Chapter Text
Sunny stood at the foot of Basil’s hospital bed. The room was too white. White walls. White sheets. White bandages. White light buzzing faintly overhead, steady and sour and impossible to ignore once he noticed it. It pooled over Basil’s face and made him look smaller than he was, almost like the boy from the photo album again, tucked beneath the blanket with his lashes resting against his cheeks and his hands still.
Too still.
Sunny stared at Basil’s hands. There were bandages around his wrists. Around his fingers. Around the places where Sunny had grabbed and Basil had clawed and both of them had tried, in their own terrible ways, to survive the night.
Basil was asleep. That was good. That was bad. Sunny could not decide.
His own face hurt. One side of the world was gone behind gauze and pressure and darkness. The nurses had told him not to touch the bandages over his eye. His mother would have told him the same thing in a softer voice.
Be good, Sunny.
He kept his hands at his sides.
Kel stood closest to the door, like part of him was already trying to leave. His hair was a mess from sleep or panic or both, and his hands kept opening and closing at his sides. Aubrey stood near the window, arms folded so tightly that her nails dug half-moons into her skin. Hero was beside her, tall and pale, one hand braced against the back of a chair.
They were all looking at him.
Waiting.
Sunny had said the first words already.
"I need to tell you something."
The sentence still hung in the room.
It should have been impossible. Four years of silence, four years of words sinking before they reached his mouth, and then suddenly those six words had scraped themselves out of him like something broken and alive.
Kel had gone still when he heard them. Aubrey had stopped breathing. Hero’s eyes had filled with something like hope at first. Maybe that was the worst part. For one awful second, Hero had looked like he thought Sunny was about to say something that would make the world kinder.
Sunny looked down at the footboard of Basil’s bed.
There was a sticker on it with Basil’s name.
BASIL GREENHORNE.
Black letters on white paper. The room tilted.
For half a second, the hospital smell turned into grass. Not real grass. Not outside grass. Soft grass. Too green. Too clean. The kind that never stained your knees unless it was supposed to. The kind that grew in a place where the sky was always blue unless something wanted it not to be.
Someone laughed behind him.
Not Kel.
Not Aubrey.
Not Hero.
A bright, sweet sound, like a bell through summer air.
Sunny turned his head.
Mari stood by the door. She was wearing her recital dress. Her hair fell over her shoulder, smooth and shining, and she smiled at him like nothing had ever happened. Like she had only gone ahead to wait for him. Like if he walked toward her, she would open her arms and call him silly for taking so long.
Sunny blinked.
The door was empty. The room was white again. His throat closed.
“Sunny?” Kel said.
Sunny looked at him.
Kel’s face blurred around the edges. Not from tears. Sunny did not think he was crying. He could not feel enough of himself to cry. Kel’s mouth moved again, but the buzzing light ate the words before they could become anything.
Tell them.
The thought was not a voice, exactly.
It was not Mari. It was not Something. It was only the truth, heavy and patient, sitting inside his chest.
Tell them.
Sunny opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Aubrey’s expression flickered. “Sunny?” Her voice was sharp, but underneath it was fear.
Sunny swallowed. His tongue felt too big. His teeth felt wrong. The room pressed closer. He looked at Basil. Basil slept on, pale and bandaged, unaware that the world was about to end a second time.
Sunny wanted him to wake up. Sunny wanted him never to wake up. He wanted to run. He wanted to disappear into the white wall and become a flat, blank thing no one could ask questions of. He wanted to be back in bed with the curtains closed and the computer monitor glowing and the floor cluttered with things that had once meant he was a person. He wanted Mari to call him to practice. He wanted to stop himself from throwing that violin down the stairs.
His fingers twitched. He saw it again. Not like a memory. Memories stayed behind your eyes. This was in front of him.
