by Alison Stine
It was May, still cold in the morning. We didn’t talk in the cab. We didn’t hug at the station. I kept my hands stuffed in my pockets and my hood pulled down.
But then the Firecracker said, “It will be better this time.”
I sniffed. “What do you mean?”
“Grandma. She’ll be good for you. It’ll be good for you to be in the country right now, away from …” she gestured around at the station: the early morning commuters rushing by, the platform littered with trash, the garbage cans covered with graffiti like scabs. “All this.”
“I thought you loved all this.”
“Sometimes I do,” my sister said. “But it’s time for you to go.”
And then she gripped my shoulders and pulled me toward her in a hug. She smelled of fancy perfume and leather and the smell that never quite went away from her; it seemed attached to her hair, the smell of rosin for the toe shoes, though it had been ages since she had worn them.
“I’ll visit you soon,” the Firecracker said. I was about to say something in response, but then she pulled out of the hug and squeezed my shoulder. “Esmé, eat something. You feel like you’re wasting away to nothing.”
Once on the train, I closed my eyes and didn’t look back.
My sister had bought me a ticket on the Keystone to Pennsylvania—a daylong trip from Penn Station. I slept mostly. We passed into New Jersey, following the water, steely and gray. I didn’t talk to anyone, or move when the conductor came through, calling for lunch reservations. I wasn’t hungry. When the train stopped after Elizabethtown, at the most desolate, busted place I could imagine, I stood. This was the stop. I knew it. After all, I had been here before.
When our parents died, the Firecracker was fifteen—my age now—too young to take care of me herself. I tried to imagine my sister like me, in school, wearing toe shoes around her neck, her long hair in a ponytail. I couldn’t picture it, not really. I was five then, and we moved in with our grandmother, our mother’s mother, for three years until my sister was legal, could drop out of school and get a job, get a place for us back in the city where we belonged, she said.
I knew the blandness, the brokenness of this place, I had been here and escaped from it once already. Wellstone.
The conductor called the name of the town, but I was the only one who got out. The train huffed away, and I was left. Outside on the platform, under an overhang, I sat on a bench to wait.
Wellstone was a punishment, like my grandmother was a punishment. My sister had used both of them as idle threats for years. If I didn’t do better in school, if I didn’t come home on time, if I didn’t stop talking back, she would send me here, to Wellstone, where there were no malls or coffee shops or stores that stayed open past five o’clock or kids my own age or anything to do.
There were also rumors about this town, stories which I could still remember bits of: something about a man in the woods; bones in the weeds; places where kids were afraid to play. This was not a good place, I knew that much.
My grandmother didn’t have internet. She didn’t have a computer. She didn’t have cable. She lived in an old, rambling mansion that was falling down. It wasn’t safe, I remembered. Once, my foot had fallen through a stair. Rain had fallen through the ceiling. The Firecracker had cried a lot.
But in New York, after they had pulled me from the tunnel, my sister had made plans, secretly and instantly. There were three weeks left of school, and she had arranged for me to be transferred. The school in Wellstone had emailed a schedule. They were expecting me.
Grandma was the only family we had left, the last resort for me.
I didn’t even know if I would know her face. She was quiet and terrifying, I remembered that much. She kept cats with no tails who roamed freely in and out of the house. There was a barn I wasn’t allowed to go into. There was a big black bag she carried that I wasn’t allowed to touch.
My grandmother had worked the night shift, as a nurse or something. She had cooked strange things, nearly inedible things, bubbling stews and simmering broths, which she left hissing on the stove all day. The house smelled of herbs and dried flowers and dust and spice and boiling chickens. She kept the bones. The cats played with them.
On the train platform, I shivered. I checked for reception on my phone. I waited. And I waited. I had started to fall asleep when I heard a car. I sat up and reached for my suitcases.
My grandmother came around the corner of the station. I hadn’t seen her for seven years. She was smaller than I remembered, and she wore glasses, the kind with a beaded chain. She walked heavily and slowly, as though it hurt her. She stepped up to the platform and looked across.
I didn’t run to her. I didn’t shout. I wasn’t going to hug her. I decided to stay very still. I decided to look like it didn’t matter; I didn’t care.
She turned, and without a word to me, began to walk back to her car.
“Grandma?” I said, but my voice felt thick. I wasn’t sure she had heard me. By the time I had gathered up my bags, the car was starting. “Grandma, no!” I left the suitcases and ran into the parking lot.
Her car, a station wagon, was just disappearing up the road.
I dialed my phone. “Grandma left me,” I said when my sister picked up.
“Why are you calling me at work?”
“She left me.”
“Where?” my sister said.
“At the train station.”
“Well, was your train late?”
“No.”
“I’m sure it’s a mistake,” the Firecracker said. “A misunderstanding.”
I remembered her raging about our grandmother, about her strangeness, her habits. Eccentric was the word the Firecracker used, which, as a child, I had thought was electric; I kept waiting for our grandmother to light up like a Christmas tree.
“You know where she lives,” my sister said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, you have the address. And you remember the house.”
“Yes,” I said.
I couldn’t forget the house.
