Hank had suspected it might all lead back to where it started. Nameless Canyon was the only part of Eustace with any depth, the only part vast enough to contain all that had happened to his family over the course of their lives.
Sometimes he imagined the reason Mom had chosen this house on the edge of the world was because the canyon was big enough to pour any amount of pain into.
In his imagination, pain looked like a nosebleed, red and wet.
In reality, pain looked like the scene he witnessed as Henry Flowers slammed his RV brakes before the sheer drop beyond an intersection.
Curled between the road and the cliff face as if napping in the dirt, the most horrifying roadkill: Hank would recognize Milo’s sprawl anywhere.
“H-whoopsy daisy!” cried Henry Flowers. He’d taken the last turn too fast, way too fast, and the forces of momentum and gravity meant the right side of the vehicle lifted momentarily off its tires.
It should have been fine, except from the other direction, right then, another vehicle barreled, equally reckless, around the corner—
A flash of white—some kind of van?—and then two drivers slammed wailing brakes.
It was anyone’s guess, whether the Alienator would tip—
And then it did.
Hank felt the pullback of his head on his spine, a violent snap as his teeth came together on his tongue and bit through it before he was thrown against the left side of the RV. In Hank’s arms, the cat scratched his chest like Milo’s fingers had. He cracked his head against the crinkled tinfoil walls.
The world stilled.
“Mr. Flowers?” Hank spat hot blood, but his speech remained slurred. “Sir?”
Mr. Flowers coughed. The seat belt had dug deep into his chest. He swung from his seat like an astronaut might. “See, that’s why I told you to strap in.”
Hank had, but his mouth was still a throbbing mess.
“Mr. Flowers, I’m gonna dry and”—spit—“climb oudda dop. I’ll ged help, bud, my bruh-dur—”
“God, kid. Go. I’ll hang in there …” His head fell limp.
We need to get out.
Escaping the RV seemed unfeasible. The only option was the driver’s-side window above, suddenly part of a new ceiling.
Hank climbed, grabbing sun-bleached cup holders, wedging his foot against the seat backs. He could only hope his fingers would be enough.
Pressed against the back of Henry’s seat, Hank caught hold of the grab handle over the cracked driver’s-side window. Suspended as he was by flagging hands, Hank couldn’t roll down the window and hold on simultaneously.
The glass had to go.
Hank swung his right arm. One useless hand curled. The other strained to hold his weight.
You stupid fucking things.
His fist hit the crack at its nexus. Something that was not glass cracked and pain shot up his arm. But Hank swung again, and again. Just like shooting. Just like missing.
It took too many tries. Hank’s knuckles were bleeding, and he knew it was futile but he couldn’t seem to stop—
Just this once be what I pretend you are.
His fist found open air—glass hailed down.
Hank hoisted himself up, willing his shattered fingers to last just a little longer, willing them to remain fingers despite all the abuse he’d done them.
Finally he extricated himself, glass in his knuckles sparkling like glitter. He sprawled across the warm RV siding. He was panting, bloody all over. But he was out.
From this high up Hank could see the canyon gaping brown and gray and red under him, could see the van that they’d almost struck had spun out into a ditch but remained upright.
Milo’s body lay precisely where it had been.
Hank wasn’t thinking. He was only hopping down that ten-foot drop and twisting his ankle on the shitty landing in the dirt, worsening the twist by sprinting as fast as he could. As if he could stop an already fallen thing from falling.
He hardly registered the van door sliding open, revealing a pile of faces with Ana’s at the fore, or the arrival of another car, a busted old station wagon.
Hank skidded to the earth beside Milo and scooped him up. He shook him, bled on him in the shaking, and as the sky bruised purple pressed his head against a chest altogether too soundless. Hank lifted eyelids without knowing what to look for, Hank was so stupid, and now Milo, Milo was too quiet—
He hadn’t strangled him this time, but he might as well have. “Milo, what happened, what the hell happened, hey? What are you doing here?”
Milo seemed like nothing so much as a broken doll, joints poorly placed.
“Milo? Milo, hey, wake up, please, Milo—”
“Set him down, Hank!” Ana skidded to a halt beside them. “Hank, Luz might still have him!”
Hank had pulled Milo up to rest on his lap. Something about seeing him faceup in the fading light seemed to kill Ana’s resolve, and suddenly she was kneeling, too. “Hank, hold him still. You’re shaking and I can’t tell whether he’s got a pulse. Stop moving, you dumbass!”
The truth of the word stilled him. Ana pressed her ear to Milo’s chest. Hank tried not to breathe, as if not doing so meant Milo would.
“He’s alive, Hank. But we should step back, because Hank, Luz—”
“Forget Luz. I don’t give a shit about Luz!” Hank pressed his head against his little brother’s chest—there was a rise and fall there, though it stuttered like it shouldn’t.
Ana took Hank’s shoulders and held them steady. “Listen up. He might be possessing Milo right now—”
“Luz is in Carmella and he’s in Orson—”
“And maybe also in Milo. We know he can split himself in three! So we need to back away and let Dr. Ruby deal with this, okay?” Ana craned her neck. “Brendan, where is she?”
Brendan Nesbitt was there between them and the amazing clown van. “I don’t know—she got one look at that RV and just sprinted right for it. Marissa’s gone after her, but honestly, I think we’ve aligned ourselves with a complete eccentric, Ana. I’m not sure she’s going to be any help.”
“Just find her, please!”
“I wonder how it got this bad. Again.” Hank wiped his nose on his hand, forgetting that his knuckles were full of glass, forgetting that his face was full of blood. “After this summer. How did we end up hurting him again?”
Ana squeezed his arm. Their heads bumped together. When they were kids, this would have been cause for a squabble. Hank closed his eyes.
“You’re dripping on me,” Milo said. “And if that is blood, it will stain my clothes.”
Neither Ana nor Hank had any rational thought in that moment, and this time their skulls hit harder in their collective struggle to wrap Milo up in their arms, tuck him away, and never let him go again.
“I need to breathe!” Milo protested.
Ana detached herself first. She pulled Hank back with her. “Wait.”
“That’s just Milo,” Penny Dawson declared. Hank had no idea how long she’d been standing there, serious-faced, frizzy pigtails half-undone.
“I’m sorry,” Ms. Yu gasped, huffing up in Penny’s wake. “She demanded we head to your house, and when we saw—I mean, here we are. How can I—”
“Hush!” Penny said. She moved her hands together and apart, deliberate gestures in quick succession. Milo sat up straight, leaning on both Ana and Hank.
His mouth dropped open in some show of mock-horror.
He signed back. She giggled. Milo did, too. Hank wished it would echo forever.
“What did he say?”
“Doesn’t matter. That’s Milo. Luz doesn’t know ASL.” Penny smiled.
“Even if he did,” Hank hazarded, “he’s not very good with fingers.”
For a moment Hank felt they had been lifted halfway to the stars.
The feeling was fleeting. In all the years Milo had been alive, all the sounds he’d made over those years, Hank had never heard a sob like the one that left him now. “Milo?”
“Milo.” A breeze from the canyon lifted Ana’s bangs. “Where did Luz go?”
Milo seemed lost for words. He put a hand to his chin, too ashamed to meet Hank’s eyes.
“Mom,” Penny translated.
Hank tilted Milo’s face his way. “Hey. Hey. It’s not your fault. But where did they go?”
Milo signed again.
Even Hank knew this one. He’d learned it years ago, when he was maybe only as big as Milo, in Cub Scouts alongside Tim Miller.
Home.