Accidental Evil

by Ike Hamill

  Concern tightened the girl’s face. “Ms. Yettin? Do you remember me? I’m Lily? Lily Hazard?”

  April looked at the girl with fresh eyes and tried to see her all at once. It was so difficult to not focus in on one little detail, like the way her toes stretched down to balance her on top of the big bike, or the dust caked on the inseams of her jeans. She moved her gaze up to the girl’s eyes and saw them surrounded by a much younger face. This girl, Lily, was from the past?

  “You’re Lily?”

  “Yes!” Lily said. “From fourth and fifth grade? You remember me?”

  “Who and that?” April asked. She didn’t know what the question meant. It had been supplied by the back of her brain—the part that knew what a Gettysburg accent sounded like.

  “Yes!” Lily said. “That’s me! I still get frustrated when people say ‘that’ when they mean ‘who.’”

  “Language is fluid,” April said.

  Lily smiled. “You’re right. You always said that and you’re right.” Lily leaned her bike over to the side and swung her leg over the handle bars. “You need help finding your house, Ms. Yettin?”

  “No,” April said. The girl wasn’t a robot, but the robots might be tracking her. The last thing she wanted was for the robots to know where she lived. She shook her head to reset everything. Of course the robots already knew where she lived—they were the ones who kept moving the house. Why shouldn’t this girl help her find her house?

  “Yes,” April said.

  Lily’s face melted from concern to a smile. She was pleased. This made April pleased. The girl was too skinny to be tracked by robots.

  “Come on,” Lily said. “I think I know where to look for your house.”

  “Don’t let them see,” April said.

  “No,” Lily said, shaking her head. “Of course not.”

  Chapter 9 : Hazard

  [ Shepherd ]

  “MS. YETTIN!” LILY SAID.

  Her grade school teacher, April Yettin, had been veering towards the street again. Lily let Ms. Yettin roam ahead and then snuck between her and the road. She used the bike to separate herself from Ms. Yettin. She wasn’t afraid of her; not exactly. She was a little scared, but she still saw the kind teacher under the layers of disease.

  Every time she veered, it started the same way. Ms. Yettin would blink several times and then jerk her head. Lily’s father kept an old record player in his study. The arm of the record player moved like Ms. Yettin’s head. It would hit a scratch and then jerk back. That’s what Ms. Yettin would do right before she veered off course—her needle would skip.

  “My house should be over here somewhere.”

  “No, Ms. Yettin,” Lily said. “You’re on the other side of the dam, remember? You moved two years ago.”

  Ms. Yettin turned and looked directly at Lily. The girl’s hand automatically clamped down on the handlebars of the bike. She accidentally squeezed one of the brake levers and the bike skidded to a stop under her hands.

  “They moved me,” Ms. Yettin said. “They move the whole house. They do it all the time.”

  “Okay,” Lily said. “You’re on the other side of the dam, okay? Let’s go over there and I’ll show you.”

  Ms. Yettin laughed at Lily. “We’ll see.”

  “There’s Ricky,” Lily said. She pointed as she got her bike rolling again. Ricky was taking a black bag of trash across to the green dumpster. When he saw Lily and Ms. Yettin, he waved.

  Ms. Yettin stopped.

  “Come on, Ms. Yettin, there’s a way to go yet. You’re in the house up here on the right, remember?”

  Lily thought it was nice that Ms. Yettin could walk around Kingston Lakes and remain pretty safe. Lily’s mother didn’t agree. She thought that Ms. Yettin should be taken somewhere supervised, where she wouldn’t be a danger to herself or the people around her. Lily hated that idea. Lily thought that a community should take care of its own, especially when that person used to be a teacher. They were public servants—they deserved respect.

  Ms. Yettin was focused on Ricky.

  “You remember Ricky? You loved him—he wrote that essay on boats that you sent to that magazine? Remember?”

  “He’s infected,” Ms. Yettin whispered.

  “Pardon?” Lily asked.

  Ms. Yettin turned to Lily and then jabbed a finger towards Ricky. A dozen yards away and preoccupied with disposing of the trash bag, Ricky didn’t notice.

