by Unknown
The other girls were moving quickly, Pam jumping into the shallow water and wading to the rear of the boat to push, Keeley and Amy up on a raised tuft of grasses next to the shack, pulling the two lines. They beached the boat, pulling it halfway out of the water so that the bow rested on the grasses while the stern still lay in the shallow water, and tied both lines to the shack’s pilings just as the first crack of lightening lit up the sky.
All of their heads snapped around, looking at the white jagged finger of light that cut through the darkness over the bay and touched the open water a half a mile from them. Zooey yelped.
Pam said, “In the house! We’ve got to take cover!” She pointed at the shack.
They all stopped and looked up at the slouching old building. This house was even more famously haunted than Old Lady Bennett’s with many circulating stories of the old sea captain still living there, his wraith attacking anyone who entered his eternal abode. In the darkness of the storm, it seemed to rear up above them, menacing and mysterious. Would it even be safe? The narrow wooden ladder that was its only point of entry had missing rungs and looked so dilapidated it seemed it would certainly collapse under their weight. The house hadn’t been occupied for years, and without an owner to keep up with the necessary maintenance, the salt air had feasted on it, peeling off its shingles, rotting its floorboards, rusting holes in the old metal cistern.
Pam started toward the ladder, but the others hesitated, staring up at the house. Pam looked back at them and put her hands on her hips. “Come on! We don’t have enough time to get home and we could get killed out here!”
Zooey thought of the captain’s ghost, waiting to attack. If they climbed up the ladder safely, who was to say he wouldn’t push them out the door when they tried to enter? They’d fall to their deaths, his horrible white staring face the last thing they saw before dying. She started to shake her head, and looked at the other girls whose eyes were wide as they returned her glance.
Then another bolt of lightning tore through the air, and the sky cracked apart followed by a loud boom that shook the air itself.
The girls ran toward the little house and its ladder and climbed: Pam first, then Keeley, then Amy, and last, Zooey. Zooey was glad to let the others go first. If there was something waiting for them, let the others see it first. She knew she couldn’t handle it. If she didn’t die from the fall, she’d go stark raving mad and end up in an asylum like her Uncle Teddy. And other than death, there was nothing more terrifying than ending up like her father’s poor brother, sitting in a wheelchair staring at nothing, drooling slightly so that a string of saliva hung from his lip to his shirt, and smelling of spoiled milk and antiseptic.
Exhausted from swimming, Zooey took much longer to climb the ladder than everyone else, the only thing making her move after every break she took to rest was the boom and crack of the storm as it moved closer. The other girls leaned out of the open doorway at the top of the ladder and shouted encouragement to her until she reached them, upon which she collapsed on the floor next to their feet.
Keeley squatted down next to her. “Oh! Poor Zo! She’s plum tuckered out!”
Pam laughed and said, “Oh, here we go with the cowboy-talk! Where do you get that stuff from?”
Keeley looked up at Pam and said, “That’s not cowboy! It’s country folks’ talk. You know! You watch Little House on the Prairie, too!”
Amy said, “Will you guys quit arguing? We’ve got a patient here to take care of!” She walked carefully around the remaining portions of the floor in the living room and then went into the kitchen of the little two-room house, testing each board with one foot before putting her full weight on it. She yelled to them that the kitchen floor was really soft and not to go in there. An entire section in the southeastern corner of the living room had rotted away, most of the boards completely gone and showing, like narrow windows, the tossing waves of the shallow water below. A cedar trunk was pushed against the opposite wall and Amy opened it. Inside was a pile of old woolen blankets, neatly folded.
“Cool!” Amy crowed, pulling the blankets out one by one. “There are even four of them! One for each of us! Yay!”
Zooey had sat up by this time and was looking around the room nervously. No ghost. Not yet.
Amy rushed over to Zooey with one of the blankets and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Better?” she asked, rubbing Zooey’s shoulders through the cloth.
