by Leah Thomas
By the time I passed the library, my toes were numb. I thought about going inside. Had anyone checked on the situation with Patricia’s family? The moment the shelter became our collective obsession, we’d stopped talking about Patricia Jr.
I walked past the library and neared the Green House. It really was an old house that had been some wealthy person’s mansion back in the early 1900s. The house was set a little distance from the road, but its white staircase and pillared porch were welcoming. I thought maybe I should go inside and collect some pamphlets on mental health and recovery, some ideas to fuel our shelter. If the layout was the same as it used to be, I knew I’d find a whole rack of them inside the doorway.
When we lived at the Green House, Mom spent the first few days going through withdrawal in a bed upstairs, sharing her room with another woman who had a broken arm and two black eyes. There were a few other children there, too, but I didn’t talk to any of them.
I didn’t want to believe that we had anything in common.
I’m not sure I had begun to hate Dad, not yet. I hated the gentle voices the staff used when speaking to me, resented the helplessness I felt, until I realized those soft voices were helping that helplessness fade. After the first week, I started talking to some of the other kids, and Mom started getting out of bed and looking for a job. I cried.
Dad really wasn’t coming to get us. I still don’t know if I was happy or sad about that.
I approached the Green House now with a strange pressure in my chest that had nothing to do with the bruising. Mom and me—we weren’t entirely all right. Our lives weren’t perfect and never would be. I barely spoke to Mom, almost no one could see who I really was, and my only friends were dead girls.
But still I could say, despite all that, our lives were better than they had been.
Standing on the front step, I almost embraced one of those white pillars.
I heard footsteps on the walk behind me and turned.
This was becoming downright predictable.
Seiji stood there, looking fed up. In his arms he held a large cardboard box. He wore his duffel coat and a fluffy pair of earmuffs, incongruous as a rabbit’s puffy tail on an alligator.
“I’m not following you,” he growled. “It’s a small town.”
I bit my lip. “Thanks for . . . thanks for earlier.”
“Can you move? I need to go inside.”
“Oh.” I remembered myself and held the door. When Seiji held the inner door open with his foot and stared at me expectantly, I scurried in after him, wincing at the spike of pain in my chest.
The old floor creaked under our feet as we neared the vacant reception desk. I readjusted my backpack on my shoulder, trying to take pressure off my diaphragm. Seiji must have noticed, because he said, “You could have hurt yourself.”
“As if you care.”
“Maybe someone else does.”
I thought of what Corina had said. Rumors about the death of his mother, the tattoos on his knuckles. I thought about his wide, terrified eyes. About his presence here in this old house. The Green House didn’t allow casual visitors as a rule, but here was Seiji, standing in the foyer as if he’d been here a dozen times.
A shuffling sound came from a back room, and an unfamiliar young woman, plump and red-faced, made her way to the counter. She beamed at Seiji.
“Oh, hey, Seiji!”
“Hey, Sophie.”
“Your aunt said to expect you. What goodies have you got for us?”
He pushed the box forward. “Canned soup. Ramen noodles. Some vegetable oil.”
“Ooh, that’s great. People always forget to donate vegetable oil. That’ll make someone’s day for sure.” She pulled the box to her and then looked at me. “Hi! Miss . . . ?”
“It’s not Miss,” I said. “I’m Dani.”
“Have you also brought some goods for the Thanksgiving food drive, Dani? Or . . . do you need to speak to someone here?”
I shook my head. “No, I . . . no.”
“Well, if you and your family feel like scouring your kitchen for donations, we’ll be collecting right up until Turkey Day. And please tell your friends at school about it, too. I’m sure they’ve got some canned goods to spare.” Sophie jerked her thumb at Seiji. “I’ve asked this guy to spread the word, but he’s about as chatty as a stuffed turkey.”
Seiji did not reply, although his face turned a disarming shade of red. I watched him comb his black fringe over his eyebrows and mumble, “See you later,” before pivoting and pushing his way outside again.
