My mascara. I’d used my mascara. But somehow I had no memory of doing it. I couldn’t have done it—I would never write on the walls—except I had. Every time it happened had been captured in its own little video clip. Laura, I realized, must have fast-forwarded through these feeds every day.

With a sick, heavy feeling in my stomach, I closed the folder and made sure the screen was set back to the correct camera feed. Then I went to the door, peeked into the hall, and upon seeing that the coast was clear, I padded silently back to the foyer.

I was beyond exhausted. My body felt like it was made of paper, ready to be blown over at any second. I looked forward to my own bed the way a kid looks forward to birthday cake. But when I entered the nursery, I paused in the doorway and looked around.

My eyes took in the room compared to the view on the security camera, and I looked up at the shelf on the wall.

It was full of stuffed animals. I’d heard of nanny-cams—decorative stuffed animals that were actually cameras, used by parents to keep an eye on their babysitters.

I pressed up against the wall and shimmied around to just under the shelf. There was a toy chest nearby, and I dragged it over. Then I climbed up on it and reached across the shelf.

One by one, I knocked over each of the stuffed animals.

. . . The way Agatha had knocked over Blue Bunny.

The third one in the row, a floppy-eared puppy in a little tuxedo jacket, made a clicking sound as it fell. Keeping its belly aimed down, I pulled it toward myself. Along its back was a strip of Velcro, which I pulled apart. And inside, where in a sweet children’s story you would find a little heart, was the spidery mechanism of a surveillance camera. Its lens was one of the black buttons on the puppy’s jacket.

I closed up his back again.

Had Agatha known about the cameras?

Was that why she hated my bunny? In her confused state, she had associated him with the stuffed animals that kept silent watch over her every move. The ones that her mother used to observe and control her.

I climbed down from the toy chest and went back around the walls to my own room.

I lay down on the bed, feeling like the pillow and mattress were rising up around me, holding my body in place in a soft, heavenly mold.

No, no. I couldn’t sleep. I had to leave. I would leave, right now. I’d get up and walk out the door and never come back.

For a brief moment, I opened my eyes, but the strength it took to keep them open was beyond me.

CHAPTER

28