Chapter Twenty-One

Reconstruction

After Iris got home, she ran right up to Lark’s room, where it looked like a tiny tornado had hit the dollhouse world.

“I threw up in class today,” Lark said when she entered. She didn’t even look at Iris.

“I know,” Iris said.

“In front of everyone.”

“I know.”

“How do you know? Was everyone talking about it?”

“No! I asked Jenny and Natalie on the bus, because Mom left me a note that you’d gone home sick, that’s all.”

“Did they laugh?”

Kind of? “No, definitely not.”

“Everyone in class laughed. Except Mr. Hunt. He got all red and weird and sent me to the nurse’s office. Did they tell you what we had to do?”

“Owl pellets.”

“Do you know what those are?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

“Well, I didn’t know. I thought it was, like, owl food or something. So when I found out, I was like, I can’t do this; I’m going to have to pretend to be sick or something. But I couldn’t tell Mr. Hunt I was sick—what if he knew I was pretending and he got mad at me? So then I thought, you know what? I’m just going to do this. How gross can it be? And I’m standing there looking at this . . . thing, and I have my little knife, and everyone else is cutting into theirs and pulling out bones.”

While Lark talked, Iris made her way over to Lark’s bed, grabbing Esmeralda and holding her tight.

“And I can’t do it. I can’t put the knife in. And meanwhile all these skeletons of these poor animals are reconstructing themselves. People are, like, guessing what they have. A bunny! A frog! A mouse! And all I can think is that maybe the process will keep going and the animals will take on flesh and fur and come back to life and then I can open the window and send them all to freedom. And then Mr. Hunt says, ‘Lark, is there a problem?’ And everyone turns to look at me. Everyone. And Tommy says something about Crow Girl, I don’t even know what. So I just plunge my knife into the pellet and pull out this little bone and—”

She mashed her lips together.

“I tried. I did! But none of the other kids seemed to mind at all, like maybe they were grossed out at first but then they all kind of got into it. Like it was a game. Like a kit from the Science Museum, only it’s not a kit from the Science Museum at all. It was a real bone. It was so tiny.”

“I know.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“What? Nothing.”

“Something’s wrong with me. Everyone else is fine. Everyone’s fine with the math drills and the mouse remains. But I’m not. I threw up in front of everyone.” Her eyes were red now.

“There’s nothing wrong with you!” Iris’s voice had edges, and Lark blinked up at her. “There’s nothing wrong,” she repeated softly. “You thought it was gross and you got sick. It happens.”

“Why does it only happen to me?”

Her eyes were looking up at Iris desperately, as if Iris could give her an answer and make it all okay.

Iris swallowed. “It happens to you,” she said, talking slowly, “because most people look at a bone and see a bone. You see the whole story.”

It was true. Lark saw backward in time—the beginning, the middle, and the terrible end. Everything had flesh, everything had feelings, everything had a story, and she felt for everything. Once upon a time there was a mouse who lived in a field. And then the owl came. The end.

Iris sat down next to her sister and Lark tucked her head into her shoulder. They fit like this. After a moment, she put her hand on Lark’s knee and tapped three times on her leg. It was their code for something, something like I am here or I love you or Iris and Lark, or something that was a combination of all those things.

Lark exhaled loudly and then tapped three times back.

“So . . . what are you doing?” Iris asked, nodding to the dollhouse. It was undergoing major renovations. The whole family was sprawled on the floor and Lark had taken apart the campfire room in the attic. That room had been there the longest of any of them, and Iris could not help but feel a twinge. She’d liked roasting marshmallows on the moon.

Lark sat up. “I’m making boxes,” she said, motioning to the origami pile.

“For what?”

“It’s an attic, isn’t it? This is where they keep things.”

Iris shifted. Lark had not made rooms like normal rooms in some time.

“What kind of things?”

“Things they want to put away.”

“. . . Like what?”

“Just things.”

“Okay.”

“Things that go in brightly colored boxes. You know.”

She did not. “What about the family?”

“I think they should each be in their own rooms.”

“The girls, too?”

“They have to be.”

“Why?”

“Because someone decided it was supposed to be this way, that’s why. Someone made a decision and now everyone’s just locked in their own room and they can’t get out and find each other. They should never have split up in the first place.”

“What about Baby Thing?”

“Except Baby Thing. Baby Thing stays with the Lark doll so she can watch over it.”

It wasn’t the first time Lark had done something like this. For a while last year the dad character had been strapped on a table in a mad-scientist room, next to a duct-tape mummy-cyborg, which was also strapped to a table. Each had a tiny tinfoil cap strapped to his head, and the caps were connected to each other by a wire. Making it easier, Lark explained, for the brain to travel directly from the dad figure to the cyborg-mummy figure once the mad scientist flipped the switch.

“Did I do something?” their dad had asked when he saw it.

“Never open the door to strangers,” Lark had responded darkly.