But before Zooey could answer, a huge crash of thunder directly overhead made them all yelp. Then the rain that had been coming down hard before, pounded into the roof so loudly it sounded as if it was going to break through. Areas of the ceiling that were dripping before became little waterfalls pouring down all around the girls. There was one large dry area next to the window looking out on the water that wasn’t affected by the leaks, and the girls ran to it through the streams of pouring rain.
Outside it had become dark, the only source of light being the blinding flashes of lightening that illuminated everything around the shack briefly in stark glaring relief. The girls huddled closely together in a u-shape as they peered through the window at the storm. Then the sky went black and all that could be seen was the silvery sheet of pouring rain. Zooey held her breath. Was that it?
Suddenly a huge bolt powered down out of the sky and hit the water outside of the shack, blinding her with blazing light and the deafening cracking sound that followed felt as if the whole world was being torn apart. Zooey screamed a little, panicked. A hot little hand grabbed her right one then, and she jolted and squealed again. The hand gave hers a squeeze and Zooey looked to see that it was Keeley’s hand and, looking up, saw Keeley tight-lipped brave smile and nod of encouragement. Zooey, tried to smile back.
It was amazing. Keeley, who could be terrified into a mute folded-up statue during an argument, was also this warrior princess, her eyes bright and her chin raised as the storm raged around them. Keeley nodded her head again, more meaningfully this time, toward Amy. Quickly, Zooey reached across and grabbed Amy’s hand with her free one, and then Amy took Pam’s, and Pam took Keeley’s, each exchanging scared smiles. Holding tightly to each other, they turned their attention again to the storm outside.
Although the wind buffeted the house with such power that it shook, and the howling around the eaves became a shriek, and the waves rose so high that they covered the marsh and licked at the pilings of the little house, none of them spoke or worried aloud. None of them screamed again or cried. Instead their little girl-knot simply became tighter, hands locked together.
Then, slowly, the noise of the storm started to abate, the shrieking in the eaves lowered to a dull howl, and the downpour tapered off to a gentle rain as the booming and crackling of electricity moved north. The brightening sky gradually lit the room and then Keeley began to sing, her clear bell-like voice ringing out and startling Zooey.
She was singing the chorus to “American Pie”, raising her chin in farewell to the retreating storm. It was a hugely popular song that year on Captain’s, sang at bonfire parties, hummed while hanging out laundry to dry, whistled while strolling down the boardwalk, yet now it felt personally significant to the four girls – singing of Rose’s betrayal, of their ever-tighter bonds of friendship, of the reality that they could have all died that day.
Pam and Amy joined in, their voices harmonizing. Amy was staring and nodding at Zooey as she was singing, and Zooey knew she’d have to join in, even with her horrible yodeling voice. At least she knew the lyrics to the chorus. She started singing, too, wincing a little at the sound of her wobbling off-tune voice. On the last bar Keeley released Pam and Zooey’s hands, and raised her hands in the air as if praising Hallelujah, and hooted the lyrics at the ceiling. Her tone and gestures were of triumph, as if saying, “Take that, world!”
They all trailed off then, not knowing more than the chorus of the song. Then Pam made a circle in the air with her hand and started singing again from the start of the chorus. The others joined in aga
in, their voices raising higher, their smiles growing, their legs bouncing a little to the tune. Pam waved to them towards the door as they sang and they walked toward it, Amy refolding the blankets and putting them back in the wooden trunk.
They sang as they climbed down the ladder again, checked on the boat, which was still secured and safely tied to the pilings of the shack, and continued singing as they started to wade in shallows toward the southernmost section of the boardwalk and home.
Zooey was the last again on the ladder, climbing down this time, and she stopped at the bottom to look up. Maybe it wasn’t a ghost that had been watching her. Maybe it was the house, waiting for her, waiting for them. Staring up at it, she thought it didn’t look scary at all anymore.
