“Miss Crenshaw? Mind stepping in here for a moment?”
Morris intercommed the office already. That’s just fantastic.
I sniff a slow breath through my nose. Might as well get this over with. I’m on a roll, sullying up my record. Let’s rack up detention while I’m at it.
Even though my outburst was at Amy, all I can think of is Sierra. Sierra. The girl who has made my life wretched since I moved here in third grade. The girl who used to blow snot rockets in my chocolate milk, who would invite me over to play just so she and her friends could make fun of my crooked teeth and huge glasses, the girl who would stare down at me from bathroom stalls and dare me to lick toilet seats during truth or dare—then force my head down when I wouldn’t do it. Not to mention she’s snagged Todd’s attention from me.
Sierra. Sierra Thompson. I hate her. HATE.
Her parents are ordinary, together, alive. Her house is normal. Her skin is beautiful. Just for once I’d like to trade with her, to let her know what it means to feel plain, to have pimples no amount of squeezing will get rid of. That she could have the mean comments in her direction, the teasing, the low self-esteem. Maybe that would shut her up.
After leading me into his office, Connor sits and taps a pencil against the desk. Tap. Tap. Tap.
I lift my head, waiting for him to say it. De-ten-tion.
He stops fiddling with the pencil long enough to say, “I just want to make sure you’re…coping…with things.”
Everything inside me sags. The news. That must be all anyone thinks about when they see me now. I take a deep breath though I feel like I’m about to snap. Sure, I wanted to talk to someone, but not the freaking principal. I shove a smile on my face. “I’m fine.”
“Nothing at all you’d like to discuss?”
Another slow breath. “Nope.”
“I want you to know I’m here if you need someone to talk to.”
Right. Because if I can’t tell my best friend, I can tell you.
I step out into the hall, but the school looks like a prison to me, like one giant mousetrap, the kind that people drop rats into just to watch them hit dead ends. I don’t care that my audition is today. I can’t stay here.
I peek into the office window behind me. Connor’s back is turned, and the secretary isn’t at her desk. I make a break for the front doors.
The air outside has never smelled fresher, and I welcome the sunshine. It soaks in warmer than it did during Todd’s football practice earlier, and my mood lifts. I ditched school. I did it. I really did it. For the first time I feel daring and adventurous. My steps are light, like I’m on the descending slope of a big hill.
Until I turn the corner onto my street. The weight from what happened in the basement, the library—it all crashes back in. My beautiful, freaky Victorian. It’s insane to keep living there, and I’m not even sure how I’ve lasted this long. Something is seriously going on, and I don’t have a clue what it is.
My mother killed someone and hid his body there. My father died there. The worst thing the average kid probably deals with is, I don’t know, having to do chores. Not me, nope. Lucky me, I’m dealing with death. My knees hurt from the strain of stepping so hard, like I’m trying to take my frustration out on the sidewalk. So what? It’s my house. My house!
I run to the center of my street, backpack smacking my back with each step, making me do a kind of wobble-run. I pass Todd’s ordinary, red brick bungalow and then duck beside his Mom’s SUV out front to catch my breath.
I’m tempted to hide and just let the world pass me by. Wait for Todd to get out of school. I’ve always felt safe and warm with Todd, since we were children. I’d trade my Polly Pockets and Barbies for Power Rangers and Star Wars action figures with him and his brother, but it wasn’t until that day when we were nine years old that we became inseparable.
The sky had a red tint that matched the leaves. I heard someone whimpering, and I kicked through my leaf pile with a scabby knee and rounded to the sound, only to find Todd behind a prickly bush, crying.
“You okay?” I called, peering around the pokey branches.
Todd’s head snapped up. A smear of freckles dotted across his nose, and coils of black hair toppled into his eyes.
“What do you want?” he asked, scuffing a hand across the tears on his cheeks.
I pressed myself against the rough brick and sank to the dirt beside him. I didn’t say a word.
