The Apothecary Page 0,27

here?” I whispered. I was too amazed to worry about the fact that I was only in my nightgown. Anyway, it was the long flannel hand-me-down nightgown from Olivia Wolff ’s daughter, and it was about as revealing as a nun’s habit.

“I climbed that tree to the window ledge.”

“If my parents catch you—”

“They won’t. I’ll leave early in the morning.”

I tried to think about the options, and the consequences, but I had no argument. He really didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Benjamin set his satchel down carefully and spotted the diary open on my bed. “You keep a diary?”

I closed it and slid it beneath my pillow. “Sometimes.”

“It doesn’t say anything about the Pharmacopoeia or the gardener, does it?”

“No.” That was a partial truth. “Not so anyone else could understand it.”

“It would be bad if someone found it, and could understand.”

“They won’t,” I said. My eyes filled. “Benjamin—the gardener.”

“We have to be strong,” he said. “Don’t cry.”

I brushed away the tears. “Where will you sleep?” My bed was very narrow, and even if it hadn’t been, the question of sharing it was too embarrassing to think about.

“On the floor.”

So I gave him one of my wool blankets, and he lay down on the floor with his satchel for a pillow. He stretched out on his back with his hands behind his head.

“Why did your father call me Figment?” he asked.

I climbed into bed, under the one remaining blanket, and tried to push the gardener from my head. “Because he thinks he’s funny.”

“But Figment?”

“When I told them I was going to play chess with you, my mother was teasing me about having a boyfriend. Someone said, as a joke, that it was a figment of her imagination. That’s all it took—they were off.”

Benjamin was silent, looking at the ceiling. “It’s nice that they tease you,” he finally said. “My dad’s always so serious. I wonder what he’d have been like if my mother hadn’t died. If he would have been more—I don’t know. Like your parents. Able to joke about things.”

I couldn’t imagine not having parents who joked: It was part of every day. I was silent because I didn’t know what to say.

“What does your diary say about me?” Benjamin asked.

“That I can’t believe my parents sent you out in the cold.”

“That’s all?”

“That you’re kind of a bully when you play chess.”

“A bully! That’s slander!”

“The truth is a defence,” I said. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was something my father liked to say, before the US marshals started looking for him.

Benjamin smiled. Then there was a knock at my bedroom door, and we both froze.

“Under the bed!” I whispered, and he rolled silently beneath, pulling his satchel and the blanket after him. I got my diary back out and posed with it on my knee.

“Yes?” I said, in a sullen voice.

My father pushed the door open and looked in. “Lights out.”

“I’m still writing.”

“You need your sleep.”

“So does Benjamin, and you sent him out in the cold.”

I was trying to act as I would have acted if Benjamin weren’t in the room, but without drawing my father into the room to discuss it. It was a gamble, and I lost it: My father sighed, and crossed to the bed and sat down. The metal springs squeaked. I held my breath, hoping he wasn’t crushing Benjamin.

“Janie,” my father said. “I know you’re upset. Your mother and I just want you to be safe. Benjamin seems like a resourceful boy. He’s probably safe at home right now.”

I was going to say that Benjamin’s home wasn’t safe, but I didn’t want to start narrowing down the options for where he might actually be. “Maybe,” I said.

“You really like him, don’t you?”

“Dad,” I said, imagining Benjamin under the bed. Even though I’d already told him I fancied him, I thought we could set that aside, in the category of Things the Smell of Truth Made Us Do. I wasn’t going to say it again.

“It’s okay, you can tell me,” my father prodded.

I said nothing.

“He’s a nice kid, Figment,” my father said. “A little arrogant, though.”

I thought I heard a noise under the bed. I shifted, squeaking the metal springs, to cover it.

“And not as responsible as I’d like. Your mother and I were scared today. We thought something terrible had happened to you.”

“I know,” I said. “But it didn’t.” I thought of the gardener bleeding on his worn floor and wondered if we had left footprints, or fingerprints.

“The funny thing is that