Tiana took a picture as the last flashbulbs popped β the boy in the corridor, the stethoscope around his neck like a talisman, his eyes on something nobody else could see.
Ten days. Eli touched the cold metal of the chest piece, and counted his own heartbeats through his fingertips, and smiled.
Ten days, Grandpa, he thought. Then we listen.
Chapter 11: The Night Before
Eli Porter could not sleep.
He lay in his bed with the green notebook on his chest, rising and falling with his breathing, and stared at the ceiling where the streetlight painted a slow orange rectangle. The radiators ticked. The El sighed past a few blocks off.
Tomorrow. The word sat in his chest like a stone.
He had practiced on Mo's bank safe every day for ten days. He knew the method by heart β breathe, stillness, turn, listen, the faint click like a knuckle popping two rooms away. He could do it. He'd done it a hundred times.
But a hundred times in Mo's shop wasn't once on a stage with sixty million people watching.
He got up β the floor cold through his socks β and padded to the kitchen, where the light was on, and found his mother at the table in her robe, a mug of cold tea in front of her.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey."
She pulled out the chair beside her, and for a while they just sat in the hum of the refrigerator, two people pretending not to be awake at one in the morning.
"Your father got like this before a big pour," Carla said finally. "He'd sit right here and tell me all the ways the concrete could go wrong, and I'd tell him he was being ridiculous. He was scared every time, baby. Brave isn't not being scared. It's being scared and showing up anyway."
Eli leaned his head against her shoulder. She smelled like dish soap and the lavender lotion she kept by the sink.
"I'm scared," he whispered.
"I know," she said, and put her arm around him. "I'm scared too. I'm so scared I could throw up, and I'm so proud I could burst, and both of those things are true at the same time, and that's all right." She kissed the top of his head. "Your grandpa would be so proud of you he'd be insufferable about it. You know that, right? He'd be telling everybody in Bronzeville."
Eli laughed, a small wet sound. "He already told everybody in Bronzeville. That's why Mo has to turn people away from the shop."
"That's my father-in-law," Carla said. "Subtle as a parade."
They sat until the fear was a little smaller, and then Carla sent him back to bed, and Eli lay down, and closed his eyes, and did not sleep.
His phone buzzed at 1:40. Tiana.
He answered on the second ring, keeping his voice low. "You awake?"
"Obviously you're awake, you're answering." Tiana wasn't really whispering. "Okay, listen, I made a list. Reasons you're going to destroy that safe tomorrow. One: locks literally confess to you. Two: your grandpa's going to be right there, I don't care if that sounds weird. Three: Chloe says her dad's been stress-eating pretzels for three days, which means HE'S scared. Four: sixty million people are going to watch you be the coolest person on the planet. Five β"
"There's a five?"
"Five: after you win, I'm getting a signed stethoscope. The Tiana Wells Museum of Eli Stuff. It's going to be huge."
Eli grinned into the dark. "You can't have my grandpa's stethoscope."
"Fine. A signed magnifier. Don't argue, go to sleep. Pep talk over."
"Thanks, Tee."
"Anytime, lock boy." She hung up.
Eli lay in the dark with the phone warm against his cheek, and the stone in his chest was lighter.
He got up once more and went to his bag. He took out the brass magnifier on its cord β Otis's magnifier β and polished it with the hem of his shirt until it threw a small warm coin of light onto the wall. He held it up and looked through it at his own fingertip, huge and ridged, the whorls like the grain of wood.
Every lock is a confession, Grandpa wrote. The maker always tells you what he loves.
"What did Sloane love?" Eli whispered to the empty kitchen.
No answer β not yet. Tomorrow he'd put his hands on the steel and ask it properly.
He went back to bed, and this time sleep came the way it had been coming for weeks: in tumblers. He dreamed of twelve wheels turning, each clicking into place like a key in a far-off door. He dreamed of his grandfather's hands over his own, warm and steady. He dreamed of a sound so faint it was almost not a sound β the gate falling, the bolt sliding, the confession.