She ran for a long time. All she could hear were the leaves beneath her feet, and her own breath hurricane-loud. Finally, one foot caught in a shrubby tangle and she fell flat out, the guitar giving a loud twang.
She held her breath. No sound came from behind her. Of course, what she’d left behind could follow her without noise. She was sure of it. She closed her eyes tightly, as if that could erase what she’d seen. Not just what she’d seen, but the soft chewing crunch that echoed in her ears.
Eventually the cold seeped through her fear. First thing was to stay warm. She put her boots on and felt the ground beneath her. Dry leaves blanketed the ground; she collected them, crawling in a circle and reaching as far as she could to bring them close. Again and again, until she had enough and could burrow deep within.
She didn’t sleep. At all. By the time light began to color the sky, she wished she’d never made her deal, had never even thought twice about Cass. Sometimes she hated Cass more than anyone else she knew. Hated her for being selfish, for leaving, for not thinking about what it would be like for Blue to be left behind. Or worse, for thinking of it and not caring. Once she started thinking about that, she started thinking about everyone else she hated. Teena, for example, for turning on her.
Only, if she was honest, had it really been that way? Hadn’t she been pushing off, bit by bit, like a diver at the end of the board, wiggling her toes a little, feeling the bounce? Getting ready to go. Listening to Teena talking about them moving to Portland together, knowing it wasn’t what she wanted. Not saying it, though. Waiting, holding on to the whatever Teena punctuated every thought with, to Sundays watching Patriots games she didn’t care about, to belonging somewhere. What if Teena had been holding on, too, both of them afraid to let go?
She examined her hands in the pale sunlight. Both were scraped up pretty well from catching her as she’d fallen. A smart person would have packed Band-Aids, maybe even a whole first-aid kit. Then again, a smart person wouldn’t have been caught in the dark of the crossroads.
A chickadee sang close by, its winter call reminding her of snow, of home. She could have been there, warm, waking up to the beep of the alarm, smelling Lynne’s coffee from the kitchen. Not here, with no idea how to find her way out. With that . . . thing . . . from last night lurking somewhere.
A game, that’s what the woman in the red dress had called it. Find Cass, win the prize. Only today the game looked a lot more like bullfighting than chess. Even the crackle of leaves as she moved reminded her of the click of teeth.
Her feet hurt as if she’d spent the night kicking concrete blocks with them. She wanted to take off her boots, maybe bury them there, and walk away for good, leaving them the way Cass had left her. Instead, she stood up and stretched toward the rose-colored sky, turning around to examine her surroundings.
The leaves told the story of her dash through the dark. No sense in heading back along that trail. Away from her, the land sloped down. They’d driven up to get to Amy’s house last night, so down was clearly the right direction. Who cared what the boots might say—the one thing she wanted was miles between her and whatever might be inside Amy’s house.
She hadn’t walked more than ten minutes when she hit a steep downhill. Another five and she was on a road. She walked against the traffic, prepared to jump into the woods if a black SUV appeared. Or a police car, or . . . What kind of car would a soul-eating monster drive? Did he even need one? No cars passed, though, and she continued along the shoulder.
The man in the blue shirt had eaten Amy’s soul. When Blue had waited at the crossroads, she’d imagined losing her soul as dying. Amy hadn’t been dying, though—she’d been suffering.
If your soul was the truest part of you, what did you become once it was gone? A body, she suspected, able to continue on in the world—to eat, to sleep, to breathe. The missing piece would be different for each person. Music, or laughter, or kindness—it could be anything.
If Amy had made a deal, what would she have lost with her soul? What could possibly be worth that?
Saving your sister from the same fate.
She looked down the road, trying not to think about Cass. What made Jed real? Or Jill—what was the essential piece of Jill? What did they risk losing? The man she’d seen with Amy was also the man offering them a contract. She recognized his smell: hot and bad, like something toxic cooked on a Bunsen burner.