They went home to accept the tearful kisses, fierce hugs, and punishments their parents thought suitable. Amy had to sandpaper the entire peeling porch railing at her house so it could be repainted. Pam had to not only pay for a new lock for her parent’s sailboat which she would never be able to sail again, but also had to clean the house from top to bottom for the rest of the summer. Zooey got away with the most, her parents making her go without dessert for a week; but they were always gentle with her, their surprise gift of a child. Keeley’s punishment was more extreme than the others, particularly after Pam’s mother had gone looking for the four girls and the missing sailboat and had stopped by Keeley’s parents’ house, giving Mrs. O’Brien an earful. The girls didn’t see Keeley again for seven days, and when she returned to them, she limped and would not go swimming or wear a bathing suit. She would also not tell them what had happened.
After that, it was the little house they went to each day, going to Amy’s only occasionally, usually during stormy weather for real protection and Jiffy Pop. The little shack became their imaginary rocket-ship, their tree house in a forest, their medieval castle, their school, their department store. They started bringing toys and other things there and leaving them. The other children didn’t know where the girls went every day, and the Barefooters wouldn’t tell them. It was their secret clubhouse: Barefoot Girls only.
Something else had changed with the girls after that day. They would never need to speak as they did before, now they could simply look at each other and know what the other was thinking. They would never need to know who it was when the phone rang; they knew exactly which one of them was on the other end of the line. If something bad happened to one of them, the others knew something was wrong before being told. All of the girls had felt a dark scary feeling about Keeley while she was gone the week after the storm; they hadn’t needed to see her limp when she finally returned to them.
Chapter 23
“So it was that storm that drove us into our house,” Zooey said. “And we never left it again. It’s been ours ever since.”
“Wow,” Hannah said. “I can’t believe my mom never told me that story! It’s such a great one. And you know how much my mom loves a great story.”
Zooey sighed on the other end of the line. “Yeah, she does. Well, so do I.”
Hannah bit her lip. “Um, I was wondering, what you were saying about mom’s punishment? What happened?”
“Damn!”
“Aunt Zo?”
“Ahhh, well, your mom, she had a tough childhood. She hasn’t told you any of this, has she?”
Her mother never talked about her childhood or her past in any way. It was forbidden territory. Ask, but don’t expect to be told anything. Hannah said, “No, never.”
“Well, I better not say anything. That’s your mom’s story to tell.”
“Please, please tell me. She won’t! Was she abused?” By whom? Hannah wondered. Her grandfather? No, he had doted on Keeley. Before he’d died when Hannah was little, he frequently dropped in for visits at their little house in Fairfield, always with gifts for both of them. She remembered him taking them out to the restaurant at his country club where everything was shiny and pretty and waiters in tuxedos bowed to them. It had to be Grandma.
“Was it her mother?” Hannah asked.
Zooey sighed and said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but after reading the first part of your book, I think I should. I know that your mom wasn’t perfect, no one’s mother is, But she also wasn’t that nightmare of a woman that’s in your book. So, something else is going on. You’re mad at her, maybe disappointed; you think you’re entitled to some ideal fantasy of a childhood. But let me tell you something, Hannah. Your mother is a saint. She sacrificed everything for you, twisted herself into a pretzel trying to make you happy. And… and I love you, so you need to hear this: grow up. Get over the fact that your mother’s not perfect and appreciate all that’s amazing about her. If she’s mad at you, she has every right to be. You should have made that reviewer retract what she said.”
Hannah sat very still, feeling a stinging shame zipping up and down through her. Aunt Zo had never spoken so harshly to her, had never even been angry with her before. It hurt.
Aunt Zo’s voice was softer now when she said, “I hope you heard the ‘I love you’ in that.”
Hot tears spilled out of Hannah’s eyes. Her voice was wobbly when she said, “Yes, Aunt Zo. I heard. I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Well, enough. I’ve got to go to the bathroom or I’m going to burst. You woke me up before I had a chance. I’ll talk to you soon. Have fun on Captain’s! I’m so jealous. I might come out to visit and get a dose myself. That island’s medicinal, you know. All right. Kisses! Moi! Moi!”
And then Aunt Zo hung up.
