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never cross your mind.”

“John, come on,” Ruben pleaded, “this isn’t you.”

“But it is him,” Persephone said. “It’s exactly who he is. Oh, don’t look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking about,

John. You didn’t even remember when I brought it up. You think I haven’t seen that look cross some exec or producer or writer

or whoever’s face the past five years? Empty promises completely forgotten about? That stupid blink and blank face? I can’t

believe it—or maybe I can. Just didn’t think you’d go that low.”

She stared back at him, her mouth flattened into a line. She wouldn’t. She would not.

She did. Her gaze still homed in on John, she addressed Ruben. “There was never a meeting with you and Maximum.”

They stood there, the wind tossing sand into the air, tiny shrapnel John couldn’t feel.

“John?” Ruben asked quietly.

John turned and looked the boy square in the eye. “There never was a meeting. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be.”

“You lied? Why?”

“Because,” said Persephone savagely, “he wanted to keep you in LA. He thought the meeting would do it. What John didn’t count on was you not seeing him as the center of your universe. He didn’t know you’d come with me. And of course he couldn’t

stay alone in LA, not with his two human batteries gone.”

They looked back at John, Persephone defiant and Ruben stricken.

“And you?” John countered. “You’re so upstanding? You didn’t have to tell Ruben like this. But emotional collateral damage

doesn’t matter so long as you win. But of course you didn’t mean to hurt him. You’re so good. You care about people so much

that it took years for you to return home. And when are you going to answer that mobile? Or do you not need them anymore?”

Persephone’s face was bright red now, and Ruben looked more pained than John had ever seen him, so much so that it nearly

stopped John from telling them the words they all needed to hear.

Nearly.

“I don’t need you.”

19

The bully’s cronies are deliriously happy, pushing and shoving one another into piles of leaves as they sprint across the

sprawling lawn. The freckled ringleader leans against the building, watching with his perpetual scowl. But here it is, the

long-awaited opportunity. A deep breath, then, and he pushes his bicycle forward and hurries toward his constant tormentor,

who growls Wot you want?

His gaze flicks inadvertently to the bully’s arm, to three round, pink scars. The cigarette burns. The boy follows his gaze

before looking up again, and for a moment they stare at one another. The boy’s face has never looked so lacking in animosity,

and this is encouragement enough for him to say to the source of his suffering what he’s rehearsed all these days: Better parents will come along.

The other boy’s face is a study of human expression: twisted confusion, relaxed realization, fear. The boy looks as if he

is going to say one thing, perhaps something along the lines of How did you know? but then he glowers and says You stupid darky. You don’t know anything. It’s terrible out there. They hate us! The boy steps forward and shoves him into his bicycle. They’ll hate you even more!

Like a pack of sharks smelling the blood blooming from the scrape at his knee, the others rush in, looming and jeering as

they pull at his bicycle. He pulls it back, but the handles slip from his fingers and he topples. Punches from the left, from

the right, from behind. He thrusts his hands before his face in a vain attempt to block them. I was only—

But the ringleader whisks a switchblade from his pocket and screams Shut up shut up shut up! A flash of silver and an incredible, stinging pain at his wrist, and the boys are kicking him as he lies curled on the ground.

He’d felt sorry for that swine. He’d cried for him.

It’s a betrayal of the first order.

A kick to his head.

It will be over soon.

No, it won’t.

He is stuck with them forever; everyone knows the big kids hardly ever get adopted. And in the few instances they do go off

with new families, as in the case of the freckled ringleader—the bastard—they are often returned like unwanted pets, made

all the more hard and unkind for it.

A familiar voice pierces the air and the kicking stops and through his fingers he sees Miss Amabel running down the wide steps

of the grey brick home. The boys scatter like so many fall leaves, and he watches them, already concocting a plan without

fully realizing it.

The elfin woman takes him inside, and he is strangely thankful. Because though the home can be a place of torment, it is also

a place of comfort. Because however terrible it may be here, imagine how much worse it must be out there in the world, with

no one to protect him. The future’s forecasting cloudy with nary a silver lining in sight , she says, but we both know if we look close enough, we’ll find it, if only a silver shaving.

