by Abigail Boyd
"I've noticed," I said shortly, and started walking away. But he kept up with me, matching my stride.
"I don't understand how you can be friends with those people," I said.
"I'm friends with lots of different people. You and I, for example, I would consider friends," he said.
This made me stop again. We had barely spoken a few words to one another, and now we were friends?
"You know that power structure you mentioned? It sort of means we shouldn't even be talking," I said. It was hard to glare at someone so cheerful and attractive, but I managed it anyway.
His phone rang, and he yanked it out of his pocket, sighing with exasperation.
"I have to take this," he said, looking at the screen. "But I want to keep talking later, okay?"
He held my gaze for a moment longer, then flipped his phone open and distanced himself from me as he headed for the exit.
"Hold on a second," he told the person on the other end. He turned back around, walking backwards, and said, "Promise me."
"Fine," I said through gritted teeth. "I promise." He nodded his head at me, and then he was gone.
I unclenched the fists I didn't know I was making. Well, that was that, whatever it was. His bizarre insistence that we chat had confused me. Thankfully, I had two whole days away from school to look forward to. No more politics or drama for forty-eight hours.
I don't know if I've ever appreciated a weekend more. I tried to pretend like school was a bad dream, and I was awake now that I was in my own house. The days were rainy, and I refused to get out of my pajamas or brush my hair.
On Sunday, Claire stayed in her home office, busy with a proposal for work. She worked for a life insurance company, approving or denying people coverage while she wasn't in meetings. It seemed like an incredibly stressful job, but it paid well, and besides, Claire seemed to thrive under stress. Without deadlines and last-minute fixes, I think she would have felt unimportant.
I could tell she didn't want to be disturbed because the door was shut. Lame, considering I wanted to use the computer. But probably best to keep me away from checking Jenna's page again.
Because of the nonstop rain, by noon it was as dark as evening. The walls in the living room had swirling forest green wallpaper Claire had installed last year, which only contributed to the lack of light. I walked around the house, flicking on lamps to try to brighten up the place. I found persistent rain comforting, as if it insulated me from the outside world.
"I have an adventure for us," Hugh said, coming out of the kitchen with a box of garbage bags in his hand.
"Are we burying our enemies?" I asked.
"Ha, you are just so funny." He chucked the box at me and I caught it with both hands. "We're finally going to conquer the storage room."
Claire had been relentlessly bugging Hugh for months, ever since our May yard sale, to clean out the room full of junk across from my bedroom. Claire's plan was to donate most of the stained stuffed animals and ill-advised fad footwear to the local thrift store, and turn the room into her own personal exercise haven. A little pile of weights and a yoga mat waited in the corner of the main basement room, for the day when the treadmill would finally be uncovered.
Hugh grabbed a stack of broken down moving boxes he had brought in from the shed. With me in front, we headed down the basement stairs. I flipped on the light switch in the storage room. There was hardly any room for us to stand inside, but we managed to squeeze in.
My grandparents, Claire's parents, died in a car crash two years ago. When that happened, much of their belongings came to us. Corinne had picked through what she wanted, and then left it to my mom to dispose of the rest. Claire had a hard time parting with much of it, and there was a lot to part with. My grandparents had been wealthy, and Grandma Eleanor collected antiques on the verge of hoarding.
Much of it had ended up going to auction. But a third of the delicate china and lacey linens sat here, collecting dust. I knew part of the reason Claire wanted us to take care of it was so that she wouldn't have to go through the emotional work of deciding what to give away.
Hugh was busy putting together one of the boxes and setting it on top of an unsightly, chipped end table.
"Where do we start?" I asked him. He looked as overwhelmed as I did.
"Wherever you want," he said. "Just start. I want to get it done today. Considering how you and I operate, if we quit in the middle, it'll never get finished." I knew he was right about that.
