ROWAN
I ran. Over the grass. Water splashing around my ankles. I leapt through the scratchy bushes at the edge of our backyard. And then I was surrounded by darkness, thick and heavy on my skin.
I slowed down. An arm bent, my face tucked into my elbow, I swung my other hand around. Patted the trees and branches. Rain rolled from leaf to leaf, striking my head, sliding down my back. The lightning flashed, giving me a snapshot. I crept forward. Step by step.
Keep a straight line. You’ll get there.
I lifted my legs up and over imaginary boulders. Moss squished under my feet, then rocks, dead twigs. Scraping me. My skin so cold I could barely feel it. But I was doing it. I was getting away from her. And him, too. I hated them both. How could Telly do that? He was the one who told me not to tell about my stupid bus ride to the garage. And then, when he didn’t like my old ladies jab, which was just the truth, he opened his mouth and spilled everything. He was worse than my school counselor. Worse because he was my own father. And what was wrong with going to see him anyway? Even Mrs. Spooner thought it was a good idea.
But Mrs. Spooner didn’t know them. Nobody did. Gloria only cared about herself. And Telly was nothing more than a charlatan. A swindler. Who would have guessed he’d con his own son? Make me actually believe he loved me. Well, I wasn’t going to fall for that shit again. I was never going back there. Maisy would just have to fend for herself.
Another flash, then sudden darkness. I closed my eyes to hold the image, but everything was unfamiliar. The looming trees, the gnarled branches. I didn’t know the way. Go! Move! My heart fluttered and panic squeezed the hard lump in my throat. Inside my head, I tried to focus on Carl’s voice. Hey, Magic Boy. Carl was my friend. I was certain of that. Gloria was wrong; she always said I’d never make friends. But that was before she made that sign and pointed at a tree. Told me not to move. And Carl came along and let me follow him. Didn’t ask for a single thing in return, and just invited me to stay. That was friendship.
I tried to keep a straight line. One foot in front of the other. I felt something glide past my leg. Wet and furry. I jumped. An animal? Or moss on a rock? Didn’t dare reach down to touch it.
Carl will be there. He was always there. But what if, this one time, he isn’t? He said he was going to be there until he died, or was reclaimed, was it? But was Carl a reliable person? What if he and Girl took off? Moved to another bridge. What if there was nobody waiting?
What if I’m alone in here?
Another flash. The woods had grown denser. It felt like hours since Gloria had turned me out. Since Maisy had watched me from inside. Fear made my lungs wheeze. I rushed ahead, fingers spread, grasping and tearing. A root grabbed my ankle. I stumbled. Face struck. A stone? A log? I was on all fours now. Pain radiated out from my chin, and my throat swallowed mouthful after mouthful of watery blood. My tongue felt a gap near my bottom lip. Then a small pebble. No. My tooth! I spit it into my hand. Pushed it to the bottom of my back pocket.
Leaves and bark and dirt stuck to my arms and legs. Stuck to my neck. In my hair. I sat back on my heels. Lightning flashed again. Thunder cracked. Rain dropped through the trees, blanketing me. It was drowning me. I was shaking. Could hear clanking inside my head.
What was I thinking, running away? What did I even know about Carl? His mother was a ghost. He acted like he could read the future. He had a nice dog, but he also had three different people chattering inside his skull. He liked to eat food from a package or a can and he thought birds were picking surveillance wires out of trees and every time I saw him his eyes were redder, and his beard was thinner, and he talked more and more about the workers.
Gloria was right. I’d never have friends. Who was Carl? I didn’t even know his last name. And of course I didn’t know where he actually lived because Carl didn’t have a home. Now I was stuck in the black woods without even a pair of sneakers. I could find my way back if I wanted, but I didn’t want that either. I hated Gloria. And I hated Telly. And I loved them, too, so much. But no matter how hard I tried, they just wouldn’t love me back. Why wouldn’t they love me? Why wouldn’t they? What was wrong with me?
Then I couldn’t stop it. My mouth opened and saliva and blood and sobs barreled out of me in great heaves. I was nothing. I was a stupid kid, with no mom. With no dad. Getting what I deserved. And I didn’t even care.
