100 Cupboards Read Free

cooler.
    Henry’s light was off. There was no reason to have it on. The only thing to look at in his little room was a poster on the ceiling, and he’d finished staring at it a long time ago. Uncle Frank said that it had been his when he was young. It was a picture of the University of Kansas basketball team. One of them, at least. And not a very good one, Henry thought. None of the guys looked athletic.
    Because of the moon, the attic was almost brighter without Henry’s lamp. It hung low in the sky and its light climbed in the window, sloshing silently around the floor and silvering the walls. Henry watched the silver light until his eyes began to water. He wasn’t blinking. He was too awake to blink. He wondered if there was any chance that this summer he would get to play baseball. He would have to learn to throw first. And he’d have to make sure that no one saw him learning.
    Henry hoped his parents would be all right. He even hoped they would come back. But he also thought it would be nice if they came back at the end of the summer, right before he went back to school, or whenever the baseball season ended.
    Henry was thinking about baseball and his uncle’s truck, as well as what exactly it was his aunt had smelled like when she hugged him, when something thumped against the wall above his head. He landed gently on his bed before he even realized that he’d jumped in surprise. He forced himself to breathe, still not blinking.
    â€œSome bird,” he said loudly. He was not going to whisper. “Probably an owl or a bat or something.”
    Henry tried to force his eyes shut, not noticing when they popped back open. Whatever had thumped outside of his wall was now scratching. Or he was imagining that it was. He couldn’t be sure. Yes, he could. It thumped again, not as loudly, but still a genuine thump.
    Henry sat up in bed and tried to breathe normally, picturing large bats scrambling on the house and rats trekking through the walls. No different from thousands of noises in thousands of nights, he told himself. Roll over. Ignore it. Instead, he got out of bed and walked to the stairs. He would go to the bathroom. He would run water and flush a toilet. He would wash his mind with normal noise.
    Leaving behind the moonlit attic was like stepping into a hole, and the steep stairs squealed at him as he went.
    Someone had left the light on in the bathroom—a band of glow at the bottom of the door frosted the carpeted landing. When he reached the door, Henry put his hand out for the knob and froze. Someone was probably inside. No one would leave the light on and then shut the door.
    Henry hated knocking. He hated conversations through bathroom doors. So he dropped his hand and turned to go sit on the stairs and wait. He hadn’t taken a step when the knob turned. Henry caught his breath, jumped toward the stairs, and sat down in the darkness.
    An old man stepped onto the landing. He was short and had a polished bald head with white hair straggling off the sides. Long tweed trousers were rolled up at his ankles, and a purple satin bathrobe hung down around a dirty white T-shirt. The bottom of the bathrobe piled on the floor around the man’s bare feet.
    The man was daubing shaving cream off his neck with a hand towel. He sniffed loudly and brought the towel up to his face while he turned toward Grandfather’s bedroom door at the end of the landing. The purple robe dragged behind him like the train on a wedding dress. Before he touched the door, he looked back over his shoulder. His deep black eyes settled on Henry in the darkness.
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    Henry blinked hard and then yawned, stretching his arms above his head. Someone had left the bathroom light on, but the door was open. Why was he sitting on the stairs? He wasn’t sure, but he needed to use the bathroom.
    He did, and then hurried back up the stairs into his attic.
    Henry slid into his bed with his mind wandering