  “Can’t you see the thing following him around like a dog on a leash?” Ms. Yettin asked.

  Lily’s eyes grew wide.

  “Ms. Yettin, that’s just Ricky…”

  “He thinks that it’s doing his bidding, but it’s the other way around,” Ms. Yettin said. “He’s infected with robots and they’re going to boil his bones for the marrow. It’s not as good as fat, but they’ll take what they can get.”

  “You gotta get home,” Lily said. She started pushing her bike again, and almost hoped that Ms. Yettin wouldn’t follow. For the first time, Lily began to wonder if maybe her mother had a point. Maybe some people were a little too creepy to be left to their own devices.

  Ms. Yettin began to walk again. When Lily sped up, so did her former teacher.

  “He’s infected,” Ms. Yettin whispered to herself. Lily held her breath so she could hear what the woman was saying. “Regular people can’t see the thing following him around.”

  “Come on this way, Ms. Yettin,” Lily said. She pushed front wheel of her bike into the crosswalk, declaring her intention to the line of cars. A gap developed and Lily began to roll through. Ms. Yettin followed, but still seemed distracted by Ricky.

  “We’ll have to cut off his head. That will cure it,” Ms. Yettin said.

  “What was that?” Lily asked.

  Ms. Yettin only smiled in response. Through the gap in her lips, her gums showed. They looked like they might be oozing blood.

  “Come on this way,” Lily said. She rolled her bike on the path between two buildings. There were a few land-locked houses in the wide place between the road and the lake. They could only be reached on foot. When Phil Harpswell had his new refrigerator installed the year before, they had taken it in through the Trundell house and out the back door in order to get to the Harpswell place. Lily hadn’t seen it, but she had heard the story from several reliable sources.

  The Yettin house was easier to get to. There was a path nearly wide enough to fit a car. In fact, Lily and Ms. Yettin walked side by side with the bike between them. They didn’t stop at the front door, but continued on to the side of the house. There was a staircase tacked onto the side of the building. It was painted white and had black no-skid pads glued to each tread. Lily rested her bike against the railing.

  “You want me to walk you up?” Lily asked.

  “No,” Ms. Yettin said with wide eyes. “You’ll fall through the holes. They lead down into hell.”

  Lily hunched her shoulders up towards her ears and grabbed her bike. “Okay,” she said, trying to remain cheery. Public servant or not, she didn’t have the energy to show any more resect to Ms. Yettin. She just wanted to get out of there before the woman said something else creepy.

  “Stay safe, Ms. Yettin. Good to see you.”

  Lily waited as Ms. Yettin climbed the staircase without a farewell or thanks. Lily didn’t mind. As long as the woman was gone, she didn’t care if she ever gave thanks. When Ms. Yettin disappeared through the door at the top of the stairs, Lily rolled her bike to the house’s front door. She rang the bell and counted down from fifty. There would be no answer. If anyone was home, they wouldn’t have let Ms. Yettin go out wandering.

  She got to thirty-four when the door opened.

  “Hi, Mr. Yettin,” Lily said. She looked left and then right before she came up with his name—Harold. It didn’t matter. He would always be Mr. Yettin to her. It was an unwritten rule in her house—local adults were always Mr. or Ms.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  The inside of the h
ouse behind him was lost in darkness. She could only see his face and the bright outline of the window on the backside of the house behind him.

  “I just thought you should know—I walked Ms. Yettin home.” She pumped her finger up towards the second floor so he would know what she was talking about. “She was down near the Grill.”

  “Okay. Thank you so much,” he said. He didn’t move to shut the door.

  “She seemed a little confused,” Lily said, as she tucked her hair behind her ear. She wanted him to acknowledge that it had been wrong for the woman to be walking around. It didn’t seem like she was going to get her wish.

  He angled the door slightly more closed so she was just looking at the center of his face.

  When he spoke again, his voice was lower, like he was telling her a secret. “It’s harder now that Roger is back in jail. I’m not sure why, but his visits helped level her out.”