* * *
—
I don’t know how long I crouched, shivering in the tarry darkness, my whole jaw throbbing. A pulse inside my bones. But finally the rain became lighter and I could make out small shapes, shadows. When I looked to my left, I saw a faint glow. From a fire? I thought I smelled a thread of sweetness from burning wood. That must be him. That must be where the bridge was.
As I got up and inched forward, my knees were knocking together. The moon was still behind thick clouds, but I followed sounds from the creek. Then I saw the solid blackness of the stones. I pushed through the bushes, and he was there. Under the bridge. Hunched by a fire. Rocking back and forth, a blanket over his back. The rain had finally stopped, and above the gurgling water I could hear Carl humming. Loud and long and tense, like an old generator. He pulled in a raspy breath. Then more humming.
“He’s not good,” Maisy had said. “I think he might be a wolf.”
Icy skin tightened along my spine.
What was I doing? Was it safe to be here? With this stranger?
I edged toward the fire. I was so cold, even my bones were rattling. Carl looked like an enormous animal with its shaggy head lowered. Girl leapt up, snarled. Then Carl lifted his wild mane and blinked. He stood, blanket crumpling at his feet, and I held my breath. The humming hitched in his throat. And stopped.
* * *
—
Girl raced toward me and licked my hand. Carl mumbled, “No, no, he doesn’t. Electricity released in the air. You don’t, urh, look so good.”
When he said that last part, I started crying again. My legs were shaking and my nose was running. Tears dropped off my chin. You’re acting like a baby, Gloria’s voice, a whisper in my mind. But Carl didn’t smirk or laugh. Instead his eyebrows knotted together and he twisted the hair in his beard.
“I’m so stupid.” I tried to say this, to explain to Carl, but it sounded all jangled. My mouth was swollen. When I tapped it with my thumb, the skin felt like it might burst.
“What’s that?”
“Stupid,” I tried a second time.
“Stupid,” he said back. He shone a flashlight in my face and I lifted my hand to block it. When he clicked off the light he said, “I got it, I do. I got it, Dot.” Carl picked up the blanket he’d been using, and came toward me. “Sure, now. Urh. Don’t be like that.” He shook his head forcefully. “You’re wrong, Stan. Without proof there’s only doubt. First year, first day. The brightest room in the whole solar system.”
Sometimes Carl made no sense at all, but it didn’t matter. I don’t know why I was so scared when I got there. He was the exact same as he’d been all summer. Peculiar, but welcoming. He put the blanket over my shoulders and it was still warm, and even though my face throbbed, my chest filled with relief. I was with a person who knew me and cared about me and would never, ever leave me outside in lightning.
He nudged me toward the fire. I sat down, wrapped the blanket over my knees. A long time passed before I stopped shaking. The smoke smelled good.
“I thought you were Workers,” Carl said. His fingers combed through his hair, worked the twists of metal. Fixing them tighter. “Workers coming to find me. They rang my doorbell once. Stood right on the, the, urh, steps of my house.”
I shook my head. There was a low drone inside my skull.
“Hard to tell sometimes. Workers only come in twos, though. Dressed better than you, and I never saw them cry before. They tried to tell me a message out of a book. A message about, urh, a powerful being. Wires, urh, hidden under their coats.”
I wished Carl wouldn’t talk about people
who worked. Everyone worked. There was nothing wrong with that. My stomach started quivering like I was scared. But I couldn’t be scared. I was with Carl. I knew Carl. I’d known him for weeks. He was a good person.
I heard plastic crinkling then. “You hungry?” he asked.
“My tooth.” I pointed at my mouth and started crying again.
“My tooth,” he said.
Flashlight in my face again, and he reached out and pulled down my lip.
“An avulsion injury. You got it, Magic Boy? Teeth decay. Teeth depart. It’s the government. They start with a seed and then they cultivate and pull…”
I couldn’t make out the last bit, but I nodded.
“Give it to me.”
I fished in my pocket and handed him the sticky shard. I thought Carl was going to hide it away somewhere inside his coat. Maybe he’d think it was good luck. But he didn’t; he went to the creek and bent down. He was a boulder stooped at the edge. He mumbled, “Water will have to do. No milk. Of course I know what I’m doing, Dot. I just. I’m trying to think and do.”