I hung up the phone, hoisted my suitcases, and started up the hill to the road. Soon a truck passed me, a group of bare-chested boys hanging out in the bed. Wellstone boys. I thought about hitchhiking, though the Firecracker would kill me if she found out, but the truck didn’t slow.
I began to remember the way. Past the gas station and fairgrounds. There was the hill. There was the road, the driveway cracked and steep. I tightened my grip on the suitcases and started up. The driveway veered, and there was the house: glowering from on top of the hill. The house was three stories, mostly brick, and over a hundred years old. It had belonged to someone important. It had been passed down. It had a name—but I couldn’t remember what it was.
I passed my grandmother’s station wagon parked in front of the collapsing barn. When the driveway ended, I dragged my suitcases through the grass, tearing through the weeds to get around the house. The grass hadn’t been mowed in a long time, and there were tree limbs down all over the yard. Wide steps led to a front porch and double doors, thrown wide open to the afternoon. When I walked up the steps, four blurs shot out of the doors and down, yowling.
Cats. My grandmother fed a whole herd of them, all tailless. Manx, I remembered they were called.
“Scat!” I told them. I dropped my suitcases on the porch and knocked at the open door. “Grandma?” I called.
No one answered.
I went inside.
I hadn’t remembered how high the ceilings of the house were, how the wooden floors echoed. I peeked in the doorway of the first room to my left: empty, except for bookshelves and a piano. The room on the right, the dining room, had a heavy oak table in the center, drapes drawn shut over the windows, and a fireplace, the marble mantle cluttered with candles. There were candles on the floor in the hallway too, all dusty and blackened, burned down to nubs.
A ballroom stood on the third floor, I remembered now—I had roller skated the
re. A big staircase led up to it, but I kept walking down the hall. I came to a smaller set of stairs, the servant steps. To my right was the kitchen. To my left was the sitting room where my grandmother waited for me, watching television with the sound off.
“Grandma?” I whispered.
Blue light flickered over her face. It was her. She was the same, only shrunken, only not speaking to me for some reason.
“I’m here,” I said.
She didn’t say anything.
“Esmé? Jennifer’s daughter?”
It hurt to say my mother’s name. Not hurt exactly. It felt forbidden, like a spell. It felt like I shouldn’t speak her name aloud. I wished I hadn’t. I felt dizzy, like I might be sick.
Her face unfroze at the sound of my and my mother’s names. She looked around, concentrating, as if she was listening hard. I thought she was going to speak. But she only reached over to the end table, picked a phone, saw that nobody had called or was calling, and turned the phone facedown again. She never met my eyes.
I turned away. “I’ll just go get my bags,” I said.
I lugged them up the main stairs because I didn’t want to have to face her again. Was she mad at me already? What had my sister said to her about me?
On the second floor, there were four closed doors, and two open ones. The front room held a white canopied bed. There were magazines and old, moldy books on the night table, and house slippers underneath it—my grandmother’s room.
That left the smaller room for me. I was relieved to see the bed had sheets on it, a pink quilt folded at the foot, towels draped over a chair. I opened the two doors in the room to find a closet, and a bathroom with a tub ringed in rust.
Had this been my room? I set my suitcases down, opened the drapes at the window, and looked out. The room faced the backyard. Beyond the old barn, there was a pond, round and still. I hadn’t remembered that, either.
Exhausted, too worn out to be hungry, I climbed into bed and pulled the quilt around me. I didn’t bother getting undressed, or calling the Firecracker to tell her I was here. Not home. I was not home. I would never say that word again.
I was too nervous to sleep beyond the first beam of sun breaking through the drapes. Despite weak water pressure, the shower worked. I combed out my long hair, pulled on a new shirt and jeans. The door to my grandmother’s bedroom was closed, and downstairs, there was no sign of her. I remembered her working nights, remembered the Firecracker making dinner, and grumbling about it. I found a bowl and cereal in the cabinet, milk in the fridge. I ate standing up over the sink, then washed and dried my dishes, putting them away where I had found them.
I wouldn’t bother my grandmother. I wouldn’t be a burden; she wouldn’t notice me at all.
The school bus stop was at the bottom of the driveway, my sister had told me, and a handful of kids already stood out there by the road. One of the boys looked up as I approached. One of the girls was studying a book, and another boy tried to knock it out of her hands.
She snatched it away. “I’ve got a test.”
“New girl today,” the boy said.
I adjusted my bag. I just wanted to get this over with. “I’m Esmé,” I said.
“Weird name,” he said.
“Weird family,” a second girl said.
“Do you think she’s a witch like her grandma?” the boy asked.
I held my bag tighter. “My grandma’s not a witch,” I said.
“All I know is,” the girl with the book said, “this girl got kicked out of her old school. She’s like, a juvenile delinquent or something. A total freak.”
“I am not,” I said.
But the boy just lunged for the girl’s book again. They wrestled, the girl smacking the boy on the shoulder, the other girl ignoring them, examining the split ends of her hair. I stood at the back of the bus line, hating this place, and hating my grandmother and my sister for bringing me here.
