In the house behind the sword ferns, tiny hairline cracks began to crawl across the surface of Lee’s world. The woman in the yard was the first.
White robes, a sword that gleamed in the moonlight, eyes just as sharp as her blade, dark hair that fluttered over the bottom half of her face.
Lee had opened the door and peered outside in the rain, but the woman was gone.
Lee locked the door after that and couldn’t fall asleep. Some people might have thought it was only a dream, or a trick of light. But Lee was not like other people. He saw things as they were.
He knew because the woman had looked at him too. She had seen him and recoiled, the same way everyone always did.
In the morning, Lee stood where she’d stood in the yard, felt the wet earth beneath his feet, looked at the house from her eyes.Yes, he decided, it was definitely possible for her to clearly see his face from here. What seemed like far away from his room was actually not that far at all.
Except... the house looked different from this angle.
Lee couldn’t pinpoint how, at first. He gritted his teeth and pushed against the cloud of sedatives and examined each cornerof his vision with exquisite care. He hated when the wrongness didn’t have a name, because things without names or faces were always the easiest to fear. The sun seared down on one side of his face, but he did not move, would not move until he figured out why this one particular angle of the house was screaming at him.
He realized, at last, that it was the sword ferns.
The stiff leaves scratched against the windows at night. But from here, the nearest sword fern was at least six feet away, the branches too far to tickle even the side of the house, much less reach the windows. When lying in the room, it felt so vast and empty, but from out here, it looked much smaller.
He went inside and grabbed his father’s measuring tape, which felt like a lie in his hands—he was not the kind of man who built furniture or repaired sinks or hung up shelves, and he should not have been holding any kind of tool.
But he needed this to quiet his mind. Only irrefutable facts would stop his brain from buzzing.
He measured the length of his room, then went outside to measure the exterior. When he didn’t like the answer, he tried again. But still the numbers didn’t make any sense.
From inside, the room measured six feet longer than the outside.
He tried again, then decided to measure the entire length of the house to make sure he hadn’t underestimated where his room started and ended from the outside, but the result was the same. The house measured six feet longer from the inside than the outside. If anything, the outside should have been bigger because of the thickness of the walls. Lee unfurled the measuring tape inch by inch and counted to make sure it hadn’t been printed wrong, but everything was as it should have been.
This was the answer he wanted: that he so desperately needed to think about anything but James that he was inventing problems where there weren’t any, trying to keep his mind busy. Thatwas probably what a psychologist would tell him, if there was anyone he could tell about the murder. Lee already had enough problems, so that was the answer he should have accepted. He knew this. And yet...
It itched. Deep, beneath his skin. No matter how much he scratched, the answer felt just past his fingertips, waiting for him to touch it.
Again, he thought.I will measure again, and then the noise will stop.
“Lee?”
Lee jumped back. His shoulder punched straight through one of the panels of the paper door.
His father was standing in the hallway, frowning.
“What are you doing?” his father said, grimacing at the broken panel.
Lee paused, chewed over the lie for a moment. It was hard to think past the look on his father’s face that said he’d done it again—he’d reminded him to worry.
“Interior decorating,” he said, turning the notebook to face his father, showing him the measurements. “I wanted to have a good blueprint to work with.”
Lee’s father hesitated, as if searching for the lie in his eyes. Then he laughed and shook his head. “I actually like living somewhere with so much empty space for once,” he said. “It’s nice to not have a place totally crammed with junk, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Lee said, even though he didn’t think so. His brain was an attic packed to the brim. He did not know what it was like to live any other way.
Lee could tell from his father’s eyes that he didn’t believe him. The sedative was wearing off, and it was as if his father had peeled back his own skin, bared his raw muscles and veins—that was how easily Lee could read him. The way his brow pinchedjust slightly down, gaze darting between Lee’s scrawl on the notebook and the broken paper panel, like he couldn’t decide which was more troublesome.
“Well, have fun,” his father said, turning around because he didn’t want to look at him anymore.
The measuring tape felt so heavy in his hands now, the question of the house’s measurements just a quiet simmer at the back of his mind. He put the tape back in the hall closet, mourning the loss of a distraction.
Then a squeak echoed through the house.