He crunched back over the pebbles and knelt beside me. He had the flashlight tucked up into his armpit, and he pulled my lip down again. His fingers were in my mouth. I tasted bitterness, and I closed my eyes. Lips stretched, my jaw shook up and down and I felt him guiding the tooth down into its socket. “Urh. I think it’s level there,” he said. “Should stick.” Then he cupped his hand under my chin so that my mouth stayed closed. Held it there for a moment. Ever so gently.
“It’s going to be fine, Magic Boy.” He laughed loudly, then cocked his head. “You’re right, you’re right. Unless I got it the wrong way around.”
I ran my tongue over it. I tried not to budge it. I put my head down on my knees. Throbbing moved through my chin, out through my ears. The woods around us glowed when lightning jagged to the north. But it was far away. The storm had ended. Through the trees I thought I saw the moon. Bright and yellow and nearly full.
Carl went back and sat down next to Girl. “Sure, sure. It’s okay to tell him that,” he said. “It’s not confidential.” Girl kicked out her legs, moved her body closer to Carl. With her paw, she clawed her toy squirrel toward her. Took its pointed face in her mouth. “He was trying to get currents to move around outside wires. The man. Then the government got, got, got, urh, hold of his research. They shoot it through the air when it’s raining. That’s the testing phase.”
“Oh,” I said. I blinked. It sort of made sense, though, but I wasn’t sure. It was different from what I’d read in a science book Mrs. Spooner lent me from the library. And it was hard to think about anything with the pain. Part of me felt as though I was drifting. Floating up. I was warm. My eyes closed.
“Strange, though, urh,” he said. Carl stood up again, walked back and forth. “Stan? You think that’s proof? I don’t know, I don’t know. He’s only one, not two. Like the Workers with their books. Magic Boy did show, show, show, urh, up when they let the electricity out. Flying through the sky. I wonder…”
That was the last thing I remembered Carl saying. I followed the sound of his pacing as I was falling asleep.
Curled in a ball by the fire, I dreamt about Gran. When I was little, I lived with Gran. I must have lived with Gloria and Telly before that, when I was a baby, but Gran is the first person I remember. In the dream I could see the two white whiskers poking out of her chin, and her skin smelled like gingersnap cookies. But as I leaned into her she started to smell strange. Like old cheese or fish. Then she was licking me. Her rough pink tongue gliding up my cheek. I shook my head. “Gran,” I whispered. “Stop it.” She licked me again. She really missed me a lot. Too bad she’s already dead.
I laughed. Pain shot through my tooth and my eyes opened. At first I didn’t know why I was on the ground. Why there was no ceiling above me. Then the memories all rushed back. Gloria. The storm. Running away. Finding Carl. The way he held my chin after he’d fixed my tooth.
Girl was beside me, lapping at my face. I looked around. Gray light filled the space under the bridge. The creek trickled over the rocks and in the distance a morning bird called. My jaw pulsed, and my neck and back were stiff.
But as bad as everything had been last night, morning still arrived.
“Hey, Carl.”
“Good,” he said. “About time.” He twisted a section of his beard and yanked. “You need, need, need, urh, to get up. Get up right away.”
MAISY
I didn’t mean to, but I fell asleep next to the sliding door in the kitchen. It was me and Chicken and Jenny the Head, and I woke up when Chicken started whining because he needed to go pee. I got up and looked at the black switch, and I saw that it was still snapped down tight. Then I knew Rowan never came home. He never broke open the door and stepped over me and snuck into his bed. I lifted up the lock and let Chicken outside. I went out too, and then tiptoed across the deck and the grass and over to the edge of the woods. The sun was already getting hot but it still looked wet and dark in there. I whispered, “Rowan, you can come out now. You don’t need to hide no more. You can come home.” But Rowan didn’t say nothing back, and my middle went twisty when I remembered about Carl.