The bedtime story Mama used to tell her about the devil at the crossroads had felt nothing like this. “Robert Johnson and his guitar were just too big a temptation,” Mama would say. “The devil saw right through him, saw his potential, saw the way he burned to play that guitar, looked right into his very heart and saw it was made of the truest stuff there is, and right then and there, the devil made a choice.”
But Robert Johnson had just died young, not lived to have his guitar-playing torn out of him. Blue’s decision to make a deal had been all about the gesture, about getting Cass back. It was like a fairy tale; and in fairy tales the suffering never felt quite real. Now, having seen what waited for her, she wasn’t sure she would have chosen the same way.
She caught a ride with a little bird of a woman driving a dented green sedan. The woman was headed to work in a town west of Rochester, and she dropped Blue in front of a drugstore there. Blue mouthed a quick thanks and set out, her gear in tow.
In the drugstore, she grabbed a box of crackers and a couple of cheese sticks, along with some hydrogen peroxide and Band-Aids. She paid for them out of the fifty dollars she kept in her jeans. She needed to replenish her stash for a bus ticket. She’d do it in the bathroom, where no one would be watching.
Inside, she worked on her hands first. Hands taken care of, she moved on to pulling her greasy hair back tight with an elastic and brushing her teeth. Somewhat cleaner than she had been before, she opened the pocket of her backpack where she kept her wallet. The wallet was there.
The money was not.
All the money she’d taken out of her account, minus the bit she’d carried in her pocket, was gone. She pulled everything out of her bag, first that pocket and then all of them, but she knew she wouldn’t find it.
She’d been so stupid. She’d known when she got back to Marcos’s room and found her bag open that she hadn’t left it that way, but she’d looked at his house and everything he had and had assumed he wouldn’t touch her stuff. Rich kids didn’t steal, right? Stupid, stupid. Now she had . . . She took the cash out of her pocket. Thirty-seven dollars and fifty-six cents. Enough for a bus ticket to somewhere nearby. Not enough for a room.
Blue crouched down and rested her head in her hands as the world spun around her. She could hitch, sure, but where would she sleep? What would she eat, once the money ran out? The cheese and crackers wouldn’t last long.
A knock at the door made her draw a deep breath, wipe her eyes dry. She shoved everything back into her pack and left.
Outside, the sun shone and the wind tugged at her hair. She walked around the back of the building and leaned against the wall. What was she going to do? She could go to a police station and . . . what? Tell them some rich kid somewhere in Rochester had stolen her money? She didn’t even know Marcos’s last name.
Lynne? Lynne would come if Blue contacted her. One e-mail and even now, even after she had walked away, Lynne would come for her. Then she’d demand an explanation, and Blue would have to tell her a story she’d never believe. Lynne would think she was crazy. Maybe she was. Maybe she belonged in a psych ward.
She found some comfort in the thought, in the idea that the man in the blue shirt and the woman in the red dress were accidents of her mind and could be sent away by talking, by the right meds. She’d all but made up her mind to contact Lynne when she remembered the girl in the basement of Bet’s aunt’s house and the smoke rising from the rags at her feet.
If someone knew Blue’s name, she couldn’t stay with them for more than three days. Everyone in Eliotville knew her name. What would happen to t
hem if she returned?
She slapped the wall, just hard enough to redden her palm a little. Until she found Cass, she had no home. The only way to keep everyone safe was to keep moving. Everything else she had to work out for herself.
She returned to the front of the building and, for the first time, studied the town around her. It reminded her a bit of Portland—not too big, not too small, not too crowded on a sunny Tuesday in November. She caught a squirrel peering at her from a trash can as she looked up and down the street. The woman who’d given her a ride had said the bus station was a few blocks away. Blue started walking in the direction she’d pointed, hoping a plan would come to her along the way.
