Chapter Twenty-Five: Fleas and Thank You
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In the time following the honestly rather unsurprising outcome of Spencer breaking his leg, Emily took it upon herself to improve his lot. And, by this, she decided that it was one hundred percent her duty as his best and most wonderful friend—which she still was, she hoped, despite being somewhat kind of a little bit responsible for the accident—to entertain him while he was stuck in bed 'convalescing', as Diana termed it. Thus far, she was doing an admirable job, by her standards, anyway. Spencer had everything one needed to stay in bed for a week and a half: that was, he had every pillow she'd been able to drag up there piled around him so high that sometimes he quite vanished under the lot of them, all of her dolls assembled around him complete with outfits in case he decided to dress them, every pencil and colouring book she owned, enough puzzles that she hadn't actually been able to fit all the boxes on the bed and had had to improvise to get them there, and even her little TV set and VCR player had been brought up here. Emily had decided that, much like she'd promised, she couldn't possibly leave him while he was in such a dreadfully weak state, and so she'd also brought her own bedding and made a nest on the floor beside him.
"I'm not really sure this was a good idea," Spencer was saying at this moment, as he peered into the pillow case that Emily had dumped all the puzzle pieces into in order to get them up there without the troublesome boxes taking up space. "How many jigsaws are in here?"
"Oh, all the ones I could find. About twelve? I think it makes it a challenge."
Spencer, his leg aching under the mountain of pillows stacked around it and under it and over it and, well, everywhere, wasn't really sure that he was up for any more of Emily's challenges, even though she'd apologised over and over again for the terrible dare. He nodded agreeably, asking her to rewind one of the movies she'd picked out from the rental shop for them to watch.
"Which one?" Emily asked, diving into the pile of glossy VHS tape covers and reading out their titles; while she was distracted, Spencer hurriedly let the pillow case of assorted puzzle pieces slide down the edge of his bed to lurk under there instead of up here, where they were in danger of needing to be solved. "We've got The Muppet Movie, for the eighty-billionth time, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Pete's Dragon, 20,000 Leagues, um, Alien? What's Alien?"
Spencer perked up. "Oooh, can I see?" He studied the case, turning it over and grinning at it. "Hey, this looks scary. How come they let you borrow this?"
Emily didn't remember picking that one out. "It does look scary," she said doubtfully. "I've never watched a scary movie before."
"Oh, you'll love it," Spencer said, without any idea of what he was about to do to her. "Put this one on—it's almost dark, it'll be terrifying."
Emily, although hesitant, did as asked. After all, she did owe him. And whatever Spencer wanted right now, she was going to give him.
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"That might have been a mistake," Spencer told Diana lately as they tried to coax the sobbing Emily out from under her blankets. "Sorry, Mom."
Diana just sighed, patting the blanket-covered lump as she tried to reassure the girl that, no, there was nothing living inside her waiting to burst out, no matter how excitedly Spencer had discussed the possibility. The only response she got was a shrieked, "It's in my belly!" and the further bundling of the ball into the blankets, tightly enough that she began to worry that Emily was running out of oxygen in there—a rather excessive way to defeat the imagined alien, and one Elizabeth was very unlikely to approve of.
"I knew you would bring doom upon the household," Diana told the VCR player after, as she removed the offending machine from Spencer's room—at Emily's request, as she'd become quite convinced it would turn on in the night and release the aliens into the room where they slept. "I told Elizabeth you were a mistake."
The VCR player, being a machine, didn't reply.
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Emily's next bright idea was that what Spencer clearly needed was something to cuddle. Her dolls weren't up to the task, since it was cold outside and she figured something warm would go over much better. That left her, but she didn't really want to cuddle with a boy, gross, especially not one that was all wonky and easily broken. There was also Ethan but, after some consideration and mental mathematics, Emily decided that he was definitely much too long to be any good at cuddling, and also full of elbows that were liable to bump all Spencer's broken bits—which they'd been told was Bad and not to do at all, ever, on pain of breaking him further.
Therefore, as she realised, there was only one creature in the world who could give Spencer his much needed cuddles: Baltharog.
Baltharog, being very much a wild-except-sometimes-tame-for-biscuits hare, would prove to be antagonistic towards this plan. Despite this, Emily wasn't one to be beaten at her own game, especially not by a long-eared weirdo like Balthy. With the liberal application of biscuits and a fruit bun that she gracefully gifted to the cause, soon Emily had lured the wary hare into the lake house and up the narrow flight of stairs, tossing the rest of the bun into the room and then quickly shutting the door as Balthy chased it.
On the other side of the door, the three of them looked at each other: Emily triumphant, Spencer surprised, and Balthy with narrowed eyes and a mouthful of bun.