Hannah sat at the kitchen table staring off into space as the sun rose and peeked through the windows on the east side of the room, shining through the lace of the handkerchief café-curtains and making white rectangles on the wood floor. The book had felt so good to write, like a good cry, and the whole time she had reminded herself again and again that it was fiction. A little girl of six is abandoned by her mother and has to take care of herself. She has adventures in her neighborhood while she searches for help and finds out about the wider world. A kind elderly woman, a neighbor, comes to her rescue and when the little girl’s mother finally returns, the neighbor has the mother declared unfit in a court and then adopts the little girl. The legal battle had been especially satisfying to write, like scratching a long-resisted itch.
She stood up, her legs stiff from sitting for so long and went into the living room to search for her book. She had forgotten where it was and had to look through several bags before she found it and carried it back to the kitchen. Sitting again, she paged through it, still loving the heft of it, the smooth pages. But looking at it now, the printed words on the pages seemed especially bold and black. She thumbed to the scene where the character of the mother is introduced and reread it.
God…, it was harsh. It was ugly.
She looked away, out the window at the tall grasses that stood at the edge of Pam’s little sandy yard. Had she been fair? Keeley had abandoned her many times; she knew that even though Aunt Zooey didn’t. But, unlike the cold uncaring mother in the book, Keeley had always returned with love, grabbing Hannah up and hugging her hard, telling her how much she had missed her, and asking was she okay? And Hannah had lied. Yes, of course, she was okay. Everything was okay. Why hadn’t Hannah simply confronted her mother two years ago, when the urge to scratch had overwhelmed her? Now this book was out there, and looking at it now and seeing it for what it was, she wanted to take it back. Take it back, suck out the poison, go back in time and have a do-over.
She slammed the book closed and put it on the table. Then she punched the top of it. “Stupid!” she said. She punched it three more times, each time repeating, “Stupid!”
Wait.
Maybe the book was a flop. Please let it be a flop. It’s horrible. It’s a piece of sentimental simple-minded trash. Let it get swept away, forgotten. It happened to novels all the time. It would happen to hers. But she had to know, be sure. Then she could relax.
Hannah picked up her cell again and foun
d the number. Was it too early? No, eight wasn’t early for Felicia. She dialed.
It rang three times. Hannah slumped in her chair, waiting for voicemail.
Then she picked up. “Felicia Resnick here.”
“Felicia! It’s Hannah O’Brien.”
“Hannah! Oh, my God. I’ve was going to call you today. Exciting news!”
A zinging went up her spine. “What?”
She could hear the smile in her editor’s voice. “Wait Another Day made the lists! It’s way down there, but still! We’re going to have to do another printing!”
Chapter 24
Pam sat back in the soft chocolate-brown leather chair at her desk and stared into space, flipping a pen dexterously between the long tapered fingers of one manicured hand like a magician getting ready to do a trick. She had written three versions of the press release for Expressia this morning. They were all pitiful. And it wasn’t her fault.
The problem was that Expressia was trying to be Google. And Wikipedia. And both were already providing all the things that Mark Cooper talked about when he talked about his new search engine-slash-encyclopedia. The two services provided targeted searches, ads, and information so well, there was no need for Expressia. Pam had known this the first time she’d met Mark and heard his spin, which was so weak it was laughable. But the pay he was offering was extraordinary. Mark was loaded and free with it, having made a killing in the bull market of the early 2000s before jumping ship right before everything tanked. Unlike Warren Buffett, Mark had just been lucky – simply wanting to pull his money out of the market before going on a month-long vacation to New Zealand. He’d come back tan and fit from his trek on the Milford Track to find the U.S. swiftly slipping into the second greatest economic depression in its history.
She kept trying to figure out a fresh angle, a way of making Mark’s product sound brand new, but the words just kept falling dead and lying there on the page. Blah, blah, blah. There had always been hopeless jobs, but somehow she’d been able to wave her fingers over the keyboard and pull the words from somewhere, like a rabbit popping out of a hat. Not lately. Was she losing it?
