White Smoke

by Tiffany D. Jackson

  “Mari! What are you doing?” Mom shouts, snatching my wrist, trying to shove me off with her shoulder. “Let go of her! Right now!”

  But I’m seeing red and out for blood. I yank harder.

  “DADDY!”

  Piper squirms, squeaking as Alec comes rushing down the stairs.

  “Oh my God,” he shouts, yoking Piper. “GET OFF HER!”

  But my grip is firm, leaving Piper caught in a brutal game of tug-of-war.

  “LET GO! LET GO!”

  “DADDY, PLEASE, DADDY!!”

  “Mari?”

  A shell-shocked Sammy, standing in the living room with Buddy, breaks my concentration. I loosen my grip, and Mom and I fall back onto the floor.

  Alec consoles a hysterical Piper, patting her scalp. Mom pulls me to my feet, shaking my shoulders.

  “Mari, what the hell is going on?” Mom screams. “And why do you smell like rubbing alcohol?”

  “She’s been messing with my phone, trying to scare the shit out of me!”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Mom says.

  Alec, shoving Piper behind him, towers over me, a finger in my face. “If you lay one hand on my daughter again, I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll do nothing!” Mom roars, slapping his hand away. “Because we don’t TOUCH our children. Right?”

  Alec is enraged. “Raquel, you can’t possibly let this stand. She assaulted Piper!”

  “Because she was in my room,” I snap. “Leaving strange creepy messages on my phone!”

  Mom stands in front of me, using her body as a shield. “Messages? This is all over some messages, Mari?”

  “It wasn’t me,” Piper shouts. “I swear! Ms. Suga did it!”

  Alec and Mom whip around to Piper.

  “What?” they say in unison.

  Piper’s mouth drops before she snaps it shut and quickly tries to throw the focus back on me.

  “You’re always on that phone,” she shouts, then tugs on Alec’s shirt. “She tells her daddy that she hates it here and hates you and sends dirty messages to that boy she likes!”

  Mom frowns at me.

  “Are you kidding me? NONE of that is true! Ask Dad if you don’t believe me, because I know you don’t. But let’s not lose sight of the real problem here, and that’s that she’s fucking with my shit! She’s creeping around with no respect for people’s things, going through my phone, and is now blaming it on her stupid imaginary friend she’s too damn old to have in the first place. It’s a total invasion of privacy! So what are you going to do about it?”

  Alec and Mom exchange a tired glance before Mom crosses her arms and cocks her head at Alec, as if to say, “Well?”

  Alec’s face softens, staring down at Piper.

  “Well, it’s not nice to talk behind people’s backs,” he says mildly.

  Mom’s mouth drops as Sammy’s eyebrows hit his hairline.

  “Unbelievable!” I scream, and storm off.

  Fifteen

  STARING UP AT the ceiling is how I do my best thinking. The vast blankness helps me sort out all kinds of stuff. Like how to chuck my little stepsister into a nearby dumpster without anyone knowing.

  Piper refused to apologize for the phone fiasco, and Alec “doesn’t feel he should force his daughter to do anything she’s not ready to do” or some bullshit like that.

  But if I’m honest, there’s a small piece of me that wonders if it really was her. Unless she snuck in here like some super ninja while I was sleeping for those measly two hours, I can’t see how she pulled it off. And I had my phone with me the entire night.

  Except . . . when I went downstairs and the lights turned off. It was just lying on the bedroom floor so perfectly, as if placed there.

  Ice prickles around my neck and I pull up my hoodie. So much happened in the last twenty-four hours. But none of it would bother me if I was high. I’d gladly give Piper all my passwords to any device she wanted just to have some numbness. Which reminds me, I need to go check on the secret garden.

  Mom opens the door just as I change into my run gear. “Yep?” she asks, full of eagerness.

  I tilt my head, pulling my shirt down. “Yep what?”

  She frowns. “You didn’t just call me?”

  “No.”

  “Huh? I guess I must be hearing things.”

  “Ugh, don’t go losing it, Mom. You can’t leave us alone with Alec.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind. Her smirk turns serious. “You feeling okay? Anything you want to tell me?”

