Sophie was still wound up something shocking about Death. She was convinced he was causing people to die. I got a cold, and for a whole week she was hovering around me with hot tea-towels and mugs of chicken soup. It drove me nuts. I hid out in the shed and built a billy-cart for Fred (there were billy-cart instructions in 300 Projects for the Modern Handyman, but I think I fucked up somewhere, because when Fred got in it fell apart). I sniffled away like a dog as I worked, and coughed up big green things and spat them out through the open window. Sometimes I missed. Gross.
"I know," she said one night as we ate dinner. "We'll go up there."
Sophie does this thing where she'll quietly work herself up about a subject, then suddenly burst out with "we'll go up there" or something and expect you to know exactly what she's talking about.
"Go up where?" I said.
"To their room."
"Whose room?"
Sophie rolled her eyes. "The Deaths."
"Don't you remember Lucio?"
"I don't care about Lucio."
"And the Ape?"
"This is important Ben. If he's not real, how does he know Dirty Joe?"
I'd never told Sophie about what I'd read in Joe's book. She probably would have had a meltdown.
"Then there's the book," she whispered.
So she'd worked it out. The book Joe's teacher had given him was about rabbits, and the book Joe had given me was also about rabbits – she'd seen the rabbit on the front cover. She was too smart for her own good. I wasn't going to get the upper hand in this one, as far as I could tell.
"Okay," I said. "We'll go up there tomorrow."