by Alex van Tol
“Like that.”
She chucks it toward the door. “We can make a garbage pile over there,” she says. “Then when we’re done, we can shove it all into bags and carry it down to the Dumpsters.”
I move toward a rack of PFDs. “Nice to know you got it all worked out,” I say.
She misses my dart, responding with a cheery, “You’re in good hands!”
I roll my eyes and shake out a plastic bag. I put the broken bucket inside it and set the bag down by the door. Then I get to work.
I count and organize the life jackets. Shannon sits on the floor behind me, rifling through a bin of maps, rope and colored pinnies.
“So do you paddle?” she asks, tossing a roll of tape onto a pile.
“No, I swim,” I say.
“I know you swim, Elliot,” she says. “You’re on the national team.” I glance over at her. She throws me a sweet smile.
I study her for a moment, trying to decide whether she’s making fun of me.
“I’d like to learn how,” she says.
“To swim?” I ask.
She laughs and shakes her head. “I know how to swim,” she says. “I mean it might be cool to learn how to paddle.”
This surprises me. “Yeah?” She doesn’t exactly strike me as the outdoorsy type. I wonder what she looks like without all that makeup on.
She nods. “We used to do a lot of camping when I was little.”
I can’t see it. But I don’t say it.
Shannon sighs and holds up a section of rope. “This knot’s going to take me all night,” she says.
I grunt and look down at the one I’m trying to undo. I wish she’d stop talking. I just want to get this job done. She’s not exactly my pick of conversation partners.
“What would you be doing otherwise?” Shannon asks. “If you weren’t cleaning up a boathouse?”
There’s no way this girl can work quietly. She’s a total motormouth. I’m going to have to talk.
“On a Friday night?” I say. “Probably playing Rock Band or watching movies at someone’s house.”
“After you do the vacuuming and finish all your homework?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “We have a cleaning lady who comes in to do the vacuuming.”
I look up. Shannon’s staring at me, her thoughts right there on her face. Spoiled rich kid. The world handed to him on a platter.
But that’s just the way it seems to her. It’s not how things really are.
No one’s life is really what you think it is. Not from the outside.
As she stares, I feel my ears grow hot. “You got the homework part right though,” I say.
The tension eases a little.
I look back at the knot. “And I have to clean my room too. I’m actually not allowed out until it’s done.”
Shannon laughs then. Glad, I guess, to think I have normal problems like other people. “At least then you get it out of the way,” she says.
I shrug. “I guess. I spend most of the weekend swimming, so I kind of have to. I’m way too tired by Sunday night.” I tug at the knot with my teeth. Damn, this thing’s tight. “Your Friday nights?”
She thinks for a minute. “Probably cleaning up my mother’s mess before I take off. I usually crash with friends on weekends.”
I look up. “You clean up your mom’s mess? That’s a switch. Don’t most mothers complain that their kids make the messes?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Shannon says. “Mine’s a depressed alcoholic who spends her days lying on the sofa eating Chunky Monkey and watching reality TV.”
I lower the rope and look at her. “Wow.”
Her voice is light, but she keeps her eyes down. “Yeah. Well, sometimes she switches to Chubby Hubby, though, so it’s not all bad.” She laughs.
“I’m sorry.”
“About the ice cream?” She sighs. “I know. It’s a problem.”
“No, I mean, about…”
Shannon lifts a shoulder. “No biggie. It is what it is.”
But I’m sure she wishes it wasn’t.
“Where’s your dad?” I’m always curious about other people’s parents, since one of mine pretty much up and disappeared.
“Saudi Arabia,” she says.
Oh. One of those families. I’ve heard things get messed up when your parents travel overseas for work. I think about what Shannon’s home life must look like. I can’t imagine my mother even lying on the sofa, let alone eating ice cream in front of the TV. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen her lie down. She doesn’t know how to stop moving.
“Ha!” Shannon holds up the length of nylon she’s been working on. “Behold the knot-free rope!”
“Nice,” I say. I’m relieved to change the subject. It sounds like a depressing life. I hold the PFD out toward her. “Here. Try this one. I’m not having any luck.”
“Not a chance,” she says. “I’ve had enough knots for the time being.” She stands and stretches. “What about these bins here, on the shelves?”
“Check them all,” I say.
“Most of this stuff is in pretty good shape, actually,” she says, pulling back a couple of tops and peering inside. “It’s just not very well organized. I think once we get it all into the right places, we’ll be done.”
“Maybe it won’t take us the whole night, after all,” I say. As I say the words, the knot in the cord finally loosens.
“Hey,” Shannon says. Her voice is muffled. “What’s this?”
I look over. Shannon’s leaning forward, her upper body buried deep inside a blue bin. She’s standing on her tiptoes, reaching. She’d have nice legs if she didn’t go around covering them up with that ugly fishnet crap.
That’s a pretty short skirt. I wonder if she really might have a tattoo on her bum.
I lean forward a little to see if I can influence the view.
Suddenly she straightens and her skirt drops back down. I look down and get busy with pulling the final loops out of the cord. I feel a flush creeping up. I’m glad she can’t tell.