  Lily tried to think of something to say. It wasn’t her place—she was just a kid. Lily desperately wanted to help. “If there’s anything my family can do, Mr. Yettin… We all feel bad about what has happened, and…”

  She didn’t get to finish the thought. The door was finally all the way closed.

  Lily picked up her bike and walked it back out to the street.

  [ Winding ]

  Lily walked her bike along the shoreline. It was tough going, but it gave her time to think. Nobody ever took her seriously. When she attacked a problem, she could make real changes, but nobody ever believed in her enough to let her help. She was too young, too skinny, and too blond. Mr. Yettin had just closed the door in her face. Why should he listen to a little girl’s ideas about his niece?

  The worst part was that Ms. Yettin had been one of the few adults who had believed in Lily. They had tackled the cat shelter problem together, and that had been all Lily’s idea. Together, they had saved the lives of countless cats and helped a couple of families understand how they could help control the stray cat population. Everyone had won. It never would have happened if Ms. Yettin hadn’t believed in Lily, but it also never would have happened if Lily hadn’t kept pushing. Now Ms. Yettin was the one who needed help and there was nobody who would believe in Lily enough to help.

  She stopped her bike.

  A group of three kids—mushroom heads—were squatting on the grass, feeding the ducks. Lately it seemed like most of the Summer Kids were mushroom heads. It was Sarah’s term for those kids who had big round bowls of hair on top of their heads. These kids looked like they were wearing helmets of hair.

  “Not too much,” Lily said. The three kids had a whole loaf of bread in a bag. Her sister Elizabeth said that ducks were too stupid to know when to stop eating.

  “Too much what?” the girl asked. Lily was lucky. She was able to talk to the Summer Kids without them sneering at her. If Sarah or Jenny tried to instruct the kids, they would have been quickly dismissed. Lily had been born less than ten miles from Kingston Lakes, but she would always be “From Away.” Some families were locals and some were From Away, and the two were never confused by Summer Kids. Lily didn’t know how they detected it, but they always did.

  “Too much bread,” Lily said. “It’s good to give them a little bread—maybe a slice or two—but if you give them the whole loaf, it can be bad for them.”

  “They’re stupid,” one of the boys said. Lily nodded.

  “Is it true that these ducks are the ones they have for dinner?” a boy asked.

  “No,” Lily said. The Kingston Village Inn restaurant was famous for its duck dinner. “No, those ducks come from up the road. There’s a farm on the left as you’re headed up towards Farmington.”

  “Those are turkeys,” the girl said.

  “They have ducks there too,” Lily said. Maybe it was the fact that she was willing to talk to the Summer Kids—maybe that’s why they didn’t sneer at her. The only time Sarah talked to Summer Kids was when she was taking their ice cream order. She would have never talked to these kids. Sarah probably would have never even walked along this part of the shore. This was a place where people vacationed. Sarah stuck to more practical places.

  One of the boys snatched the bag of bread and that seemed to break the spell. The mushroom head Summer Kids all ran back around the building to find their parents. Rooms at the Kingston Village Inn were small, but nice. Lily couldn’t even imagine how much their parents were paying for the privilege of staying there in the height of summer. With all that money, they should be able to afford a nanny to watch the kids and make sure they didn’t overfeed all the local ducks.

  Lily cocked her head—maybe that was the solution. Maybe Ms. Yettin could be a nanny for Summer Kids. There were always tons of them running around, and Ms. Yettin had nothing but time. She shook the idea out of her head. It was stupid. Ms. Yettin seemed way too crazy. Nobody would ever trust her with their kids.

  Lily pushed her bike through the grass and rolled it up the stone path that led back up towards the road. It was easy to save the ducks, and at one point in the past she and Ms. Yettin had managed to save a bunch of cats. Now she just had to think of a way to save Ms. Yettin.

  When she saw a familiar stride walking up the road, Lily pushed faster. As soon as she was close enough, she called.

  “Jenny!”

  Chapter 10 : Hilliard

  [ Job ]

  JENNY SPOTTED LILY DOWN the path. She picked up her pace and hoped that the girl didn’t see her.

  “Jenny!” Lily yelled.

