Now Mai’s tough-girl exterior is all but gone. She truly is like a little kid listening wide-eyed to a campfire story. “What did they do?”
“They decided they didn’t want Humphrey unwound after all,” says Hayden.
“Wait a second,” says Mai. “You said they already unwound him.”
Hayden’s eyes look maniacal in the candlelight. “They did.”
Mai shudders.
“Here’s the thing,” says Hayden. “Like I said, everything about harvest camp is secret—even the records of who receives what, once the unwinding is done.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So the Dunfees found the records. The father, I think, worked for the government, so he was able to hack into the parts department.”
“The what?”
Hayden sighs. “The National Unwind Database.”
“Oh.”
“And he gets a printout of every single person who received a piece of Humphrey. Then the Dunfees go traveling around the world to find them . . . so they can kill them, take back the parts, and bit by bit make Humphrey whole. . . .”
“No way.”
“That’s why people call him Humphrey,” Connor adds. “’Cause ‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men . . . couldn’t put Humphrey together again.’ ”
The thought hangs heavy in the air, until Hayden, leaning forward over the candle, suddenly throws his hands out toward Mai and shouts, “Boo!”
They all flinch in spite of themselves—Mai most of all.
Connor has to laugh. “Did you see that? She practically jumped out of her skin!”
“Better not do that, Mai,” says Hayden. “Jump out of your skin, and they’ll give it to someone else before you can get it back.”
“You can both just take a flying leap.” Mai tries to punch Hayden, but he easily evades her. That’s when Roland appears from behind his bookshelves.
“What’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” says Hayden. “Just telling ghost stories.”
Roland looks at the three of them, clearly irritated, and distrustful of any situation not involving him. “Yeah, well, get to bed. It’s late.”
Roland lumbers back to his corner, but Connor’s sure he’s monitoring the conversation now, probably paranoid that they’re plotting against him.
“That Humphrey Dunfee thing,” says Mai. “It’s just a story, right?”
Connor keeps his opinion to himself, but Hayden says, “I knew a kid who used to tell people he had Humphrey’s liver. Then one day he disappeared and was never seen again. People said he just got unwound, but then again . . . maybe the Dunfees got him.” Then Hayden blows out the candle, leaving them in darkness.
On Connor and Risa’s third day there, Sonia calls each of them upstairs—but one at a time, in the order they’d arrived.
“First the thieving ox,” she says, pointing down the stairs at Roland.
Apparently she knows about the stolen MP3 player.
“What do you suppose the Dragon Lady wants?” Hayden asks, after the trapdoor is closed.
“To drink your blood,” says Mai. “Beat you with her cane for a while. Stuff like that.”
“I wish you’d stop calling her the Dragon Lady,” Risa says. “She’s saving your ass—the least you could do is show some respect.” She turns toward Connor.
“You wanna take Didi? My arms are getting tired.” Connor takes the baby, cradling it a bit more skillfully than he had before. Mai looks at him with mild interest. He wonders if Hayden told her that they’re not really the baby’s parents.
Roland comes back from his appointment with Sonia half an hour later, and says nothing about it. Neither does Mai when she comes back. Hayden takes the longest, and when he returns, he’s closemouthed too—which is strange for him.
It’s unsettling.
Connor goes next. It’s night outside when he goes upstairs. He has no idea what time of night. Sonia sits with him in her little back room, putting him in an uncomfortable chair that wobbles whenever he moves.
“You’ll be leaving here tomorrow,” she tells him.
“Going where?”
She ignores the question and reaches into the drawer of an old rolltop desk.
“I’m hoping you’re at least semiliterate.”
“Why? What do you want me to read?”
“You don’t have to read anything.” Then she pulls out several sheets of blank paper. “I want you to write.”
“What, my last will and testament? Is that it?”
“A will implies you have something to pass on—which you don’t. What I want you to do is write a letter.” She hands him the paper, a pen, and an envelope. “Write a letter to someone you love. Make it as long as you want, or as short as you want; I don’t care. But fill it with everything you wished you could say, but never had the chance. Do you understand?”
“What if I don’t love anybody?”
She purses her lips and shakes her head slowly. “You Unwinds are all the same. You think that because no one loves you, then you can’t love anyone. All right, then, if there’s no one you love, then pick someone who needs to hear what you have to say. Say everything that’s in your heart—don’t hold back. And when you’re done, put it in the envelope and seal it. I’m not going to read it, so don’t worry about that.”
“What’s the point? Are you going to mail it?”
“Just do it and stop asking questions.” Then she takes a little ceramic dinner bell, and places it on the rolltop desk, next to the pen and paper. “Take all the time you need, and when you’re done, ring the bell.”
Then she leaves him alone.
It’s an odd request, and Connor actually finds himself a bit frightened by it.
There are places inside he simply doesn’t want to go. He thinks he might write to Ariana. That would be easiest. He had cared about her. She was closer to him than any other girl had ever been. Every girl except Risa—but then, Risa doesn’t really count. What he and Risa have isn’t a relationship; it’s just two people clinging to the same ledge hoping not to fall. After about three lines of his letter, Connor crumples the page. Writing to Ariana feels pointless. No matter how much he’s resisted, he knows who he needs to address this letter to.
He presses his pen to a fresh page and writes, Dear Mom and Dad. . . .
It’s five minutes before he can come up with another line, but once he does, the words start flowing—and in strange directions, too. At first it’s angry, as he knew it would be. How could you? Why did you? What kind of people could do this to their kid? Yet by the third page it mellows. It becomes about all the good things that happened in their lives together. At first he does it to hurt them, and to remind them exactly what they’ve thrown away when they signed the order to unwind him. But then it becomes all about remembering—or more to the point, getting them to remember, so that when he’s gone . . . if he’s gone, there will be a record of all the things he felt were worth keeping alive. When he started, he knew how the letter would end. I hate you for what you’ve done. And I’ll never forgive you. But when he finally reaches the tenth page, he finds himself writing, I love you. Your one-time son, Connor.
Even before he signs his name, he feels the tears welling up inside. They don’t seem to come from his eyes but from deep in his gut. It’s a heaving so powerful it hurts his stomach and his lungs. His eyes flood, and the pain inside is so great, he’s certain it will kill him right here, right now. But he doesn’t die, and in time the storm inside him passes, leaving him weak in every joint and muscle of his body. He feels like he needs Sonia’s cane just to walk again.