“Drew!” She put the plate down on the table, ignoring the now frantic dog, and wiped her hand on her thigh. “Look, it only took a—”
The telephone rang. Lacey made a motion toward it, but stopped herself. She couldn’t turn her back on him. He might do anything. He might rush into her, as he had done before; take her baby by the throat and choke it inside her. “What do you want?”
“Go on, answer the phone,” Drew said bitterly. “It’s somebody who matters. You don’t care about me, nobody does. And I didn’t even cheat.” He swept his arm across the table, and the game pieces scattered. Lacey flexed her hand. Had he done that through her, as he had played the game? She’d felt nothing. “Answer it!”
The phone rang again. Lacey let the answering machine take it, although she heard Eric’s voice. “I’m listening to you,” she said. “I’m listening right now.”
“Nobody ever listens.”
“I care about you.”
“Nobody cares.”
Lacey knelt in front of him, took his shoulders in both her hands, and looked into his face. What did he want, more than anything, what was all the noise about? He was the same as any other child. She knew about noisy boys because she had been a quiet girl; when she was little, she’d longed to do what they did, to demand along with them, Look at me, listen to me, love me. To be a person no one could ignore. She said, slowly and clearly, “I am paying attention to you, Drew.”
He wrenched himself away. “Nobody listens, nobody cares, nobody loves me!” He grabbed the plate of tuna off the table and whirled out of the kitchen. Lacey and Bibbits followed him.
Drew ran up the stairs. He did not float or swoop or drift; his feet pounded hard and solid on every step. Bibbits raced after him, yipping with hunger and excitement, an old dog, not used to such games. “I accuse you,” Drew shouted, from the darkness that gathered at the top of the stairs. Lacey held on to the curved edge of the banister and could not speak. “I accuse you,” he said again, his voice now deeper and older. “You are guilty, all of you guilty, all, all, all.” And Bibbits’s desperate bark mingled with Drew’s voice.
The front door opened and Ella Dane came in. “I meant to ask if you wanted . . .” she began. She stopped short, staring toward the noise. “Is that Bibbits? That noise?” She pulled the brown glass vial from her pocket. “Bibbits, honey, come get your meddies.” She headed for the stairs, and Lacey clutched her arm and pulled her back.
Drew was a dark form among the shadows, starred with a single white gleam, maybe his bright hair, maybe his eyes, maybe something else—light on metal, Lacey couldn’t tell—and he was taller, wider, larger. Or it was only the tumbling shadows that made him seem so big. “All of you,” he shouted. Lacey had an impression of sound, terrible loud sounds that her mind could not name or remember.
Something pale flew toward her out of the noise and the dark. The plate smashed at her feet, and the lumps of tuna scattered. Oh, the mess, the smell; Eric would be so unhappy—she tried to gather up the pieces, maybe the plate could be fixed, here was a big piece, maybe as much as a third of the plate, the round edge fitting in her hand and the long dagger of ceramic, which she had to be careful of—something fluttered around her, beat into her, darkness and hands and voices, and she struck out at it with the piece of broken plate. It was Drew. He wanted to take the big pieces and break them into little pieces, so that plate could never be fixed and Eric would be miserable and furious, and it was all her fault.
“Get away, get away from me,” she screamed.
Something caught her hands and wrists, something pulled the broken piece away from her.
Bibbits barked and barked. Strong arms held Lacey tight, crossing her arms across her body and holding both her wrists. “Hush, hush, baby, it’s okay,” somebody said.
“Drew?” she whispered into the black curtain that blew around her.
“Your fault!”
The black curtain blew over her. She threw off the binding hands. She was standing below the circle step at the foot of the stairs, and the banister should be at her right hand, but she couldn’t find it. She stood in a black circle, struggling for balance—the baby would die if she fell, he would fall into the spinning shadow beneath her, he would fall forever—with Drew blazing gold and silver in front of her. Sunlight on his yellow hair, his white T-shirt and shorts, his yellow sneakers.
“Your fault,” he said in his deep adult voice.
“Stop this,” said the other voice. “Make him stop. Now.”