Chapter 21: Worse Than Guessing Pornography

Dante wanted to deny it before Jett’s stretcher cleared the doorway, but the nurse said questions would wait until both patients had been checked. Bell went to inform Miss Vale while Posey stayed beside Dante, leaving him without anybody he could impress into fixing this.

"Someone took files from my computer," he admitted, then wished he’d chosen words that didn’t make her expression so considerate. She asked whether they included recordings of him practicing speeches, which was worse than guessing pornography.

"Sometimes you sound as though you’ve practiced, so I wondered," she explained, touching his good hand. "I liked your voice during the movie. I just get a little lost when I can’t tell if you’re joking, and I’d like to know what you really think."

He almost gave her another grand answer before noticing that she was still waiting for a real one. "I like doing the voice, but sometimes I keep going because I don’t know what else to say," he admitted. Posey squeezed his fingers instead of laughing, which made it easier to tell her that somebody had taken the recordings without asking.

He had been fifteen the first time that happened. For a school drama assignment, he had recorded a villain’s lines in an empty classroom, trying several voices until he found one he liked. A boy borrowed his phone to check the time while Dante helped move the desks.

By lunch, that recording had reached three group chats. People bowed when he approached their table, and someone asked whether his royal highness needed permission to sit. Dante laughed because he still wanted a seat, then made another joke when nobody moved a bag to give him one.

He tried asking them to stop when someone played the clip through a speaker during homeroom. That got a bigger laugh than the recording, so he pretended he had been joking. The teacher told him to stop encouraging the attention, and he spent the rest of the lesson looking at his desk.

When Mom asked how the assignment had gone, he told her it was fine. He still liked acting and making up stories, but he stopped recording where other people could hear. At home, he could try a line again without someone saving the worst version to play for the whole school.

The escape-room job had mattered because somebody was finally offering to pay him for the thing he enjoyed. He could have been good at it without pretending the laughter didn’t hurt. Instead, somebody had taken his voice again, and this time a person had been hurt while listening to it.

Posey asked whether he wanted water when he fell quiet. He accepted the glass with his good hand and told her that people at school had shared a recording too. "You don’t have to play it for me, Dante. I believe you," she said, and he was grateful enough to need a moment before answering. Across the hall, Jett was waiting to explain what those people had done to him, and Dante wanted to listen without making him prove he had a reason to be upset.

After checking Dante, the nurse brought a wheelchair to his bed and helped him into it, since she still wanted him off his feet. She wheeled Dante across the hall to Jett’s room while Posey walked beside him. His phone and bag stayed behind in his own room.

Jett sat against pillows with a dressing around his forearm, and Anika occupied the chair beside his bed. The nurse parked Dante’s wheelchair near the foot of the bed, then joined Rhea to check Jett’s medicine chart.

Jett looked built for American football, even under a hospital blanket, with pointed ears sticking through short red hair. "I’m Jett, and I promise I’m friendlier than my sister," he told Dante. "Once they stop checking everything that comes out of me, I’ll buy you a drink." Anika told him to start with the water beside his bed.

"You frightened your sister," Dante said, discovering too late that it sounded like an accusation. Jett glanced at Anika and answered that she normally considered being frightened a service she provided to other people.

Her laugh broke halfway through, and she adjusted his blanket with such unnecessary care that Dante looked elsewhere. Rhea checked Jett’s dressing when he winced, refusing to let him describe pain as an invitation to hold her hand.

The nurse allowed ten minutes of questions when Miss Vale arrived with Iris, and Jett agreed to have his account recorded. Iris wore round glasses and a silver skeleton clip in her short dark curls, and she waited while he decided where to begin.

He had accepted support work for money and equipment access, then asked to leave when the sessions hurt. Staff said stopping halfway was dangerous, extended his agreement without asking and played reassuring messages whenever a patient objected.

The recordings used room numbers instead of names, sometimes repeating the same breath before the same promise. Staff supplied instructions between them, claiming the applicant understood what the treatment required, although Jett hadn’t recognized Dante until their later call.

Dante described the bedroom files, including the speech thanking an imaginary army for its sacrifice. Anika asked whether the assessment cube had displayed that folder, and he confirmed it without defending why the folder existed.

Miss Vale asked Iris to preserve his wording rather than declare a match from memory. Security had recovered a staff tablet in the laundry room, giving the technician something real to compare with the files on Dante’s computer.

Jett asked whether his friends believed he had withdrawn without saying goodbye. Anika explained the false record, and his mouth stayed open for a moment before he asked for it corrected, without a joke.

Dante checked that Jett wanted his request written down exactly as he had said it, then asked Iris to record it. "Could you let him know once the school removes the false withdrawal from his record?" he asked her. He turned back to Jett before adding, "I’d rather hear you complain about homework than wonder whether you’re coming back."

Iris agreed and finished writing before the nurse ended the questions. Vale stepped into the hall to speak with the technician, while Rhea made Jett drink water. Anika reminded her brother that being a second-year student meant reading an agreement beyond the line promising money.

"I thought that was where the plot got interesting," Jett said, then requested his charger, clothes and the green case beneath his desk. Anika refused the case immediately, explaining that its contents were experiments rather than toiletries.

A lipstick inside could release a glitter cloud because Jett had wanted to know whether it could. Improving its range had apparently taken the weekend he meant to spend on an essay, which Dante considered an understandable academic tragedy.

"You weaponized a makeup bag before submitting coursework?" he asked, and Jett said the coursework had never presented a worthwhile target. Rhea reminded him that juniors remained people even when his inventions made them sparkle.

Posey laughed into her sleeve while Anika called her brother an idiot, and Dante finally felt the comfort of hearing someone mocked by people who wanted him there. He didn’t have to compete with that kind of laughter.

He wanted Jett back making stupid inventions and Anika insulting him without checking his breathing. Getting the false withdrawal corrected was a start he could ask about, and he wanted to be there when Jett heard the answer.

Miss Vale returned with a printed copy of the words from the recording the staff had played for Jett. A technician still needed to check the recording against Dante’s original files. Posey turned his wheelchair toward the window so he had better light, then stood beside him while he read.

Dante recognized a line from a video he had recorded in his bedroom, pretending to thank an army he had invented. He remembered Mom calling him to dinner before he finished. On the page, his ridiculous threats were gone, leaving only promises that everyone was safe and that their sacrifice mattered. Cut that way, his performance sounded like he approved of what the staff were doing to Jett.

Iris set a second page beside it, taken from the folder used to arrange his planned theater appearance. The instructions said Dante had to approve the people who would take the strain of his spells before the audience entered. Jett had just explained what that work did to him, and Dante had never agreed to put anyone through it.

"I haven’t approved anybody," he said, looking up from the page. Iris turned her tablet toward him and opened the audio file attached to the form, asking him to listen.

His own voice came from the speaker, calm and pleased with itself. "Everyone who follows me will be perfectly safe," it promised, while Jett stopped smiling and pulled the blanket over his injured arm.

Dante looked back at the form. Beneath his name was a new list of support volunteers, already marked APPROVED. Someone had used his bedroom speech as permission to do it again.