Yesterday she and Jack dismantled what was left of the doghouse. They didn’t talk much while they did it and cried on and off. Neither of them showered, and they still had soot under their noses and around their mouths when the skinny red-haired man from the Bloomtown Gazette showed up and started taking pictures. Jack didn’t say anything when Anna threw globs of melted rhinestones at the man until he left. In return Anna kept quiet when Jack lugged the burned wood from the doghouse down into the basement.
Anna, Doreen, and Freddy found each other in the crowded hallway and made their way through the commons, discussing Penelope’s puppies. Anna wanted them out of the house as soon as possible. It wasn’t safe there.
“We’ll find them a great family,” Doreen said as the threesome left the school and headed to Freddy’s Jeep.
“At the very least, only moderately dysfunctional,” Freddy added.
Izzy, Frank, and a couple of other porn-heads stood on the curb in front of the parking lot, passing around a phone and scrutinizing the screen.
“Whoa, that shit is nasty,” Frank said.
“The bitch loves it, though. Look at her face,” Izzy said, then spotted them approaching. “Hey, gay boy,” Izzy shouted to Freddy, waving his phone, “check this shit out. I found a girl that just might let you bang her.”
Freddy ignored him.
“What's the matter, got your period?” Frank said, then sniffed his fingers as he guffawed.
Anna saw Freddy’s green eyes narrow.
“Don’t feed the trolls,” she said.
Doreen nodded. “So not worth it.”
“Don’t you like pussy?” Izzy called after him. “Shit. You really are queer.”
Freddy kept walking, but Izzy kept at it.
“Look at them go!” Izzy shouted. “The three G’s. Geek, goofball, and Goblin Girl.”
Anna tried to lighten the mood. “So, which one of you is the geek and which one is the goofball?”
Doreen giggled, but Freddy wasn’t laughing. He glanced over his shoulder at Izzy. “That’s four G’s, you ignorant homophobe.”
“Oooh. Look at gay boy talking tough!” Izzy said, and then whack. He darted toward them and sucker punched Freddy in the back of the head. Freddy managed to get his arms out in front of him before he hit the ground.
Anna whirled around. “You coward!” she shouted at Izzy.
A small crowd formed and quickly encircled them. Anna helped Freddy up. His face burned a deep crimson. Adam Letcher, a large football-playing senior, stepped forward, took out his cell phone and started filming.
“Can we just go?” Doreen asked, after Freddy got to his feet.
Izzy lunged at Freddy and made him flinch. The crowd laughed. Satisfied, victorious, Izzy lit a cigarette.
Time seemed to slow as Anna stared at the clove cigarette sticking out of Izzy's smug face. Izzy tossed it on the ground, still burning. She closed the distance between them.
“You were at my house the other night,” Anna said.
“Shit,” Izzy said. “Maybe if you begged me.”
She picked up the cigarette butt. “Who else is stupid enough to smoke this thing?” Anna flicked it at his chest.
Izzy slapped burning embers off his shirt, his features twisting in surprise.
“You killed my dog,” Anna said, and threw a punch. She was aiming for his nose but missed, so she threw another, connecting with his stomach. Izzy grabbed both of her wrists and held them in one hand, aware of the eyes on him.
Freddy lunged at Izzy, but Frank tackled him and pinned his arms behind his back. Anna dug her nails into Izzy’s hand and bit down hard on his wrist. Izzy roared in pain and anger and put her in a headlock.
“Drawing blood, Fagan?” Izzy said. “Wanna suck something, vampire bitch?”
Doreen, her face pale beneath the rosy splotches on each cheek, made a strange primal noise, a combination of the words stop and no. She launched herself onto Izzy's back, pulling his hair and slapping his ears. The crowd loved it, cheering and laughing. With one heaving shrug, Izzy threw both girls onto the pavement. Doreen managed to land on her feet, but Anna fell hard on her back. The breath left her lungs in a quick blast, and she couldn’t pull any air in.
From the pavement she saw Jimmy Pitz in his Honda Civic, squealing to a long and loud stop in the parking lot. Jimmy stuck his wide, acne-clogged face out the window, ogling the fight. His hand followed, holding out a cell phone. Damn it. Anna didn’t want this to be her YouTube debut.