Todd sniffed. “Pace sucks,” he blurted.
“Your brother?”
“My parents just love him. Pace, have a new shirt. Pace, stay up past nine. Pace, wipe our butts. So what if I’m not as old as he is? I should still get to go to Disneyland with our cousins.”
He kicked the bush, sending a sprinkling of berries around us. I flicked a stray leaf off my thigh.
“Come here,” I said after thinking it over for a few seconds. I took his hand and dragged him out from the bush.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere just for you. It’s not Disneyland, but I still think it’s fun.”
I led him through the catacombs of flowers and past the skeletal white gazebo. I drew back a drapery of vines that clung to my house, to reveal a solid chunk of gray siding.
“But—”
“Watch this,” I said. A small square of wood switched back under my grip, like the metal slide cover of a key slot. The opening displayed a flat latch. At my grip, a doorway of siding cleft open with a low whine.
“Wicked!” Todd said with a bright grin on his tearstained, freckled cheeks.
Cool air teased my skin, and I took Todd’s hand again. The wooden walkway was cramped and cold, bare of anything but concrete under our feet. I shut the door and left us in blackness, except for the slivers of light peeking through the old servants’ entrance a few feet away.
“This is how servants would get right into our kitchen,” I told him. “Or so my Dad says. But it’s our space now. Friend space.” I captured Todd’s toothy smile with my own. “Now you have something Pace never will.”
Todd’s grin widened directly across from me, since back then we were the same height. He squeezed my hand, and my nine-year-old tummy curled.
We sat in that dark space between outside and inside. It was almost like we suspended reality. For those few minutes, we had control. But the real kicker for me was when he asked The Question:
“Do you miss your mom?”
I stared at my knees and the rhinestones on my shoes. I knew then that he knew the truth about her. He knew, and he was still in a secret passageway, alone with me. Something unbreakable strung between his soul and mine that day. I rested my head on his shoulders and put my arm around him, and we both grieved through our different tragedies.
The sun bounces off the glass from the windows of my house now. The same change I felt at school earlier prods me. I won’t hide. Not this time. I steal a glance to the street behind me before making my way to my front door.
“I’m done being scared,” I say once I’m inside. “Not knowing what’s going on.” To the chandelier dangling above the entryway; to the stairs branching off the side; to the whole place. “Do you hear me? I’m done!”
A heavy slam comes from the library. The same fear I felt as a child rushes back, but I shove the mass down in my chest. There’s a reason this is all happening, and the inexplicable feeling that the answers are hidden behind that door in the library won’t shake.
“No more fear,” I say to myself, marching straight through the glass double doors.
Two levels of floor-to-ceiling books rise on either side of me, surrounding dark leather chairs on the rug in the center of the room. A single volume lies on the floor just behind one of the chairs, and I get the image of a drowned body, floating facedown in the water. Chunks rise in my throat, but I force each step until the hardback and I are inches away from each other.
A shudder pours through, ruffling the books in a room-length wave of air. Spines shake on the
shelves, sounding like a stampede of hooves as the wind whooshes its way along each wall in circular fashion, juddering the books as it passes, leaving silence in its place. It happens in an instant.
I can’t run. I won’t run.
“What are you hiding?” I ask the walls. “What are you hiding?”
My eyes throb, and I can practically see my father towering over me. Under no circumstances is this door to be opened, do you understand? Never open that door. Even I never open this one.
I cross the rug in three steps and reach for the brass knob. My hand feels like it has a fifty-pound weight attached to it, but I push against the resistance. The doorknob rattles, and I double over with a gasp, but manage to turn it.
The door opens, ripping at me, a human-sized waxing strip all over my body, snagging every hair follicle. I keel over, screeching from the sensation that isn’t quite painful, just incessant. Something collides with my frame and it hums from the reverberation.
“Piper,” says a girl’s soft voice, making my bones jump in my skin. I whirl around, glance leaping from books to chairs, to the window, and back to the open door.
