The times I’d tried that same maneuver only to land on my ass with dirt and cobwebs coating my hair didn’t count. I turned to latch the window from the inside. Avoiding Rottweiler jaws always took precedence while visiting Rocket.
“Miss Charlotte!”
For like the gazillionth time that day, I jumped, cutting my finger on the latch. And it was still early. Apparently, this was Scare the Bejesus out of Charley Day. Had I known, I would’ve ordered a cheese ball.
I whirled around and looked up into the grinning face of Rocket Man. He scooped me up into a hug that was soft and warm despite my assailant’s frigid temperature. My breath fogged when I laughed.
“Miss Charlotte,” he said again.
“This is like being hugged by an ice sculpture,” I said, teasing him.
He set me down, his eyes glistening and happy. “Miss Charlotte, you came back.”
I chuckled. “I told you I would come back.”
“Okay, but you have to go now.” He clutched me around the waist, and I suddenly found myself being stuffed back out the basement window. The same window I had just latched.
“Wait, Rocket,” I said, planting my feet on either side of the windowsill, feeling oddly ridiculous. And quite ready for a pelvic exam. I’d been kicked out of asylums before, but never by Rocket. “I just got here,” I protested, pushing against the sill. But holy mother of crap, Rocket was strong.
“Miss Charlotte has to go,” he repeated, not struggling in the least.
I grunted under his weight. “Miss Charlotte doesn’t have to go, Rocket. She promises.”
When he didn’t budge, just pushed me closer and closer to the window, I lost my footing. Before I knew it, my right leg slipped and I found myself being crammed against the tiny window.
That was when I heard the crack, the chilling sound of glass splintering beneath the force. Damn it. If I had to get stitches, Rocket was so going to pay. Well, not literally, but …
I was doing my darnedest to twist and maneuver away from the decades-old glass when Rocket disappeared. In an instant, I dropped to the cement floor, landing mostly on my left shoulder and a little on my head. Pain burst and spread like napalm throughout my nerve endings. Then I realized I couldn’t breathe. I hated when that happened.
Rocket reappeared, picked me up off the ground, and stood me up. “Are you okay, Miss Charlotte?” he asked. Now, he was worried.
All I could do was fan my face, trying to get air to my burning lungs. The fall had knocked the breath out of me. The fact that it was a non-life-threatening condition did little to lessen the state of panic I was slipping into.
When I didn’t answer, Rocket shook me, waited a moment, then shook me again for good measure. I watched the world blur, refocus, then blur again, wondering if the knock to my head had me seizing.
“Miss Charlotte,” he said as I gulped tiny rations of air, none quite large enough to fill the void of imminent suffocation, “why did you do that?”
“What? Me?” I asked, sticking to monosyllabic utterances. I’d work my way up to bigger words in a few.
“Why did you fall?”
“I can’t imagine.” Unfortunately, sarcasm rarely translated into Rocket language.
“New names. I have new names,” he said, dragging me up the stairs. He patted the crumbling walls like they were made of precious metals. That was what Rocket did. Carved name upon name of those who had passed, and while the asylum was huge, I knew he would eventually scrape through the cement-covered walls. He would eventually run out of space. I wondered if the building would fall, if it would crumble to Earth like the people who had been memorialized by Rocket’s hand. If so, what would that do to him? Where would he go? I’d invite him to my place, but I didn’t know how Mr. Wong would take to an oversized kid with a scraping fetish.
“I thought I had to leave,” I said, my lungs relaxing at last.
He stopped on the top step and looked up in thought. “No, you don’t have to go now. Just don’t break the rules.”
I tried not to laugh. He was such a stickler for the rules, though I had no idea what they were. Still, I had to wonder what all that stuffing-me-out-the-window business was about. He’d never tried to bounce me before.
“Rocket, I have to talk to you,” I said, following behind him. He patted the wall on his right as we walked through the crumbling building.
“I have new names. They should not be here. No, ma’am.”
“I know, sweetheart, and I’ll get to them, but I have to ask you something.”
Before I could get hold of his shirt to slow him down, he disappeared again, and it took everything in me not to drop my head into my hands in frustration. Rocket took ADHD to a whole new level.
“Miss Charlotte,” I heard him call from down the same hall. “You need to keep up.”
I took off toward his voice, hoping the crumbling floors would hold and wishing I’d brought a flashlight. “I’m coming. Stay there.”
“All of these,” he said when I reached him. “All of these. They should not be here. They have to follow the rules just like everybody else.” And Rocket knew it was my job to help them cross. I looked at the wall he’d referenced. It held hundreds of names from dozens of countries. It amazed me how he knew this stuff.
I decided to test him, to see what would pour out of him at the mention of Reyes’s otherworldly—for lack of a better term—name. But first I would ask about Mimi Jacobs. I needed to make sure she was still alive. “Okay, but I have some names for you now.”