We set to work, digging through boxes and bags, and taking out garbage and donations to the main room. The charity pile began to grow, and after an hour had passed, we could move more freely in the storage room little by little. Like my room, there were no windows inside, and it was musty. Puffs of dust whirled up like spirits whenever we moved a box.
"Good lord, there's carpeting," Hugh remarked when he discovered a swatch of blue on the floor. "I had no idea." We looked at each other and laughed. It felt good since we hadn't done it in so long.
A rack of old clothing was crushed against the back wall. Hanging on rusty wire hangers was a baby blue tuxedo that I assumed had belonged to my grandpa, and a few sweaters with shoulder pads and color vomit that moths had nibbled.
"Everything on that rack can go," Hugh advised me. "In case you can't tell."
He helped me navigate the wheeled time machine out into the hall. I pulled a sticky cobweb off of my palm.
"I'm glad we have a van coming to pick this up. Otherwise we'd never get it out of here," he said, surveying the little mountain of junk that had accumulated.
"Do you think everything will fit?" I asked. It was an awful lot of our crap.
"We'll make it fit," he said determinedly.
Taking the rack out made a significant dent in the room, a full free corner. Nearby, I found some loose photographs in a box, of Claire and Corinne as kids. They are fraternal twins, but in the pictures, they were dressed in matching outfits. I watched them grow older as I flipped through the photos, morphing into their current personalities.
Claire looked fashionable for the time with a perm and short jean jackets, while Corinne's hair was flat and practical, held in place with barrettes. As I flipped through them, I smiled. I could totally see them fighting tooth and nail over the bathroom mirror.
A musty old file lay at the bottom of the box. "Eleanor's Medical Records" someone had scribbled in black on the surface. I picked it up, fascinated by my find.
"Take a look at this," I said, lifting the cover. Hugh snatched it out of my hands almost immediately, before I got a chance to look at the yellowing papers inside.
"Claire would want this," he said distractedly.
"Okay. But can I just look at it before you take it to her?" I pleaded.
"You wouldn't be interested in grimy old papers," he said. He had already tucked the file underneath his arm.
"Are you kidding?" I asked. "You know me. I would definitely be interested in grimy old papers."
"Looking at it would be a little disrespectful, don't you think, kiddo? You know the kind of medical tests old people have to have. I'm sure there's nothing fascinating."
He put the file in going upstairs box next to him. The subject was closed.
My mind raced with reasons why he would be so eager to cover up whatever was in the file. I wondered if I really was just being rude by wanting to look at it, but I didn't see the harm when Eleanor was my own grandmother. She had always enjoyed fairly good health as far as I knew, no cancer or diabetes, and her death had obviously been an accident. Still, I tried to put it out of my mind.
We finished the storage room in a few hours. The space was almost totally clear, save for some tubs of Christmas decorations in the corner, an old TV and DVD player we had rigged up, and the treadmill. Finally I had the heart to put most of my old stuffed animals and dolls in the charity pile, although a few of them now sat on my dresser.
Later on, I sat down to finish homework in my room. The light rain ha
d been replaced by a full on storm outside, and I could feel the rumbles of thunder underneath my socks. Not wanting to think about school while I was home, I had put off my homework until the last minute. I hated the fact that the weekend was almost up. Time raced when I was out of classrooms and echoing hallways. At least I had someone to talk to in Theo.
I tapped my pencil on my Geometry worksheet. I was struggling with math already, not much, but I could imagine how it would be soon. I hated it because it made me feel stupid, even though I wasn't. I filled in the holes in the letters of "surface area formulas" with pencil.
The last day of ninth grade captured my wandering thoughts. Jenna and I had been talking about moving on to sophomore year, sitting up front in Mr. Calhoun's class. He'd given us the last two weeks basically off, merely making us complete word find puzzles every day.
"It's like rush week. And it's finally over, and we survived," Jenna said, flaking orange polish off of her tiny fingernails. "Despite the hazing. And look, we still even have all our hair." She ran her hand lovingly through her springy, perfect curls. My hair could never do that.
