Chapter 23 Through The Glass #2
Every so often, he murmured a phrase or two, nothing as coherent as before, just the wet, stuttering syllables of dream-language, but each time he settled back into silence.
When I was sure he was out, I went into the kitchen. My hands trembled as I reached for the notebook, flipping to the page with the drawing. I returned to the window and compared Mateo’s dusty graffiti with Ava’s fevered ink.
It was identical.
Not just similar, but an exact match: every curve, every angle. Even the two sharp tines at the base. My stomach knotted.
I stared at the two figures, side by side, trying to summon the rational part of my brain. Maybe he’d seen the notebook. Maybe he’d watched me studying it, or maybe I’d left the photo open on my phone.
Kids absorb everything, don’t they?
But the more I tried to convince myself, the less it held together.
What the hell was going on?
I poured myself a glass of water and chugged it, trying to wash down the taste of fear.
The apartment was silent, save for the low hum of the ancient fridge and the distant, predawn traffic.
The walls seemed to close in, the shadowed corners growing deeper and more menacing with each passing second.
I picked up the notebook again, flipping through Ava’s entries. My eyes caught on the phrase she’d underlined three times: “If it reaches the surface, everything will change.”
River under the ground, I thought, recalling Mateo’s sleep-muttered words.
She’s in the water, in the blue.
They’re listening through the glass.
I thought of the blue stone necklace that Mateo drew a couple of days ago. I thought of the woman in the parka, standing perfectly still across the street, waiting. And I thought of my own reflection in the kitchen window, hollow-eyed and spectral, as if I were already half on the other side.
I returned to Mateo’s room and sat on the edge of his bed, watching him sleep. His breathing was steady, but every now and then his fingers twitched, as if he were still tracing symbols in the dust of some other world.
I stayed like that for an eternity, afraid to close my eyes, afraid of what I might see if I did.
Morning came in slow, grainy layers, the kind of gray light that never quite becomes day. I watched the room shift from night to not-night, my thoughts hovering somewhere in between.
Mateo woke up first, as usual, stretching and blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He glanced at the window, at the spiral still ghosted in the dust, and then at me.
“Did I really do that?” he asked again, his voice smaller than before.
I managed a smile. “Looks like you made some modern art, huh?”
He grinned, but the worry didn’t leave his eyes. “I had a dream,” he said. “You were in it. And her.” He pointed to Ava’s photograph on the dresser.
“What did you dream about?” I braced myself for more secrets.
He frowned, searching for the right words. “It was underground, like in the subway. Like a cave, but not. There was water, and it was really blue. She was calling me, but she didn’t say my name. She wanted… she wanted me to follow.”
Something in my chest tightened. I pulled him close, feeling the solid weight of him under my chin.
“You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to,” I whispered. “Promise me.”
He nodded, clinging tighter.
We made breakfast in silence, the morning ritual a thin veneer over the cracks that had started to spider all through my life.
I watched Mateo out of the corner of my eye, worried he might slip back into that other-worldly trance at any second.
But he seemed normal, eleven-year-old normal, anyway, teasing about the grossness of instant oatmeal, humming under his breath as he colored a new page in his sketchbook.
I tried to mimic his calm, but the spiral on the window kept pulling my attention, a faint gray mark that wouldn’t disappear.
I tried to fill the day with ordinary motions. I scrubbed the sink, even though it was already clean, then wiped the counters hard enough to dull the laminate. I helped Mateo organize his drawings and kept my gaze off the window, where the spiral lingered like a fingerprint nobody wanted to claim.
For hours, I did everything but what I longed to do: lock myself in the bathroom and read Ava’s journal cover to cover, searching for a rationale, a hint, a map, anything to explain what was happening to us.
Instead, I made us a lunch of toast and peanut butter, ignoring the way my hands trembled as I spread it. Mateo launched into a rant about why Charizard is overrated, how Sandslash deserved way more respect, and how the city buses should be double-deckers, like in London.
He was bright and beautiful and so heartbreakingly normal, except for the way he sometimes stared through me like I was made of glass.
I thought I could outrun the day by pretending hard enough.
But then, sometime past noon, my phone buzzed. I nearly dropped it out of old instinct; bad news always came by phone.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: “I know what happened to Ava. Meet me at midnight, Central Park, by the fountain. Come alone.”
My heart stopped, then hammered so loudly I was sure Mateo could hear it from the other room. I stared at the words until the screen dimmed. I waited for a second message, a name, a threat, anything, but nothing followed. Just the blunt, electric pressure of that single statement.
I sat at the table for five full minutes, phone facedown, pulse stuttering in my wrists.
Once, I would have tossed the phone across the room and let the message rot in the inbox.
I would have told myself it was a prank, a scam, or worse, the start of some police entrapment.
But that old version of me was gone, buried under layers of cryptic notebooks, unexplained symbols, and the memory of Ava’s last desperate voicemails.
I glanced at the living room, where Mateo was sprawled on the carpet, sketching a fleet of ships in blue marker.
He looked smaller than he had yesterday, cross-legged and intent, his tongue caught between his teeth, the way it always did when he forgot anyone was watching.
I wondered if he could sense that something was about to change; if he was already bracing for it, the way Ava used to stiffen before thunder.
My first, loudest instinct was to ignore the text. Why walk into another trap? Why risk making myself a target, again? But the other voice, the one that sounded more and more like my own, said: What if they know about Mateo? What if this is about him?
I counted backward from ten, then again, then a third time. Still, the logic wouldn’t cohere. I wanted to believe that the worst was behind us, that Ava’s death was just a tragic fluke, that Mateo’s nightmares were some leftover trauma and not a sign of something much, much deeper.
But the world had gotten so much stranger. The rules were off. Every day, the line between sense and nonsense blurred a little more.
And I needed answers, desperately.
Even if it meant walking straight into the dark.