Kane was pretending he didn’t care. He yawned. His head hurt. He tried to remember the dream he’d been having, but all he found within himself was the usual soupy gloom. And, beneath the gloom, the same simmering dread that had kept him awake every night since he’d encountered those things on the path. And, of course, Ursula Abernathy. Check the treasure chest, she’d said, a riddle that wouldn’t let him rest. He only slept during the day now, and only by accident, waking up at the kitchen table with a spoon in his hand, or slumped over in the sunny spot on the landing, or draped across the living room ottoman with his PlayStation still humming.

“Let me guess.” She unlatched her viola case. “You’ve been lying here for hours, despondent.”

“Yep.”

“Did you eat?”

“Yep.”

“What?”

“Fruit snacks.”

The instrument hummed in Sophia’s hands as she removed it from the velvet interior. “Fruit snacks? Sounds like cannibalism to me.”

Kane propped himself up. “Was that a gay joke?”

In response, a pleasant, fat note rang out as Sophia carved the bow across the strings. She smiled at Kane vacantly the whole time, holding it extra long and finishing with a flourish.

“Why yes, it was a gay joke.”

Kane frowned. Sophia’s face was as blank and cold as the moon now, and she felt just as distant. Secrets were a new and uncomfortable thing between them. He wouldn’t tell her about his meeting with Dr. Poesy, or being chased on the path, or Ursula Abernathy. In exchange, he sensed she was keeping her own bank of secrets locked away. And so things had been tense, and her questions had become pointed. Kane had becoming both the prison and the prisoner within their locked-up siblingship.

“You got a haircut,” Sophia said.

“Mom tricked me into it to get me out of the house.”

“You look like a poodle who was drafted into the military.”

“Thank you.”

The metronome ticked on as Sophia ran through her warm-up. Kane let his mind drift between the wobbling notes. He wished he could tell her everything, but ever since he’d learned about Maxine Osman, his pain felt fraudulent, unearned, as though Maxine’s death forfeited his right to feel bad for his own near-death. The guilt didn’t just disarm him; it formed a new armor around him. A heavier guard that made the very idea of asking for help, or even sympathy, impossible. Kane wasn’t scared to talk about his pain; he was scared of making other people listen.