"I guess you could look at it that way," I agreed. Mr. Calhoun handed out pamphlets about a job seminar the school was holding in July. Jenna picked hers up and read the summary on the back flap.
"Ever wonder what technology lies ahead? You can become involved in your future starting now...Like I would really want to rush right back up to Hawthorne when I finally get out of here," Jenna scoffed, tossing it on her desk. "No thanks. I wish I never had to see this place again."
She crumpled the pamphlet up and aimed for the garbage can sitting beside the door. She missed by a fraction but didn't bother to retrieve her refuse.
"It's not that bad, is it?" I asked. "I mean...most of the time."
"Are you kidding me?" Her nostrils flared like she was on the verge of losing her temper. "This town is a nightmare, even if it didn't try so hard to be." This from the person who used to have the world's most optimistic attitude.
I shifted uncomfortably at my desk. The way she was acting was the beginning of the rift between us, little cracks in the smooth façade of our friendship. I had tried not to notice it, and I knew now that was a mistake. But back then I thought denial was my best defense.
"Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?" I asked her in my best teacher voice. I already knew it would be something with animals. Jenna had been a vegan since she knew what the word meant, and she was always pet sitting whenever she had the opportunity because her parents' wouldn't allow her to have animals in the house. She'd saved multiple mice and turtles and kept them in secret shoeboxes behind the garage over the years.
Jenna smirked, the angry attitude draining off her face. "Veterinarian." She sang out the syllables. "Although at the rate my parents' money is going down the drain, I think I'll have to take up a job dancing on top of a bar to pay my way through veterinary school."
I frowned. I had always thought Jenna's parents were pretty well off. Not popular-kid-rich exactly, but definitely upper middle class. I had been amazed when she forked over a hundred dollars for jeans.
"What are you talking about?" I asked. "I thought they had a bunch in savings, college fund, everything."
She looked down at the floor. "They've been having a lot of bad luck. Their stocks tanked a while back. I know they've been dipping into their savings accounts. I keep hearing them late at night screaming at each other when they think I'm sleeping."
Maybe that was the reason she left. It could be as valid as any motivation, I thought as I sat in my room in the present, listening to the thunder. I wondered if her parents still blamed me. The day after Jenna disappeared, her mother grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.
"Why her? Why not you?" she had shouted through her tears until my father pulled her off of me.
My parents told me not to think about it. She was just a scared mother. People say things they don't mean when they're frightened, especially when it involves their children. I couldn't just forget it, though. I still saw the desperate look in her eyes, and I knew she would trade me for her daughter without question.
THUD.
I jumped. Something had pounded the wall above my desk. I pushed my seat back and stood up.
THUD.
Maybe it was the water heater. I was pretty sure it was on the other side of the wall. But it appeared to be coming from high on the ceiling. I waited. For a few seconds, it seemed like the sound stopped, but as soon as I thought that, it came again.
THUD.
I flinched. Speed-walking out of my room, I stood up on the bottom step and yelled up to Claire. "Hey, did you drop something in the kitchen?"
"No, why?"
"I just heard a couple of loud sounds."
"It wasn't up here," she called. "Maybe it was outside. It's still storming; it could have been thunder or the deck chairs getting knocked around in the wind."
Well, it could have, had it not been right above my desk in the middle of our basement. I walked down to the end of the hall, past my room and to the little alcove beyond. But there wasn't much in the little space. The water heater I had suspected before was totally silent, and the furnace wasn't even on.
THUD.
I recoiled, hands clasping, teeth clenching. I definitely wasn't imagining it. My mind filed through the possibilities — pipes, the storm...maybe something else. Something that made voices whisper behind doors, and lockers shut and open. But that was stupid, that had been at school.
