Burn by Monica Hesse Page B

Lona ignored him, focusing on the rug in front of her. “I wish I did, because I know how to do a special trick, but it won’t work on my shoes, because my shoes have boring laces.”
    Warren crawled out from his chair and extended his legs toward Lona, the pant legs of his lilac sweat suit riding up his calf.
    â€œSee, your straps are in lines.” She gently reached to his feet. “But you can also do them
this
way.” She peeled back the Velcro and switched the straps so that they crossed each other, forming a multiplication sign instead of an equals. “X marks the spot.”
    Warren bobbed his head up and down, insisting that she do the other one before practicing on himself. Lona leaned her head against the wall and glanced at the alarm clock on Warren’s bedside table. Almost five. She still needed to stop by the electronics store for a new calculator. Hers had recently shorted out in the middle of practice text. Last week she’d also promised to buy some new earphones for Fenn.
Fenn.
    â€œStory?” Warren looked up hopefully from his shoes, which he’d managed to Velcro together.
    â€œOkay.” She sighed. “A short one. The one from the other day? The pig and the porcupine and the science experiment?”
    She found it by the chair where they’d left it and opened it to the first page. Oink sat in his lab, daydreaming about the experiments he was going to conduct. His elbows rested on his messy desk as thought bubbles floated from his head.
    â€œHere’s his lab.” Lona held up the book so he could see the pictures. “See how messy it is?”
    â€œNehhh! Nehhh!”
    Warren reached out and stroked his fingers down the page. He did that with books, treating them as tactile objects. Most of his had fingerprints streaking down the illustrations. This one he seemed particularly interested in, jabbing at the scientific clutter of Oink’s office.
    â€œNehhh!”
    Lona froze. The office was familiar because it reminded her of her dream. Her dream had been in a lab. It wasn’t like the labs from Julian’s high school science classes – it didn’t have test tubes or Bunsen burners. It had electrical equipment, and reams of paper pouring out of a machine with a needle that looked like it was designed to measure earthquakes or lies.
    She mechanically turned the page. The next illustration showed Spike the porcupine at home making a sandwich. Warren shook his head, trying to flip back to the previous page.
    â€œNehhh!”
    Warren didn’t have the typical linguistic problems of a developing toddler. He didn’t say “pesketti” instead of “spaghetti”, or “lello” instead of “yellow.” Lona had only ever heard him make one repeated error. Sometimes, when he said a word that ended in “D”, he would cut off the end sound, just the last consonant. “Bed” became “Beh”. “Good” became “Gooh”.
    When Warren said “Nehhh,” that’s not what he was saying at all.
    He scrambled on the floor, through the mess of the spilled drawer. His ID badge swung from his neck, the plastic photo clunking against his fat stomach. They were coming. The photo showed the top of straight strawberry blond hair. The last name started with a C, or an O, maybe. It was obscured by the fabric of his pants.
    The first name was Ned.
    He knew. That bastard. Somewhere in the deep corners of the Architect’s broken brain, he knew exactly what Lona was dreaming about.

13
    Fenn was in bed when she got home, his body curled like a C facing the wall. Lona stood over him for a few seconds, debating. Technically they were still fighting. But after what she’d just been through with Warren, she needed to feel comforted. She tossed her coat and the crumpled plastic bag containing her new calculator onto the floor and slid in behind him.
    He stiffened when her hands