After leaving the Underland for the last time, things were mostly okay. His mother was still tired and needed help doing things. His father struggled too. The medicines from the Underland were helping and both of them stayed at a stable place. Lizzie was nervous and didn't speak much. Gregor knew she missed her code-breaking friends. Boots seemed confused. She continued to ask for Temp. It upset everyone to hear her bring up the Underland. They didn't let it show.
Gregor himself though? He decided it didn't really matter how he felt. He pushed away any thoughts of his friends from the Underland. He pushed away his thoughts in general most of the time. His family needed him to be strong. Thinking about the people he knew, thinking about anything at all was too much of a distraction.
Within the first few weeks of being home, his parents began to fight. Maybe it wasn't a fight, just more of an argument. It was the argument that determined where they would live. His mother wanted to move in with her brother in Virginia and his father wanted to stay. Gregor ever so quietly agreed with his father. How on earth would his recovering parents fare if they uprooted their family, yet again? He would have asked Lizzie what she thought, but he didn't want to upset her more than she already seemed to be.
As much as Gregor wanted to get involved, he figured it wouldn't matter what he thought in the end. He shut himself in his room. Or, at least, he tried to. The lack of door on his wall sort of kept that from happening. He was forced to listen to the words of his parents. They were never mean words. They just annoyed him with their inability to see their lives for what they really were.
They argued for days about it. Gregor wanted to scream at them to just shut up. "For the love of all that's good in the world, would you both just shut up?" He would think. He wouldn't say that though. Why were they arguing in the first place? "No matter where we go, I'll hate it. Lizzie will hate it too. They're lying to themselves if they think it'll be better in either place." He thought bitterly. He would never say that aloud either. It'd hurt his mother's feelings terribly. His father would be disappointed too.
He still couldn't understand them. How on earth would their grandmother be able to move to Virginia? She was in the hospital! His mother should be in the hospital too. Well, maybe. She was getting better. But his grandmother sure wasn't!
Still, the arguments continued. Until finally, one strangely quiet night, his mother stood in his doorway after putting Boots and Lizzie down for bed. Her face looked like she was forcing it to be emotionless. She was doing a fairly good job of it. Gregor was becoming somewhat of an expert on that particular skill.
"Gregor, I'm going to just ask you now. Do you want to stay in New York or go to Virginia?"
He stared at her for a moment and shook his head. He wasn't expecting that question. "Whatever will make you happy?" He replied with a bit of shake in his voice. He hadn't meant to make it sound like a question. His mother frowned at him.
"Gregor, please give me a straight answer." Gregor ran a finger down a particularly prominent scar on his arm as he pondered the question. He couldn't remember what particularly caused the scar though.
"I don't think Virginia is a possibility, Mom." He whispered, trying to be kind, but honest. It was difficult being nice and honest at the same time. That's why he was beginning to think that lying was better. Her face stayed stony.
"Why do you think that?" She asked quietly, too gently. Her tone irritated him.
"It just isn't!" He snapped. Only after he had shouted did he remember that Boots would be sleeping. Lizzie would be lying awake to listen. "It just isn't." He repeated with a more calm tone to his voice. "Grandma is sick and she's not getting better. She can't go to Virginia like that. There's no way! You're still sick and if you have a relapse and we can't go back to the Underland for them to help you, what are we going to do?" He was rambling now, but he didn't care. He'd avoided the subject long enough. "Lizzie can't handle being jostled around even more, and you're crazy if you think Boots is just going to forget. And I'm not forgetting either! How could you expect me to forget? Remember what Lizzie told us? 'Ripred says that if you run from things that scare you they just chase you', so why do you keep trying to run?" His voice cracked on the end, but he refused to cry. His mother's hand reached for his. He resisted the urge to pull away from her.
"Thank you for telling me the truth, baby. I'll tell your father what you think." She patted his hair in a way that used to comfort him. He wasn't sure what comforted him now. She squeezed his hand for a second and then backed out the door.
He was already starting to regret his snap at her. It was cruel and childish. Some of those things had needed to be said though.
Even though he slipped up moments ago, he was learning to hide behind a mask. If Luxa could hide her feelings, he could do it too. Mimicking her wasn't as hard as it once seemed to be.
There were unintelligible whispers that came from the kitchen that lay just down the hall. Gregor couldn't decide if he wanted to know what the two of them were saying or not. In a moment, he decided that he didn't, and stayed in his room.
After a few hours, the talking died down to a silence. He didn't like silence anymore. The lights in the apartment were shut off and his parents retreated to their bedroom. He sat in the darkness of his bedroom, not bothering to try to get to sleep. Sleep rarely came so easily anymore.
After that night, no one spoke of moving again.