"You'll sleep here."
Mr. Arlington tosses the duffel bag onto a twin bed in the corner of the basement, and the springs in the mattress scream their protest. There's a light bulb on a long orange extension cord swinging idly overhead. The laundry machine and dryer are just a couple feet away from the head of the bed.
Peter sits next to the duffel bag and says nothing.
Mr. Arlington is a short, heavy man with no hair on his head but a lot on his arms, which he crosses over his chest as he stares down at Peter. He seems to be waiting for Peter to say something, but Peter's mind is completely empty, an endless plane of scratchy white.
"No thank you, then?" says Mr. Arlington after a while. "Is this just what I should expect from here on out?"
Peter doesn't even have the energy to feel indignant. He shrugs.
Mr. Arlington scoffs and stomps up the stairs. When he reaches the upper floor of the condo, Peter tracks his progress from the living room to the kitchen by watching the dust that trickles through the floorboards—his ceiling.
Mr. and Mrs. Arlington are his cousins, they told him at the station, though probably a few times removed. His last living relatives. A real bitch to track them down, according to the deputy. They've agreed to take Peter in while everything is sorted out, isn't that nice of them?
What do they have to sort out? Peter wanted to know.
All kinds of things. Uncle Ben's will. What will happen to his apartment, his things. Where Peter is going to spend the rest of his life.
The rest of his life. The concept feels just as scratchy and blank to Peter as his other thoughts. He lays down on the twin bed and immediately sinks into the deep indent at the center of the ancient mattress. Reaches automatically for his phone, then realizes it was taken into evidence, because it was covered in blood.
He can't call May again. He doesn't know if he would anyway. He already feels hot with shame at their earlier conversation, shame that boils over when he remembers how he stared at the doors to the precinct while he waited for the officer who gathered his things to come back with them and hoping harder than he'd ever hoped for anything that she would appear.
But why would she? Besides those few weeks last year—and a few sporadic weekends in his childhood—they barely know each other. Just because Peter likes her doesn't mean she would want to… to…
Peter rolls over, lets the thought roll away as he does. His duffel bumps against his knees, but he can't bring himself to look inside yet. They didn't even let him pack his own things.
Eventually there are footsteps at the top of the stairs, but they don't come further than the landing. There is a click. The swinging bulb goes out, leaving Peter in the dark.
He waits for the tears to come, like they did with his parents.
Instead, two thoughts, black as iron, come jolting out of the white.
The first: Uncle Ben is dead.
The second: It's my fault.
He doesn't sleep for a long time.
The cousins don't tell Peter anything about themselves. He doesn't know what they do for work. He doesn't know if they have kids of their own. He doesn't even know if they're married or if they're brother and sister, though he leans toward the latter. They have the same foreshortened stature, like someone cut them off at the knees, the same manner of crossing their arms over their chests when they look at him.
"Dinner is at six every evening," Mrs. Arlington tells him. "If you miss it, you wait until breakfast. No snacking between meals. School provides a lunch for kids like you, so you'll take advantage of that, got it?"
This is how she introduces herself.
While she talks, Mr. Arlington comes stumping up the basement steps, carrying Peter's duffel bag. He drops it on the floor in front of Mrs. Arlington and the pair of them rifle through it, mussing up Peter's neatly-folded clothes.
Peter watches them silently, with an intense feeling that he is not here in this dusty, ancient apartment, but rather somewhere very far away, somewhere outside of New York. Maybe a different planet.
He's still wearing the clothes they gave him at the precinct. They're too big, and smell like mildew. He watches the clothes that Uncle Ben bought for him pile up at his feet but can't bring himself to touch any of them. There's still blood under his fingernails.
The cousins pocket his wristwatch, the debit card Ben gave him for emergencies—which has about a hundred bucks on it—and a nineties-era Nintendo GameBoy the officer must have grabbed off of Peter's desk. Peter doesn't tell them it's worthless. He plucked it out of the garbage weeks ago, thinking he and Ben might fix it together, but he and Ben had been going through one of their silent periods ever since, so it still doesn't work.
When the bag is thoroughly overturned, the cousins sit back, wearing identical expressions of disappointment.
Mr. Arlington tosses the duffel bag at him. Peter stumbles as he catches it.
"Go take a shower," he says. "I called the school this morning, they're setting you up. If you hurry you can make a half day."
Peter goes to the bathroom. He hopes the shower covers the sound of vomiting, which lasts a long time.