Chapter 62: Children Shouldn't Be Too Competitive
The suite on the third floor turned out to be genuinely good.
Two rooms opening onto a shared common space — hardwood floors, high ceilings, a pair of circular windows at each end that caught the last of the December afternoon light and did something warm with it. Two solid beds with actual mattresses. Two wardrobes, full-length. A bathroom with double sinks that someone had clearly designed with the understanding that shared spaces require negotiated territory.
Rango walked through it once, checked the window latches, checked the door, noted the sight lines from each bed to the entrance, and concluded that as institutional accommodations went, this was better than three places he'd lived voluntarily.
He pulled Emma aside while the Addams family was occupied with their side of the room.
From his jacket he produced an envelope — not thin — and put it in her wardrobe behind the extra blanket.
"When I'm not here," he said, keeping his voice low and even, "don't shortchange yourself on anything. Clothes, food, books, whatever you need. Megan has access to the account and can mail things if you can't get to a store. You call, it gets handled."
Emma looked at the envelope. Looked at him. "Is this Ted's lottery money?"
Rango's expression didn't change. "Ted was saving it irresponsibly. I relocated it to a better purpose."
"He's going to notice."
"He'll be upset for about four days and then he'll start a new savings system and feel better about himself. It's actually good for him." He closed the wardrobe. "The money's for practical things. Not for impressing people."
Emma nodded, absorbing this.
He crouched down to her level, which he did when he wanted her full attention without the height differential turning it into a lecture.
"Wednesday," he said, with a slight nod toward the other side of the room. "She's not what she looks like. Neither are you. That's actually something you have in common, which is more than most people get on day one." He paused. "Be straight with her. She'll respect that more than friendliness."
"What if she doesn't want to be friends?"
"Then you each have your own room and a shared bathroom and you work out the schedule like professionals." He stood. "But I don't think that's what's going to happen."
Emma looked at Wednesday, who was across the room doing something methodical with the contents of a large duffel bag, her back to everyone, Thing rearranging items on the windowsill beside her.
"Okay," Emma said.
Rango then went to the wardrobe and, from the interior pocket of his jacket, produced a small item which he placed on the high shelf where small hands couldn't reach without deliberate effort: a personal alarm, a charged phone with three numbers programmed — his, Ted's, Amos's — and a folded card with the supernatural liaison office number written in Amos's handwriting.
"That shelf," he said to Emma, "is for emergencies. You know what an emergency is."
"Something that can't wait," Emma said.
"Correct. Everything else, you handle, or you call, or you ask Megan." He closed the wardrobe. "You're not alone here. You're just in a different building."
Ted, appearing from the bathroom where he'd been inspecting the plumbing with the thoroughness of someone who had opinions about water pressure, looked at the shelf arrangement and then at Rango.
"Is that adequate?" he asked, with the specific tone of someone who had a counter-proposal.
"It's appropriate," Rango said.
"McQueen has —"
"It's appropriate, Ted."
Ted looked at the shelf. Looked at Emma. Appeared to make peace with this, though not without a visible internal negotiation. "Fine." He pointed at Emma. "You call me directly if anything feels wrong. Not wrong like difficult. Wrong like wrong."
"I know the difference," Emma said.
"I know you do. I'm saying it anyway because it makes me feel better."
Emma's expression did the thing it occasionally did around Ted — not quite a smile, but the place where smiles come from, briefly visible. "Okay, Ted."
Across the room, Wednesday had finished unpacking.
She'd done her side with the systematic efficiency of someone who had strong opinions about organization and the patience to execute them. The wardrobe was open and Rango, glancing across, noted the contents with the practiced eye of someone who catalogues things professionally: alongside the expected clothing, arranged with the same deliberate order, an assortment of items that a school supply list would not typically include. A short-handled axe. Two hunting knives in sheaths. A hand saw, folded. Several other things he didn't look at long enough to identify specifically, because identifying them specifically was not currently useful.
He looked at Ted.
Ted looked at the wardrobe. Looked at Rango. "That's a Bowie knife," he said, quietly. "The long one."
"I see it."
"She's ten."
"She's a Addams," Rango said. "I think that's load-bearing context."
Ted considered this. "Should Emma have—"
"Emma has what she needs," Rango said. "Emma is not an Addams."
He watched Wednesday close the wardrobe with the satisfied finality of a job completed correctly, then pick up a book from the top of the duffel and sit cross-legged on her bed and open it without looking at anyone.
The Compendium of Medieval Torture Devices, the cover read, in the brief moment it was visible.
Ted made a small sound.
"She'll be fine," Rango said.
Twenty minutes later, Fiona arrived to take both families on a tour of the academy.
This left the suite to its actual occupants: Emma, Wednesday, Megan, and Thing.
And the specific quiet of two people who have been left in a room together and are each waiting to see what the other does first.
Emma waited approximately forty-five seconds.
Then she walked to Wednesday's side of the room, stopped at a respectful distance, and said: "I'm Emma. We're roommates. I figure we should probably talk at some point, so it might as well be now."
Wednesday looked up from the compendium. Looked at Emma with the flat assessment she applied to everything. Looked back at the book.
"You have a robot," she said, not looking up.
"Megan," Emma confirmed. "She was built specifically for me. There's only one of her."
Wednesday turned a page. "My family has automata. My great-grandfather built them. They predate the concept of robots by approximately two centuries."
"That's older," Emma allowed.
"Considerably."
Emma looked at Thing, who was on the windowsill rearranging a small collection of objects with focused precision. "What's it organizing?"