“Careful, there,” Sophie said, “he’ll talk your ear off.”
I nodded at her, scooped an assortment of pamphlets from a rack on the counter, shoved them in my bag, and followed Seiji out.
Darkness had well and truly fallen, and the sleet had become a curtain of white.
Seiji stood on the top step. “Do you need a ride?” he asked.
I started. “Don’t you live downtown somewhere?”
“So?”
“Um, so? Wouldn’t you have walked to school?”
“I borrowed the truck today,” he explained. “So I could drop off the food. Do you want a ride?”
“Oh. I mean, I live close, too. I can walk home.”
“It’s pissing down,” he observed, walking ahead of me, letting the rain strike his bare head and soak his earmuffs. “Just come on.”
Now I really was following him.
GMC
Seiji’s car turned out to be a battered old GM truck. On one side of the cabin, hand-painted in oddball calligraphy that looked like it belonged in a county fair, were the words Murphy’s Flower Shoppe—We Roses to the Occasion!
I stared, wondering if he’d stolen a flower delivery truck, but despite my reservations, my bruises stung and the rain was really coming down.
I knew what Sarah might have said, had she seen me climbing into a car with a supposedly violent boy. Except I wasn’t so certain anymore that he was violent, and I knew that I for one was violent and, at least secretly, a boy.
I climbed in and set my backpack at my feet. The sweet smell of soil and blossoms pervaded the truck, dampened by the cold. I glanced into the back and spied several bags of Miracle-Gro on the seat.
“You don’t seem like a flower guy to me,” I observed.
“Put on your seat belt.”
“Who cares?” The back talk was instinctive.
But Seiji refused to start the engine until I clicked the seat belt into place.
The engine had seen sunnier days, but growled to life on the second try.
“My aunt runs the shop,” Seiji said, about a minute later. We’d already reached the main intersection in town. “My family bought Murphy’s Flowers when we moved to Rochdale.”
We passed the little corner business as he spoke, and I recalled running into him on the sidewalk. “When was that?”
“Around the same time you moved here.”
“You’ve lived downtown this whole time?”
His shrug implied a whole lot.
“I mean, fine. I know I’m caught up in my own shit, but I’ve never seen you on the way to school.”
“I go to school early,” he said mysteriously, “and I come home late.”
Everyone knew Seiji went home late because he had daily detentions, but I had no idea why he might go in early, too. The rest of our uncomfortable trip passed in silence. After the longest minute ever, he pulled into the motel parking lot.
I eased out the door and into a sad snowbank, one hand on my ribs. “Thanks.”
“Hey,” Seiji said, rolling down the passenger window before I walked away. His expression seemed almost fragile. “Why did you say that?”
“Why did I say what?”
“That I don’t seem like a flowers guy. What did you mean by that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was just trying to make conversation.”
Seiji dipped his head. When he looked up again, a line had formed o
n his forehead, and his cheeks were red. “I really try to be a flowers guy, is all.”
“Oh.” I was at a loss. He was blushing. He looked like a different person. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry I called you angry.”
“Well, you weren’t wrong,” I said, at a slight loss for words. “I am pretty angry.”
“Maybe that’s how you seem, but it’s not necessarily how you are.”
My breath caught. Seiji’s point resonated—did he know that? Being called something you’re not is not a stupid-ass reason to cry. Like being called a girl when you’re a boy. Or being called a victim when you’re striving to escape the word. That’s not stupid, either.
Being called a thug when you’re a gardener? That’s got to be upsetting, too.
“So what else do I seem like,” I asked, and it was hardly a question.
Seiji pauses. “Lonely.”
I flinch. “What?”
“You seem lonely. You talk to yourself a lot. Do you realize?”
I take a step away, face flushed. “Yeah, I realize, and it’s none of your business.”
“You asked.”
“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t have.”