Her vision narrowed as her brain screamed for oxygen. Jimmy Pitz and the parking lot became a receding square at the end of a long black tunnel. And then it wasn’t Jimmy Pitz she was seeing anymore. It was the demon inside her mother on the last morning of Helen Fagan’s life.
On their drive to school that morning, eight-year-old Anna had cowered in the passenger seat while the thing inside her mother sped through the streets of Bloomtown without even glancing at the road. It turned corners and screeched to a stop at stop signs and red lights, all with its grinning face turned to Anna. Finally, What-Was-Helen screeched to a stop in front of Bloomtown Elementary.
“Give Mommy a kiss good-bye,” it said.
Anna groped for the door handle and launched herself out of the car and onto the pavement. She wanted to run into the elementary school, to Freddy and Doreen, even the teachers, even the mean teachers, but then she heard her mother’s voice, her real mother’s voice.
“Anna.”
She peeked into the car window. Her mother was herself again.
“It wants me to hurt you, honey,” her mother said. “You and Daddy. But it can't make me. I won't…and it knows it. I love you, Sweet Pea. You know that, right?”
Anna nodded, but then her mother’s sad smile morphed into a maniacal, teeth-licking grin, and What-Was-Helen slammed its foot on the gas. Her mother’s car lurched forward and peeled across the parking lot for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few seconds. There was a loud crunch as the Jetta smashed into the dumpster by the soccer field and the hood crumpled like an accordion. And then the blaring of a horn, stuck and broken. A cloud of green glitter, knocked loose from a discarded “Happy Earth Day” banner, rained back down into the dumpster. A high-pitched sound blotted out the horn and Anna realized, dimly, that she was screaming.
Jill Flanagan’s mother, her mouth thin as a blade, had grabbed Anna and pulled her toward the front doors of the elementary school. Anna tried to look back at her mother’s car, but Mrs. Flanagan covered Anna’s eyes with one of her hands. “It will be alright, Anna. Just don’t look.” It was said with such authority that Anna had slapped her own hands over Mrs. Flanagan’s, pushing hard and squeezing her eyelids together as tightly as she could. Mrs. Flanagan’s coat smelled like the soap in the library bathroom. That smell was the last thing Anna registered before going numb.
Anna didn’t feel her mother’s poorly fastened butterfly barrette spring loose from its clasp. She didn’t feel the sharp tip of one wing pierce the skin behind her ear and then scrape across her cheek as she’d staggered blindly into the school. She was placed on a cot in the nurse’s office and sat there, cold, stunned and bleeding until her father came to get her. The look on his face when he showed up would haunt her nightmares for years. Hours later, in the hospital waiting room, a doctor came and told Jack that his wife was dead.
“Something bad got her, didn't it?” Anna asked when the doctor left them alone.
“It wasn't Mommy's fault.”
He wasn’t answering her. Anger rose from the depths of numbness inside her. The numbness began to peel away, allowing in the first jolts of ragged pain. The seven stitches in her face tightened and throbbed.
Anna’s voice cracked. “Does it still have her?”
“She's in heaven now, Sweet Pea, with God.”
Anna no longer believed in a god, but she suspected there were fates far worse than death.
“What if she didn’t make it? What if the bad thing's
still hurting her?”
“She made it.”
“But how do you know?”
Jack got down on his knees and took his daughter’s small hands in his. “I'll find out. I’ll make sure, okay? That’s a promise.”
A promise he failed to keep.
Anna’s lungs finally sucked in air. She was lying on the warm, rocky pavement, her head aching. Jimmy Pitz was still gaping at her from his Honda, and Doreen’s tear-stained face hovered over her. Anna sat up too fast and her head spun. Frank let go of Freddy and pushed him toward them.
“You okay?” Freddy asked, rushing to Anna’s side. She nodded.
“That shit was like a horror movie,” Frank bellowed to the crowd. “Attack of the freaks!”
Izzy forced a laugh. His wrist was imprinted with Anna’s purple bite mark, and his ears were red from Doreen’s thrashing. For a moment Anna’s heart thudded with glee.