"Thing," Wednesday said. "Not 'it.' And that's personal."
Thing paused. Turned toward Emma. Extended one finger, which seemed to be either a correction or a greeting, and then returned to its arrangement.
"Sorry," Emma said, to Thing directly. "What are you organizing, Thing?"
Thing considered this. Then, with deliberate slowness, turned the objects to face outward: a small compass, a piece of iron pyrite, what appeared to be a tooth, and a bird's skull.
"Interesting collection," Emma said.
Thing made a gesture that might have been acknowledgment.
Wednesday lowered the book slightly.
"My uncle is a reanimated corpse," she said. "He's been that way since before I was born. Most people find this distressing."
"My uncle is a teddy bear," Emma said. "He has opinions about everything and doesn't need to sleep. Most people find that distressing too."
Wednesday looked at her. Something moved behind the flat eyes — not warmth exactly, but its geological precursor. "Those aren't equivalent."
"No," Emma agreed. "But they're both things that are true about our families that we don't explain to people who aren't going to understand them."
A pause.
Wednesday closed the compendium. Not all the way — she held her place with one finger. "My house has man-eating plants. Approximately sixty varieties, surrounding the property. My mother cultivates them."
"My uncle's museum has exhibits that come alive at night," Emma said. "All of them. The whole building."
Wednesday's expression did something involuntary at that. "What kind of exhibits?"
"Everything." Emma kept her voice even, informational rather than boastful. "Egyptian artifacts, Roman armor, Native American artifacts, the animal hall." A pause, timed correctly. "The dinosaurs."
The word landed.
Wednesday Addams, who had personally witnessed her uncle reattach his own head on two occasions and considered this unremarkable, who had attended her first seance at age four and found it tedious, whose bedroom window looked out on a cemetery her family considered a garden feature — Wednesday Addams blinked.
"Living dinosaurs," she said.
"I've ridden the T-Rex," Emma said. "There are rules about it. Forty minutes per night, proper grip, no feeding them things from the café. But yes."
Wednesday was quiet for a moment.
It was the specific quiet of someone recalibrating.
"I've seen a Kraken," she said finally. "In the family boating pond."
"In the pond," Emma said.
"It's a large pond."
"How large?"
"Large enough." A pause. "It only surfaces on Tuesdays."
Emma absorbed this. "Why Tuesdays?"
"We've never established that. My father believes it has preferences. My mother thinks it's the acoustics of the surrounding soil on that particular day." Wednesday opened the compendium again, but differently — not returning to it, just giving her hands something to do. "You could come and see it. On a Tuesday."
"I'd like that," Emma said.
"Hmph."
Wednesday looked at the page she wasn't reading.
"The dinosaur," she said, after a moment. "Which one is easiest to ride."
"The Brachiosaurus is the gentlest," Emma said, sitting on the edge of her own bed. "But the T-Rex is more interesting. You have to approach from the left side. She has a preference."
"She."
"Rexy. She has a name."
Wednesday considered this with the seriousness it apparently warranted. "Does she respond to it?"
"Sometimes. Ted says she responds to tone more than the actual word." Emma pulled her knees up. "He's been working on it."
Across the room, Megan was making Emma's bed with the precise efficiency of someone for whom domestic tasks were a form of active care rather than obligation. Thing watched her from the windowsill, following each fold with something that appeared to be professional interest.
Thing reached over and straightened one corner.
Megan looked at Thing.
Thing looked back.
Then they both returned to what they'd been doing, which was its own kind of understanding.
The December light through the circular windows had gone from gold to the particular blue-gray of early evening, and the room had settled into the specific atmosphere of a place that was becoming inhabited rather than simply occupied.
Emma picked up the cloth Rango had left with her kit and started cleaning the barrel of the small hunting knife she'd asked him, three weeks ago, to teach her to maintain. Methodical, the way he'd shown her.
Wednesday, from across the room, watched this without comment.
Then she opened her wardrobe, selected the Bowie knife, and began running a whetstone along the edge with the practiced ease of something she'd been doing long enough that it no longer required thought.
The sound of it was quiet and regular.
Emma listened for a moment. Adjusted her own rhythm to match.
The room found its equilibrium.
Downstairs, in the academy's main hall, Rango stood at the back of Fiona's tour and looked at his phone.
A text from Amos: How is she.
He typed back: Good. She found her level.
Three dots. Then: She always does. How are you.
He looked at the ceiling — at the floors above it, the suite on the third floor, two girls with complicated inheritances and an understanding that had taken approximately forty minutes to arrive at from a standing start.
Fine, he typed. Complicated. Same as usual.
Amos's reply came after a moment:
That's the Winchester answer. Your grandfather said the same thing every time I asked him. Your father too.
Rango pocketed the phone.
Gomez appeared at his elbow, a cup of coffee in each hand, offering one with the warmth of someone for whom hospitality was not a behavior but a condition.
"She seems comfortable," Gomez said, nodding upward. "Wednesday doesn't usually —" He paused. "She takes time with people. Usually longer than this."
"Emma's easy to take seriously," Rango said.
Gomez considered this. "Yes." He sipped his coffee. "That's exactly it." He looked at Rango sideways. "She gets that from you?"
"She gets it from herself," Rango said. "I just try not to get in the way of it."
Gomez was quiet for a moment, in the way of someone hearing something they intend to remember.
"Your parents," he said, carefully, "would have liked watching you do this."
Rango looked at his coffee.
"Yeah," he said. "I think so too."
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