To Best the Boys(68)

I raise a brow. I can imagine some of the names behind such a threat. We both stare at each other. And then he pulls out his notes on a new crippling disease serum he’s been developing.





23

It takes another full day for any official news to arrive. According to Mrs. Mench’s loud commentary outside to anyone walking by, Stemwick’s board has not only been busy arguing policies and a long history of being the highest standard in male-focused education—they’ve also been weighing the implications of honoring a female as Mr. Holm’s scholarship recipient. Particularly when it appears their funding relies far more heavily on Holm’s yearly contributions than anyone thought.

And like the Port, the Holm estate has also made its position perfectly clear—either allow me to take the entrance exam or lose the financial support.

Da’s agitation grows while he waits. Every five minutes between starting work on a new trial medicine and checking on Mum, he steals a peek out the window when he thinks I’m not looking.

His tension becomes Mum’s excuse for why she’s begun sleeping so much. “I’m just trying to tune out the stress of his nerves.” To which I swallow and pat her hand because I know full well it’s not true.

This is the next stage of the disease, and it’s not something we can run from.

Although everything in me still wants to—just for a while. To go find Sam and Will as if everything is fine. Or maybe ask Seleni to find Lute and see what’s on his mind.

But I don’t. Da’s set Sam and Will to healing. And Lute has his family to care for, and I have mine. And that is where things lie as I sit with my fading Mum, as the slow fear for what is about to happen creeps upon the horizon. I can feel it twitching and shuddering and . . . waiting.

I don’t bake or make deliveries. I don’t see Seleni or the sea. I just wait with Da and Mum as I try not to look like I might throw up from the realization that’s been sinking in. That even if I did get accepted to the uni, anything I learn won’t be soon enough to save Mum. She will die anyway—of that I am sure. Unless Da’s new treatment is a miracle.

I wrinkle my nose against the astringent scent of cleaning alcohol and stand in the lab—and stare at the rat cages and experiments and blood samples and try all the harder to unravel what those scratching nudges in my head keep saying. Because I know I’m missing something. Something right in front of me. I just can’t figure out what it is.

And then the letter comes.

I am adjusting Mum’s pillows and watching the seagulls through the sunlit pane when Da rushes in with the packet—sealed in a thick, yellow envelope, much like Mum is wrapped up in layers of yellowed blankets.

He holds his breath and watches me weigh it in hand. The thick paper in my fingers is heavier than I’d expect for a simple yes or no answer. I frown. Maybe they’ve skipped the exams and just sent some sort of disciplinary action. Or maybe it’s an application. My chest leaps before logic sets in. I saw their expressions after the contest. To say half of them were furious would be an understatement.

I offer the letter back to Da. “You open it.” But he bats it away.

I look at him. Then Mum. Then break the wax seal and lift the contents out, and without peeking at what is written there, I hold the papers six inches in front of Mum’s face. “You read it first.”

Her eyes turn moist and she nods before she weakly lifts her hand to grab it and scans the first page. We wait. She looks up at me and has me shuffle to the next, then the next, so she can peer over each one. “It’s a ten-page packet of qualifiers and caveats,” she eventually whispers. “But . . .” She pauses and blinks and directs her gaze back to the first, as if to ensure she won’t misspeak.

“Helen, what’d they decide?” Da stands over her with a face so anxious I think he might pass out.

Her lips curve up into a smile, and she starts to cry in thin, barely-there teardrops that drip down her cheeks as she looks up at me. “I’m proud of you.” Then she glances at Da.

“The board has agreed to let Rhen take the university entrance examination.”

The moment the letter illuminates her face and makes her cry—is the moment the theory hits me. I stand in the sunlight beside the bed in my nightdress, even though it is six o’clock in the evening, and watch Mum’s joy spill out in her emaciated voice and smile and loving gaze. I frame that look in my mind, my emotions, because it is exactly who I know my mum to be and also the person she hasn’t been for a very long time. And because I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to see it.

And it occurs to me that no person whose every cell is this full of life could produce such a wretched disease.

What if Da and I were wrong this whole time, and the disease didn’t start in humans?

What if it came from a plant or animal? What if it came from . . .?

The rats.

Da is still focused on the letter and his elation. He drops on the bed and clasps Mum’s hands in his as the two of them lock eyes and share parental pride, while the sensation of unease stirs my gut and spreads within me.

I want to tell him. To tell them I have a theory. But to do so would alert Da immediately to what it might mean. That the origination of the rat disease might’ve been Da and me.

I don’t speak. I refuse to ruin this moment for either.