Chapter 23 Through The Glass
Through The Glass
Mateo pushed through the door like he owned the lease, cheeks flushed from the heat. He dropped his backpack a little too hard; it hit the floor with a thud and spilled a folder with his half-finished comic panels, a battered library book, and his sketchbook across the linoleum.
“Whoa, slow down, Picasso,” I said, kicking one of his sketches out of the doorway before I tripped over it. “You trying to decorate the floor again?”
He grinned, breathless. “It’s not decorating, Mom, it’s displaying my art. Mrs. White says real artists need to showcase their work.”
“Uh-huh. Tell Mrs. White she’s welcome to come sweep up your ‘exhibit’ next time,” I said, arching a brow with practiced skepticism.
He laughed and darted toward the couch, already shedding his jacket mid-run.
It landed somewhere near the kitchen chair, which, at this point, might as well have been a coat rack.
He dropped onto the couch and grabbed the remote without asking.
A YouTube intro blared, someone shouting about “top ten insane boss fights,” all neon graphics and chaotic sound effects.
“We went to Central Park after lunch today, and I climbed the biggest tree,” he announced, the words tumbling over each other, “like, not the little ones by the statue, the giant one by the lake. Mrs. White said I went higher than Billy.” He grinned, the pride in his lopsided smile warming me from the inside out.
I ducked into the kitchen, running water over my hands, and let his voice fill the air as I threw together dinner from the sparse contents of our fridge.
Tonight’s feast: spaghetti with a jarred tomato sauce, dressed up with half a wilted zucchini and a handful of frozen peas.
I plated it with a flourish, pretending not to notice how little food was left for tomorrow.
Mateo bounced to the table and attacked the pasta with the gusto of an eleven-year-old who’d spent the entire afternoon burning calories at maximum velocity. He ate fast, barely pausing for air, already halfway through before I’d even sat down.
“This is the best spaghetti ever,” he declared around a mouthful. “Mrs. White says I should try out for track,” he said, shrugging. “I told her I’d consider it. Gotta maintain my secret identity.”
He made a show of flexing his arms, skinny but determined, and for a moment I saw the man he might become. I reached over and ruffled his hair, my tired fingers lingering a little longer than usual.
“Every superhero needs fuel,” I said, and he nodded sagely, as if this were an ancient truth passed down from on high.
After dinner, I supervised the nightly ritual of showering, teeth-brushing, and a brief but passionate negotiation over bedtime.
“You promised me five more minutes,” he accused, holding up five fingers as evidence. “You’re the only parent who enforces sleep like it’s a prison sentence.”
I caved, as I always did, losing the argument to a boy who was already learning how to cross-examine witnesses, and we curled on the couch together with a blanket stretched over both of us like a battered flag of truce.
He fell asleep before the second episode even started, his head heavy on my shoulder, his breath slow and steady. I watched him for a while, memorizing the constellation of freckles on his nose, the way his lashes curled against the soft roundness of his cheeks.
Each night, I found new reasons to fall in love with my son all over again, and each night I found new, sharper ways to worry about losing him.
I nudged him awake long enough to get him down the hall. He leaned on me, heavy now, all elbows and knees. I tucked him in beneath the faded quilt we’d found at Goodwill.
The room was small, crowded with the artifacts of childhood: plastic dinosaurs he played with less and less, a row of library books lined up like soldiers, a half-assembled model volcano.
The bedside lamp softened everything, drawing shadows over the walls and making the world beyond those sheets feel miles away.
Mateo stirred, blinking up at me with sleepy blue-hazel eyes. “You know, Mom,” he said, voice thick with sleep, “I think I could be a superhero one day. Like, for real.”
“I have no doubt about that, buddy.” My words settled into the room, gentle and true.
I watched him slip away into dreams, his face serene and impossibly young. I stayed for a minute, smoothing the comforter, brushing a stray lock from his forehead.
I lingered a moment longer, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing. For all the chaos that swirled around us, past and present, this was the quiet proof that I hadn’t lost everything.
Then I switched off the lamp, leaving only the faint city light seeping through the blinds, and whispered, “Goodnight, baby.”
“Night, Mom,” he mumbled.
I left the door partially open, letting the hallway’s golden light spill across the worn carpet.