One block over she found a park. Not much, just a stretch of grass with a few leafless trees and three benches around an empty fountain. She crossed the street and sat down, careful to tuck her pack under her seat, one shoulder strap looped around her ankle.
The guitar case rested against her shins. No. She rejected the idea as quickly as it entered her head. The guitar was worth more than anything else she owned, here or at home, but she’d never sell it. Even before the woman in the red dress had conjured Mama up while playing it, she’d never ever have given it up.
The pigeons shied away as a group, breaking into flight. She looked up to see an old woman approaching. She was creaky, old, and dark-skinned, a dark green beret set atop her thin white hair, a neatly pressed plaid skirt covering tights-encased legs. Blue expected her to choose her own bench, but she made her slow way right up to Blue and sat down so close that she had to tuck her feet behind the guitar case.
“My, that’s a little nippy,” she said, wiggling side to side. “Careful you don’t get frozen in place here.”
Her slackened skin pleated around a pair of deep brown eyes that looked unfamiliar; but the smell—the heat, the sweetness and rot mixed together that blew from the woman’s skin . . . Blue yanked her notebook from her back pocket.
I’m deciding what to do next. Not staying.
She went back and underlined staying before holding the page up.
The old woman laughed. “Now, now, don’t you get yourself worked up, my dear. I’m just enjoying the sun.”
Liar!
The anger made her hand shake as she wrote.
You lied about everything. Did you have to take my money? It’s not a game, it’s just mean.
And then she did freeze, her hand stilling on the page. The snick of teeth chewing, the bubble from Amy’s mouth, her hand pawing, pawing. Whatever shape it took, the thing beside her was a monster.
The woman leaned closer, touched Blue’s hand and moved it so she could read the words. She tutted. “You can’t blame me for everything that happens. I didn’t take any money from you.”
Blue swallowed.
Amy. You did that, right in front of me.
She paused, afraid to continue. She had to know, though.
Is that what you’re going to do to me?
The old woman turned her attention to the returning pigeons. They shuffled forward cautiously, cocking their heads to see whether seeds were forthcoming. “Like I said, you can’t blame me for everything you see wrong in the world.”
How many of you are there? Mama said—the tightness in her chest came, the one that reminded her that from now on she’d always be a girl without a mother—you wait for the devil at the crossroads with your instrument + you make a deal. The thing you most want in exchange for your soul. She never said the world was full of devils and that they ate your soul.
“Child, you’ve made a deal. That’s the only thing you need to think about: your deal. I gave you what you need to find your heart’s desire, and I gave you time to do what needs doing. The rest is up to you.”
The cold from the bench had risen inside her, inch by chilling inch, until her teeth chattered and her hands shook.
The old woman sighed. The smell of a lit match blew forth from her mouth. She looked down at the watch on her wrist, a tiny silver thing on a band that creased her fragile skin. “It’s time for me to be going. Stay focused on our deal, Bluebird. It’s the only thing that matters.”
She put a hand down to push herself up from the bench, then stopped. Instead, she took Blue’s cheeks between her palms and leaned closer, until her papery lips touched Blue’s forehead. A shock, warmth rushing in, and something more, something like what had happened at the crossroads; only then it had been taking, and this, the pressure against her head, was gentle giving.
She let go. “That guitar, Bluebird, keep her close. She carries more answers than you can ever imagine.” She stood up and walked slowly toward the fountain, raising one leg and then the other to step inside before fading away completely.
Blue opened her mouth, certain her voice had come back. No sound came out, though. She’d felt something going into her. What else could it be but her voice? Unless it was another trick, and now she’d have seizures, or smallpox, or something else terrible. Or maybe it was just a kiss?
Unlikely.
She stayed on the bench. No longer cold, she opened the case and took out the guitar. At that moment, she would have taken answers to just about anything, but the guitar said nothing. Blue gave a hesitant strum. The cold strings responded off-key. She turned the first peg, listened closely.
