Page 66 of The Staircase in the Woods

Owen felt bad for his old friend. Somehow, Hamish was handling it worse than he was. And Owen wasn’t handling it well at all. He felt he had to disassociate from this experience entirely unless he wanted to grab fistfuls of his own hair and rip them from his scalp like grass from a lawn.

Lore continued: “I’m just saying, there is no ‘straight line path’ to a highway. Maybe there’s an easy way out, and if there is we will find it, but we’re going to have to do this in a smart way. Like in a game, in a dungeon, we have to think about our choices here. And we have to do it together.”

“One problem,” Nick said.

“Which is?”

“We’re going to need to eat food.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Right! Of course. Here—” Lore still had her backpack, and from there, she pulled out a couple of protein bars. Some bougie brand called Elation. Lore tossed one to Hamish and kept one. “Ham, you and Nick split that. Me and Owen will have the other. I have more, but we should ration.” Implicit in that last sentence:just in case. And implicit inthat? Just in case they’re stuck here. Really, seriously stuck here. Trapped in the maze. Owen pictured it in his head like a game map.Staircase to Hallway to Marshie’s Room toThumb Cake Room to the Greige Room.Hallways between them. Shadows lurking.

“I’m not fucking hungry,” Hamish said.

Nick was already unwrapping theirs, though—breaking it in half and shoving that piece into Hamish’s hand. “Here. You need to eat. It’s—” He checked the crumpled up label. “Hazelnut Crunch, with lion’s mane, rishi, and cordyceps mushrooms. Jesus, Lore. Can’t wait to chow down on the forest floor!” He popped the whole thing in his mouth and gamely chewed. Hamish mumbled something about “I like this brand” before biting into his half, nibbling at its edges.

As Lore ripped at the packaging of theirs with her teeth, she said, “Have a snack. Then let’s try to, I dunno, rest a little. Lie down. Shut your eyes. Even if you don’t sleep, I think we need it. Again, remember, we were all trudging through the woods a few hours ago. And since then it’s just been adrenalin and cortisol dumps, and I know I feel like someone has run a serrated steak knife across my brain—and maybe if we give it some time, the rooms will shift again.”

Owen looked to the doors at the far end of the living room.

One of them which apparently opened into darkness.

They all agreed. Hamish sat back, staring at the ceiling, eating his bar with the hesitation of a pukey fifth grader. Nick went to the other end of the couch and lay right down, shoes still on, his arms crossed across his chest like a mummy—it was the way he slept, always. Owen wondered if he was still so sound a sleeper. Nick would pass outhard,and the only way to wake him was essentially to waterboard him with a washcloth. That always got him up.

Owen pushed himself into the couch as Lore walked up to him and offered him his half of the protein bar. “It’s peanut butter, quinoa, and collagen.”

At that, he couldn’t help but laugh a little. “God, Lore, why do you have these cursed protein bars?”

“Trying to, like, min-max hack my health.”

“Is it working?”

Her turn to laugh. “Probably not. I still have a BP high enough thatI could probably squirt blood out of the corners of my eyes, like a lizard.”

“Mine’s so low, they’re worried I’m dead.”

“Shit. Getting old is stupid.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

They ate their protein bars. It was somehow both good and gross. The peanut butter flavor was real, and not chemical-tasting, and the quinoa provided real crunch. But it also had a weird oily taste—and not edible oil, but almost as if it had been run through a dish of aloe vera lotion beforehand.

He finally said, around a mouthful of the weird food, “I’m…sorry I rolled up on you so hard earlier.”

“Nah. No. You were right. I fucked it. I fucked us. I ran up those stairs without thinking. I could’ve been smarter. Ishould’ve been smarter. I just…” Her voice withered to a soft sigh. “Mistakes were made.”

“You missed Matty.”

“Yes. But no. I—” She shook her head and said stiffly, “I can’t do this now. But I just wanted you to know, you were right. This is my fault, and I should’ve been better. I will be better. I’ll get us out of this.”

“You’re not our leader, Lore. It’s all right.”

Her mouth formed a hard line. Her words were firm when she responded with, “IsaidI have to do better. And I will.” She took the wrapper trash back from him and looked around for a trash can. Shrugging, she just stuffed it back in her pocket. “Whatever. Get a little rest. Then we figure out what’s next.”

“Lore, I think we need to talk—”

But she was already walking away from him, to the other side of the room, where she moved one chair across from the other and used them as a kind of clumsy, makeshift cot. Already he could see her eyes were closed.

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