That’s another start, isn’t it? She always says that, having new starts and all, and he nods, clings to hope.

Sometimes, and he’s never told her this, he imagines she is his mother.

Here, with her, he will always have a home.

And if faced with venturing out into a world full of bullies and heartache and grown-ups who whip children with wire and burn them with cigarettes, he would choose instead to remain in the Grey House forever.

But if he’s to stay here in peace, he must do something about the boys.

20

Riley stared back at John through the glass that separated the recording booth from the rest of the room.

“I’m John,” he began yet again, “and I’m here to say—well, it’s not like I came with the intention of delivering a message,

but...”

He stopped. He didn’t have the patience to make something up, and anyway wouldn’t they sniff it out, if what he said on the

record was false? They wanted something real from someone who wasn’t supposed to exist, and somehow this emboldened him, made

him feel that, on this song, during the moments in which his voice was the only one heard, it was the only thing that mattered.

And so John gave them the truth.

“The funny thing about people is that they will inevitably let you down. It isn’t always on purpose, and to be quite honest

I can’t remember how I know this so well, but I do. I know it deeply. They will let you down, usually in the moment you need

them most. You don’t have to blame them—you shouldn’t, in fact—but you do have to get a hold of yourself. You are your own

constant. So figure out your life and what you want out of it and set out. Can’t say you’ll be happy, because how many genuinely

happy people do you know? I venture to guess the really happy ones you don’t know because they’re off enjoying their own company

and—never mind. Just... what I’ve said.” Probably he should say something about destiny or fate or something. It’s what

people would expect of a ghost. “Set out, set sail, don’t be afraid and all that. Your future, your whatever-you’re-aiming-for...

It’s out there... somewhere... Of course, you could always just give up. There’s that. There’s always that.”

21

John hadn’t realized he’d walked so far out. It had grown dark, so he could hardly know how far he’d gone, but he knew it

was more than a short distance. Now he stepped from the road and lowered himself onto the patchy, overgrown grass. He stared

over the slim sandy shore to the ocean. The sky was cloaked in navy and had become one with the water, the horizon nearly

disappeared.

What was the point of it all? Nothing. Nothing was the point.

And there was nothing to do but sit here. Nothing he did mattered. John could walk around and find the portal to the Grey

House near the water towers, but he’d have to fight the Grey Man for it. Or he could sit right here and wait for the Grey

Man to eventually show up and finish what he’d started. Or John could wander about or simply sit right here and fade into

the aether. All roads led to the same place, and he was a fool not to have seen it earlier.

He felt himself getting lost in the sounds of the waves rolling against the shore, and it felt good. Fading into oblivion

to this sound... it wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

He lay back. “It didn’t mean anything, Ruben,” he murmured, “that stupid song.” He laughed a little at this. John had pulled

those words out of nowhere, scrounged up something to say and, just like dirt, it was worthless. People liked to ascribe meaning

to so many things that meant nothing—events, words, glances, people—because nothing was never enough. John stared at the night sky. What stretched beyond space and time? Did Mabel come from wherever lay there?

Why had their paths ever crossed? Why could nothing, why could meaninglessness , not be enough?

You’re as foolish as the rest of them , he told himself. Even now, desperate for significance.

But he kept staring.

John stared for so long, it was as if he’d become the dark expanse itself. He became the dark, became the quiet, became the

emptiness that was so full.

genesis

i’d been a question for so long .

I cloaked the room in indigo paint, from floorboards to ceiling. Oh, Ms. Top Brass had a fit when she laid eyes on it, pointing

and stuttering at the floor and walls and wainscoting. I’d expected her opposition, which was why I hadn’t asked permission

to paint in the first place. I simply brought the paints in slowly over time, pint by pint, and kept the windows open, my

subterfuge gone entirely unnoticed by staff. (The smell was strong, but I’d set out a couple of pints every now and then in

the hall, matching the walls, claiming that I was just spot-treating to keep the place up. For about three months the entire

floor smelled just the way you’d expect, but it kept me from being discovered.)

I called it the Genesis Room

because it was the closest I could get to my first memory.

It was the closest I could get to Home.

It was the closest I could get to knowing what it was like to be in a womb,

to be created,