The staircase cut through the hospital room, dark wood replacing tile, shadows replacing fluorescent light. Mari stood at the top, angry and crying and beautiful and alive. Her mouth moved. Sunny could not hear what she said. He never could, not clearly. Only the feeling of it remained.
Pressure.
Noise.
Too much.
Too close.
Get away.
His hands lifted before he remembered lifting them.
No.
Sunny clenched them at his sides.
“Sunny, you’re scaring me,” Kel said.
Sunny breathed in. The air went nowhere. He made himself look at Hero.
Hero deserved to hear it from him. They all did, but Hero most of all. Hero, who had loved Mari like tomorrow was something they had already planned together. Hero, who had disappeared after the funeral. Hero, who had come back thinner and quieter, carrying grief like a second spine.
Sunny’s voice came out small. “Mari…”
Everyone froze. The name changed the room.
Aubrey’s arms loosened. Kel’s eyes widened. Hero’s hand tightened around the chair until his knuckles went white.
Sunny almost stopped there. One word could be enough. One word had always been enough in dreams. Mari. Mari. Mari. Say her name and the world rearranged itself around the wound.
But not here. Here, names did not fix anything.
Sunny forced the rest out before he could vanish again. “Mari didn’t…” His voice cracked. It was rusty from disuse, each syllable scraping raw. “She didn’t kill herself.”
Aubrey made a sound. Not a word. Just a sound, punched out of her.
Kel stared at him.
Hero’s face changed so slowly that Sunny had time to see every part of him break. “What?” He whispered.
Sunny’s gaze dropped to the footboard again.
BASIL GREENHORNE.
Black letters.
White paper.
White room.
White light.
He could feel his body trying to leave without moving. A familiar looseness started at the back of his head, soft and inviting. The edges of things shimmered. The beeping monitors became a rhythm. The rhythm became a song. Not a real song. A song he almost knew.
Somewhere, a picnic blanket waited beneath a tree. Somewhere, Mari patted the space beside her.
Sunny dug his nails into his palms.
Stay.
He did not deserve to leave.
“I pushed her,” Sunny said.
No one moved.
The sentence fell to the floor and lay there.
Sunny kept going because if he stopped, he would never start again. “We were fighting. About the recital. About the violin. She was… she was in front of me. I wanted her to move.” His breathing hitched. “I pushed her.”
Aubrey’s hand went to her mouth.
Kel stepped back once. Only once. It was a small movement. Barely anything. His shoe squeaked against the floor, and the sound cut through Sunny sharper than a scream.
“I didn’t mean to,” Sunny said, and hated himself for saying it because it sounded like an excuse. “She fell. Down the stairs.”
Hero sat down. Not because he wanted to. Because his knees gave way. The chair scraped back, ugly and loud, and he dropped into it with one hand over his mouth.
Sunny did not look at him for long. He could not. His eyes moved to Aubrey instead.
Aubrey looked sick. Her face had gone gray beneath her makeup. The pink in her hair looked too bright, almost violent against her skin. She was staring at Sunny like she had never seen him before.
“Mari…” Kel said. “Sunny, what are you saying?”
Sunny could feel himself slipping again.
He was in the hospital.
He was at the top of the stairs.
He was twelve.
He was sixteen.
Basil was asleep.
Basil was awake in the hallway, eyes wide and green and wet, hands shaking as he stared past Sunny at the bottom of the stairs.
Mari’s hair was spread out wrong.
ot like sleep.
Not like anything.
Sunny’s mouth opened. No words.
The silence after the fall had been worse than the sound of it. Worse than the crack. Worse than the thud. Worse than the violin splintering somewhere below.
At first, he had thought she would wake up. Of course she would wake up. Mari always woke up. Mari woke him up when he had nightmares. Mari woke him up when he slept late. Mari woke him up for school, for breakfast, for practice, for life. Mari would wake up.
Basil had helped him put her in bed. They had waited.
