the hallway were Helen’s and Edie’s.
Edie went into Cassiel’s room before me, strolled right in like it was no big deal. Dust swarmed in the light from the ceiling. I thought about breathing it in. I thought about it swarming like that inside my nose and mouth and throat and lungs.
I stopped in the doorway like the air itself was pushing me away. It wasn’t my room. It wasn’t my stuff to touch.
“What?” Edie said.
I looked past her. “Nothing.”
“Is it different?” she said. “I tried to make it look exactly the same.”
I said, “I’m just looking.”
The dust swarmed harder and faster around me when I walked in, like it was angry. Here was his mother holding me tight, here was his sister asking me in. But even the dust in Cassiel’s room knew I wasn’t him.
“It’s tidier,” she said. “You can’t miss that.”
I looked at his stuff. I moved around the room, picking things up, touching them, opening drawers. A mirror with an apple printed on it, a skin drum, a picture of two banjo players in a small metal frame. A book about mask-making, a folder of drawings, a skateboard. A stack of postcards, a laptop, a poster for a film I’d never heard of. Clothes, washed and ironed and folded and waiting for someone to wear them for two whole years. They were way too small for me. They’d never fit him now.
I thought about Cassiel watching me from somewhere, from a daydream, from a park bench, from a checkout, from heaven or hell or the plain cold grave, wherever he might be.
I wondered how much he would hate me for what I was doing.
I wondered when he was coming to get me back.
“Does it feel weird?” she said.
“A bit,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got this running commentary in my head: My little brother’s home. ”
She sounded like an announcer at a railway station. “ My little brother is home and in his room. ”
No, he’s not , the commentary in my head said. No, he isn’t.
“Do you like it?” she said. “Do you like your room?”
I didn’t answer. She didn’t notice.
“It’s bigger than the old one, isn’t it? Do you like the color? It’s called Lamp Room Gray or something. Mum said it was boring. I think it’s cool.”
I smiled.
“You hate it,” she said.
“I don’t.”
Helen came upstairs and knocked on the open door. Edie took her eyes off me for a moment to look at her.
“You are so tall,” Helen said.
“Am I?”
“I forgot you’d be two years older.” She leaned on the doorframe. She crossed her arms around herself and watched me.
“I said the same thing,” Edie said. “It’s like you grew in five minutes.”
Helen nodded. “It’s a lot to take in.”
When she blinked, she blinked slowly, like her eyes would have been happy staying closed.
“Where have you been, Cassiel?”
“What happened? Tell us what happened.”
They spoke at the same time, almost. They were nothing but questions. I couldn’t answer them. My disguise was paper-thin. I didn’t know who Cassiel Roadnight was or what he’d say. If I spoke, I’d eat away at it, I’d just show myself lurking underneath, the rotten core.
“Not now,” I said.
“When?” Edie said.
“Leave it, love,” said Helen.
It was quiet, tense, like a standoff. I could hear us all breathing. I thought about how big Cassiel’s breaths were, how many times a minute his heart beat.
“Are you hungry?” Helen said.
I should be. I don’t think I’d eaten since Edie called. But I wasn’t. My stomach was like a closed fist. There was too much to think about. Too much could go wrong.
Cassiel would be. He would be relaxed and hungry and tired. Cassiel was home.
“I think so,” I said.
“Good. Let’s eat.”
They left the room ahead of me, and I listened to them go along the landing and down the stairs. I stopped in the doorway and looked back into his room. The dust was still frenzied in the light from the bulb. I switched it off.
The dust disappeared, just
Odd Arne Westad, J. M. Roberts