Chapter Ten Lee #2
It wasn’t until he thought about the logistics of back-alley organ removal that he started to feel sick.
Lee closed his eyes and remembered his mother in her last summer, back when they lived in New Jersey.
Come here, Lee , she’d called from the backyard. Her words were airy, like she was afraid to startle him.
Lee had abandoned his TV show and stuck his head out the back door.
His mother was lying in the grass, covered in butterflies. She had orange slices in each hand, and as Lee drew closer, he
saw that she’d covered her arms in something bright that reflected the sunlight. Maybe honey, or sugar water. She wore a blanket
of monarch butterflies, one of them balanced on her nose, her eyes crossed to see it.
“Wow,” Lee said, drawing as close as he dared. He would scare them away. He scared everyone away. “How do they feel?”
“They tickle,” his mom said with a soft smile.
“They look like they want to eat you,” Lee said, only half joking. The butterflies were crawling across her with fevered intensity,
their little antennae twitching and wings fluttering.
His mother laughed. “When they finish the honey, they’ll leave. They won’t eat me.”
But Lee could imagine it now—the butterflies gnawing holes in his mother like maggots devouring a corpse. And now the butterflies
were men, hungry for parts of her.
Lee had seen enough. He carefully stacked the articles and placed them back in the drawer, pushed in his father’s chair, and
locked the door behind him. He lingered in the hallway for a moment, feeling as empty as the house, all the air in the world
blowing through him.
Even though his father was handsome, and kind, and well-spoken, everything Lee was not, inside they were exactly the same: They wanted the truth, no matter how ugly. They craved it the way wolves craved wet flesh and hot blood and pain. They needed it, even when they knew it would hurt.
Lee would help his father find the truth, no matter what.
When Lee opened his eyes, the sky was moving.
He was nine, and his mother would only be alive three more years, though he didn’t know it at the time. All he knew then was
that he’d woken in the back seat of a car that smelled like chemicals, streetlights flashing by in the window. He sat up and
saw no other cars on the road, only his mother behind the wheel, her curls strangely blue under the city lights. She had a
backpack beside her in the front seat, and there were duffel bags at Lee’s feet, all around him. The car wobbled, burdened
by the extra weight.
“Where are we going?” Lee said.
“You’re not allowed to ask me that,” his mother said evenly. She turned a corner and the bags pressed against Lee, shifting
in the back seat.
“I’m not?”
“No,” she said. “It breaks the rules of the game.”
Lee peered through the window, but he didn’t recognize any of the streets.
“How do I play the game?” he said, pressing a hand to the cold window.
“Do you remember when we talked about Egyptian mummies?” his mother said.
Lee nodded. “They pulled their brains out with a stick through their nose.”
“Yes, very good, Lee,” his mom said, her gaze flickering to his in the rearview mirror. “This is an Egyptian burial game.”
“Okay,” Lee said, now wide awake.
“You’re a pharaoh, and we’re going to put you in a pyramid,” she said.
“In a sarcophagus,” Lee said.
His mom nodded quickly. “Yes, in a sarcophagus in a big pyramid. But you have to lie down and be very still and quiet until
we get there, or else your soul will leave your body.”
Immediately, Lee lay down on the seat, holding his breath.
“Do you understand, Lee?” his mom asked.
But Lee didn’t answer because the game had already begun.
“Very good,” his mom said.
Lee stared at the ceiling of the car—a car he was sure he had never been in before. The seats had a plastic coating that squealed
when he moved, but that just made the game more challenging, which Lee appreciated. He could feel the car parts clicking and
whirring beneath his spine, could tell they were getting on the highway.
Why isn’t Dad playing? Lee wanted to ask. But then he would lose the game.
The sky flashed by faster and faster through the windows, the stars smearing together. This is part of the game , Lee thought. This is how she’ll take us to ancient Egypt .
Sirens wailed in the distance. Lee stayed perfectly still, even when they grew louder and louder, screaming in his ear. The
sky turned blue and red, and his mom said nothing at all to him as the car slowed down and stopped, the engine clicking as
it cooled down.
“Where is he?”
That was his father’s voice. Lee turned his head toward it, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be a mummy, but
his mom hadn’t noticed, so maybe he hadn’t lost the game.
“He’s fine,” she said. A car door slammed, and their voices became muffled.
Then the door at Lee’s feet opened up and bright light washed over his face. He winced, could barely make out his father’s shadow eclipsing the light. His father scooped him up off the seat and held him close.
“Are you okay?” his father said.
“I’m a mummy,” Lee said.
His father let out a tense breath. Lee could see his mother talking to police officers, but she didn’t look worried, so Lee
wouldn’t worry either.
“We were playing a game,” Lee said.
But his father didn’t answer, didn’t care. He stopped looking at Lee’s mother after that. Even when he made her tea or held
her hand, it was as if he couldn’t quite bear to look in her eyes. Lee didn’t understand it back then, until his father stopped
looking at him too.
They never finished the game. At least, that was what Lee thought.