The Keepers by Ted Sanders Page B

for the short time dinner would take, was unbearable. And yet he had to keep it hidden. He didn’t want anybody asking any questions. What to do? Experimentally, he buckled the pouch to a belt loop at his right hip. It peeked out from under his shirt—but just barely. He dug around in his dresser and found a few oversized shirts. He pulled one on, a hand-me-down from his father. It was a glaring yellow, featuring the logo of a restaurant called the Eleven Spot, someplace Horace had never been. But the hem came down below his hips, covering the box completely. Perfect. Now hidden, the box remained at his side all through dinner, and all through the evening. That night Horace fell asleep early and happily, with the box hidden beneath his pillow.
    But the next day, Mother’s Day, was miserable.
    Horace awoke with the box in his hand and a troubled spiderweb of dream fragments clouding his head. He sat up, half remembering a dream in which the box was an unseen beacon over an endless landscape of green hills, calling out for Horace but never letting itself be found. “What do you want?” Horace said to the box now. “What am I supposed to do?” And through his bones and his flesh Horace felt—or thought he felt—something in return, as if the box were waiting for Horace to understand, to act. But Horace did not understand. He did not know what he was supposed to do. His uncertainty made the base of his skull ache, made his stomach heavy, turned his mood sour and surly. Nonetheless,he kept the box at his side.
    After a late breakfast, his mother opened her gifts. His father had gotten her a massive two-volume collection of Sherlock Holmes stories that she’d clearly expected to get, and a moonstone pendant that she clearly hadn’t. Horace looked down at his thumbs while they hugged and smooched. Next she unwrapped the raven-and-turtle statue, and when she was done she turned and gave Horace such a frank look of surprise that for a moment Horace thought he’d done something wrong. He’d been so distracted by the box that he’d almost forgotten that the statue wasn’t just a statue—but of course his mother didn’t know that. She shook her head, her face seeming to flicker on the edge of a question before she broke into a smile. “I love it,” she said. “It’s perfect.”
    Horace, meanwhile, was feeling worse and worse. After presents, he excused himself and returned to his room, taking the box from its pouch. Later, when his parents wanted to go down to the lakeshore, Horace told them he felt sick, and this wasn’t exactly a lie. The box seemed to burn in his hands, carving out a hollow space in Horace’s gut that he had no idea how to fill.
    The next several days passed like a fever dream. Horace felt more and more connected to the box, but that connection became more sickly, more tainted, as if Horace was searching for an answer to a question that hadn’t been asked. He took the box with him everywhere, keeping it hidden. At school he kept one hand on the box at all times, protecting it from thebumping and jostling in the halls between classes. He worried about the box almost constantly, struggling to pay attention in class. Ordinarily Horace loved school but now he found himself counting the hours until summer—only two weeks away now. It couldn’t come soon enough. On Tuesday he realized he’d forgotten to do his project for social studies, a report about Wyoming. On Wednesday he even bombed one of Mr. Ludwig’s pop quizzes.
    â€œTroubles?” Mr. Ludwig said, smiling through his bushy beard as Horace slumped to the desk to turn the quiz in. Usually Horace was the first one done; today he was the last.
    Horace shook his head. Just one , he thought.
    And what a trouble it was, a trouble without a name. As the week wore on, Horace took the box out less and less, even in the privacy of his own room. Sometimes he