He squinted. Was he slightly walleyed? That was what it was called when your eyes didn’t point in the same direction, right?
He blinked.
No, it was fine. It was just a trick of this chilly green light. He leaned in closer to see if there was any redness in the corner.
It was walleyed.
Adam blinked, and it was not. He blinked, and it was. It was like one of those bad dreams that was not a nightmare, not really, that was just about trying to put on a pair of socks and finding they suddenly wouldn’t fit on your foot.
As he watched, his left eye slowly sank down to look at the floor, unhitched from the gaze of his right eye.
His vision blurred and then focused again as his right eye took dominance. Adam’s breath was uneven. He’d already lost hearing in one ear. He couldn’t lose sight in one eye, too. Was it from his father? Was this a delayed effect of hitting his head?
The eye rocked slowly, like a marble sliding in a jar of water. He could feel the horror of it in his stomach.
In the mirror, he thought the shadow of one of the stalls changed.
He turned to look: nothing. Nothing.
Cabeswater, are you with me?
He turned back to the mirror. Now his left eye was travelling slowly around, wandering back and forth, up and down.
Adam’s chest hitched.
The eye looked at him.
Adam scrambled back from the mirror, hand smacked over his eye. His shoulder blade crashed into the opposite wall, and he stood there, gasping for air, scared, scared, scared, because what kind of help did he need, and who could he ask?
The shadow above the stall was changing. It was turning from a square into a triangle because – oh God – one of the stall doors was opening.
The long hallway back to the outside felt like a horror gallery gauntlet. Black spilled out of the stall door.
Adam said, “Cabeswater, I need you.”
The darkness spread across the floor.
All Adam could think was that he couldn’t let it touch him. The thought of it on his skin was worse than the image of his useless eye. “Cabeswater. Keep me safe. Cabeswater! ”
There was a sound like a shot – Adam shied away – as the mirror split. A sun from somewhere else burned on the other side of it. Leaves were pressed up against the glass as if it were a window. The forest whispered and hissed in Adam’s deaf ear, urging him to help it find a channel.
Gratitude burned through him, as hard to bear as the fear. If something happened to him now, at least he wouldn’t be alone.
Water, Cabeswater urged. Waterwaterwater.
Scrambling to the sink, Adam twisted on the tap. Water rushed out, scented with rain and rocks. He reached through the flow to smash down the plug. The inky black bled towards him, inches from his shoes.
Don’t let it touch you—
He clambered on to the edge of the sink as the darkness reached the bottom of the wall. It would climb, Adam knew. But then, finally, the water filled the plugged basin and flowed over the edge on to the floor. It washed over the blackness, soundless, colourless, sliding towards the drain. It left behind only pale, ordinary concrete.
Even after the blackness was gone, Adam let the sink pour on to the floor for another full minute, soaking his shoes. Then he slipped off the edge of the sink. He scooped the water up in his palms and splashed the earthy-scented water over his face, over his left eye. Again and again, again and again, again and again, until his eye no longer felt tired. Until he could no longer feel it at all. It was just his eye again, when he peered into the mirror. Just his face. There was no sign of the other sun or a lazy iris. Drops of Cabeswater’s rivers clung damply in Adam’s eyelashes. Cabeswater muttered and moaned, vines curling through Adam, dappled light flashing behind his eyes, stones pressing up beneath the palms of his hands.
Cabeswater had taken so long to come to his aid. Only a few weeks before, a heap of roofing tiles had fallen on top of him, and Cabeswater had swept instantaneously to save him. If that had happened today, he would have been dead.
The forest whispered at him in its language that was equal parts pictures and words, and it made him understand why it had been so slow to come to him.
Something had been attacking them both.
As Maura had already pointed out, being suspended was not a vacation, so Blue had her after-school shift at Nino’s as usual. Although the sun outside was overpowering, the restaurant was strangely dim inside, a trick of the thunderheads darkening the western sky. The shadows beneath the metal-legged tables were gray and diffuse; it was hard to tell if it was dark enough to turn on the lights that hung over each table or not. The decision could wait; there was no one in the restaurant.
With nothing to occupy her mind except for sweeping the Parmesan cheese from the corners of the room, Blue thought about Gansey inviting her to a toga party tonight. To her surprise, her mother had urged her to go. Blue had said that an Aglionby toga party went against everything she stood for. Maura had replied, “Private school boys? Using random pieces of fabric as apparel? That seems like exactly what you stand for these days.”
Shoof, shoof. Blue swept the floor aggressively. She could feel herself hurtling towards self-awareness, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
In the kitchen, the shift manager chortled. Dissonant, clunky music warred with the electric guitar playing overhead; he was watching videos on his phone with the cooks. A loud ding sounded as the restaurant door opened. To her surprise, Adam stepped in and warily assessed the empty tables. His uniform was strangely bedraggled: the trousers wrinkled and muddied, his white shirt smudged and damp in places.
“Wasn’t I supposed to call you later?” Blue asked. She eyed his uniform. Ordinarily it would have been impeccable. “Are you OK?”