“Can we please go?” Doreen begged.
Anna took Freddy’s hand and pulled herself upright. But Frank was still at it.
“Damn, Izzy, you killed the hoochie's dog?” Frank said. “No, hold up. You killed the bitch's bitch?” Frank went for a high-five but Izzy skulked off.
The disappointed crowd made disappointed mutterings as Freddy, Anna, and Doreen ambled off with as much dignity as possible, crossing the street into the parking lot.
“That dirtbag killed Peeps,” Anna said as they limped toward Major Tom.
“He must've been peeping in your windows,” Freddy said.
“No surprise. He’s a total perv,” Doreen said.
“Speaking of surprises,” Anna said, looking at Doreen with a smile. It was hard to fathom that her shy, conflict-avoiding friend had unleashed a fury of blows to Izzy’s head.
Despite their fresh humiliation, Anna’s long-absent smile seemed to energize her two friends. Freddy clapped Dor on the shoulder. “I didn't know you had moves like that.”
Doreen threw jabs into the air and danced from side to side.
Freddy cupped his hands like a bullhorn. “And in this corner, standing five foot three inches tall…ladies and gentleman…let's get ready to Reeeeeenie!”
They were almost to Major Tom when they passed Craig Shine leaning against his SUV, his legs crossed casually at the ankles. A sliver of his tanned stomach was showing in between his jeans and the bottom of his vintage Sex Pistols T-shirt. Sydney White leaned against him, whispering in his ear. Craig grinned at whatever she said, his hand on her waist, his eyes cold.
“Yo, Fagan,” Craig said when he saw Anna. “What was up with that throw down?”
Craig’s mocking tone hit her like a gut punch. Freddy and Doreen got into Major Tom. Freddy opened the passenger side door for Anna, willing her with his eyes to get in. He must have guessed what was coming.
“You really need to chill, Goblin Girl,” Craig said.
It was the first time he ever called her that.
Chapter Six
Puppy Run
Dor had to go home to help her mom with something, so Anna took Freddy back to Jack’s house to wait for her. Freddy’s eyes went wide when they stepped through the front door and into the path-tunnel of Jack’s hoard. He hadn’t been over for a while to witness the progression of Jack’s Crap, or maybe regression was more like it. Entering the kitchen, they found Jack at the table reading a thick hardcover book with a well-battered spine.
Jack sneezed, his face haggard beyond his years, and then trained his bloodshot eyes on Anna.
“I won't survive another night with them inside,” he said. “Allergies are killing me.”
Anna was keeping the puppies in her room.
“We're on it,” she said, filling two glasses of water and handing one to Freddy. “Dor and Freddy are going to help me find homes for the pups.”
Jack looked over at Freddy as if just noticing that there was a teenaged boy wearing a Neil deGrasse Tyson T-shirt in his kitchen.
“Hi, Freddy. How’s your mother doing?”
“She’s great, Mr. Fagan. What’s that book you’re reading?”
“The Origins of Faith,” Anna said. “It came to Jack through a client, some rich Manhattan bachelor who collects rare books. We call it Oof.”
“A client, huh?” Freddy’s eyes lit up. “Any little creepsters still hanging on to it?”
“Sorry. All clear,” Jack said and went back to reading.
“It had an attachment that Jack cleared years ago,” Anna said. “The spirit specialized in filling rooms with the smell of flatulence, especially when a woman was present. The client didn’t want the book back so, of course, Jack was happy to keep it. Oof turned out to be useful, especially for researching objects.”
“So it’s no longer passing gas? That’s a bummer,” Freddy said, grinning at Jack—but Jack didn’t look up.
They left Anna’s father bent over Oof and went upstairs to greet the puppies. Hyper from being stuck in Anna’s room, the puppies rushed them, barking and nipping at their sneakers. Freddy played with them for a bit and then went to Anna’s window, looking out at the shingled slant of roof directly underneath it.
“Remember when we used to sit out there at night with your dad's binoculars playing the what-if game?” he said.
Anna remembered. They’d stay out there for hours, watching the stars and asking what-ifs. What if the whole universe is a cell in the body of an inconceivably large being? What if we are those beings and every time we skin a knee, entire cosmos explode?
