Chapter 18: The Hallways That Lengthen at Night

He waited until Aldric's breathing went heavy and Declan's went silent, which took longer than usual because Declan had been coughing since dinner and the cough had a wet, productive quality that suggested it would not resolve quickly. Callum lay on his back in the dark and counted ceiling cracks he could not see, tracing them from memory, and waited. Aldric. Declan. The particular quality of a dormitory room in which everyone present has genuinely left consciousness — a different texture of quiet than performed sleep, which Callum had catalogued extensively over three weeks of sharing a room with two boys who both occasionally dreamed loudly.

He had not decided to go. He had simply noticed, somewhere in the hours after reading Søren's pages, that he was going to — that his body had already arrived at the conclusion and was simply waiting for his mind to catch up.

This, he thought, was probably what Fletcher had felt.