The rest of the apartment felt impossibly quiet in his absence, the laughter and energy gone all at once, leaving only the hum of the refrigerator and the persistent, low-level anxiety that had become my constant companion.
I moved through the familiar motions: cleaning up, locking the deadbolt, and double-checking the window latches. It was a ritual as much about comfort as safety, a way to keep the world’s chaos at bay for one more night.
But as I rinsed the last plate and turned off the kitchen light, I caught sight of it again: the battered, leather-bound journal on the side table by the couch. Ava’s words waited inside.
I stood there a moment longer than necessary, then turned away. The journal’s presence felt heavy and intrusive, whispering of a world I was desperate to shield Mateo from.
In bed, I stared at the ceiling, the humid air clinging to my skin. In the dark, the journal felt like an unopened door, the weight of Ava’s voice drifting through my thoughts.
I must have slept, because the next thing I knew, it was three in the morning, and someone was standing at the end of my bed. At first, I thought it was Ava. But the shape at the foot of the bed was smaller. Lankier. Mateo stood there, whispering something I couldn’t understand.
I blinked the bleariness from my eyes and propped myself up on one elbow. “Mateo?”
He didn’t answer. He stood barefoot, his pajama bottoms twisted at the ankles, toes curling and uncurling in a slow, almost mechanical rhythm.
His hands hung at his sides, fingers twitching as if he were playing some silent, solitary piano.
His eyes were open, but they didn’t see me.
They glowed faintly in the blue haze of the pre-dawn streetlight, glazed over as if he were watching something behind the world itself.
His lips moved again, whispering ultra-soft, so low I had to strain to catch anything. At first, it was just a jumble of syllables, no language I recognized, but then the sounds snapped into focus, like a radio finally tuning to a station through static.
“Deep under. Under the river. She’s in the water, in the blue. They’re listening. Through the glass.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I looked closer, searching for a fever, for the nightmares he sometimes got when he was sick or overtired or upset about something at school. But his skin was cool, and his breath came in slow, even drags, like he was in another room entirely.
I slid off the bed and padded over to him, my own knees shaky, and knelt to match his height. “Mateo, honey. Can you hear me?”
He moved abruptly, crossing the tiny space in two long steps, until he stood at the window.
With a single, deliberate motion, he pressed his palm to the glass, then drew his finger along the dusty sill.
He started to drag a shape, a looping, angular mark, slow and precise like a compass needle tethered to some unseen force.
For a wild moment, I remembered Ava’s notebook, the pages full of frantic diagrams, the relentless repetition of certain symbols.
I reached for my phone and pulled up a photo I’d snapped of one particularly odd page: a sideways figure eight crossing at the center, it was a continuous, uneven line with two pointed shapes facing each other.
Mateo’s fingertip traced that exact shape in the dust.
My heart stuttered. I reached out, grasping his shoulder, lightly at first, then harder, desperate to break whatever trance had taken him. I could feel the corded tension running through his body.
“Mateo,” I said, louder now, my voice gone hoarse. “Sweetheart, look at me.”
He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. Beneath my palm, I felt him trembling, just barely.
I shook him gently, then with a desperate firmness that would have made me ashamed if I hadn’t been so scared. “Mateo! Wake up!”
His body jerked. He sucked in a ragged breath and blinked, eyes clearing. For a second, I thought he was going to be sick, but instead he just looked at me, bewildered, as if trying to understand why I was kneeling on the floor at three in the morning, clutching his arm.
“Mom?” His voice was thick, fuzzy with sleep. “What happened?”
My heart, already crumpled from weeks of fear and uncertainty, folded even tighter. I dragged him into a hug, wrapping my arms around his frame.
“You were sleepwalking, baby,” I murmured into his hair, hoping the lie would settle somewhere safe inside him. “But you’re okay now.”
He nodded, but he looked over his shoulder at the window, at the spiral he’d drawn.
“Did I do that?” he whispered.
I forced a laugh.
“Yeah. Pretty good, huh?” I tried to keep my tone light.
But I didn’t believe it, not even a little.
I guided him back to bed, tucking the covers around his chest, smoothing the wild cowlicks back into something resembling order. For a long time, I just sat beside him, watching the rise and fall of his breathing, counting the seconds until I could convince myself he was truly asleep.