Sunny remembered sitting beside her, staring at her face, waiting for her chest to move the right way. Waiting for her fingers to twitch. Waiting for her to open her eyes and be angry. He would have let her be angry forever if she would just wake up.
Then Basil had started crying. Not loud. Worse than loud. A thin, broken sound through his teeth.
“She wasn’t waking up,” Sunny whispered.
Aubrey turned away from him and pressed both hands over her mouth.
“Basil was there,” Sunny said.
The room changed again. Kel stepped forward again. Hero lowered his hand from his mouth. Aubrey turned around slowly.
Sunny’s heart beat once. Twice.
Too hard.
Too slow.
“He helped me move her,” Sunny said. “We put her in bed. We thought…”
He stopped.
There was no way to finish that sentence that did not sound like madness.
We thought she was sleeping.
We thought she could still come back.
We thought if we were very quiet and very good, the world would take pity on us.
A tear slid down Kel’s face. He did not seem to notice.
“What did Basil do?” Aubrey asked. Her voice was low.
Sunny looked at Basil. Basil did not move. Sunny tried to speak. Nothing.
The words had found the wall inside him. They struck it once, then fell.
Aubrey took one step forward. “Sunny.”
Kel shook his head faintly. “Aubrey—”
“No.” Her eyes stayed on Sunny. “What did Basil do?”
Sunny’s throat worked.
He could not.
He had already said too much. The words were gone now. His body knew it before anyone else did. His tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth and stayed there. His jaw locked. His chest squeezed. He could hear them. He could understand them. But the path from thought to sound had collapsed.
Verbal shutdown. That was what a doctor had called it once. His mother had not liked that.
He’s just shy, she had said, smiling too hard. Aren’t you, Sunny?
Sunny stared at the floor.
Aubrey’s voice sharpened. “Answer me.”
Sunny flinched. Hero noticed. Even through his own horror, he noticed. His eyes flicked from Sunny’s face to Aubrey’s hands and back again. Kel did too.
But Aubrey did not stop.
“What did Basil do?” she demanded. “What did he do, Sunny?”
Sunny’s mouth trembled. No sound.
The room began to stretch. The bed moved farther away. The door moved farther away. Kel and Aubrey and Hero grew tall and flat, like cutouts against the walls. Basil’s sleeping face blurred into a pale oval. The monitor beep became a metronome.
One, two, three.
One, two, three.
Practice.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Mari sat at the piano.
Her hands rested on the keys.
“From the beginning,” she said gently.
Sunny shook his head.
Not here.
“From the beginning, Sunny.”
No.
His fingers hurt.
He did not have the violin. He did not have the bow. He did not have anything except the truth, and even that was too heavy to hold.
Something moved behind him.
A shadow at the edge of the bed.
Not real.
Not real.
Not real.
Sunny’s gaze fixed on the floor until the tiles stopped breathing.
Someone inhaled sharply.
Basil was awake.
At first, his eyes were only half open, unfocused and glassy from sleep and pain medicine. Then they found Sunny. Then Kel. Then Aubrey. Then Hero.
The room was wrong. Basil understood that immediately. Sunny saw it happen. Basil’s expression shifted from confusion to fear with horrible speed, like he had woken into a nightmare and recognized the walls.
His lips parted. No sound came out at first. Then, very softly, “Sunny?”
Sunny could not look at him.
Basil tried to sit up. Pain stopped him. His whole body jerked, and he gasped, bandaged hands clutching weakly at the sheets.
Kel moved on instinct. “Don’t—” Then he stopped himself. His hand hovered in the air between them.
Basil saw it. The hesitation. The withdrawal. His face crumpled.
“What happened?” Basil whispered.
No one answered.
His eyes darted around the room, desperate now. “What happened?”
Aubrey laughed once. It was not a laugh. It was a broken, ugly breath that had found the wrong shape. “You don’t know?” she said.
Basil went very still. Sunny closed his eye. He did not need to see Basil understand. But he heard it. The little inhale. The silence after.
