Jamal?
Jamal didn’t move. He stood back by the sill, his face emptied of color. Ethan wanted to shake him, to make him see and act, but the boy’s limbs were weak, his eyes enormous with the shock of being the one left on the inside. Jamal was the oldest in that way that feels like a curse for children forced to measure things for adults. He had always carried a strange gravity; now that gravity was a leaden immobility.
“Jamal,” Ethan said, voice low because the air had gone thin. “Listen. Go now—call for help. Bring a towel. Bring anything.” The words felt hollow even as he said them. Jamal’s lips quivered. At last, as if a plug had been pulled, the boy moved slowly, mechanically and went down the stairs with steps that looked borrowed from someone else’s life.
Ethan leaned over the fi