Now Lark picked up the Iris doll and considered her. “At first I was going to put you in the bird room so you could fly. But then I realized you should probably be in the armory.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“I trust you the most with the weapons. Mom will be onstage with the chickens. Dad . . . maybe a picnic in the bear habitat.”

“That might be dangerous.”

“Well, you know Dad. He probably wouldn’t notice the bears.”

“Don’t you think he’d be in the disco room?”

Lark smiled a little. “He wishes. That’s why he is trapped.”

“And what about you?” Iris said, picking up the Lark doll.

“I’m not sure yet. I think she’s in the attic.”

The attic was bare now—all signs of the moon and the starry black night were gone. All that was left were bits of paper and paint and drops of glitter here and there, the ruins of the former landscape.

With a thoughtful frown Lark stared into the attic, considering. Then she started placing the little origami boxes in there, strange bursts of bright clean color against the postapocalyptic room

“Aren’t you going to decorate the room first?”

“No, I’m just going to leave it like this.”

“But it looks . . .” What? Not just bare. It looked ruined. Lonely.

“I know,” said Lark. “But it’s the attic. That’s how attics look.”

“Well, then, shouldn’t the boxes be more broken down?” Something about the bright colors of the origami papers made it all look worse.

“No,” Lark said. “This is what I want.”

And that was the end of that. Lark never minded when Iris gave suggestions, because Iris never minded when Lark didn’t take them, and Iris never demanded to know why. Their parents always wanted Lark to explain why she’d put the chicken on the stage or the dog in the cat room or pasted a whole hallway entirely in cotton, and sometimes she had an explanation—because she’s doing a one-chicken show—and sometimes she didn’t. Or, Iris suspected, she had an explanation, but not one that could be explained. The dog was in the cat room because it felt right to Lark to do it that way, and that was all that really mattered.

“So why are you—she—in the attic?”

“She’s looking for something.”

“In the boxes?”

Lark scrunched up her face. “I don’t know yet. Probably.”

There were times when Iris and Lark knew exactly what the other was thinking; there were times they talked in secret languages that no one else knew. And there were times where it seemed like they didn’t speak the same language at all.

“I’m sorry about school,” Iris said.

Lark nodded slightly. “Me too.”

Iris watched her sister fill the attic with brightly colored origami boxes, and after a while Lark’s face relaxed and her eyes cleared and her cheeks dimmed from red to pink. She sucked on her bottom lip as she carefully folded paper into perfect little boxes—she did it so swiftly and elegantly, like it was what the paper wanted to be most in the world and all she had to do was help it get there—and then put boxes in the attic, moved them around, and took them out again.

It seemed like it was going to take a while.

So Iris went downstairs to find her mom frantically searching through piles of paper in the kitchen. There had been a lot of frantic searching for things since their dad had left.

“I can’t find the”—she waved her hand around as if by disturbing the air the missing word would pop out—“electric bill.”

“It will turn up,” Iris said brightly.

“I just . . . I don’t know where anything is anymore.”

Tell me about it, Iris thought.

“Maybe whoever’s stealing stuff took it,” her mom muttered.

“Huh?”

“Oh, there’s some crime ring, people taking stuff from museums around here. It’s all over the news. I don’t seriously think they took my electric bill, though.”

“Okay. Um, Mom, I want to talk to you.” Iris slid into a chair and looked up at her mother with her best serious expression. Their last serious conversation had gone so well, after all.

“Oh, yes, of course.” Her mom glanced at the piles, and then sat at the breakfast table across from Iris, clearly giving her daughter her full attention, clearly banishing all thoughts of lost electric bills and the disasters they might portend. Iris had her best serious expression and her mom had her best listening expression, and there they were, both of them, doing their best. “What’s up?”

“I think Lark should move to Ms. Shonubi’s class.”

There. A practical solution to the problem. They had done their best, they had tried, but clearly it wasn’t working. Clearly it was a mistake. Lark getting sick in class proved that. Yes, it was terrible for Lark, but it had one positive benefit of showing their parents that this idea was a terrible mistake.

Her mom blew air out of her mouth. “Honey. We talked about this.”

“I know, but we should talk about it again. She doesn’t like Mr. Hunt.”

“I understand that, but that’s not a good enough reason. It’s not even a month into the school year. Lark might like him just fine if she gives him a chance.”

“That’s not going to work. She thinks he’s an ogre.”

Her mom sat back and exhaled deeply, one of those cleansing breaths they tell you to take before standardized tests. “I wish I knew whether you meant literally or figuratively.”

“You mean, whether she really thinks he’s an actual creature of myth, or whether she just thinks he acts like one?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t think there’s a difference.”

Mom just shook her head. “You guys and your stories.”

Iris flushed. “I’m not making this up. And neither is Lark.”

“It’s just the fourth week of school and you’ve decided your fifth-grade teacher is a monster.”

“Not mine. Lark’s. She doesn’t like him. He makes her do math drills in front of the class.”