When the bus came, I sat in the first empty seat, and no one sat with me or talked to me. When we stopped and the bus emptied, I had to fight to get out into the aisle; kids kept pushing past me, and the driver almost closed the door.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to check in, but I waited around the office for what seemed like forever, until after the first warning bell had sounded and the office cleared. Then I followed the late kids out into the hall. No one asked if they could help me or what I was doing. I didn’t bother finding my locker. I pulled the print-out of my schedule from my pocket, and was searching for room numbers when the tardy bell rang.
Someone sprinted around a corner and plowed into me.
I was knocked to my knees. My bag shot off my back and onto the floor, the zipper splitting open. The boy who had knocked me down pushed himself up with a squeal of his sneakers and took off. “Hey,” I said. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
He dashed around the next corner and was gone.
“Jerk,” I said.
In the empty hallway, I stood and gathered my stuff. I collected the loose papers that had fallen from the folder that was supposed to travel with me to the office: my permanent record from New York. Words leapt out at me from the file: distracted … disrespectful … loner … antisocial … underachiever … daydreamer … lives in a fantasy world …
The words began to blur. No, I would not cry. Not on the first day of school. I shoved the pages back into the folder. Somehow, I found my classroom. A science lab. Students perched at tables, looking bored. There was one empty stool so I took it.
“All right,” the teacher said. She looked up. She was going to make some sort of announcement, introduce me, something embarrassing.
I tensed, waiting for it.
The door shot open and a boy came in, looking flustered. He headed straight for me.
He ran up to me. Then he sat on me—or tried to, sat right on my stool, on my lap. I pushed him as hard as I could, and he tumbled off the stool onto the ground. He looked up, his face blanching.
The class laughed, everyone at once. The teacher rolled her eyes and told them to be nice, told the boy to be more careful. He stood and reached for my stool again, and I backed up, scooting the stool with me.
“Sit in the back, Ron,” the teacher said. “I don’t think that chair likes you.”
“The chair?” I said. “Hello? I have a name.”
But Ron moved away, and no one asked me what my name was. The teacher didn’t do an announcement, or give me a book. She didn’t even take roll. She started the class like nothing was different. “So,” she said. “Today we’re going to talk about something that actually matters to us, matters to our history here in Wellstone.”
“History matters?” some boy said.
“The locomotive,” the teacher said. “You might be surprised to learn the steam locomotive has something in common with an aircraft carrier. Anyone know what?”
I looked around. No one knew my name here yet. No one knew my nickname—Miss Wrong—or had given it to me, thinking they were being smart, thinking they were being new. Slowly I raised my hand.
“The steam locomotive and an aircraft carrier. What do they have in common?”
I pumped my hand. I waved it.
“Anyone?” the teacher said.
“Excuse me?” I said. “They both convert heat into motion.”
The teacher sighed. “They both convert heat into motion.”
I lowered my hand.
“Take out your books,” the teacher said. “I know we’ve all got senioritis here, but there are three weeks left of school and we’re going to make them count. Read chapter twelve to yourselves, please, then we’ll do the questions together.”
Everyone fumbled with their books. Everyone but me.
I waited for the teacher to notice. I waited for her to give me a book, to ask my name, to see me. But she never did.
CHAPTER 3:
Six Feet
I raised my hand once in my next class, English, and in the next, Geometry. And then I gave
up. I sat out on the bleachers during gym, and no one said anything. At lunch, I sat alone at a table near the back until it was swarmed with cheerleaders in pleated skirts and ponytails, chattering around me.
At home, I was mocked. I was made fun of. But here, I was ignored. I was invisible.
This was worse.
No one spoke to me the whole day until, on the bus ride home, a girl sat down in the seat in front of me. I was watching the window, the gray sameness of the landscape, when her head popped up above the seat. “You must be completely new,” she said.
I glanced up. Was she actually speaking to me? The girl had long blond hair in waves, and severe features. Her eyebrows were black, a shocking contrast to her hair. She was not smiling.
I cleared my throat. “I got here yesterday.”
“I figured. Completely green. So, why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“What happened to get you sent here? What did you do?”
I studied the girl. “What did you do?”
She smiled. “My mother was otherwise occupied. She was working, couldn’t be bothered. And then, well, I went somewhere I wasn’t supposed to go, didn’t I.”
I smiled. “Me too. Something like that, anyway. I’m Esmé Wong.”
“Strange name,” the girl said.
“What’s yours?”
“Clara Blue.”
That name wasn’t exactly normal, I thought.
All around us on the bus, kids laughed and messed around, trying to shove each other off the seats. But Clara Blue studied me, serious and calm. The bus plowed over a bump in the road, and she barely moved. “Well, you’re obvious, Esmé Wong,” she said. “You need to work on that. I’ll help you, don’t worry.” Then she turned back around.
I couldn’t stop smiling. I had made a friend, one friend. My stop was next and when I passed Clara’s seat, I paused to say goodbye to the girl, but her seat was empty. The bus driver was about to close the doors so I hurried down the aisle and exited. With a jerk, the bus pulled away. Something made me turn to look at it.