I steel myself enough to look. Steps climb, boxed in and blocked at the top by a wooden ceiling. A low laugh rides on the air, and then a gust knocks into me like a glacial current. The cold flurry fills me with needles. It pricks from the inside before sending me flat on my back. I hit the floor.
The impact makes me shriek like I’m being attacked from behind. My muscles constrict all over, my fingers grapple the wood beneath me on either side. I press my head—my whole body—harder to the wood, never wanting to move, to breathe. The humming sensations won’t stop.
“Joel!” I shout, though I know my brother isn’t even here. I stare at the second level of shelved books, sitting there with their secrets. And I appeal to the house.
“Help me!” I order, though I’m not sure how it can.
My gut settles, and I get the feeling. Close it. The door.
Stomach in a tight wad, I roll and rise to my hands and knees. Something doesn’t want me nearing that knob. The air has congealed, and I have to slog through it. Skin crawling the entire time with icy prickles, I push through the pressure. I raise a trembling hand, slam the door shut and sink to the rug.
Though the door is closed, the image burns my mind. A staircase. Leading nowhere.
The strength leaves my body, and I sag to the floor once more.
I blink a few more times, trying to focus. A chandelier dangles above me, each of its crystals pointing down like sparkling daggers. The rich smell of leather is strong from the armchair beside my head.
My limbs quiver like taut strings recently plucked, and I cling to the chair, pulling myself up. The library appears undisturbed, as if nothing happened. I wait for the velvet curtains to sway, for the walls to creak, but only stillness answers. The house knows what I did—it has to know. So why the silence?
And the door…The thought alone conducts tiny jolts through me like corn kernels popping under my skin. The carved, circular designs on it stare back at me like weird, sideways eyes.
I have to force my brain to focus. Thoughts whirr and spin—no, it’s more like they’re bickering in my head, trying to chisel an opening out of my skull from the inside.
What was with the door? I should never have opened it. I should have listened to my dad. I wipe my palms on my jeans and stagger to my feet. I need to talk to someone. It’s time to find Todd.
I hurry back to school in time for the final bell to ring. My heart nearly bursts from my chest at the sight of him coming out of his English class. He swaggers, his hair slightly poofy and curling past his ears and down his forehead. His warm eyes light when they see me, and the sight zings my insides.
“Hey, Pipes, where did you disappear to earlier? I looked for you at lunch.”
I snatch his wrist and drag him through the throng of students and into the cubby-like opening beside the stairs leading up to the wrestling mats above the gym.
“You okay?” he asks with concern.
I pace the small space. My fingers weave and bend the others. I wipe them on my jeans.
“I set out to prove something, Todd,” I start, because I don’t know what else to say. “Only now I think I’ve made things worse. I need help.”
Todd puts his steady hands on my shoulders to hold me in place. I wring my hands while sweat clams in my palms. “Hold up. What’s going on?”
“You want answers? My house is alive,” I say, glancing around to make sure it’s just the two of us. I look up to the high ceiling, half expecting to hear my house complain from blocks away, or for lightning to strike in the middle of my school. To my relief, nothing happens.
“Uh—okay. Alive, as in…?”
I stare at the stripped metal peeking out through the stair rail’s white paint.
“As in it was built in the 1800s but there’s never once been any repair work done. I mean, ever. And it still looks brand new. The sinks, the floors, the stained glass windows above the doors—all original from when it was first built. Nothing has ever been replaced.”
Todd bites his bottom lip and meets my gaze. “How can you know that, if it’s so old?”
“Because I’ve seen it! I’ve seen it heal itself. One time I slammed the door open too hard, and the knob chunked into the wall. Seconds later, the wall was whole again.”
He’s going to think I’m cracked. But I have to talk to someone, and my mouth is too open to shut it now.
“Alive.” He repeats the word like it’s a confession.
I clench. Is he…is he buying it?