“You told them,” Basil said.
Sunny nodded once. The movement was tiny.
Basil stared at him. For one unbearable second, there was something like relief on his face. Not happiness. Never that. But a terrible loosening, as if some part of him had been waiting to die and had finally been allowed.
Then Aubrey spoke. “You knew.”
Basil’s eyes moved to her.
Aubrey’s face was wet now. She looked furious about it, like even her tears had betrayed her. “You knew this whole time.”
Basil swallowed. “Aubrey…”
“You knew,” she repeated. “You knew Mari didn’t—” Her voice broke on the word she could not say.
Hero closed his eyes.
Kel wiped his face with the heel of his hand.
Basil looked at Sunny again, and something in him sharpened through the fear. He saw Sunny’s locked jaw. His lowered head. His hands hanging useless and shaking at his sides.
Basil knew. Of course he knew.
He had always known the different shapes of Sunny’s silence. The small silences from childhood, when Sunny chose not to speak because words felt unnecessary. The shy silences, when he hid behind Mari or Basil or Kel. The heavy silences after the stairs, when there were no doors left in him.
This was not refusal. This was not cowardice.
Sunny was gone somewhere inside himself, standing in the room only because his body had not yet learned how to disappear completely.
Basil pushed himself up again. This time, he ignored the pain.
“Stop,” he said. His voice was weak, but urgent.
Aubrey turned on him. “Excuse me?”
“Stop asking him.” Basil’s breath shook. “He can’t—he can’t talk right now.”
Kel’s face twisted. “Basil…”
“No, he can’t.” Basil’s eyes were wide and shining. “He’s not ignoring you. He’s not trying to—he’s shutting down. Please, just—”
“Don’t,” Aubrey said. The word cracked across the room.
Basil flinched.
Aubrey stepped closer to the bed. “Don’t you dare sit there and defend him right now.”
“I’m not defending what happened,” Basil said quickly. Too quickly. “I’m just saying he can’t answer like this. He told you, didn’t he? He told you himself, so please don’t—”
“Did you help him?” Hero asked.
Basil stopped.
Hero’s voice was quiet. That made it worse. He was sitting forward now, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together so tightly they trembled. His eyes were red, but his face was empty in a way Sunny had never seen before. Not numb. Not calm. Empty like a room after everything had been taken out.
Basil looked at him.
Hero repeated, “Did you help him?”
Basil’s mouth opened. Closed.
Sunny wanted to say Basil was twelve. Sunny wanted to say Basil was scared. Sunny wanted to say Basil found him with Mari at the bottom of the stairs and Sunny was already gone, already useless, already nothing. Basil had been the one who moved. Basil had been the one who thought. Basil had been the one who took Sunny’s hand and dragged him through the worst day of both their lives. Sunny wanted to say Basil was a child. Sunny wanted to say that did not make it okay.
He said nothing.
Basil looked down at his bandaged hands. “Yes,” he whispered.
Kel made a sound like he had been hit.
Aubrey’s face twisted. “Yes?”
Basil’s fingers curled into the blanket. “Yes,” he said again, and his voice broke. “I helped him move her.”
Hero bent forward, pressing both hands to his face.
Kel turned away.
Aubrey stared at Basil like she might climb over the bed and shake him apart.
“You helped him move her,” Aubrey said slowly.
Basil started crying.
“I thought—I thought she would wake up. At first. We both did. We put her in bed because we thought if she was in bed, she could just—she could wake up, and everything would—”
“Stop,” Hero said.
Basil stopped immediately. The room went quiet except for the monitor.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Sunny stared at Basil’s name on the footboard until the letters blurred.
BASIL GREENHORNE.
BASIL GREENHORNE.
BASIL GREENHORNE.
“Then what?” Kel asked.
His voice sounded younger than usual.
Basil shook his head. No. Not because he would not answer. Because he already knew what the answer would do.
