Only Child: A novel

by Rhiannon Navin

After a while I got up and washed my face with cold water and then I looked in the mirror. My eyes were red all around. I stared at them in the mirror, and when you look at yourself in the mirror when you feel like crying, then you cry even more.

  “Stop crying,” I said out loud to myself.

  “Stop crying, I said!” I said, and it was like one part of me was talking to a different part of me. “Stop, stop, STOP.”

  I washed my face again and went back in my room, and then I stood there in the middle of my room and thought about what I should do.

  “You have to do something,” I said to my other part. “Everything is getting worse.”

  “OK, but what can I do about it?” the other part of me answered, but not out loud, just in my head. I thought about it for a long time, and I didn’t move and I didn’t sit down. I just kept standing there in the middle of my room, thinking about it.

  [ 46 ]

  Urgent Mission

  Is it time to go on another mission?” said Annie.

  “Indeed,” said Kathleen.

  “And it is quite urgent now,” said Teddy.

  “Merlin is failing quickly,” said Kathleen. She blinked back tears.

  “Oh, no!” said Annie.

  “Morgan wants you to find the final secret of happiness today,” said Teddy.

  Today was the day when Jack and Annie are going to look for the fourth secret of happiness for Merlin. Their two friends, Kathleen and Teddy, they are sorcerers, show up in the Magic Tree House and give them their mission from Morgan, who is like their teacher—the Magic Tree House belongs to her.

  And today was the day when I was going on my mission, too. All morning my stomach was doing the roller-coaster thing like crazy, and my legs were so twitchy I had to move them all the time. I tried to sit still on my bed with Clancy on my lap, and I tried to read Magic Tree House #40, Eve of the Emperor Penguin, so I could think about Jack and Annie’s adventure and not mine.

  Every time I thought about my mission I started to feel scared, and then I had to do the thing again where the one part of me talks to the other part: “Stop being scared. Time for the mission. Time to be brave. Remember?”

  It wasn’t time for my mission yet, but almost. I tried to read, but I kept thinking about other stuff. All the time I had to go back to the top of the page and read it all over, and then I still didn’t remember what I just got done reading.

  My plan was ready, my supplies were ready, but it wasn’t time to go yet. The perfect time was going to be later after lunch, when Mommy was having her lawyer meeting, because then Mommy wasn’t going to notice and I could get a head start.

  My mission was to go to the cemetery where Andy’s grave was. And Charlie’s son’s grave. The man from the news said that every day in the evening Charlie goes there to visit his son’s grave. So I was going to the cemetery, too, and I was going to wait there for Charlie to come. I had to go to the cemetery, because I didn’t know where his house is or what his phone number is.

  I wanted to talk to him to say sorry about how Mommy was talking about him. I wanted to ask him to come back to my house with me so we could talk to Mommy together and then all the fighting could be over and then maybe Daddy could come back home.

  Getting ready to go on a mission was a lot of work—I was working on it this whole morning and I kept thinking about other things I had to bring with me. For Jack and Annie, it’s easy. All they have to do is point to a book and say, “I wish we could go there!” and BAM! they end up exactly where they were supposed to go. Also they don’t have to worry about packing for their trip because they’re already magically wearing what they will need. In Eve of the Emperor Penguin, they end up in Antarctica and they are wearing snow pants and gloves and goggles. And Jack’s backpack changes into a hiker’s backpack.

  I wished I could find a book about the cemetery and say “I wish I could go there,” and then just show up there with all the supplies I was going to need. But that wasn’t happening. I had to make the plan on my own and pack my stuff on my own and then go there all by myself.

  That was the part that was making my stomach do all the flips and making my legs all twitchy, when I thought about how I had to sneak out so Mommy wasn’t going to notice, and then get to the cemetery all by myself. I knew the way because it was right by my old preschool and I went that way a thousand times. But I never walked there even though it’s close, only like five minutes in the car, and Mommy always said we should really walk there instead of drive, but then we never did because we’re always in a rush in the mornings.

