Dan and Nora didn’t yell at him, but Isaac got a long talking to after they picked him up from Mr. Lincoln’s house.
“You scared the living crap out of us!” Dan had exclaimed, sounding more amazed than reproachful.
“Dan!” Nora had exclaimed.
“Excuse me,” Dan apologized. “That wasn’t very good to say.”
“We were really scared, though,” Nora agreed. “Everybody was looking for you.”
“Policemen,” Dan added.
“Policemen?” Isaac repeated. Guilt was welling in his stomach. He hadn’t meant to cause this much trouble.
“Policemen,” Dan agreed.
“Honey, the thing that bothers me the most is. . . you could have called us,” Nora said. “We would have come and gotten you.”
“I know,” Isaac whispered, feeling even worse. “I know I shouldn’t have done that. I just. . . I didn’t even realize I’d done it until I already did it.”
“I’m glad you called Mr. Lincoln,” Nora said. “It was good that you asked for help.”
Isaac lowered his eyes. “I’m really sorry.”
“We’re not mad,” Dan said. “We were just worried. That’s all.”
Isaac was deeply upset about running away, about betraying his brothers and shaking Dan and Nora’s trust in him. He didn’t know if any of them would ever forgive him. He didn’t know if he deserved their forgiveness.
The worst part was, they were all being really nice to him. He wished that somebody would get mad at him. Maybe then he could stop punishing himself.
Dan ambled into the room, sitting down at the opposite end of the couch. He and Isaac regarded each other for a moment.
Dan grinned. “Buddy. . . I’m not going to bite your head off.”
Isaac sighed. “I really do feel bad about it.”
“How long are you going to sit there and feel guilty?” Dan asked. “Because then I’ll start feeling guilty, and so will Nora. It’s not a big deal, Ike. Just don’t make a habit out of it.”
“Okay,” Isaac whispered. His legs were drawn up to his chest, and he rested his chin on his knees. “Do I have to go back to school?”
“We’ll see,” Dan said. He put his arm around Isaac. “Ike, things are going to work out, okay?”
Isaac nodded. “Okay.”
“I don’t know how. . .” Dan admitted. “I mean, I don’t know what’s going to happen?”
“Are they going to split us up now?” Isaac whispered. “I mean, do I have to go to jail or someting.”
Dan blinked. “Ike, where would you get that idea?”
Isaac shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“No,” said Dan. “You are not going to go to jail. You and Taylor and Zac are not going to be split up.”
“I didn’t run away because I wanted to leave,” Isaac told him. “I wasn’t running away from you.”
Dan grinned. “Ike,” he said, “you are never going to know how much it means to me to hear you say that.”
Isaac swallowed. “But I did run away,” he reminded Dan. “From school.”
“Hey. . .” Dan shook his head. “I’d much rather have it be school.”
The two of them were quiet for a moment. Despite the sweatshirt he was wearing and Dan’s arm around him, Isaac still had a shivery feeling fluttering beneath his ribcage. He wrapped his arms more tightly around his legs.
“Are you okay?” Dan asked.
“It’s just kind of cold in here,” Isaac told him.
Dan raised his eyebrows. “Right.”
“It is,” Isaac protested, but he didn’t think Dan believed him.
The fever heightened his perceptions and deepened his impressions. Isaac lay very still, listening.
He could hear Dan and Nora moving around downstairs, their muffled voices wafting in through the crack in the door. Zac sighed in his sleep, stirring gently beneath the covers. Gradually, deliberately, his thumb found it’s way back into his mouth.
Taylor had his mouth open, breathing loudly. He had started out the night in bed with Zac, then migrated across the room to climb in with Isaac. This plan had soon been abandoned. “You’re making the bed too hot,” Taylor had explained. “I’m going away now.”
Isaac had not been sad to see his brother go. He didn’t care, really, whether Taylor stayed or went. It didn’t make much of a difference. He couldn’t sleep.
He didn’t know how much time had passed. It could have been a lot, or it could have been a little. Isaac thought about darkness, the different types of it. With the hallway light streaming around the crack in the door, everything seemed softer in this room at night. Shadows melted into one another, melted into one big shadow. It would be easy for something to hide in here, melting away into the velvety darkness.
With the light off, bright and dark would be distinct. You could hide in the blackness, but not in the light that came through the window and laid patterns on the floor. If you had anything you wanted to hide, the light would expose it. The blackness would devour anything that wanted to hide itself. Isaac was thinking of monsters.
Sometimes, he didn’t think there was anything on Earth scarier than people. He knew that, had experienced the fact so profoundly that nothing could shake his belief. People were the ones who hurt each other, killed each other, abandoned each other. But not all people were like that. Maybe.
The thought of pure evil, something immense and devouring and irredeemable, something worse than all of the worst people on Earth put together, that was what was scaring Isaac now. There was something. . . he didn’t know what. . . that was going to destroy everything, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Everything was going to be gone, obliterated, and it had something to do with him. By going away, he could protect the people he cared about. He’d have to leave, for good this time. He’d have to get out of their lives, even if they said they didn’t want him to. They didn’t know about the darkness he would bring with him, if they let him in.
Isaac swallowed. He knew what he had to do.
“I’m going.” He stood in the doorway of the living room to make this pronouncement, gripping the frame. “All right. Bye, then.”
Dan and Nora both looked up from their respective sections of The New York Times, puzzled. “Where are you going?” Nora asked.
Isaac sighed, annoyed at this. “Some place else.”
“Thanks for telling us, this time,” Dan remarked. “Want me to make you a sandwich to bring along?”
“Dan,” Nora cautioned, and turned back to Isaac. “It’s eleven thirty at night, honey.” Her voice was gentle, reasonable. “Do you want to wait until the morning?”
Isaac shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Dan asked.
“I can’t,” Isaac repeated. “I. . . can’t. Stay.”
“Do you want to sit with us down here for awhile?” Nora asked.
Isaac nodded. “Yeah, but I can’t.”
Dan grinned. “Who would have known?”
“You don’t know.” Isaac gazed at Dan, a level, eerie, child-in-a-horror-movie gaze. “You don’t know.”
A little disconcerted, Dan shrugged again. “Okay, I don’t know.”
“No.” Isaac shook his head. “You don’t know.”
“Ever seen ‘Children of the Corn’?” Dan asked, cracking a nervous smile. “His name was Isaac, too.”
“Dan!” Nora rose off the couch and moved toward Isaac, but for every step she took forward, he took one away. She stopped. “Honey, I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. I won’t move any further, all right?”
“Don’t come too close,” Isaac warned her, “or it might get you.”
“What?” Nora asked, softly.
Isaac swallowed. “I can’t say.”
“Is there anything I can do that will make it go away?” Nora asked.
“Nothing will make it go away!” Isaac rubbed his eyes, staring at the floor. His voice was quavering. “It’ll just keep getting bigger and bigger and. . .” Nora held out her arms and he fell into them, trembling. “Yeah, just make it stop, okay? Can you just. . . just. . . I have to leave, because it’s going to get everything.”
Nora rubbed his back. “It won’t get everything,” she soothed. “I promise, it won’t get everything.” She looked at Dan. “He’s burning up,” she whispered.
“Oh, great,” Dan returned. “Well, this means he doesn’t have to go to school tomorrow.”
“It’s awful,” Nora agreed, “but that was my first thought.”