I slowly strode over to my open doorway, and glued my eyes to the innocuous, plain wall. I stood still, waiting for the sound again, but all was still. I could hear the faint sound of the TV program upstairs, but whatever caused the banging had finally stopped. Like the whispering behind the door. I shook my head. I didn't know if that made me more relieved or apprehensive. Either my imagination was going bonkers, or something more supernatural had started to affect me.
Chapter 8
Luckily, no one appeared to care about my supposed staring problem last week. Even Lainey continued to pretend I was nothing more than a bug beneath her stiletto. Which meant I still wasn't important.
At lunch, I found Theo in the commons as we both got in line. Everyone had lunch at Hawthorne during the same time period, so there were two lunch counters, with people snaking out behind them. Theo really hadn't made other friends at school yet.
"How about you just come sit at my table?" I offered, assuming the other girls wouldn't mind. There were always a few free seats, I was sure we could make room.
"Okay," Theo said, nodding. Tiny sparkly flecks rained on her tray. We gathered our food and made our way to our destination.
"What are you doing?" Becky asked, alarmed. Theo and I froze as we were setting our trays down. Becky was normally so inviting, having rescued me the other day. I couldn't imagine what I had done to bring on the change. She beckoned for me to lean in so she could whisper to me, so I did.
"She's not sitting with us," she said, indicating Theo with a quick flash of her muddy eyes. Off of my confused look, she continued, "She's a freak. I don't want her bringing the rest of us down." There was no maybe about it, her mind was made up. Becky had become the leader of the group when I wasn't looking. The lipgloss she had been busy applying dangled from her fingertips.
"If you'll just drop her, we'd be happy to have you still sit here," she finished. Funny, I remember her bare faced and only interested in volleyball last year. Now her freckles were buried under thick foundation and she wore a low-cut top. I realized I hadn't been paying much attention at all. My mouth gaped open a little as I pulled back.
I took a second to compose myself. "You really don't have the hair to act like Lainey," I spat, and spun around, walking quickly away.
The word mad didn't cover the emotions coursing through me. I was revolted. It's not like they owed me anything, but it still made me furious. Theo stayed close on my heels, and nearly bumped into me when I stopped
.
Surveying the commons for a moment, I looked for a seat. But as usual, it was completely packed. The tables were as cliquey as a movie cliché, too, and I didn't see any empty spots together. I glanced at Theo and she was chewing off all of her lip balm.
"Come on," I said, and we made a beeline for the back wall beneath the windows. It was the only place I could think of. I turned around, and plopped resolutely down against the wall. She followed suit.
"This is a little unusual," she said, adjusting her skirt underneath her. She started taking the cellophane off of her sandwich. "I like it."
"I just don't understand people sometimes," I said. "Or I guess I think I understand them, and then they morph into different people."
She nodded thoughtfully. "Well, you told me you didn't have any friends here."
"I suppose I was right," I said, sighing. "I just didn't realize it at the time."
We chatted for a bit as we were eating our bland cafeteria meal. Theo filled me in about moving to Hell, and about her parents' recent divorce.
"They still love each other," she explained, twisting the cap off of her water bottle and taking a drink. "They just can't live together. They tried to resist divorcing for a long time, but being caught up together just made them fight, even when they were in separate places. Now that they're totally disconnected entities, and they each have their own bank accounts, they get along fine."
"Does your dad still live in Chicago?" I asked.
"No, that's the funny thing," she said. "He lives four houses down from us. He moved here about a year ago. Mom followed him because she thought it would be easier for me. I think I'm just an excuse. It's not like there was anything for me here, really. I'm planning to go to the Art Institute of Chicago."
"Parents like to make excuses," I said, running my fingernail over the scratches in the tray. They had switched from Styrofoam to reusable brown plastic this year, but they were already suffering abuse. "Even when it's more like lying."
Theo nodded thoughtfully, and we both surveyed the busy, chattering mass of people in front of us. Even though we got a few odd stares from some of the tables nearby, pretty much everyone ignored our odd choice of seating. I was growing to like it that way.
