at Poxforth. I didn’t think much about it.”
The fact was, he hadn’t examined it too closely, because he hadn’t wanted a real guardian.
“I didn’t know it had to do with any of this, because I didn’t know about this. But I knew I didn’t meet Danny by chance—it was too clearly a setup. But I didn’t mind. Do you know why? Because after that first get-together, it didn’t feel false. It didn’t feel forced. If it had, I’d have dropped both of you loons like hot potatoes.
“So, no, Rack, it doesn’t matter as much to me as it does to you. Although I understand why you feel betrayed. But she’s still your sister. She’s Danny, Rack. You know Danny. I know Danny. She’s a straight shooter. She didn’t hide what she knew when the time came. She told us.”
No doubt there was more she needed to tell them, about why Rack was to be kept well clear, in her own time. But now wasn’t the time to push her—or point that out. But other parts of Jonathan’s world would begin to fall apart if he started down the path of not trusting Danny.
“Not to mention this ridiculous story,” Rack said, shifting the goalposts and returning to his other objection, “about another world.”
“Are you afraid it’s true or that it’s not true?” Danny asked. “Because all we need do is walk through a door to prove it. You can’t have it both ways. Either I’m a nutter along with Jonathan or I betrayed you in some way that’s more than make-believe. Which is it?”
Jonathan winced; Rack was speechless. But it was still pure Danny. Go straight for the goal, defenders draped off her, legs churning grass to mud.
“You’re confusing me now, on purpose,” Rack said.
“Ask Jonathan why he’s going to go with this Alice. Oh, wait—he’s already told you. Because it’s important.”
“As you’ve said.” Rack turned on Jonathan again. “But just how important is it?”
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the other part?”
Jonathan shrugged, opened his mouth, thought better of it, said nothing. Started again, stopped, then dropped his arms to his sides in surrender.
“Because there’s nothing for me here. Not really. I could dress it up any which way—say it’s what Dr. Lambshead would have wanted, perhaps. Parrot something Alice’s said about the peril to the world. But the truth is, my mother’s dead, Dr. Lambshead is dead, and I’m stuck in a house full of ghosts and piles of useless junk. And Stimply’s informed me I’m bankrupt and have to sell everything in the mansion anyway. I’ve nothing at all, nothing to lose.”
The kicker was he wanted to go on this adventure or misadventure, however it turned out. Not just because, as Danny thought, it was the right thing to do. But also to learn more about what his family had been, at least. He’d been trying to forget he had a father, but it never really worked.
“Sob story told to another sob story,” Rack said, and rightly so. But also not said without some empathy.
Because they were truly all friends. Because R & D, even at each other’s throats, were fundamentally good-hearted people, and now they were thinking of Jonathan’s situation, not their own. At least for that moment.
“Which is also why you shouldn’t go with me.” As desperately as he wanted them to, he proceeded to take that opportunity to underline and underscore why they shouldn’t come along. Circled it in red pen and drew green arrows pointing at the circle. Then he took the whole thing and had it embossed and tattooed on their foreheads.
But it didn’t make a difference. In the end, his obstinance fueled their own. Despite their squabble. Despite Alice’s protests when she caught wind of this development—that not only wouldn’t Jonathan relinquish the Wobble, but she’d have three hangers-on to deal with, not one.
Then came the moment Danny folded her arms, which meant it was over. She was adamant: She was going with Jonathan, and if they tried to ditch her in the doors, then she’d just get lost.
Which only made Rack resolute, as if chained to his sister as she jumped off a cliff. It was all foolishness and betrayal—a huge mess, in Rack’s opinion—but if Danny went, “I go, too.” Besides, it was “all a crock” and no doubt all that lay behind the next door in this weird haunted mansion was “a broom closet.”
Instead, as it turned out, what lay behind that door was a men’s room on a speeding train.
Jonathan wondered if Rack would’ve been so contrarian and yet keen if he’d known that in advance.