The Archived

“How was Wes?” asks Mom.

“Fine. He’s helping me with the Inferno.”

“Is that what they call it?”

“Dad!”

Mom frowns. “Didn’t you have it with you when you left?”

I look down at my empty hands, and rack my brain. Where did I leave it? The garden? The study? Nix’s place? The roof? No, I didn’t have it on the roof—

“Told you they weren’t reading,” whispers Dad.

“He has…character,” adds Mom.

“You should see Mac around him. I swear I saw a smile!”

“Are you actually cooking?” I ask.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“Mac, what do you think of this green?”

“Food’s up.”

I carry plates to the table, trying to figure out why my chest hurts. And somewhere between pouring a glass of water and taking a bite of stir-fry, I realize why. Because this—the banter and the joking and the food—this is what normal families do. Mom isn’t smiling too hard, and Dad isn’t ru

This is normal. Comfortable.

This is us moving on.

Without Ben.

My brother left a hole, and it’s starting to close. And when it does, he’ll be gone. Really and truly gone. Isn’t this what I wanted? For my parents to stop ru

“You okay?” asks Dad. I realize I’ve stopped with the fork halfway to my mouth. I open my mouth to say the three small words that will shatter everything. I miss Ben.

“Mackenzie?” asks Mom, the smile sliding from her face.

I blink. I can’t do it.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was just thinking.…”

Think think think.

Mom and Dad watch me. My mind stumbles through lies until I find the right one. I smile, even though it feels like a grimace. “Could we make cookies after di

Mom’s brows peak, but she nods. “Of course.” She twirls her fork. “What sort?”

“Oatmeal raisin. The chewy kind.”

When the cookies are in the oven, I call Lyndsey back. I slip into my room and let her talk. She tunes her guitar and rambles about her parents and the boy at the gym. Somewhere between her description of her new music tutor and her lament over her mother’s attempt to diet, I stop her.

“Hey, Lynds.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking. About Ben. A lot.”

Oddly enough, we never talk about Ben. By some silent understanding he’s always been off-limits. But I can’t help it.

“Yeah?” she asks. I hear the hollow thud of the guitar being set aside. “I think about him all the time. I was babysitting a kid the other night, and he insisted on drawing with a green crayon. Wouldn’t use anything else. And I thought about Ben and his love of blue pencils, and it made me smile and ache at the same time.”

My eyes burn. I reach out for blue stuffed bear, the pair of black glasses still perched on its nose.

“But you know,” says Lyndsey, “it kind of feels like he’s not gone, because I see him in everything.”

“I think I’m starting to forget him,” I whisper.

“Nah, you’re not.” She sounds so certain.

“How do you know?”

“If you mean a few little things—the exact sound of his voice, the shade of his hair, then okay, yeah. You’re going to forget. But Ben isn’t those things, you know? He’s your brother. He’s made up of every moment in his life. You’ll never forget all of that.”

“Are you taking a philosophy course too?” I manage. She laughs. I laugh, a hollow echo of hers.

“So,” she says, turning up the cheer, “how’s Guyliner?”

I dream of Ben again.

Stretched out on his stomach on my bedroom floor, drawing with a blue pencil right on the hardwood, twisting the drops of blood into monsters with dull eyes. I come in, and he looks up. His eyes are black, but as I watch, the blackness begins to draw inward until it’s nothing but a dot in the center of his bright brown eyes.

He opens his mouth to speak, but he only gets halfway through saying “I won’t slip” before his voice fades away. And then his eyes fade, dissolving into air. And then his whole face fades. His body begins to fade, as if an invisible hand is erasing him, inch by inch.

I reach out, but by the time I touch his shoulder, he’s only a vague shape.

An outline.

A sketch.

And then nothing.

I sit up in the dark.

I rest my head against my knees. It doesn’t help. The tightness in my chest goes deeper than air. I snatch the glasses from the bear’s nose and reach for the memory, watching it loop three or four times, but the faded impression of a Ben-like shape only makes it worse, only reminds me how much I’m forgetting. I pull on my jeans and boots, and shove the list in my pocket without even looking at the names.

I know this is a bad idea, a horrible idea, but as I make my way through the apartment, down the hall, into the Narrows, I pray that Roland is behind the desk. I step into the Archive, hoping for his red Chucks, but instead I find a pair of black leather boots, the heels kicked up on the desk before the doors, which are now closed. The girl has a notebook in her lap and a pen tucked behind her ear, along with a sweep of sandy blond hair, impossibly streaked with sun.

“Miss Bishop,” says Carmen. “How can I help you?”

“Is Roland here?” I ask.

She frowns. “Sorry, he’s busy. I’m afraid I’ll have to do.”

“I wanted to see my brother.”

Her boots slide off the desk and land on the floor. Her green eyes look sad. “This isn’t a cemetery, Miss Bishop.” It feels weird for someone so young to refer to me this way.

“I know that,” I say carefully, trying to pick my angle. “I was just hoping…”

Carmen takes the pen from behind her ear and sets it in the book to mark her place, then puts the book aside and interlaces her fingers on top of the desk. Each motion is smooth, methodical.

“Sometimes Roland lets me see him.”

A faint crease forms between her eyes. “I know. But that doesn’t make it right. I think you should—”

“Please,” I say. “There’s nothing of him left in my world. I just want to sit by his shelf.”

After several long moments, she picks up a pad of paper and makes a note. We wait in silence, which is good, because I can barely hear over my pulse. And then the doors behind her open, and a short, thin Librarian strides through.

“I need a break,” says Carmen, rolling her neck. The Librarian—Elliot, I remember—nods obediently and takes a seat. Carmen holds her hand toward the doors, and I pass through into the atrium. She follows and tugs them shut behind her.

We make our way through the room and down the sixth wing.

“What would you have done,” she asks, “if I’d said no?”

I shrug. “I guess I would have gone home.”

We cross through a courtyard. “I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t believe you would have said no.”

“Why’s that?” she asks.

“Your eyes are sad,” I say, “even when you smile.”

Her expression wavers. “I may be a Librarian, Miss Bishop, but we have people we miss, too. People we want back. It can be hard to be so far from the living, and so close to the dead.”

I’ve never heard a Librarian talk that way. It’s like light shining through armor. We start up a short set of wooden stairs.

“Why did you take this job?” I ask. “It doesn’t make sense. You’re so young—”

“It was an honor to be promoted,” she says, but the words have a hollow ring. I can see her drawing back into herself, into her role.

“Who did you lose?” I ask.

Carmen flashes a smile that is at once dazzling and sad. “I’m a Librarian, Miss Bishop. I’ve lost everyone.”

Before I can say anything, she opens the door to the large reading room with the red rug and the corner chairs, and leads me to the wall of cabinets on the far side. I reach out and run my fingers over the name.

BISHOP, BENJAMIN GEORGE

I just want to see him. That’s all. I need to see him. I press my hand flat against the face of the drawer, and I can almost feel the pull of him. The need. Is this the way the Histories feel, trapped in the Narrows with only the desperate sense that something vital is beyond the doors, that if they could just get out—