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I have no choice but to call the Maxwells. I don’t want to tell them what’s happened, but it’s an emergency. I take out my cell phone and I’m calling Caroline’s number when suddenly I see him! All the way across the park, sitting on the steps of Little Red Riding Hood’s cottage. I elbow my way through throngs of people, trying to move as fast as I can. But by the time I reach the cottage it’s not Teddy anymore. It’s my sister, Beth! She’s wearing a yellow T-shirt and faded jeans and checkered black-and-white Vans.
I run over and hug her and lift her off the ground. I can’t believe she’s here, she’s alive! I squeeze her so tight she starts laughing, and sunlight glints off her orthodontic braces. “I thought you were dead! I thought I killed you!”
“Don’t be a dork,” she says, and my dream is so realistic I can actually smell her. She smells like coconut and pineapple, like the piña colada bath bombs that she and her girlfriends used to buy at Lush, the overpriced soap shop at the King of Prussia Mall.
She explains the accident was just a big misunderstanding and all this time I’ve been blaming myself for nothing.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, Mal, for the one millionth time I am totally okay. Now can we ride the Balloon Bounce?”
“Yes, Beth, yes! Anything! Anything you want!”
But then Teddy is back, he’s pulling on my arm, he’s gently shaking me awake. I open my eyes and I’m lying on the sofa in the den and Teddy is holding out the iPad.
“It went dead again.”
I’m certain he’s mistaken. I just charged the iPad over lunch and the battery went to 100 percent. But as I sit up, I realize the light in the den is significantly darker; the sun has stopped streaming through the north-facing windows. The clock over the mantel says it’s 5:17 but that can’t be right, that’s impossible.
I reach for my phone and confirm it’s actually 5:23.
I’ve been asleep four hours.
And the Maxwells will be home any minute.
“Teddy, what happened? Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I got to level thirty,” he says proudly. “I unlocked eight new feather cards!”
My hands are filthy. My fingers and palms are smeared with dark black soot, like I’ve been digging outside in the garden. There’s a worn-down nub of pencil in my lap—and more pencils and markers and crayons scattered on the floor, all the art supplies that Caroline stashed away in the kitchen.
Teddy looks around the den in wide-eyed wonder.
“Mommy’s going to be so mad.”
I look where he’s looking and the walls are covered with sketches—many, many sketches, dense and detailed and spanning from floor to ceiling.
“Teddy, why did you do this?”
“Me? I didn’t do anything!”
And of course he didn’t. He couldn’t! He’s not tall enough! He’s not the one with charcoal and graphite smeared all over his hands. I walk across the room to take a closer look. These are Anya’s drawings, there’s no doubt in my mind. They’re all over the walls, drawn in the blank spots between windows and thermostats and light switches.
“Mallory? Are you okay?”
He’s tugging on my shirttail, and I am not okay.
I am definitely not okay.
“Teddy, listen to me. We need to fix this before Mommy and Daddy get home. Do you have any erasers in your bedroom? Big fat pink rubber erasers?”
He looks at all the pencils and crayons and markers on the floor. “This is everything I have. But I’m not supposed to use these anymore. Not until we get to the bottom of things.”
It’s too late, anyway. I can hear a car pulling into the driveway. I look outside and see not just Ted and Caroline but Adrian, too. He’s parking his landscaping truck in front of the house. Right now I’m supposed to be putting on one of Caroline’s summer dresses, getting ready for my big dinner date in Princeton.
“Go upstairs, Teddy.”
“Why?”
