Gansey had been here before – seven years and some change. Impossibly, it had been for another Congressional fund-raiser. Gansey remembered that he had been excited to go. Washington, D.C., in the summer was airless and close, its inhabitants reluctant hostages, bags over their heads. Although the Ganseys had just taken an overseas trip to visit mint farms in Punjab (a political trip that Gansey still didn’t fully understand the purpose of), the travel had only served to make the youngest Gansey more restless. The only backyard their Georgetown house had was filled wall to wall with flowers older than Gansey, and he was forbidden to go into it during high summer, because the backyard drowsed with bees. And although his parents took him to antiques shows and museums, horse races and art shindigs, Gansey’s feet grew itchier. He had seen all of these things. He felt greedy for new curiosities and wonders, for things he had never seen before and things he couldn’t understand. He wanted to go.
So although he was not excited by the idea of politics, he had been excited by the idea of leaving.
“It will be fun,” his father had said. “There will be other children there.”
“Martin’s kids,” his mother had added, and the two of them exchanged a private snigger over a long-ago slight.
It had taken Gansey a moment to realize that they were offering this as an incentive rather than merely reporting the fact as a weather update. Gansey had never found children fun, including the child he had been. He had always looked to a future where he could change his own address at will.
Now, years later, Gansey stood on the ivy-tangled staircase and looked at the plaque by the door. THE GREEN HOUSE, it read. EST. 1824. Up close, it was hard to say precisely why the property looked grotesque rather than merely shaggy. The attendance of ravens on every horizontal surface of the house didn’t hurt. He tried the front door: locked. He clicked on the torch function on his phone and leaned against the sidelight windows, trying to see inside. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He would know it when he saw it, maybe. Perhaps a back door was unlocked, or a window could be slid open. Though there was no particular reason why the interior of the neglected house should hold any secrets relevant to Gansey, the part of him that was good at finding things battered silently against the glass, wanting in.
“Look at this,” Henry called from a few yards away. His voice was theatrically shocked. “I have discovered that, at some point, this side door was broken into by a teenage Korean vandal.”
Gansey had to pick across a bed of dead lilies to join him at a less elaborate side entrance. Henry had finished the work of a cracked windowpane in order to reach inside and open the lock. “Kids these days. ‘Cheng’ isn’t Korean, is it?”
“My father isn’t,” Henry said. “I am. I got that, and the vandal part, from my mother. Let us enter, Dick, as I’ve already broken.”
Gansey hesitated, though, outside the door. “You had RoboBee looking out for me.”
“It was friendly. That was a friend thing.”
He seemed anxious for Gansey to believe that his motives were pure, so Gansey said quickly, “I know that. Just – I don’t meet many people who make friends like I do. So – fast.”
Henry flipped crazy devil horns at him. “Jeong, bro.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Who knows,” Henry said. “It means being Henry. It means being Richardman. Jeong. You never say the word, but you live it anyway. I will be honest, I did not expect to find it in a guy such as yourself. It’s like we’ve met each other before. No, not really. We are friends at once, we would instantly do what friends would do for each other. Not just pals. Friends. Blood brothers. You just feel it. We instead of you and me. That’s jeong.”
Gansey was aware on a certain level that the description was melodramatic, heightened, illogical. But on a deeper level, it felt true, and familiar, and like it explained much of Gansey’s life. It was how he felt about Ronan and Adam and Noah and Blue. With each of them, it had felt instantly right: relieving. Finally, he’d thought, he’d found them. We instead of you and me.
“OK,” he said.
Henry smiled brilliantly, and then opened the door he had just broken. “Now, what are we looking for?”
“I’m not sure,” Gansey admitted. He was captured by the familiar scent of the house: whatever it was that made all these old rambling Colonials smell like they did. Mould and boxwood and old floor polish, perhaps. He was struck by not a precise memory, but rather a more carefree era. “Something unusual, I suppose. I think it’ll be obvious.”
“Should we split up, or is this a horror movie?”
“Scream if something eats you,” Gansey said, relieved that Henry had offered to split up. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He switched off his torch just as Henry switched his on. Henry looked as if he was about to ask why, and then Gansey would be forced to say Makes my instincts louder, but Henry merely shrugged as they parted ways.
In the silence, Gansey wandered through the dim halls of the Green House, ghosts dogging his heels. Here had been a buffet; here had been a piano; here had been a pack of political interns that had seemed so worldly. He stood in the very centre of what had been the ballroom. A motion light triggered outside as Gansey walked further into the room, startling him. There was a wide fireplace with an ugly, dated hearth and an ominous black mouth. Dead flies littered the windowsills. Gansey felt as if he were the last man left alive.
The room had seemed enormous before. If he squinted his eyes, he could still see the party. It was always happening at some point in time. If this were Cabeswater, perhaps he could replay that party, skipping back in time to watch it again. The thought was at once wistful and unpleasant: He had been younger and easier then, unfettered by anything like responsibility or wisdom. But he had done so much between now and then. The idea of living through it again, learning all the hard lessons again, struggling to once again ensure that he met Ronan and Adam, Noah and Blue – it was exhausting, nerve-racking.