The pigeons watched as she focused. Step by step, closing her eyes and tilting her head, until everything sounded the way it should. She smiled and opened her eyes. A little boy stood in front of her, his lower lip jutting out. A few steps back waited a woman who had to be his mother—same big brown eyes, same full lower lip.
“Go ahead and ask the nice lady,” the woman said.
The boy took a step closer. So little; he had to be three, maybe four. “You gonna play my song.” He reached toward the guitar, his tiny fat fingers curling as if to stroke a cat.
Blue shook her head. She hadn’t meant to play anything, just to hold the guitar while thinking about what she might do next. She didn’t even know any kids’ songs.
“You play song for me,” the little boy persisted. She looked at him, and he reached again toward the strings.
She shrugged, ready to pack up, only then she heard something. Music, lacy, like a dulcimer heard from several rooms away in an old farmhouse. Head up, she stared across the park, searching for someone else playing. No one was there, though, aside from pigeons and the boy and his mother.
The boy. She leaned toward him. The music was somehow inside him, as if he’d swallowed a music box. Only way better than a music box, more like he’d swallowed a real musician and her instrument. It was beautiful.
Okay, so the boy had music inside him. Was it any weirder than the woman in the red dress, or losing her voice, or any of the bad things that had happened? Either the world was full of crazy things, or she was the only crazy one. Schizophrenic—that could be it. She was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there.
Unlike everything else, though, the boy’s music didn’t make her afraid. It made her want to play. She strummed once or twice, then launched into a song Mama used to do for her and Cass, an old blues tune that reminded her of the clink of radiators in the winter, of cold hands warming around mugs of peppermint tea after they came in from playing in the snow.
The little boy shimmied along with the song, clapping his hands off beat, pumping his knees up and down. The pigeons, which had flown off at the first chord, came back in, clucking and cooing. Blue lifted her head to the sun, her foot tapping along. It felt good. More than good—it felt exactly right, as if the world had corrected its orbit.
At the end, the boy’s mother handed him something while whispering in his ear. He marched forward and dropped a couple of dollars into the case.
“Carter,” the mother said in a stage whisper. “Say thanks.”
He didn’t, rushing back to wrap his arms around his mother’s leg instead. The woman smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
Blue flashed her a peace sign, and the pair walke
d away.
Just like that, she had two dollars more than she’d had ten minutes ago. Maybe the guitar had more answers than she’d assumed.
Blue played right on through the early afternoon. Not constantly—when no one was around, she let the guitar rest in her lap and sucked on her sore fingertips. Real players built up calluses on their fingers. Hers were too soft, and the steel strings wore them raw. As soon as people walked by, though, she was all smiles, the pain her secret.
By the time she knew she couldn’t play another song, she’d made forty-eight dollars. There had been other mothers and kids stopping by, a whole little group at one point. At lunchtime a couple of men in suits had listened for a song. They’d each tossed a ten in before leaving together. She’d heard them as they walked away, something about a college band and where had the time gone.
The money didn’t come close to making up for what Marcos had stolen, but it gave her hope. The guitar was the answer, just the way the woman in the red dress had said. All she had to do was play. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it before. Tish had survived her travel along the Gully by busking. But Tish was a genius, and Blue was just . . . Blue.
That afternoon, Blue started walking, unsure what she should do. She had enough money now for food, and either a bus ticket or a place to stay. Not all three. She’d stayed out in the woods at home with just a sleeping bag plenty of times. That was in a place she knew well, though. And with a sleeping bag—that was the real difference. The night before, she’d managed okay because she’d had leaves for insulation. The thought of spending the night in a doorway with no sleeping bag or leaves made her stomach ache.
Eventually Blue came across a two-story brick building with HEFFLELAND MEMORIAL LIBRARY printed in black on the white sign on the lawn. Libraries, every one she’d ever known, were warm and welcoming, and full of information. The perfect place to sit and figure things out.
Devil and the Bluebird Page 7