Aubrey knew too. Sunny could see it on her face. She was putting it together piece by piece, and each piece made her sicker.
“The tree,” she said.
Basil’s breathing changed.
Aubrey stepped back.
“No,” she said.
Basil covered his mouth with one bandaged hand.
“No,” Aubrey said again, louder. “No, you didn’t.”
Kel looked between them. “Aubrey…”
She ignored him.
Her eyes were locked on Basil. “You did that?”
Basil shook his head, but it was not denial. It was panic.
Sunny’s vision flickered.
The hospital room disappeared.
A tree stood in the backyard.
The rope was rough against his hands.
Basil was crying. Sunny was not crying. Sunny was not anything.
The leaves above them whispered even though there was no wind.
There was Something behind Mari.
There was Something behind the tree.
There was something behind Basil’s eyes when he turned and looked at Sunny and said they had to do it, they had to, because no one would understand, because Sunny would be taken away, because everyone would hate him, because Mari was gone and if Sunny was gone too then Basil would have nothing left to protect.
Sunny blinked hard.
White room.
White sheets.
White light.
Basil was sobbing now, but trying to do it quietly.
“It was my idea,” Basil said.
The room died.
Even the monitor seemed too loud.
Sunny’s head lifted. Basil looked at him with an apology that was too late for both of them.
“It was my idea,” Basil repeated, louder this time, though his voice shook so badly the words almost fell apart. “Sunny didn’t—he couldn’t think. He couldn’t even move right. I told him we had to. I told him no one would believe it was an accident. I told him they’d take him away.”
Aubrey looked like she might be sick again.
Kel stared at Basil.
Hero did not move at all.
“I was scared,” Basil whispered. “I was so scared. I thought I was helping him.”
Aubrey’s expression hardened.
“You thought you were helping him?”
Basil flinched.
“You made us think she killed herself.”
Basil shut his eyes.
“You let Hero think—” Aubrey’s voice broke, then came back sharper. “You let all of us think that. For four years.”
“I know,” Basil said.
“No, you don’t.” Aubrey’s hands were shaking now. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know what that did to us.”
“I do,” Basil said, but even as he said it, he knew it was wrong.
He did not know. Not really. He knew what it had done to him. He knew what it had done to Sunny. He knew the shape of the lie from the inside. He did not know what it was like to stand outside it and mourn the wrong death.
Hero stood. The movement silenced everyone. He looked at Sunny first. Sunny could not breathe.
Hero’s eyes lingered on the bandage covering half of Sunny’s face. Then on Sunny’s hands. Then, finally, on his face.
For one second, Sunny thought Hero might come toward him. He did not.
Hero looked at Basil.
“I loved her,” he said.
Basil’s face collapsed.
“I know.”
Hero shook his head. “No.” His voice stayed quiet. “You don’t get to know that.”
Basil recoiled as if the words had struck him physically.
Hero looked back at Sunny. There was no hatred in his face. Sunny almost wished there was. Hatred would have been easier than the devastated confusion, the awful searching, the impossible question Hero could not ask because Sunny could not answer it.
Why?
Why her?
Why did you not tell me?
Why did you let me bury her like that?
Why are you still here?
Sunny’s knees weakened. The floor seemed very far away.
Kel noticed and took one step forward. Then stopped. Again.
Sunny saw it.
Kel saw that Sunny saw it.
Pain flashed across Kel’s face.
“I…” Kel started. Nothing followed.
Aubrey wiped her face hard. “I can’t be here.” She moved toward the door.
Kel turned. “Aubrey—”
“No.” She pointed at Kel without looking at him. “No. Don’t.”
Kel’s mouth closed.
Aubrey’s hand closed around the door handle.
For a second, she paused.
Sunny wondered if she would look back. She did. Not at Basil. At him. Her eyes were bright and furious and hurt in a way Sunny had no right to name.
“You killed her,” Aubrey said.
Sunny did not move.
