The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(68)

Sometimes, though, he just smiled at her. Smiled like he knew something about what existed inside of her, a great cosmic joke that he would never tell.

Stevie hid in her room a lot, coming out only for food and class and sometimes she wouldn’t even bother with the food. She claimed to be studying, and Janelle would bring her containers back from the cafeteria.

“You probably think mine would be the Haunted Mansion,” Mudge continued. “It’s not. I like the Haunted Mansion, but my favorite is the Country Bear Jamboree.”

“Once you remove the external tissue,” Pix said from the front of the room, “you can go ahead and make the incision into the cornea.”

“The thing about it . . .” Mudge set down the dissection scissors and reached for the scalpel. “Is that it doesn’t change. Ever. It’s been there since the opening day and some people think it’s boring, but . . .”

He made the incision expertly, cutting across the eye. Liquid seeped out onto the dissection tray.

“. . . it’s actually completely metal. The one bear sings this song about blood on the saddle. You should go. It’s great. But if you’re talking rides . . .”

“The aqueous humor is the liquid you see,” Pix said. “It helps give shape to the cornea. Now, you’re going to want to go through the sclera . . .”

“Ride-wise,” Mudge said, “I mean, people talk about Space Mountain a lot, but that’s not Disney at its best. That’s some midcentury space age bullshit. The best ride is Dumbo.”

“And what is the sclera, Stevie?” said Pix, who had come up alongside them.

“The white of the eye?” Stevie replied.

“It’s the protective outer coating. Move in a little bit. Dissection is hard at first, but you get used to it. Think of the things you may have to see if you become a detective.”

These were perhaps the only words that could move her. Stevie took a single step closer to the tray. It was true that she might have to get used to dissections in her chosen career, but this was different. This was a giant eye, and it was looking at her from Mudge’s hand as he sliced it in half in the same way some people might slice an apple.

“How have you been doing?” Mudge asked.

“With . . .”

“Ellie’s death. You need to make sure you’re practicing good self-care.” Mudge set the scalpel down and looked through the dissection kit for a probe. “Just so you know, I’m here if you want to talk to me about anything.”

Stevie stared up at her tall, black-clad lab partner in his blue plastic apron and his rubber gloves. It was hard to read the expression in his eyes because of his purple snake-eye pupils.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Just offering. It’s important to make sure people know that you’re open to discussion.”

“You’re going to want to get the iris from between the cornea and the lens,” Pix said, circling the room.

Mudge held out the half an eyeball with a you want this? gesture. Stevie shook her head no. He set it down and continued working. The smell of formaldehyde stung the inside of Stevie’s nose, and it made her think of the smell in the tunnel.

Don’t think about that.

“How did she get down there?” Stevie said, out loud.

“Ellie?” Mudge said. “She was always like that. She liked looking for liminal spaces.”

“But I was down in that basement,” Stevie said. She didn’t really mean to talk to Mudge about this, but now that he had elicited her comment, it was coming out. “I don’t see how she could have found that opening. She must have been down there before.”

“You know,” he said, “there are miles and miles of tunnels under Disney World. They’re called utilidors. Walt Disney got upset when he saw a cowboy walking through Tomorrowland to get to Frontierland—this was in the California Disneyland. So in Florida he had all these tunnels built. So it’s a little like here. This is sort of like educational Disney World.”

Stevie had no idea what to say to that.

“Disney World is on a swamp,” Mudge went on. “Everything there has to be built up. So the tunnels are ground level. Disney World is actually built on raised ground, on an incline. People don’t even notice because it’s so gradual.”

Mudge triumphantly pulled a clear, squidgy thing out of the eye, about the size of a quarter. It looked a bit like a jellyfish.

“The lens,” he said.

He set it down on the tray.

“The lens,” she said.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she surreptitiously pulled it out. She had gotten an email. The name of the sender confused her for a moment—Ann Abbott. But then she remembered. The flour lady. The Jell-O and salad lady. She knocked the probe off the edge of the lab station so she could bend down for a moment to read:

Dear Stevie,

Thank you so much for your note! I’m sorry I took so long to respond. I am terrible with email. I am so pleased that you enjoyed Better Than Homemade! I didn’t even know copies of it were still around.

To answer your question, there is very little information I know of on Francis Crane. Most of the family fortune went to her older brother, who died sometime in the 1960s. There was some kind of argument within the family, I believe, which resulted in Francis largely being taken out of the will.