  I can tell this morning’s fight with Piper has Mom on red alert. I plaster on a fake smile.

  “I’m fine. Totally in control.”

  “Hm. Well, where are you off to?”

  “A run.”

  Mom nods, impressed. “You’ve been really on top of your game here.”

  “Have to be,” I say, doing a quick stretch.

  “So why won’t you try out for the track team again?”

  Immediately, I want to run in the opposite direction of this conversation.

  “It’s just not my thing anymore,” I say, keeping my voice light, hoping she’ll drop it.

  “Mari, what happened with David and school . . . don’t let it railroad your whole life. It’s okay to let go. It was an . . . accident.”

  “Yeah. But I was the only one punished for it,” I snap. Unintentionally, but I couldn’t help it. Just the mention of his name makes me want to break the floorboard with my heel.

  Mom twists her lips. “You’re right. It’s not fair. Life is not fair. But we keep moving forward. We moved to this new town so you could have a fresh start. And a fresh start also means doing the things you used to love. Like track.”

  She’s right. We only moved here because of what I did. If it wasn’t for me, we would still be where I loved and was once loved.

  She kisses the side of my head. “Just . . . think about it, okay?”

  “Sure,” I mumble, and head out the door.

  “If I haven’t said it, I’m very proud of you, Marigold. You have made some significant improvements while we’ve been here. I just want you to start thinking about your future. Don’t be so stuck in the past. There’s nothing back there for you.”

  Guilt pinches at my side like a cramp. I paste on a fake smile.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She smiles, giving me a hug. “Oh, by the way, have you seen the broom? I can’t find it anywhere!”

  The plants are starting to flower. Much faster than I anticipated. Meaning my one-room secret garden smells like a two-acre weed farm. The blooming sweet fragrance hits me as soon as I open the door.

  This is both good and bad. Good, as I’ll probably be able to harvest before Halloween. Bad, in that anyone could catch a whiff of this place from a mile away through the cracks in the windows. If I spent more than five minutes in the house, the essence would bake into my clothes and hair. Might as well wear a sign on my forehead that says what I’m up to (and thank God I keep a pair of clothes to change into). A quick Google search and I learned a carbon filter would minimize the scent . . . if I had read that far.

  The janitor’s closet at school was surprisingly helpful. It had plenty of the supplies I needed to build a makeshift filter system—charcoal air filters, duct tape, tinfoil, and clear plastic sheets.

  The duct tape I stuck on the back door as a poor man’s security system is still in place, but the moment I step inside, something feels . . . off. The house seems smaller, air putrid and dusty. Windows still closed, I glance at the duct tape. No signs of someone messing with it. A few cautious steps in and I stop short. The dining room is now crowded, as if every piece of moldy furniture in the house had been moved, rearranged, and shifted. Acid rises to my throat.

  “H-hello?” I call out, and listen close. No movement.

  Slowly, I backpedal into the kitchen, gripping the bags tighter. The plants sit, seemingly undisturbed. But on the floor surrounding them . . . red muddy footprints circle th
e table. I can count the toes from their bare feet. . . .

  Someone was in the house.

  I slam the door, burst through the brush, and run off in a frantic zigzag, looking over my shoulder every five seconds.

  Someone was in the house. Someone saw the secret garden. Someone knows!

  It dawns on me as soon I hit the porch steps that I’m still carrying the materials I stole from school.

  I slink around the house and find a man standing in the backyard.

  “Mr. Watson!” I yelp.

  His head snaps up and he looks neither surprised nor happy to see me. Just a chronic state of indifference. In his hands are the overalls and shirt I leave under the deck.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  He glances at the clothes in his hands, inspecting them, checking their tags.

  “Your mother called,” he says nonchalantly. “Asked me to replace the gutters. I was just taking some measurements. Are these . . . yours?”

  I swallow, keeping my distance. “Yeah. They’re my garden gear.”

  “Oh,” he says, handing them over, his nose twitching. Can he smell the bud baked into the jeans? Is he going to tell Mom? What was he doing digging under the deck in the first place?