I walked back and sat on the deck. I sat in the same spot where Rowan was. Water from the storm went through my shorts, but I didn’t care. Chicken finished his business and came and plopped down next to me. He didn’t care about the water neither. He was warm, and I pushed in close. Me and Chicken watched the woods together. We waited and waited. I picked all the tiny bits of wet grass off my feet. I pulled some burrs out of Chicken’s fur. Then I put my face near his ear. “Rowan’s not with Carl. Right, Chicken? He’s going to come out of the woods any second.” Chicken yawned and closed his eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I jumped. Gloria was yelling out from the kitchen.
“Talking to a dog? Get up from there and come inside.”
I went into the kitchen. Gloria’s hair was puffed and there was still black under her eyes.
“Go wake up your brother. I want him scraping down the porch. All that flaking paint gone.”
“He’s not home, Gloria.”
“What? Up and out already?”
I shook my head.
“That kid spends more time at the library than the bloody librarians.”
I shook my head again.
“Well, he better not be up at that old bat’s house.”
“Mrs. Spooner?”
“You got that right.”
“He went into the woods. I saw him last night. I slept with Chicken and the door was locked and he never came back.” I closed my mouth then. I couldn’t tell about Carl, because I swore on Telly’s future grave.
“What?”
I nodded.
“Well, that can’t be right. He’s got himself poked away somewhere. He’s not that senseless.”
I followed Gloria upstairs and she opened Rowan’s bedroom and looked at his messy bed and all the books spilled on the floor. “Pigsty,” she said. Then she went down the stairs and out the front door and across the porch. She went around the side of the house where the clothesline was. The dead bird grave was there, and the basket was full of soggy clothes. “Well, he’ll be hanging those up again,” she said. “When he comes out from wherever he’s hiding.” She opened the door of the shed and poked around. I hugged Jenny the Head tight and stayed right behind her. “I don’t know where that boy’s got to.” Then she went back to the front of the house and walked up the driveway to the circle. Muck stuck to her slippers, and she waved at Darrell. He was digging dandelions out of Aunt Erma’s lawn, but he stopped when Gloria called out, “You seen Rowan?”
“Nope. Not this morning.”
“Early bird today, it seems!” She laughed, and Darrell shrugged. He threw the weeds into a bucket.
She turned around and pinched my chin. “What game’s he trying to play with me?”
“No game, Gloria.” My mouth was dry
and my heart was going tak-tak-tak. Carl was not a game, was he?
“You know where he’s got to, miss.” Her breath smelled like Chicken’s. “I know it.”
“I think—I think he ran away.”
“If you’re lying to Gloria…” she said.
That was not a lie.
Then she marched back inside, and I could hear her on the phone. “Thanks ever so much, Mrs. Spooner. First place I thought was the library. You know how much he enjoys it there. You’ve always been a lovely influence on him.” I snuck into the kitchen. She hung up and walked around the kitchen opening cupboard doors and then slamming them closed. When the phone rang again she grabbed it, said, “No? Even checked the bathrooms?” She tapped her foot. “He got into an awful argument with Telly last night. Misses him terribly, I figure that’s the root of it. Mm-hmm. Yes, he came to visit, trying to sort things out and all. I’m just worried about Rowan.” Then she was biting hard at her mouth. “Yes, I’m sure he’s fine. That age, you know. Sure, sure, if he shows up, I’d appreciate it. You’re a godsend.” She put the phone back again. Hard this time.
Gloria went upstairs, and a long while later she came down with a dress on. It had blue and yellow flowers, and her hair was curled nice. The black was gone off her cheeks and they were turned pink. She made me and her a sandwich. She didn’t cut it into a heart like she did sometimes. It was dry but I ate it all. After lunch she washed our plates and all the dirty stuff from last night and told me to broom up the floor. Then when the kitchen was sparkly, she picked up the phone and called Telly.
“He’s just gone,” she said. “Yes. That’s what I said. Since last night.”
She used a mean voice. She told him Rowan was so upset after dinner he got some madness in his head. He just up and took off. She said the mess was Telly’s fault. He was a useless disaster of a father. Completely worthless. After all the work she’d done to get Rowan on a straight path, he brought on this garbage. “Yep, yep,” she said. “You heard me. Surely you can’t be that thick.”
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