"I figured you could cuddle her," Emily told Spencer cheerfully, pointing to the bed. "Balthy, up."
Balthy tapped her hind foot on the floor, looking around for an exit. She saw the closet.
She recognised the closet.
And all hell broke loose.
Two hours later, as Emily cleaned up the broken ceramic from Spencer's mug and righted his tossed about books, Balthy had finally worn herself out and flopped down next to Spencer while making angry grumbling noises, whiskers twitching fretfully. Spencer, who'd been entirely unable to help Emily stop Balthy from breaking everything, just petted his hare and tried not to laugh at Emily's face.
"Well, maybe it wasn't such a good idea bringing her inside," he suggested gently. "Although it's cool to see her up so close when her fur is white like this, we don't normally get to see it during winter without her hiding. But still…"
"Nonsense," was Emily's reply. "You're getting cuddles, right? So it was a great idea."
That notion lasted until the next day, when they woke up and found that, at some point during the night, Balthy had eaten her way out of the room and gone adventuring somewhere else in the house. Diana would later find her napping in a laundry hamper, carrying her gently outside and releasing her back to her family, unharmed except for a stray sock looped around her ear that Garett would later find in the hare house and puzzle over. But, at the time of waking, finding Balthy came second to the realisation that Emily hadn't just invited their hare in for cuddles: both children were liberally covered in painful, red spots.
"Fleas," the doctor that was summoned immediately informed them. "You'll have to delouse the entire room—and he'll need a new cast."
"Oh no," whined Spencer, trying desperately to itch inside his cast with the end of a coloured pencil.
"Sorry," whispered Emily, handing him a wire coat hanger instead along with her most contrite of smiles.
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A new rule about hares was added to the whiteboard on Spencer's wall, the one that now read:
No horror movies.
No hares.
ABSOLUTELY NO BALANCING.
The last one was underlined twice, as if the crushing boredom of missing the last few days of their holidays before school term began again wasn't enough. Even the news that Emily would be staying for the school term wasn't enough to cheer them up, especially since Spencer wasn't being allowed to return until his leg was better enough that he could wear a walking cast along with his clunky crutches.
And the days were miserable because of this, until Ethan arrived on their doorstep.
"I bought a puzzle for you," was the first thing he said, bouncing into the room, all knees and elbows and silly hair, and beaming at Spencer as he tossed him a brightly coloured cube. "It's a rubrics cube, you—oh."
While he'd been talking, Spencer had flicked the puzzle into place, handing it back completed and slouching further into his pillow fort.
"They're going to chop up your brain for science," Emily said from behind the conspiracy theory book she was reading.
"That's alright, he's got brains to spare," Ethan said cheerfully, throwing the rubrics cube into the laundry basket and bouncing over to the bed. Both children tensed with anticipation of a bumped leg, but Ethan patted the pillows gently before finding a spot that wouldn't batter his much smaller friend around. "What are you doing?"
"Dying of boredom," said Emily.
"Slowly oxidising," Spencer added glumly. "I'm going to get bedsores."
Emily reappeared above her book, eyes wide. "Can I see?" she asked with an obscene amount of interest in her voice. "What do bedsores look like? Are they super gross?"
"I don't know." Spencer dragged a pillow over his head, wondering if he could accidentally suffocate so he wasn't bored anymore. "Go see if you can find a medical dictionary, sometimes they've got pictures."
Emily was gone in moments, abandoning her book in favour of grossness. Spencer shook his head, really not understanding how bedsores were fascinating to her, but the xenomorph from Alien still made her cry at night about things being inside her. Weirdo.
"Hey, Spence?" Ethan asked as Emily's footsteps faded down the stairs and the front door banged open, Diana calling out, "Gentle!" as she went.
"Hmm?"
"Can I ask you a question?"
Spencer popped out of the pillows, trying to move around and wincing as his leg dragged a bit. He was stiff and sore and bored, and didn't really like the look on Ethan's face right now much at all. "I guess?" he said finally, wary of how Ethan wasn't smiling right now.
Ethan took a breath, fiddling with the edge of Spencer's bedcovers and the sparkles that made up the owl-shaped face of one of Emily's pillows, before speaking. "When that happened," he began, pointing to Spencer's leg. "Your mom…"
Oh.
Oh no.
Spencer wished he could curl up and ignore this question, steeling himself for it.
"Is she okay?"
Oh, how he wished Emily would appear right now with a book filled with the most grotesque bedsores in the history of the known universe, but he wasn't that lucky.
"She's not well," Spencer hedged finally, not wanting to go into details. "She's scared of hospitals."
"Is that why she didn't go with you?"