Anna stood beside Freddy—a puppy in her arms, licking her nose—and looked out the window, down past the shingled roof to the burned, blackened ground where the doghouse used to be. Izzy’s smug face flashed before her, and a fast rage built in her throat.
“I’d come over with my remote-controlled rockets, but you didn’t like them, remember?” Freddy said. “You said it would be easier to take an escalator to space, like at the mall.”
“You remember everything,” Anna said. She put the puppy down, sat on her bed and pulled up Craig’s Instagram on her phone. “It was a stupid idea.”
“It wasn’t stupid. They're studying it,” Freddy said. “It could happen.”
“Huh?” What was he babbling about?
“The escalators to space. But it would be more like an elevator. What they'd do is anchor the cable at the equator and extend it up into space, then inertia would counteract the forces of gravity. It would have to be pretty long, though.”
“Uh-huh,” Anna said. Mackenzie Donald had posted a comment on one of Craig’s selfies.
ur band rox!
Ugh.
“I could be a part of it,” Freddy said. “The studying of it. I’m thinking about applying for the Young Physicists Scholarship at a private school in Florida. I could do my senior year there maybe.”
Anna didn’t look up from her phone. Freddy sat on her bed next to her.
“Leave, like, forever,” he said and snapped his fingers in her face. “Did you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Anna said.
“I said I might move to Florida.”
“Lucky you.” Yeah right. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Freddy leaned over to see what she was looking at. “Pining away for Shine again?” He stood and put his hands in his pocket. “Where's Dor? Maybe she’d like to talk about something other than Shine’s shitty band.”
Anna’s head snapped up, ready for a fight. But the color had drained from Freddy’s face. He looked so lost. She thought about giving him a hug but stayed where she was. Sometimes when she hugged him it was like he didn’t want to let go, and she wasn’t sure she did either. It felt nice in Freddy’s arms. It felt warm. But he was one of her best friends.
Besides, Anna suspected that Doreen had a little crush on Freddy, not that Dor would ever admit it. Either way, it was better to keep things the way they’d always been between the three of them. Freddy and Dor were like extra limbs at this point, keeping Anna steady.
“Dor said
she'd be here,” Anna said.
“Well, I have other things to do,” he said.
And just like that, Anna was seething. “Don't worry about it. Penelope gets murdered and it's inconveniencing you, so go home.”
Doreen rushed in the door, flustered and more red-faced than usual. She opened her mouth and then, taking in the thick fog of tension in the room, closed it again.
Freddy put the puppies into a basket. “Let's just do this,” he said.
Anna was about to put her phone away when Izzy posted a comment to Craig's page.
up 2 party?
Penelope was dead and that scumbag wanted to party.
Freddy started toward the door. “C’mon, Dor. She wants to stay here and worship Shine.”
No. What she wanted was revenge. Anna slipped her phone into her pocket. “Okay, I’m coming.”
• • •
Faint traces of the aurora borealis snaked across the dusk sky, but no one in Major Tom was looking up. They decided to drive around Bloomtown, scanning houses for signs of kids, the demographic they’d pegged as the most likely puppy-wanters. When Freddy spotted a basketball hoop outside an Old Bloomtown brick ranch house, they parked, and with the puppies in tow, knocked on the front door. Danny Pickens opened it, shiny with sweat and wearing a tank top and tiny shorts.
“Miss Fagan, Miss Lee, and Mr. Simms,” Pickens said.
No kids in this house, just creepy Danny Pickens. Pickens was a gym teacher and football coach Anna’s freshman year. Supposedly, he got fired because the football team had a crappy season, but she knew all too well that Pickens was a sicko and never doubted that there was more to it. She felt Freddy tense and wondered which one of them would say that they had the wrong house. Then Doreen said, “Hey, Coach Pickens.”
“Not a high school coach anymore, Miss Lee, strictly Little League now. Consider me a civilian.”
“We have puppies,” Doreen said. “Um, for free.”
“Well, come on in. Let’s take a look-see.”
The Ghost Hunter's Daughter Page 5