I take the opening he gives me. “Alive as in I can talk to it and it will creak back to me. Alive as in it cleans itself—”
“It’s not a cat, Piper.”
“—and it has all the original furniture that it started with. Pictures, knickknacks, everything.” Alive, as in it attacked you last night.
I wait. For him to tell me I’m silly or stupid. But instead he leans near me. I sense his heat, and a prickly zipper cinches up my insides.
“Is this about your mom?”
I step back. “What?”
“I heard what’s been going around. Did you—have you visited her or anything?”
I wonder if that’s how he thinks word got out. I shake my head, although tightness thickens in my throat. “You know my dad forbade it a long time ago. Just like he forbade me to open that door.” After a pause, I wail, “Todd, what have I done?”
“What do you mean what have you done?”
I meet his earnest expression. I don’t see how I can tell him when he doesn’t believe me about my house. I have no printed data for him to analyze, no textbook to confirm the facts.
Silence hangs between us. Agonizing, hair-tearing silence.
Todd shuffles to the gym door. The empty bleachers gape at me, but I keep my gaze on his back. He rests a hand on the long silver latch and speaks over his shoulder. “You better go get your clarinet. We’re gonna be late.”
That’s it?
I clamber to his side and search his burnished eyes. “You believe me, don’t you?”
Please believe me. Please, Todd. Please. After begging for the truth, he has to.
He turns away with a sigh. “I’ll meet you at my truck.”
I’m a mess. The time it takes getting my clarinet and homework from my locker is torture. I peer out the skinny window on the school exit. The parking lot is empty, save for a few cars. Even the buses have gone.
With a grimace I recognize Sierra’s lime green Beetle. Her silky hair tussles in the slight breeze. She stands by Todd’s red truck, and his forehead crinkles with concern for her.
I stay inside for a few seconds and then push open into the sunlight. Tears eke down her face. Good grief, she’s crying again. It seems so pathetic. Whatever her problem is, it can’t be as bad as mine. Her clothes all seem intact, so it’s not that. Their voices are soft, and then Todd pulls her into a hug.
A green snake slithers its way in my chest.
Squaring my jaw, I make my way to the passenger door, clarinet case in hand. Sierra glares at me on her way to her own car.
Figures, that Todd will listen to her problems, but just shove me off.
Todd climbs into the driver’s seat without saying a word. He cranks the truck to life and shifts. Heavy breaths chug in my lungs. Any minute he’ll look over. Smile at me, like he usually does. Instead, he glances behind him and backs up.
“Did she break a nail or something?” I ask, trying to be funny. A muscle jumps in his jaw. He slides me a look, then focuses back on the road.
My pulse wavers, and the bitterness deflates. Oh no. Maybe this isn’t about Sierra at all; maybe it’s about my house and what I just told him. I should have kept my mouth shut.
The cab is silent all the way into downtown Cedarvale, and the entire time I’m tearing apart inside.
“Todd—”
“Sierra said you were a witch to her. What happened?”
Though he didn’t use the actual B-word, it still smarts like a slap. “How could you of all people call me that?” He knows what their nickname for me means. But it’s more than just the nickname. It’s all the horrible things they’ve done and said. And it could just be me, but his tone sounds like he’s taking her side.
That must be what she was so upset about. Doesn’t he care about what I told him?
“Pipes, I just meant—”
“For the first time ever I was myself,” I tell him. “My real self; the self I’ve held back from people for years. Just like you told me to be.”
“You really upset her, so I just wondered what happened,” Todd says. His tone sounds less defensive this time. He turns down Bennett Avenue to the Civic Center where my audition is. The building climbs into the sky far above the other ones surrounding it, and cars completely plug up the lot. Todd pulls to the sidewalk off from the large glass doors in the front.
“I upset her? Sierra’s the reason everyone knows, Todd!” I dig the newspaper article out of my pocket and fling it near his face.
Phobic Page 9