Spencer nodded, feeling his face go hot. "But she's okay now," he said quickly, because she was. In the days following his accident, she'd quickly come back to herself, like the episode hadn't happened at all—he had his mom back, even if she was acting sad because she hadn't been there when he needed her. Which, as he kept telling her, was fine. He hadn't really needed her—Elizabeth had been there for a bit and then, after that, he'd been just fine on his own. The nurses were really nice, and the hospital was never dark. "So it doesn't matter."
"I guess." Ethan squeezed the owl pillow, watching its beak open and close in response. "But if your mom didn't go, who stayed with you that night? I've never stayed in hospital alone."
"It wasn't so bad…" Spencer was blushing again, but this time it was because Ethan was looking at him with a kind of awe on his face, like Spencer had done something really cool. "They wouldn't let Emily stay—she asked."
"You're so brave, kid," Ethan said finally, shuffling up a bit and ruffling his hair. "I wish I had half your guts."
That was a strange, but thrilling, thing for Ethan to say—Spencer never felt brave. Despite how strange it was, it was also exciting and, when Emily finally returned, he was still grinning widely.
"I couldn't find pictures," she announced, walking in and scowling in their general directions. "Books suck. Everything sucks. Everything is lame."
"Oh, well, I know some super gross stories, if you want," Ethan said, turning around to smile at Emily. "It'll be like a campfire, we can tell stories to see who gets grossed out or scared first."
"It won't be me," Emily said, reclaiming her spot on the floor.
Spencer said nothing, just looked at the whiteboard and frowned. Scary stories weren't the same as horror movies, right?
Surely, they'd be fine?
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The whiteboard had been updated: No scary stories, fables, tales, or allegories.
"Sorry, Emily," Ethan told her guiltily as they sat around the kitchen table—every light in the house on and Diana heating milk to help her calm down.
And Emily said nothing, just hiccupped wetly and stared in absolute horror at the basement door, sure that the world was so much more terrifying than she'd ever imagined.
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On their last day before school, they were drawing. At first, Emily had been absently doodling on Spencer's cast, trying to make it look like a ton of different people had written all over it, instead of just her and Ethan and a small block of poetry near the knee in Diana's handwriting. But, as Spencer kept reading out loud from their battered copy of Watership Down, her doodling became more pointed. Emily wondered what happened to Fiver between the battle for Watership and the epilogue, because such a wonderful hare couldn't possibly have just done nothing. Maybe, just maybe, he'd gone on his own adventures… and she began to draw a skinny, twitchy rabbit leaving the Down, his family spotted behind him. Down the calf he went, meeting a frog and a mouse and not really liking any of them, because they didn't understand him, until she thought that he looked a bit lonely, ambling across to the other side of the leg. She added a bird, a blackbird with a wild crest of feathers, and put them on a boat just like the ones on Spencer's Italian books.
Spencer had stopped reading, watching her with interest.
"It's Fiver," she explained, pointing to him at the helm. "He's a seafaring captain, and she's his first mate, Blackbird."
"Put her in the crow's nest," Spencer suggested, trying to lean down to see. "Like that, yeah, and with a spyglass. She has the keenest eyes in all the world, so keen that no matter how far they go from Watership, she can still look back there and tell Fiver that Hazel is doing okay."
Emily added the spyglass, and a patch in case they decided to become pirates. Then, a kraken attacked, talking up the rest of the leg side of Spencer's leg. After some debate, they managed to lever him up just enough that the battle could be completely along the back of his leg, a cannonball almost knocking Fiver clean into Spencer's knee. They were separated—and out of room.
"Hmm," said Emily, before grabbing the marker and knocking the pillows from the bed, crawling up next to Spencer and drawing Fiver on the wall. "Here, look—you're hurt."
"Oh no," said Spencer, who was worried for a heartbeat about drawing on the wall until he realised that, if they didn't, Fiver and Blackbird would never get home. "What happens next?"
"Well," said Emily. "They travelled for years and years, looking for one another, until in a desert land one day Fiver found a magic carpet that took him to her. And she was locked in a cave shaped like a tiger and he had to find the magic tooth to get her out, like this…"
Diana, when she discovered the story played out in eight parts later that night, wasn't even mad at all. "You're both fantastic," she told them proudly, finding her own seat by the bed. "Do tell me, what's the name of that splendid ship? And who is this character, with the rubrics cube—is this Bigwig?"
"Yeah!" Spencer answered, almost bouncing his leg. "He's Ethan!"
And no one ever did tell Elizabeth about the story on the bedroom wall, not even Diana. After all, it was worth it.
For that day, no one was bored or sad… and no one got fleas.