  I decided to put Magic Tree House #40, Eve of the Emperor Penguin, in my backpack, because sitting still and reading wasn’t working out anyway, and I only read like three chapters this whole time, but I wanted to bring it for later. I pulled out the backpack from under the bed and it was very heavy because earlier I tied Andy’s sleeping bag to it at the bottom with a suitcase strap. The book was the last thing that was going to fit in the backpack because it was so full.

  I thought about my plan again in my head, and that’s when I remembered the thing about the alarm box. Last night, when I was thinking about sneaking out, I thought about the alarm box and that when I was leaving the house, when Mommy had her meeting, the robot lady voice was going to say “Front door!” and then Mommy was going to know that I opened the front door. And by the way, I couldn’t go out the front door anyway because the news vans and the news people were going to see me. So I came up with a cool plan, and I almost forgot to do the most important part.

  I checked and Mommy was in her room with the door closed, so I grabbed a pencil from my desk real quick and went downstairs. I opened the door to the garage a tiny bit and from the kitchen I heard “Garage door!” I put the pencil on the floor in between the door so it stayed open, but only a tiny bit so Mommy wasn’t going to notice. Then I ran back upstairs fast.

  Right after that the doorbell rang a few times and I heard Mommy go downstairs. Voices came up from downstairs, and I stood in my room with my heart pounding, pounding, pounding. It was almost time to go. I waited for all the voices to move from the hallway, and everyone was probably sitting down in the living room.

  I went to the bathroom one more time. I put on my shoes and my jacket that were hiding under my bed next to my backpack. I was about to put the backpack on, and that’s when my eyes got stuck on the trucks. They were still lying all over the place from when I got mad and kicked them. I didn’t want to leave them like that, so I went over and put them in a straight line. That was better, and now it was the right time to go.

  I waited at the top of the stairs and I listened to the voices. This was going to be the hardest part. Get downstairs and outside. I went downstairs on my tippy-toes and I tried not to make the stairs squeak—and you have to try to walk all the way on the side of the steps, that’s where they don’t squeak. The thing was that you can see the bottom of the stairs from the living room, so that was going to be tricky. I paused a few steps up and my heart was pounding so loud that everyone in the living room was probably hearing it. Then I went down the last couple of steps very fast and around the banister and over to the door to the garage. I waited to hear Mommy’s voice saying, “Zach, where are you going?” but it never came. The people in the living room kept on talking, and no one even noticed that I came down the steps.

  The pencil was still in the door, and the door was still open a tiny bit. I opened it more and squeezed through and closed it behind me. I walked through the garage and unlocked the side door that always has a key sticking in it on the inside because it got bent and you can’t take it out, but it still works to open the door. I walked in our backyard and I stood there for a minute, and the coldness outside made my nose get tingly. I put my hand in the pocket of my pants and felt the angel wing charm with my fingers. Then I checked the time on Andy’s Lego watch that I took from his desk,
and it said 2:13.

  [ 47 ]

  Scooby-Doo in a White Van

  IN THE FRONT POCKET of my backpack was a map that I made last night of the way from my house to my old preschool and the cemetery across from it. It reminded me of what Dora always says in the beginning of all the shows—before her and Boots go somewhere: “Who do we ask when we don’t know which way to go? The map!” And then the map comes jumping out of Dora’s backpack and sings, “I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the maaaaap!” in a voice that’s really annoying. The map tells Dora and Boots which way to go, and they have to cross like three obstacles every time—a creepy forest, a windy desert, the crocodile pond, and stuff like that. I don’t watch Dora anymore, that’s really a baby show, but I watched it all the time when I still went to preschool, so that’s funny that I was thinking about that when I was getting ready to go find the preschool.

