The Boy with Words for Skin

Chapter 8: New Skin

It was almost eight-thirty by the time we got back. Some of the others were talking quietly in the parlor, but we went straight up to our room. The second we opened the door, The Headless Dog was all over my brother. It took several minutes to calm the dog down, and then we got ready for bed. I didn't want The Headless Dog on my bed, but I knew there was no choice if my brother was sleeping in my bed with me. Fortunately, The Headless Dog curled up at the foot of the bed and didn't try to lay up by us.

Boy fell asleep almost right away, but I didn't. I'd forgotten all about the noise we heard earlier and the footsteps my brother told me about until we stepped back into the house. What I needed to do seemed so clear to me. I had to make sure my brother was safe. So, I needed to stay awake all night to see if I heard anything moving around.

Just before ten, I heard some of the others shuffling back to their rooms. Light carried in Rope, laid him in his bed, and then went to his room next door. All was quiet after that.

The longer I listened to the silence, the less worried I became. Footsteps? No. He'd just dreamed that up. And the noise from the basement? It had to have been the heater. Those were the only explanations that made sense. By one in the morning, I let myself drift off to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, Boy was sitting up.

"Wow. You snore like a gorilla," I said. He hadn't snored at all.

Boy laughed like I hoped he would. "Whoops!" he said. "Sorry!"

He stood up and jumped off my bed. The Headless Dog followed.

It was seven-seventeen, give or take a few. Breakfast was at seven-thirty and that meant. Kit would be in the kitchen.

I needed to tell her that the noise we heard was just the heater, but I knew our conversation wouldn't stop there. She'd see her chance and swoop in with ten other things she'd want me to do—talk to so-and-so about this-and-that, figure out how we should handle a specific chore, and on and on.

She would've wanted me to tell her about the footsteps my brother said he heard, but there was no point. I didn't want to freak her out for no reason. If the footsteps were real and as loud as Boy said they were, someone else would've heard them and said something by then.

A part of me wanted to just avoid her like I always had, but I couldn't. I couldn't give up anymore. I needed to stand up and be a big brother. It wouldn't be fun, but I needed to do it. For him.

So, with a groan, I got out of bed. I pulled on my hoodie, yanked on the strings so it pulled tight around my face, and grabbed some clean clothes. I'd shower first. Read my new skin. Procrastinate at least a little bit.

I paused in the doorway of my bedroom. Normally, I would've just headed straight for the stairs. Instead, I let my eyes wander to the right. They slipped over the next bedroom door and the next. They came to the corner and slipped to the next wall. Finally, they rested, for the first time in a long time, on the closed bathroom door.

At the Farewell, my sister chose a shriveled up, crumbly green sponge. The next morning, she woke up, barely able breathe. Her skin started to crack and she bled all over. Our parents panicked, but she somehow knew to get into the bathtub and fill it up. As soon as her skin was wet, the cracks disappeared and she was able to breathe again. It turned out that she couldn't leave the tub for more than ten minutes or her skin would dry out, shrink, and start cracking and bleeding. The Voice named her The Girl with Porous Skin.

Personality-wise, I was like our mom and she was like our dad. Mom and me being more quiet and careful while she and dad were always ready to laugh and jump into something without thinking it through. She was always going, always moving, always running off on her own and coming back with stories that I always figured were lies because Oak Knoll was too boring of a town for the adventures she claimed to have. I couldn't imagine how hard staying in one room, in a bathtub, was on a girl like that.