“Who do you talk to?” he asked simply.
I don’t know why I answered. Maybe it was the lack of accusation in his voice, the desire to mess with him like I felt he was messing with me.
“I talk to dead people, okay?”
“Oh,” Seiji said, nodding once. “Okay. I do that, too, sometimes.”
He rolled up the window while I tried to parse him. It wasn’t until he pulled away that I realized I hadn’t told him where I lived—he’d just known.
POWER WHEELS
I stood outside the lobby for a few moments trying to compose myself. Seiji couldn’t be serious, could he? What the hell was that conversation?
From the outside, our ghost shelter remained a sorry thing: a rusting old piece of offensive architecture, but inside I hoped it would become all that we dreamed it could be.
I wanted to think people worked the same way. But I also wished my outside would match my insides without leaving me wounded and wheezing and embarrassed. More than anything else, I felt stuck in myself, and stuck in the world. I was haunting my own life.
When I finally went inside, Patricia waved hello. She’d been practicing with the fan, I could tell, but today’s magazine was facedown on the rug. She seemed frustrated.
“I thought I heard a car pull up.”
“I didn’t hear anything. Seen Sarah?”
“She’s downstairs. She said we’ve had some exciting developments, if you can imagine.” We’d long since arranged an entrance to the lobby on the upper level, so my visits to the cellar were rare. Sarah and Patricia might be immune to the chill, but as I descended the concrete stairs I felt goose bumps budding.
“She returns!” Sarah crooned, appearing beside me. “Finally! Come and have a look-see.”
“You know, I would,” I began, blinking in the dark. “But I’m not nocturnal, so—”
“Oh, criminy. I forgot.” Sarah snapped her fingers. A bulb in the ceiling flickered on, and so did my old desk lamp. Something more priceless hummed on the floor, glowing softly.
“A laptop? Sarah, where did you get that?”
“Library. They’re all sitting there on a cart, can you believe it?”
“But . . . how did you get it here?”
“Come on. You know that I can move things sometimes,” she said, feigning nonchalance. “When I really feel like it.”
“Yeah, but . . .” I’d seen her push things when she was upset, seen doors slam or curtains ripple. When we met, she pushed my folder out from under my bed. But that seemed like a far cry from transporting a computer across town.
Patricia looked as shocked as I was. “Telekinesis?”
“What?” I said. “How does that work?”
“Does it matter? I’ll bring the laptop back one day.” Sarah paused. “Maybe.”
Our sins against librarians would probably condemn us to hell regardless of how many girls we rescued. And it turned out Sarah had gotten her spectral hands on a lot more than a stolen laptop. An electronic projector came to life, casting a blurry map on the blank wall where the washing machines and dryers had once been. The next thing I knew, Sarah was adjusting a set of speakers.
“Yeah, okay, but seriously, Sarah—how did you get all this stuff here?”
Sarah shrugged. “Libraries let people borrow things, damn it.”
“Right. But how did you transport all this here? Can you what, levitate things that far?”
“Not on my own. I used electricity.”
“How cryptic,” Patricia remarked. “I see who taught you to skirt questions, Dani.”
Sarah folded her arms, clearly exasperated. “Look, I may have also borrowed transportation from a kid down the street.”
“You stole a tricycle?” Patricia asked, blinking innocently.
“No, not a—come on! It was an electric vehicle.”
“What, like a Razor scooter?” I asked.
“No, that wouldn’t have been big enough,” Sarah said, as if that were obvious. “It was one of those pint-size pink jeeps? The ones little kids ride in.”
“A Power Wheels,” Patricia supplied. “A Power Wheels Jeep. I’m familiar with them.”
“You stole a Barbie Jeep from some toddler?” I reiterated. “So that you could rob librarians of a precious laptop and projector.”
“Where’s the tiny jeep now?” Patricia asked. “In case the police come looking.”