“Check it out,” she says. I glance up as casually as I can. A silver chain dangles from her fingers. In the center hangs a little pendant.
“A necklace.”
“A necklace,” she agrees. “Well, half a necklace. Have you ever seen these before?” She comes closer and squats down to show me. “It’s one of those friendship necklaces. This is one half.”
I look at the pendant resting on Shannon’s fingers. It says BEST in fancy silver lettering.
“One friend gets the best and the other one gets the friends,” Shannon continues. “Sometimes they even fit together, like pieces of a puzzle.” She runs the chain through her fingers. I wonder if she’s thinking about stealing it.
“I wonder who this belonged to,” she says. Her eyes are on the pendant.
“No clue,” I say. I finish untwisting the cord. “Anything else weird in that box?” I stand and hang the PFD with the others.
Shannon goes back to the box and bends over to peer inside.
Damn. Why’d I stand up?
“I don’t think so,” she says, moving a few things around. “There’s mostly just a bunch of rope.” She holds up a coil of medium rope, like you’d use for tying up canoes.
“Must’ve just fallen off whoever was wearing it.” I start stacking folded tarps on a low shelf.
“I bet the other friend was sad,” says Shannon.
“Or mad,” I offer.
Shannon grins. “Or secretly relieved.”
The door bangs shut, making me jump. “What the—?”
Shannon drops the necklace and screams.
Which scares the pants off me.
“Jesus!” I yell. “Don’t freak out like that!”
Shannon’s staring at the door, her eyes huge and her hands pressed against her chest.
“It’s just the door,” I say. “Relax.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But nothing, man. You just about gave me a coron
ary.” My heart’s beating a frenzied rhythm somewhere around my molars. I bend over and pick up the tarp I dropped when she screamed.
“But…” Shannon says. She tears her eyes away from the door and looks at me. “You propped it open, Elliot.”
She looks back at the door. “With a cinderblock.”
Chapter Five
It wasn’t a cinderblock though. Not really. Just a big brick. Big enough to have stood up to the wind, I thought, but apparently not.
I guess one strong gust was all it took to just…tip it over.
It’s freezing outside anyway, and there’s not much daylight left, so I close the door all the way. There’s a little hook-and-eye clasp on the inside. I drop the hook into the eye.
“There. No more banging,” I say. “We are locked in.”
I’m feeling a bit looser after that scare. And after our conversation. I might be stuck in a boathouse with a dorky punk chick, but it’s actually more fun than…well, than cleaning my room and doing homework.
“I’m not so sure that’s such a good thing,” Shannon says. She throws me a sidelong glance.
“What, being locked in?” I ask. “Why? You afraid of the boogeyman?”
“There’s no such thing,” she says.
I open my mouth, but before I can say anything, my stomach growls. Loudly.
Shannon laughs.
“So maybe there’s no boogeyman,” I say. “There is, however, such a thing as hunger.”
I pull out my phone and glance at it. 4:09. “You hungry?”
“I could eat,” she says. “I have pita and hummus from my lunch. Enough for two.”
“Pita and hummus,” I scoff. “How about Texas donuts?”
Shannon’s mouth drops open. “You have Texas donuts?”
I nod. “Fresh from the fundraiser,” I say. “People who ordered but never picked up.” I realize how nerdy that must make me sound, especially to her. Fundraisers. Her kind don’t exactly go in for that.
More like welfare.
As soon as I think it, the thought makes me ashamed. Until today, I’d never met anyone whose home life was like Shannon’s.
If you can even call it a home life.
In fact, until today, I’d never really even talked to someone like Shannon. So who the hell am I to judge?
“Texas donuts,” Shannon is saying in a dreamy voice. “Act of god? Or pure karma?”
She’s so bizarre.
I pull a cardboard sleeve from my bag and flip it open to reveal two gigantic donuts. They’re squashed, and the cheap chocolate icing is sliding off the top, but we dig in like two starving animals.
Shannon looks around as she chews. “There’s something weird in here.”
“Like what? Did you find a hair?”
“No,” she laughs.
She laughs a lot, but somehow the sound catches me by surprise every time.
“Not in the donut,” she says. “In the boathouse.”
“Think so?” I ask. I take another bite and look around. “Like?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“Well, there’s the rats,” I say.
“No, no, more like…something else. A presence.”
“Maybe it’s a ghost,” I say. “O-o-o-o.”
Shannon raises one perfect, dark eyebrow and fixes me with a stare. “Maybe it is.”
My turn to laugh. “Oh, come on. Do you actually believe in stuff like that?”
She shrugs. “Who’s to say spirits don’t exist?”
I roll my eyes. “Oh my god. So do you believe in UFOs too?” Come to think of it, she seems like the type to believe in anything.
She gives a little half smile. “Maybe.” She looks around the boathouse. I can see her forming an idea. When she turns back to me, her eyes are shining.
This can’t be good.
“I have an idea,” she says.
Aaaaand there it is.
I speak slowly, imagining my words as a fine mist of wisdom heavy enough to weigh down her impulsivity. “Your ideas have been known to get people into trouble,” I say.