  “Shopping?” he asks, noticing my bags.

  “Yeah. I have a . . . science project to finish.”

  “Hm,” he muses, then points next door. “You ain’t . . . going in any of these houses no more, are you?”

  How did he know about that?

  “No,” I say impassively. “I’ve learned my lesson.”

  Mr. Watson frowns. It wasn’t the answer he was expecting. “Well, just be careful. These houses are dangerous.”

  He nods and walks away. I follow, unsure how I missed his Volvo parked out front. Guess my mind was too preoccupied with the idea of going to prison.

  “Yusef, that’s . . . a completely ridiculous idea.”

  I laugh until the point of tears during another one of our late-night chats I’ve almost become accustomed to. They’re better than pretending to sleep while waiting for police to come crashing through our front door.

  “Nah, you just ain’t got vision,” Yusef insists.

  “A gardening competition show?”

  “Yeah! It’d be like a showdown to see who could come up with the dopest layouts and landscape arrangements. Like, imagine they dropped our team in some random trash backyard and gave us two hours and a thousand-dollar budget to turn it into an oasis.”

  “Our team?”

  “Yeah! You’d have to be on my team. You got terrarium skills. And don’t think I didn’t peep the way you arranged those tulip bulbs in GC. We’d smash the competition.”

  My heart flutters. Gardening compliments seem to have more meaning coming from him.

  “Dude, who is going to watch this show?”

  “Everybody! People love them baking shows. Making flying cupcakes and crap in less than twenty minutes. Why not ours?”

  “Because cake is everything! Sugar over dirt any day.”

  “Like I said, you just don’t got vision.”

  CREEEEAK

  The door clicks, its hinges wailing, before opening just a hair, as if whoever stands behind it is deciding whether to enter. Chest tightening, I chew the inside of my cheek.

  Relax. It’s just a draft.

  “You okay?” Yusef asks.

  “What? Oh, yeah. I’m fine.”

  “You lying. Tell me. What’s up?”

  I take a deep breath, turning away from the door. “It’s . . . nothing. Think I got a little cabin fever, that’s all. You know, the other night, when we went to the beach, that was the farthest I’ve been from this house in weeks. Think I’m just . . . spooking myself.”

  “It is the spooky season,” he counters.

  “And I haven’t even seen one pumpkin or witch on a broom!”

  “Hm. Wanna get out the house tomorrow. Take a drive?”

  CREEEEAK

  It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s nothing.

  “Um . . . uh, sure? Where to?”

  Sixteen

  FALL IN CEDARVILLE is like one from the movies, where the air is crisp, the trees turn amber, and the streets are littered with crunchy brown leaves. The most idyllic way to spend my first change of season. Yusef pulls his truck into a muddy lot, parking right in front of a giant sign with a pig dressed in overalls welcoming us.

  “An apple farm?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

  “You said you wanted to get out the city,” he says, turning off the ignition. “The garden club takes trips out here every year.”

  “I love apples!” Sammy cheers from the back seat. I brought him along since he could use some fresh outdoor life as much as I could.

  Mr. Wiggles’s Farm is swarming with families and kids running about. It has a corn maze, photo booth, hayrides, a pumpkin patch, and a farmer’s market.

  “Mari,” Sammy gasps, gripping my arm. “I need to ride that horse!”

  He points to a run-down stallion, making loops with kiddies on its back.

  “Dude, that’s, like, for babies.”

  He holds up a hand. “I don’t care. She will be my noble steed.”

  Yusef chuckles. “Go on, bruh! She’s a hater.”

  I shrug. “Ride like the wind.”

  We watch Sammy run off to the animal farm in silence.

  “Um, want some hot cider?” Yusef asks.

  “Sure.”

  Yusef doesn’t seem like his normal self as we stand in the fresh doughnuts and hot cider line. He barely said a word on the hour-long drive. Just let Sammy flip through his playlist. Smiling, but somehow it seems forced.

  After another five minutes of silence, he finally speaks.

  “Hey, you got a man back home?” Yusef blurts out as if he has been holding his breath.