“It’s parked out back,” Sarah said, dead serious, and Patricia burst into peals of laughter. “Look, it’s not like I’ll get caught. And I only use it at night!”
The vision of a tiny, driverless jeep haunting the streets of Rochdale, buzzing down the sidewalks, spooking the squirrels, brought me to laughter, too. Unfortunately, that made my wounded ribs cry out.
“Dani. You all right?”
“Fine.” Was I as transparent as Sarah? Could everyone see through me these days?
Sarah’s disgruntled pout brought us back around. “Do you want to see my presentation, or not? Because if not, I have better things to do.”
“Of course we do,” Patricia said. “Go on.”
Sarah stood to the side of the projector. She blinked and twitched her pale fingers, frowning in concentration. A series of pdfs, images, Word documents, and a PowerPoint presentation opened on the computer. I was impressed. I hadn’t taught Sarah anything about computers, and they’d barely been invented when she died, but I was certain she could do better in my computer class than I ever had.
“Right. So we’ll start with the maps. The first layer is a topographical map of Rochdale County, from the northern woods near Marl Lake, to the edge of I-75 and the East Branch river.” She blinked, and another map appeared. “And here’s a road map on top of that one.”
She snapped her fingers, and an overlay of gray dots, clustered like dust in some places and scattered like individual motes in the others, appeared on the map. “And this is the distribution of the county’s population. Each spot represents ten people. According to the latest census, the population of Rochdale County is approximately sixteen thousand, but only about seventeen hundred people live in the town itself.”
“Hooray for us townies,” I said.
“Everyone else lives closer to the lake, and there are a lot of cabins in the woods. Basically, there’s a concentration of people in town, but it’s not the majority of the population. No, my friends”—she tried to slam her fist dramatically on the map, but her fist passed mostly through it—“I am preoccupied with everyone else.”
“Have you been watching too much CSI?” I asked.
“This is a bit maudlin,” Patricia agreed, “but let’s hear her out. Sarah has worked very hard on her project.”
“Maybe it looks like crime television, except I’m not actually solving any crimes.�
� Sarah blinked again, and a fourth overlay appeared. This one added dozens of red pockmarks, like acne marring the surface of our little town. Even though the spots looked like they’d been added in Microsoft Paint, there was no denying that the sight of them robbed the cellar of humor.
“The fourth map isn’t about finding killers, but finding the victims. Each and every one of these spots marks the location where the body of a violent crime victim was found in the past one hundred years. I’m sure there are older ghosts around, but the online newspaper archive isn’t all that detailed, so this is our starting point.”
There weren’t a ton of spots—less than one hundred in all. What was striking was that they were spread throughout the county in varying concentrations. Several places on the map drew my eye. There was a cluster of red spots in the woods by the park where we’d met Patricia. There was a spot that appeared to be on the grounds of Rochdale high school, and another pair of spots near the west side of town where I’d met Sarah beneath the bed.
“What’s that place?” Patricia asked. She didn’t have to point, because it was obvious what she was referring to. Near the bottom of the map, between the river and Bailey Orchard, was a cluster of a dozen or more red spots that formed a large red welt on the map.
“That’s the old O’Connor Petting Zoo,” Sarah said.
“Petting zoo,” I repeated. “I never thought those words would fill me with dread.”
“I’m familiar with the story,” Patricia said, after a moment. “It’s a famous piece of local history. But the petting zoo wasn’t the scene of the crimes, simply where the bodies were discovered. Seven women, right?”
“And a child,” Sarah added. “They were digging up trees to build the alpaca pens and came across a mass grave about four feet down.”
I hadn’t heard the history. “Do they know who killed them?”
“Not for certain,” Patricia said, “although there are theories about the farmer who used to own the land, and about his teenaged son.” She paused, face suddenly inscrutable. “By the time the bodies were discovered in the 1960s, scientists determined that they’d been there for at least a century. Whoever put them there is long dead.”