  In my head, I pretend-walked the way a lot of times last night, but I made the map anyway, just in case. The way to my old preschool is like this: Cut through our backyard and then go to the corner where the school bus stops for the middle school kids. It’s not a yellow school bus that comes, but a regular bus that gets used as a school bus because there aren’t enough yellow school buses. After fifth grade, that’s what Andy was going to do, get on the regular bus to go to the middle school, and he was excited about that.

  So you go past the middle school bus corner and then up the hill to where the big green field is and the college behind it, and then after that you get to the road with the firehouse on the corner. Walk around the firehouse and then it’s another hill up. The preschool comes on the right, where the church is, it’s in the basement of the church. And the cemetery where Andy’s grave is is across the street from the preschool.

  That was going to be my mission, to find the way, and no one could see me walking there all by myself or they would think, “Why is a kid walking there all by himself?” and then they would ask me about it and my whole mission was going to be blown.

  After the map tells Dora and Boots which way to go, they say the three stops like the creepy forest and the windy desert and the crocodile pond a lot of times before they go, and they make check marks when they pass the stops. When I crossed the road in between our backyard and Liza’s house, I stopped and stared at the place where Andy was lying in my dream, with the arrow sticking out of his chest and the blood everywhere.

  After I got around the middle school bus corner, I stopped and pulled out the map. And I got out a pencil from the front pocket and made a check mark next to “middle school bus corner.” Then I put the map in the pocket of my jacket and started walking up the hill to the big green field that was the next stop on the map.

  Walking up the hill was hard. My legs started to feel tired, mostly because the backpack was really heavy from all the supplies I packed and it was starting to hurt my neck, and Andy’s sleeping bag was swinging against my legs. I decided to take a little break and take off the backpack. Then I realized I stopped right in front of Ricky’s house. There was a whole pile of newspapers rolled up in blue plastic bags on the walkway. No one lived in Ricky’s house anymore because Ricky was dead from the gunman and now his mom was dead, too. I looked at the garage door. Mommy said that in there she made herself dead, and I was wondering if she was still in there or what, and that gave me a scared feeling, so I put the backpack on again and started walking fast.

  “Time to be brave,” I said to myself in my head.

  Maybe Ricky and his mom had graves at the cemetery, too, like Andy and Charlie’s son. I was going to check when I got there.

  At the top of the hill came the big green field. Behind the field I could see the college, and no college kids were outside of it, so that was good. I made a check mark next to “college” on the map.

  Everything was fine until I got to the road. It was quiet at first and I didn’t see anyone, but just when I got ready to walk around the firehouse, cars came from the left and the right, and people were going to see me from the cars. I noticed a doorway next to the firehouse and I stepped inside it and turned around in it. I pretended like I was opening the door. The cars drove by me and didn’t stop. I peeked my head out of the doorway to see if more cars were coming, but I didn’t see any.

  I walked around the firehouse fast, and around the corner from it, before the street goes up the next hill, there was a parking lot with benches, so I decided to sit down for a minute. I made a check mark on the map next to “firehouse” and looked at Andy’s watch: 2:34. I decided to get out one of the snacks I packed. Snacks and my water bottle were in the middle pocket of my backpack. I pulled out a granola bar and I was trying to get it open when all of a sudden I saw a white van coming down the hill and it was going very slow.

  My heart started beating at super speed. I dropped my granola bar on the ground and my map and I grabbed my backpack and looked around fast. I spotted the clothes bin that Mommy and I went to a few times to drop old clothes in that we didn’t need anymore but poor people were going to use them, and I ran and scooched in behind it.

  It was very tight because the clothes bin had a fence right behind it, and it smelled bad like throw-up or something. My breath was going in and out fast, and my heart was still beating very fast. “Please don’t let the bad guy find me. Please don’t let the bad guy find me,” I said in my head and I hugged my backpack tight.