  Ugh. And I was having such a good day.

  “No,” I say flatly. “An ex.”

  “Oh. What was he like?”

  I sigh. “White. Rich. Oblivious.”

  “Damn,” he chuckles. “Then why were you with him?”

  I pace in place, kicking myself for not wearing something warmer. Sixty-two degrees is like twenty degrees to my California blood. But I can’t seem to find my new cream cable-knit sweater. Laundry must have eaten it with my tube socks.

  “He was . . . fast. Like one of the fastest runners on our team. I mean, the way he ran, he could’ve skipped across water. I found that . . . fascinating.”

  Yusef nods as the line moves up. “Still, doesn’t seem like you had a lot in common.”

  He’s right. Other than our love of weed, which is how we even started to begin with, we didn’t have much in common. But the way Yusef acted at the party, I thought it best to leave that part out.

  “I guess that’s why we broke up,” I laugh. “What about you? You have a girl?”

  Yusef smirks. “Nah. Not even an ex to complain about, though many would say different.”

  We move up in the line, the air rich with cinnamon sugar and baked apples.

  “That’s impossible. You’ve never had a girlfriend? Don’t tell me you’re out here breaking hearts all over Cedarville.”

  “Not at all,” he laughs as we reach the counter. He orders two hot apple ciders and four doughnuts. And like a classy gentleman, he offers to pay.

  “What’s up with all the questions about my ex?” I ask, following him.

  Yusef shrugs. “No reason. Just wondering what you were like, back home. Feels like I don’t really know anything about you. You’re like a big-ass lockbox.”

  “So, is this some Mission: Impossible–style quest to try to open me up?”

  He squints. “See? You’re doing it again.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Deflecting. Every time anyone gets a little close, you freeze up with Dad jokes.”

  “Hey, that joke was good, my dad would be proud. And why are you trying to get close to me anyways?”

/>   “Because . . . we’re friends!”

  “Friends?” I catch the hurt in my voice and clear my throat. “I mean, right. We are friends.”

  Yusef nods as if to say “duh” and walks ahead. It’s not like I wanted Yusef, or any boy, for that matter. But I’m not going to lie, it felt good knowing he wanted me. Nice stroke to the ego. Who knew reverse friend-zoning would come with such a sting.

  “All right,” he says, stopping at an archway made of hay bales. “Ready to pick your pumpkin?”

  The pumpkin patch is massive, the size of at least two football fields. We walk through the endless rows, sipping our cider, inspecting pumpkins along the way.

  “Are you sure we’re even allowed to have one of these? We’re not going to get arrested bringing it home?”

  He shakes his head. “You so extra. What about this one?”

  Yusef lifts a narrow-shaped pumpkin up in the air.

  “That looks like Mr. Potato Head.”

  “Okayyyyy,” he says, and huffs. “How about this one?”

  “Bumpy face? Dude, no way!”

  “Yo, don’t be disrespectful. Bumpy face got feelings! He can hear you.”

  We laugh, maneuvering through the rows, the sky a gorgeous baby blue, the fresh air sweet. I can spot the apple orchard in the distance. Maybe Mom can make her famous vegan apple crumble or a pie. This was just what the doctor ordered, a normal Saturday afternoon.

  “Yo, you hear that the Sterling Foundation is trying to tear down the library?”

  I nearly trip over a vine. “Uh, no. Didn’t hear anything about that.”

  Yusef nods and keeps moving. I don’t know why I lied. It seemed easier than telling the truth. And the truth: there’s no stopping what’s already in motion. Yusef just has no idea.

  “Ain’t that some shit,” he grumbles, inspecting another pumpkin. “Instead of them fixing shit, they just want to tear everything down.”

  “Well,” I start, trying to keep my voice light. “Would that be so bad?

  He whips around. “What?”

  “Okay, not to shit on your home or nothing . . . but Maplewood is a bit of a mess. Our high school alone could use some serious upgrades. Maybe it’s time for some changes in the neighborhood.”

  He stares at me, his eyes growing harder by the second, then crosses his arms. “Yo, you ever watch that show Midnight Truth?”