“I think we should make a Ouija board,” she says.
She’s not feeling the mist.
“I think we should finish our work and go home.”
“No, no,” she says. “I want to see if there’s something in here.”
I don’t like the way this is headed.
“Those Ouija board things are bunk,” I say. “They don’t even work.”
I have no idea if this is true. I’m grasping at straws here.
“Oh, they work all right,” she says. “I’ve done it before. It’s freaky. The way the thing moves around all by itself and everything.”
I look at her. She looks like a kid who’s just been told she’s leaving for Disneyland tomorrow.
There’s no way I’m going to be able to talk her out of this.
“Are you a glutton for punishment or something?” I say. “Weren’t you just screaming in abject terror not five minutes ago because the door slammed?”
She laughs. “It wasn’t abject. It just surprised me, is all.” She looks around. “But seriously, what if there is something here?” She takes another bite of donut and brushes a couple of crumbs from her lap.
I’m not sure what to think. Maybe she’s one of those people who likes to feel bad things. Like when your braces get tightened and your whole jaw aches, but you still clench your teeth because you get off on the pain.
Okay, I’ll admit I’ve done that.
Maybe I should just loosen up a bit, I think. Maybe it’s not that big a deal. It’s not like I’ve got any fantastic plans for later tonight anyway.
Besides, Ouija’s just a party game. They sell it in boxes at Toys “R” Us, for god’s sake. How real can it possibly be?
Chapter Six
Shannon finishes the rest of her donut. She crumples the paper towel and tosses it toward the door, where our garbage pile is growing.
Her tongue piercing flashes as she licks her fingers. I look away.
When I look back, she’s sitting cross-legged, staring expectantly at me.
“What?” I ask. Maybe she saw me staring at her tongue.
“You ready?”
I sigh. “I see you don’t know how to take no for an answer,” I say.
“No?” she says. She cocks her head and furrows her brows in mock confusion. “What’s that?”
I fight a smile. “Fine. I’m down,” I say. “Let’s just do it and get out of here.”
Shannon’s face lights up, and she leans toward me. For a panicky second, I think she’s going to kiss me and I try to think of what to do. Look away? Lean backward? Kiss her back? What do I do about the tongue thing?
But she doesn’t kiss me. She puts both her hands on my knees and gives them a little squeeze.
I feel pretty dumb.
And a little disappointed.
Shannon grins and scrambles to her feet. “This is going to be so much fun!” she says.
“There’s only one problem,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“We don’t have a Ouija board.”
Ha. See what she says to that.
She points to a nearby bin. “I saw some old chalkboards in here,” she says. “We’ll use the back of one of those.”
“You can’t do that,” I say. “Those don’t belong to us.”
Shannon stares at me. “You can’t be serious,” she says.
“I’m totally serious.” I’m not, really, but she already thinks I’m such a Goody Two-shoes. Maybe she’ll agree with me and just forget about the whole idea.
“Then what else are we supposed to use?” she demands.
I shrug and look around. I point to the yearbook on the floor.
Her eyes follow my finger. “What? No way.” She sounds shocked, like I’ve just suggested she take all her clothes off and dance naked at the next assembly. “I just bought that today. That cost me fifty bucks! I’m not going to go mark
ing it up with a Sharpie.”
The irony kills me. “Oh, so you’re okay with making a mess of other people’s stuff, but not your own?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it again. She raises her chin and looks at me.
“We’ll use chalk.” Her eyes dare me to argue.
There’s no winning.
She reaches into the bin. Her hand pops back out holding up a flat board about the size of a breakfast tray.
“This,” she says, handing it to me, “is perfect.”
“Wow,” I say, turning the board around in my hands. “It’s so old school. How does it work?”
“No idea. I can’t find the power button.”
I laugh. I try not to notice her eyes lighting up.
“So you can actually just…make a Ouija board?” I say. “I thought you had to buy them.”
“They’re actually more effective when they’re made by hand,” Shannon says. “More powerful.”
“Are we going for powerful?”
She doesn’t answer. Just motions for me to put the board down on the floor. She turns back to the bin and digs around until she comes up with a short stick of chalk.
“You’ve done this before?” I ask. She kneels on the floor beside me. I watch as she bends her head and writes YES in the top left corner.
“Couple times,” she says. She writes NO in the top right, then drops down a line and starts writing the letters of the alphabet.
“What’s it like?”
Shannon’s concentrating on making her letters neat and evenly spaced. She touches her tongue to her upper lip as she works. I think about that metal barbell again.
She finishes the first row, A through K, and sits up straight. “It’s cool,” she says. “But it can be kind of scary too. You have to stay in control of the board at all times. You can’t just take your hands off, or walk away. There’s rules.”
“Yeah, but you’re no good at following rules,” I say.
“Shut up!” She boots me in the ankle. “I know how to follow rules. I just choose which ones are important. And which ones aren’t.” She gives me a meaningful look.
Her earlier jab hangs between us, unspoken. I let it.
“Why’s it so important to keep your hands on the board?” I ask. “Do things get out of control if you don’t?”