Her mom tilted her head. “Sweetheart, I don’t think that makes someone an ogre. I think that’s just what teachers do.”

“She threw up in class today!”

“I know that. I went to pick her up, remember? But that’s hardly the teacher’s fault.”

“She threw up because he made her do something that grossed her out. They were dissecting owl pellets.”

“. . . Is that owl food?”

“No.” Iris explained what they really were.

“Oh. Well. Your sister is unusually sensitive to that kind of thing,” she said, looking vaguely grossed out herself. “But that doesn’t make the teacher an ogre. I’m guessing a lot of the students found it really interesting. Wouldn’t you?”

“She doesn’t like him,” Iris repeated, ignoring her mother’s inarguably true statement.

“Is this really about Mr. Hunt? I know it’s hard on you guys, being separated.”

“No. I mean, yes, it’s hard. But . . . it’s not that.”

“Look, things are tough on Lark. You and I know it. Living in the world’s going to be a little harder on her than it is on other people. But she still has to live in the world, you know? And not every teacher is going to be just right for her. Or for you.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Iris. Love. Do me a favor. I know you guys have a . . . flair for the dramatic. But could you just try to rein it in right now? I don’t think its going to be helpful for Lark this year. She needs to be practical. And so do you.”

Iris swallowed. She was practical. That was the entirety of her personality. If she wasn’t practical, who was she?

“Don’t get me wrong, I love how creative you girls are. Your imaginations are wonderful. But sometimes a teacher is just a teacher, doing his best. And Lark is going to be stressed and anxious without you there, and maybe it’s not the best thing to encourage her . . . flights of fancy. Maybe it’s better to just show her that things are . . . normal.”

“Normal,” Iris repeated.

“Yes, normal. Getting assignments you don’t like is normal. Getting a teacher you don’t connect with is normal. Getting sick in class. These things happen. It’s part of life and something we all have to deal with. Lark, too.”

“But . . .” But what? But Lark was dealing with it. The point was she shouldn’t have to. The point was Lark wasn’t normal, and shouldn’t have to be. Lark was Lark. Didn’t anyone see that?

Her mom reached across the table and took her hand. “My girl. I love how you take care of your sister. You are so brave and loving. But don’t forget to take care of yourself, too.”

This was not the point at all. The point was Lark and how Mr. Hunt was not the right fit for Lark and wasn’t it important to try to find the right fit for your child’s emotional well-being and if maybe you had a teacher right down the hall who was the right fit and Mr. Hunt was the wrong fit then it was only logical to move Lark down said hall. It was only practical.

“Please know your father and I would never make you two do something that we thought would be bad for you. And the decisions we make might not always make sense to you, but trust that it’s not because we don’t care or aren’t paying attention. We do care, and we are paying attention.” She looked down at the table. “Look, honey. We’re all going to have to pull together. All three of us. I’m trying, I am, but it’s hard without your father here. I’m on my own.”

Iris could not talk. She just stared at the table.

“Honey, I know you don’t understand, and I am sorry about that. Just concentrate on yourself. And with Lark”—her mom glanced out of the window for a second—“just don’t let your sister get so stuck in her head she gets lost there.”

Iris had trouble doing her homework that night. Even the math problems didn’t seem to line up the way they usually did. Instead of answers following questions like clockwork, everything was like a question leading to more questions.

Perhaps this was what it was like when you were not practical.

There was something else, something sitting there in the back of her mind. She couldn’t figure out the shape of it, let alone what to call it, but it cast a long shadow over everything.

So she threw down her pencil and went to check on Lark.

Lark had been quiet during dinner, like she was still folding boxes in her head. And she looked slightly green, and rather like she should be sleeping as opposed to trying to set the world record for origami box folding. But she was not sleeping—she was still in front of her dollhouse. The attic room was completely filled with the bright yellow, purple, pink, green, red, and blue cubes, and dozens more spilled out over the table and the floor beneath. But against the ripped-out hull of the dollhouse attic, the colors looked sad somehow.

Meanwhile, the Lark doll was sitting on a pile of boxes with her back turned, staring out the window, Baby Thing lying on a box next to her.

“What’s she doing?”

“She took a break from going through the boxes.”

“I can see that it would take a while. The family should maybe consider having a garage sale or something.”

Lark grinned a little. “They hold on to a lot of stuff. No one else even comes up here.”

“Did you figure out what she’s looking for?”

Lark shook her head.

She worked for a while more while Iris sat and watched, and then it was time for bed, so Iris said she hoped her sister felt better; she said she was sorry about the owl pellets, she was sorry about the ogre; she said if anyone made fun of Lark, she—Iris—would personally lock them in the janitor’s closet. And not the one on the second floor, the one in the basement. Where no one could hear their screams.

And still she sat there, watching Lark rearranging the boxes in the attic so they were organized by color while the little doll stared out into the sky and her mother’s words flew about the room:

Don’t let your sister get so stuck in her head she gets lost there.