“And you,” she snapped, turning toward Basil, “you stole her from us.”
Then she left. The door swung shut behind her with a soft click. A soft sound. Too soft.
Kel stood in the middle of the room, breathing too fast. Hero was still by the chair. Basil cried into his hand.
Sunny stood at the foot of Basil’s bed and felt the place where his eye used to be throb under the bandages.
No one spoke for a long time.
Then Kel said, “I need air.” His voice was barely there.
He did not look at Sunny when he passed him. That hurt.
It hurt so much Sunny almost made a sound. Almost.
Kel opened the door and left too.
Now there was only Hero. Hero, Basil, Sunny, and the white room.
Basil whispered, “Hero…”
Hero’s face changed. Not anger exactly. Exhaustion. “No,” he said.
Basil’s mouth shut.
Hero looked down at him.
“You don’t get to say my name right now.”
Basil nodded quickly, tears spilling down his face.
Hero turned toward Sunny. Sunny braced himself. For yelling. For questions. For anything.
Hero said nothing. That was worse.
His eyes moved over Sunny’s face again, searching for the child he had known. The quiet boy behind Mari’s shoulder. The little brother who followed them around. The kid Hero used to ruffle the hair of, who would scowl and hide behind his sister but never really pull away.
Maybe Hero found him. Maybe he did not.
His mouth trembled once. Then he left. The door closed.
Sunny and Basil were alone.
A nurse’s footsteps passed in the hallway. A machine beeped. Someone spoke in another room. The hospital continued around them, indifferent and alive.
Basil’s breathing hitched. “Sunny,” he whispered.
Sunny did not answer. He could not.
Basil struggled against the blankets again, trying to sit up farther. “Sunny, I’m sorry.”
Sunny stared at him.
“I’m sorry,” Basil said again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so—”
Sunny shook his head once. Basil stopped. The silence that followed was familiar. Not comfortable. Never comfortable.
But familiar in the way old wounds were familiar. The two of them had spent four years inside silence together. Sometimes beside each other. Sometimes miles apart. Always connected by the same locked door.
Now the door was open. Neither of them had stepped through.
Basil wiped his face with the heel of his bandaged hand and winced. “You told them.”
Sunny nodded.
Basil looked at him with something like awe and grief. “You really told them.”
Sunny’s gaze drifted to the window.
Outside, the morning was beginning. It should not have been. The world should have waited. The sun should not have come up after a night like that. But pale light touched the buildings across the street and slipped between the blinds like nothing had changed.
Everything had changed. Nothing had changed.
Mari was still dead.
Sunny was still alive.
Basil was still looking at him.
“Can you…” Basil stopped, then tried again more gently. “Can you talk?”
Sunny’s mouth did not move.
Basil nodded, understanding too quickly.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. You don’t have to.”
That almost broke him.
Sunny’s chest folded around the words he could not say.
I’m sorry.
I hate you.
Thank you.
Why did you do it?
Why did I let you?
Why are we still here?
Basil looked down at his hands. “They’re going to hate me.”
Sunny closed his eye. He did not nod. He did not shake his head.
Basil gave a small, miserable laugh. “They should.”
Sunny opened his eye.
Basil was staring at the blanket.
“I thought…” Basil swallowed. “I thought if I kept the truth away, I could keep you. I thought that was the same thing as saving you.”
Sunny’s fingers twitched. The room softened at the edges again.
A picnic blanket. A flower crown. Basil smiling in the sun, holding up a camera.
Say cheese!
Sunny blinked. The camera became a monitor. The flowers became bandages.
Basil looked up. “Sunny?”
Sunny gripped the footboard of the bed.
BASIL GREENHORNE.
He read the name again and again until the letters stayed still. Basil noticed. Of course he noticed.
“You’re here,” Basil said softly. “You’re in the hospital. I’m here too. It’s morning.”
Sunny breathed in. The air went in this time.
Out.
In.
Out.
