The House Above the Sea

35.

Neo is numb.

    He should move, but he can't. He should figure out how to get out of this, but he can't. So he sits, utterly lost, atop the twin bed in which he's slept for the past two and a half months. The room is a wash of stormy gray around him, the rain a constant patter overhead.

    Neo thinks of the first time he ever plopped down on this quilt—Joey watching him, shy and amused at once—from the doorway. It had felt then like he had all the time in the world. Much more time than he wanted, even.

    Now he has none left at all.

    He could still run, maybe. Tiptoe downstairs and slip out the back or side door before anyone saw him. Joey might be a helpful distraction, even, if only he knew where Joey was. Maybe he had left to see Maeve without him. Neo hoped so—

    He remembers, suddenly, Aunt Viv folding the truck's keys into her palm. The wave of hopelessness rolls back in.

    Slowly, Neo scoots off the bed, coming to his knees on the floor. He digs around beneath the bed, nudging aside a sweatshirt he forgot about and a stack of worn magazines, fingers grappling around the handle of his suitcase. He drags it out, flips it open, and stares at the two empty caverns, unblinking, until his eyes start to water.

    When he left New York, he was convinced there could be no other place that felt like home to him. Nothing could replace the bustling city life he knew, the streets humming with conversations in every language, the air alive with warm asphalt and spices and meat, the bizarre yet comforting anonymity that accompanied being surrounded by strangers. Nothing could ever replace that. Certainly not a sleepy island town halfway across the globe.

    And he was right, sort of. It isn't the sleepy island town that changed his mind, but the silent boy who lives here, trapped in that house at the cliffside.

    Joey and Elsie will figure it out. That's the grim truth of it. They'll figure it out, and Kit will wake up, and have his life back. He'll ask where Neo is, but it won't matter, because Neo will be long gone by then.

    A rapt knock on the bedroom door startles Neo. He turns his head, expecting his father, so he's stunned when it's Aunt Vivian that peeks into the room.

    He blinks at her. Last time he checked, she was giving Joey a long talking-to about stealing and lying and lying about stealing. Joey, stone-faced, wasn't saying anything. Not because he's a coward, but because he's smart.

    "Aunt Viv?" Neo says, alarmed, as she ducks quickly into the room, nudging the door shut behind her. "What's up?"

    She flattens the quilt atop Joey's bed with the palm of her hand, easing down across from Neo. "I need to talk to you, kiddo."

    "Oh," Neo says, turning to face her. "Joey didn't know about the ring, you know. I wasn't corrupting him, or anything. No one knew about it. No one knew about it but me."

    "That's not—I never thought that, Neo," she says, suddenly grave. "That you were corrupting him. I never thought that for a second."

    Neo can taste the importance of this moment, whatever it may mean for him, in the air. He folds the suitcase shut again, pushing it off to the side. "Okay?"

    "Listen, Neo," Aunt Vivian says, clasping her hands. She leans forward, her elbows on her knees, as if she's too exhausted to hold herself upright. The sight unsettles Neo, who has always seen his aunt with her shoulders back and square, her chin held high. Remnants of her life as a military commander, maybe, but more so an unshakeable sense of dignity, and well earned. But there is none of that here. No pride, no facade. Just...Aunt Viv. "This is a weird spot for me. Do you know why?"