  There was a white van with a bad guy in it in Wake Gardens, and in the summertime the bad guy was driving around with a big Scooby-Doo stuffed animal in the van, and he tried to get kids to come to the van to look at the Scooby-Doo, because he wanted to steal them. Andy told me that, and it made me really scared, and I didn’t want to go outside to play anymore. Mommy said it was true. There really was a bad guy in a white van. She read it on Facebook. She told me it would be better if I stayed close to the house, and it was definitely a no to going up to strangers’ cars. “So much for being safer in the burbs,” Mommy said.

  Now I wasn’t close to our house. I was all by myself, and now the bad guy was going to steal me and put me in the white van. I tried not to move and not to make any sounds. Maybe the bad guy didn’t see me when I was sitting on the bench. But then it looked like he did, because I heard the white van drive up in the parking lot. My whole body was shaking, and I started to cry a lot. I put my face in the backpack so no sounds were coming out of my mouth. I really wished I didn’t go on my mission. If I was still at home in my room, the bad guy wouldn’t be coming for me right now.

  I heard a car door slam and then another car door, and I didn’t let any breaths go in and out of my mouth. Then I heard voices, but it was woman voices, and they were talking about the crazy long line to see Santa at Macy’s. I knew what they were talking about because we always went to see Santa at Macy’s in the city before Christmas, and the line always took super long, like an hour, except this year we didn’t go.

  The woman voices sounded like they were moving away from me. My heart wasn’t beating so super fast anymore, and the crying got better, but I still tried not to move in case the white van was still there somewhere. I checked Andy’s watch and it said 2:39. I stared at the watch and nothing else happened, so at 2:45 I decided to look around the clothes bin. There was no white van anywhere.

  I really wanted to go back home because I still had a bad scared feeling and I wasn’t feeling brave at all anymore. But then I thought about my mission and about how I didn’t want Charlie to go in jail, so I decided to do Dicky Dicky Diamond between going back home or keep going to the cemetery: “Dicky Dicky Diamond, step right in. Dicky Dicky Diamond, step right out.” Home was out.

  I got out from behind the clothes bin and looked up the hill where my old preschool and the cemetery were going to be. I put on my backpack and started walking up the hill fast.

  There were buildings on the left side of me, and some teenagers were hanging
out there. One called over to me, “Hey, kid, are you going camping? That backpack is bigger than you!” and all the other teenagers laughed, and some made whistling sounds. I tried not to look at them. I kept my eyes on the sidewalk, square and rectangular stones, and I tried to get all the way up the hill without touching any rectangular ones.

  [ 48 ]

  Whispering Winds

  I WALKED UP THE HILL to where my old preschool was on the right, but I walked on the other side of the street where the cemetery was going to be. It took me a long time to walk up there, and then the watch said 3:10, so it was one hour minus three minutes from when I left my house. I saw the preschool up on the right side, and lots of cars were driving in and out and that made sense, because 3:00 is pickup time.

  I walked the rest of the way fast and turned left and went through the big black gate in the cemetery, because I didn’t want someone from the school to spot me. The big gate had two like towers made out of rocks on the sides, and half a circle made out of black metal went from one tower to the other one, and a sign said HOLY SEPULCHRE CEMETERY. On the two ends of the half-circle were lamps that looked like big candles. I didn’t see the gate when we came here for Andy’s funeral because we drove here from the church and parked our car on the other side of the cemetery on the little road inside. Through the gate I could see the cemetery, and this part looked different from the part where they put Andy’s grave. Maybe this was the old part or something.

  I walked in the cemetery and everything got very quiet after I passed the gate. Behind me were the cars from the preschool and all the traffic sounds, and in front of me was nothing but quietness—the gate like blocked out the sounds.

  Here the cemetery didn’t have any walkways like in the part where Andy’s grave was, but grass growing everywhere and gravestones sticking out. The gravestones looked all beat-up and creepy, and some were not standing up straight and all around them it looked like a garden with bushes and big trees everywhere. I tried to read some names on the old gravestones, but I couldn’t see the whole names, they were mostly disappeared. A lot of the gravestones had cool designs at the top, all different kinds of crosses.