  Jenny stopped with a sigh. She had been spotted. It wouldn’t do any good to keep walking. The girl would catch up with her eventually. The town wasn’t big enough for Jenny to avoid Lily for long.

  She put on a fake smile as Lily approached. “Hi,” she said.

  “How did it go?” Lily asked.

  Jenny knew exactly what she was talking about, but it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. She played dumb. “What?”

  “The job!” Lily said. She bounced the front tire of her bike with excitement. It made Jenny sick. Lily was a girl who would never have to work for anything. It was nauseating that she would get so excited over someone else getting a job. And to make things worse, Jenny hadn’t even gotten the job. Without the work, she would never have enough money to buy a car, and she was going to be sixteen before the school year started. If she didn’t have a car to drive on the first day of school, she would be devastated.

  Now Lily—who would never have to work for the money to buy a car—wanted a news report on Jenny’s failure.

  “I didn’t get it,” Jenny said.

  “What?” Lily asked. Her face froze with shock. She stopped bouncing the bike.

  Jenny frowned and started walking again. “I didn’t get it, okay? What else is there to say?”

  “But why? What about your dad? Couldn’t he put in a good word for you?”

  “He doesn’t have to put in a good word for me,” Jenny said. “He owns the whole damn building. If he wanted me to have the job, I would have it. He must not want me to work. That’s all it can be.” She walked quickly and barely gave Lily enough room on the sidewalk for her and her bike. Lily was forced to slip behind Jenny and shout her end of the conversation.

  “Did you hear about Jeffrey Cormier?” Lily asked.

  Jenny’s stride hitched a tiny bit. She couldn’t help it. His was one name that would always make her pause. “What about him?”

  “He ran off with Carla Gault,” Lily said. Jenny slowed down and let her come even on her other side.

  “Where did they go?” Jenny asked. Her eyes darted around as she tried to remember the last time she had seen Carla. Was there a chance that Carla had maybe been sporting a little extra bump at her waistline? Did Jeffrey get Carla in trouble? The last she’d heard, Jeffrey and Carla weren’t even a couple. Yes, they liked to hang around together, but there was nothing romantic. But who knew what had happened once Jeffrey had moved out of his father’s house and into the bunkhouse over the big barn. Jenn
y had heard stories of really good parties up there, but she had never been invited to any. Those parties were for older kids.

  “Nobody knows for sure,” Lily said. “Listen, you can’t tell anyone. I’m not even supposed to know. If Mr. Cormier finds out, Sarah will kill us.”

  “Relax. Who would I tell?” Jenny asked.

  One of the cars rolling slowly by honked their horn. Jenny raised a hand to the boy.

  “Who was that?” Lily asked.

  “Danny Crosby. He goes to Maranacook. You don’t know him.”

  Lily whipped her head around to try to get a better look at the boy and Jenny smiled. Truth be told, she wasn’t entirely sure it was Danny Crosby. The license plates were from New Hampshire, so it could have been some random boy. She liked the look of awe that settled on Lily’s face though. She ought to be in awe. Jenny was way more mature than Lily or even Sarah, who was nearly a year older.

  “Are you going to the show tonight?” Lily asked. “Maybe we could ride bikes down there and sit together.”

  “I might go,” Jenny said. “But I’m not riding bikes.” She frowned down at Lily’s bike. The thing was absurd. It was way too big for Lily and clearly a hand-me-down from her older sister, Elizabeth. Her sister was way taller, way more pretty, and had looked completely natural on that bike. Lily looked like a child when she tried to ride it.

  “How will you get there?”

  “I’ll get a ride from someone. I don’t know,” Jenny said.

  “Find me if you go,” Lily said. She angled her bike towards the crosswalk. The cars already started to slow down as she neared the crosswalk. Everyone—even the Summer People—knew you had to stop for the crosswalk.

  “Okay,” Jenny said. She didn’t mean it. If she went, and she probably wouldn’t, she would find someone better to sit with.

  “Bye!” Lily said. She rolled across the road between the cars before she got on her bike again. Jenny watched as it wobbled until Lily got enough speed to be stable.