Page 7 of Come Tumbling Down

“A good autopsy table isn’t creepy, it’s essential,” said Jack. She squinted at him. “Christopher? Am I to assume this is your room now? Who’s your verdigrised friend? I don’t recognize the voice.”

Seeming to relax for the first time since she’d carried Jack through the door, Alexis tapped her arm and signed something. Jack rolled her eyes.

“Of course I’m missing my glasses,” she said. “My sister—may the Drowned Gods devour every scrap of meat clinging to her barnacled bones—stole them when she stole my skull. You’re all quite blurry at any distance.”

“I’m Cora and I’m very confused right now,” said Cora.

“Then you clearly belong with this student body,” said Jack. She leaned against Alexis as she pulled the box of gloves closer. “Have there been any other miraculous resurrections since my departure? I do like to keep up on the latest gossip.”

“Everyone else who was dead is still dead, so far as I know,” said Kade. “Nancy’s door came back for her. She’s gone to the Halls of the Dead.”

“We left Nadya there when we went to find Sumi’s ghost,” said Christopher.

“Had the Halls of the Dead offended you in some way, that they deserved a Drowned Girl with no sense of etiquette?” Jack pulled out a pair of white kid gloves, shuddered, and set them aside, continuing to rummage through the remaining options.

“It was a trade,” said Cora. “Sumi for Nadya.” She couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. Nadya had been her first and fiercest friend at the school. Sumi was …

Sumi was Sumi. Spending time with her was like trying to form a close personal relationship with a cloud of butterflies. Pretty—dazzling, even—but not exactly companionable. And some of the butterflies had knives, and that was where the metaphor collapsed.

“Fascinating.” Jack pulled out another pair of gloves. These ones were black suede, and after a momentary examination, she tugged them methodically on, checking each finger to be sure the fit was close and snug.

Cora had never seen anyone put on a pair of gloves with such care. Jack’s world seemed to narrow to nothing but herself, the gloves, and the need to make sure they covered her hands. When she was finally satisfied, she sighed and sagged against Alexis again, somehow sitting up straighter at the same time, like a doll with broken legs and a rigid spine.

“Alexis, these are my schoolmates, although one was dead by Jill’s hand the last time I saw her—”

“Hi,” chirped Sumi.

“—and one is a colorful stranger. Schoolmates, this is my betrothed, Miss Alexis Chopper, who shares the unfortunate distinction of having died at my sister’s hand. She’s currently unable to speak, but I assure you, she understands everything you say.”

Alexis waved.

Jack switched her attention to Christopher. “Christopher, you’ve been occupying my room while I’ve been gone. Is it too much to hope that you’ve some of my things?”

“You’re sitting on an autopsy table,” said Christopher. “I kept everything.”

“I suppose there are still mercies in the world.” Jack closed her eyes. “If you look at the rack of red shelves, third from the top, there should be a small oak box. Inside, you’ll find my spare glasses. I would be immensely grateful if you’d bring them here. I don’t intend to send people questing for every individual part of a decent wardrobe, pleasant as the distraction would be, but I can’t proceed with any clarity if I can’t see who I’m talking to.”

“Jack, what happened?” asked Kade. “You’re not…”

“Supposed to be here? Quite myself?” Jack’s laugh was low and bitter. “I suppose I should be grateful that my sister and I are identical twins, but it’s not enough. I can feel the panic clawing at me, trying to bite through my bones. This body is … it’s filthy. I need a thousand baths before I can even begin to feel like I might someday be clean again.”

“Is it because you don’t know where it’s been?” asked Sumi.

Jack opened her eyes and favored the smaller girl with a withering look. “I can only dream of such glorious ignorance. My issue with this body is that I know precisely where it’s been, precisely what it’s done, and moreover, precisely what has been done to it. I am a ghost trapped in a charnel house, and I dislike it immensely.”

Alexis began stroking Jack’s hair. Jack reached up and caught her hand with gloved fingers, pulling it to her lips and kissing it gently.

“I’m sorry, love,” she said. “I’m trying. For you, I’m trying.”

Christopher blinked. Of all the things he’d been expecting—which, to be honest, included essentially none of the day’s events—Jack showing affection toward another human being had not made the list. He turned and hurried across the room to the shelf Jack had identified, beginning to sift through its contents.

It was a little odd how he’d preserved all Jack’s things, even after the room had officially become his. Nancy had taken it before him. She’d been newer to the school, but she’d been given priority by her roommate’s death—even with as dotty as Eleanor could sometimes be, she’d been able to recognize that Nancy probably didn’t want to sleep in Sumi’s room without Sumi. It had been Nancy who’d cleaned out the twins’ clothes, giving them to Kade to add to the school’s communal wardrobe. She hadn’t been there long enough to deal with anything else, and when Christopher moved in, he’d found the combination of mad scientist’s lab and Victorian lady’s parlor oddly soothing. It wasn’t anything like Mariposa, but it wasn’t anything like his parents’ house, either. It was his. It was home.

Sure, he’d covered up the creepier aspects, since there was “willing to share space with a taxidermically preserved alligator” and then there was “waking up every morning and looking at a whole shelf of different kinds of acid.” One was quaint. The other was disturbing.

The box was right where Jack had said it would be. Christopher picked it up, hesitated, and grabbed a pack of wipes. Jack liked to be clean. Jack took “liking to be clean” to the extreme. She’d want her glasses to be clean before she put them on.

Sumi and Alexis were signing to each other again when he returned to the group. “Here,” he said, offering the box and wipes to Jack. “I thought you might want to clean the lenses.”