Myka races back through the bookstore, her father's manuscript clutched in her arms. She can hear her father moaning and it feels like she can hear her mother panicking too.
"I've got it!"
She half-skids into her father's little nook and sits down, papers in hand.
"Bobby? You gotta stop this." Claudia's not sure that reasoning with the kid is really going to work out that well, but she feels the need to try before, you know, dying of pendulum. "I know you're all full of Poe up to your creepy eyeballs, but--"
"Butbutbut this isn't fiction!" Pete cuts in, as the pendulum swings down again. "This is real!"
"This is the most real I've ever felt in my entire life," Bobby says. "It's beautiful."
"Bobby, you're a good person, but you're--" The pendulum swings down again (the kind of thing that interrupts people, really). "You're hurting people! You're hurting yourself and you're hurting Tamara and it has to stop!"
"People like you don't see me!" Bobby all but scoffs. "You don't believe in me. People like you need to be shocked into seeing. You need to be horrified. Then you'll understand."
Oh, bitch, please, Claudia thinks. She pretty much was like him in high school - too smart for her classmates, on the fringes of everything, invisible. But instead of saying that, she sits up as much as she can in light of the restraints and says, "Understand what, Bobby? Tell me what!" (And then she lies flat again as HELLO PENDULUM. It's getting closer, isn't it? WHY.)
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"I've got it!"
She half-skids into her father's little nook and sits down, papers in hand.
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"Butbutbut this isn't fiction!" Pete cuts in, as the pendulum swings down again. "This is real!"
"This is the most real I've ever felt in my entire life," Bobby says. "It's beautiful."
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"The Blue Willow Sky by Warren Bering. Chapter one. When the girl was born, his first thought was fear..."
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"People like you don't see me!" Bobby all but scoffs. "You don't believe in me. People like you need to be shocked into seeing. You need to be horrified. Then you'll understand."
Oh, bitch, please, Claudia thinks. She pretty much was like him in high school - too smart for her classmates, on the fringes of everything, invisible. But instead of saying that, she sits up as much as she can in light of the restraints and says, "Understand what, Bobby? Tell me what!"
(And then she lies flat again as HELLO PENDULUM. It's getting closer, isn't it? WHY.)
"That words have power."
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