Basil kept his voice low.
“Kel left. Aubrey left. Hero left. They’re angry. They’re…” His voice cracked. “They’re hurt.”
Sunny’s grip tightened.
“I’m sorry,” Basil whispered again.
Sunny wanted to tell him to stop saying that. Sorry did not fit in the room. It was too small.
Basil looked toward the door, then back at Sunny. “Do you think they’ll come back?”
Sunny did not know.
For four years, he had imagined the truth a thousand different ways. Sometimes they screamed. Sometimes they cried. Sometimes they forgave him, impossibly, beautifully, in ways he knew he did not deserve. Sometimes Hero hit him. Sometimes Aubrey did. Sometimes Kel looked at him and never smiled again. Sometimes Basil took his hand and they disappeared into a white space where there were no stairs, no trees, no sisters, no friends, no mothers, no fathers, no good boys, no bad sons, no rotten things left sitting on kitchen counters, no houses empty enough to swallow a person whole.
The truth had never looked exactly like this. It was quieter. That was the worst part.
Basil sniffed. “Sunny?”
Sunny looked at him.
Basil’s voice went very small. “Do you hate me?”
Sunny stared. The question opened something in him. For a second, the wall inside his throat cracked. Air moved. A sound almost formed.
Basil leaned forward without meaning to, hope and dread twisting together across his face.
Sunny’s lips parted. Nothing came. The crack sealed. Sunny looked down.
Basil’s hope died so visibly that Sunny wished he had never tried.
“I’m sorry,” Basil said, though he had been asked not to.
Sunny let go of the footboard. His palms hurt. There were crescent marks in the skin where his nails had dug too deep.
Basil saw those too. He always saw too much.
“Sunny, don’t,” he said softly.
Sunny hid his hands behind his back.
The door opened. Both of them flinched.
A nurse stepped in, then paused when she saw their faces. Her smile faltered. She looked from Basil to Sunny, then toward the empty spaces where three other people had been. “Everything okay in here?”
Basil wiped his cheeks quickly. Sunny stared at the floor.
The nurse’s eyes softened in the professional way adults used when they saw something wrong but did not know its name.
“Visiting hours are going to be over soon,” she said gently. “And you need to rest, Basil.”
Basil looked panicked. “Can Sunny stay?”
The nurse hesitated. Sunny knew the answer before she gave it. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. He has his own room. He needs rest too.”
Sweetheart.
Good boy.
Honey.
Sunny’s skin crawled.
The nurse did not mean anything by it. He knew that. He knew. Still, the word stuck to him.
Basil reached one bandaged hand toward him. Not far. He could not reach far.
Sunny looked at it. He remembered Basil’s hands on the rope. Basil’s hands on Mari’s ankles. Basil’s hands gripping his shoulders, shaking him, begging him to listen. Basil’s hands holding a photo album. Basil’s hands planting flowers. Basil’s hands bleeding under his own.
Sunny stepped back. Basil’s hand froze in the air. The nurse pretended not to see.
“Sunny,” Basil whispered.
Sunny could not answer. He turned. Each step toward the door felt like walking through water. The room stretched long again. The white walls hummed. The floor brightened until it was almost not there.
Behind him, Basil started crying again.
Quietly. Always quietly.
Sunny reached the doorway and stopped.
In the hall, Kel was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Aubrey stood several feet away, arms wrapped around herself, staring at nothing. Hero was at the end of the hall near the vending machines, one hand covering his eyes.
None of them looked at Sunny. Then Kel did. His eyes were red. His mouth opened, and for one wild second Sunny thought Kel might say his name the way he used to. Bright and easy. Like Sunny was someone who could still be called back. But Kel only stared at him. Sunny stared back.
Between them, the truth stood barefoot in the hospital hall, newly born and already monstrous. No music swelled. No one hugged him. No one said it was okay.
Sunny lowered his gaze and followed the nurse back to his room.