“People don’t die from weed, dude.”
“They do when it impairs their judgment, or depth perception, or—”
“That was pretty sick though.”
“What?”
“You, like, used yourself as a human shield or whatever. Highly out of character, but pretty sick.”
Nora lifted her head and turned back to look at him. “You were going to die, Charlie. Maybe. I told you I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Just try not to maybe almost die again. Are you hurt?”
Charlie patted himself from his head down to as close to his toes as he could reach. “My elbow got a nice whack. Otherwise I think I’m good. You?”
Nora’s wrist was throbbing all over again, and her knee would be too bruised for Jessica to perch on for a while, but otherwise she was fine. No broken neck. No cracked skull. Somehow she’d taken a risk and come out of it alive. “I’m okay. What the hell were you doing up there anyway? You were barely gone long enough for one of your famous Charlie solo parties.”
“There was somebody out there,” he replied.
Nora sat up. “What?”
“Yeah, I saw someone standing there in the dark. They had something in their hand. I dunno. I’m sure it was nothing. I’m high as fuck, dude, I got spooked.”
“Why would there be somebody out there at—” Nora checked her watch. “Twelve oh seven a.m.?”
“Search me. Maybe old Granddaddy Boulder Shoulders felt like a late-night walk. Or he and Gram-Gram wanted to get freaky without us hearing. Maybe they swing? Did you notice any pineapples as part of the decor?”
“Pineapples? Jesus, Charlie.” Nora shook her head. “We can’t really apply city logic to a town like this. It’s such a different way of life here. I guess it could have been someone foraging or something. Night foraging. Maybe that’s a thing? I don’t know. But I don’t like it.”
“You don’t like anything.”
“Okay, come on, that is not true.”
“Name one thing you like.”
“Chamomile tea.”
Charlie faked a yawn as his review of that answer. Nora took off her other sock and threw it at him. This time it easily hit its mark. Charlie jumped up, dusting himself off as if he’d just been doused with tarantulas. “Nor, gross, I don’t want your foot fungus.”
Nora, who had never had any fungus in her life, not even shiitake mushrooms, and did everything in her power to keep it that way, blanched. “How dare you!”
“I’m going to bed. You going to bed?”
Nora let her shoulders drop. They, like the rest of her, were heavy with exhaustion. “Yes. Of course. It’s after midnight. Have we discussed the health risks of getting too little sleep for a sustained period of time?”
“Not for about six minutes.”
Nora glared at him.
“Aw, and you’ve run out of socks. Sucks to suck. Cute nightie, by the way. Is it from the Mrs.Claus collection?”
Nora retrieved the offending—but fungus-free—sock from where it had landed by the stairs and charged at Charlie, who knew this was coming before she did and was already halfway to the bedroom.
After a truce brought about by Charlie’s threat to start using his own socks as ammunition, the twins took to their beds. Jessica curled herself into Charlie’s neck and they were both snoring before Nora had finished tucking herself in to her satisfaction. She rolled her eyes. The lights in the room weren’t even off yet. Charlie always could sleep without effort, as if he didn’t have a million worries suddenly cued to the stage by his head hitting the pillow.
Nora pulled out Charlie’s file one last time. With any luck, this was it. The last way he would be fated to die. She ran her eyes down the page, but the answer revealed itself with the same clarity as before, which is to say none. The cloud of ink remained, the letters lost somewhere within. Nora looked at her own writing.S-T-A. They were the only letters she’d been able to make out so far, and they might not even be in the correct order. She turned back to the gyrating ink. In a space that had never shown the hint of a letter before, a shape appeared. Half a shape, anyway. It looked like aUwith the two stems shaved low. Nora threw the file to the ground with a grunt of frustration and curled under the covers that smelled like her dad.
