by Susan Vaught
When I opened it, a clink echoed through the house, like one of Dad’s weights was being set on the floor.
I kept listening.
I thought I made out the soft whump of the door of the little bedroom shutting.
I carried the meatloaf meals down the steps, slow so I didn’t spill anything. When I got to the little bedroom, I had to set them on the floor to turn the door handle.
The door pushed open easily.
When I looked into the room, that’s when I started to get nervous.
It seemed spotless and completely empty. No sounds. No unusual smells. No movement. I picked up the meatloaf meals and went inside, glancing at the bathroom and each of the room’s corners. The single closet door was shut, but when I spoke, I directed my words at the bed—under it, to be exact, because under the bed made more sense than anything.
“I know you’re in here.”
No response came from the bed.
“I figured you were tired of peanut butter and lunch junk, so I made you some real dinner. Well, mostly real. It’s not fish sticks, at least.”
Heart beating fast now, I stood there holding the meals and watching the bed and waiting. Nothing happened.
You’re crazy, my brain told me. Completely bonkers. Deranged, insane, certifiable. Out to lunch, screwy, nuts. Looney, flaky, cuckoo. The insults went on forever. I probably could have stood there a few hours thinking up new ones, but I didn’t think we had that kind of time before Steph showed up.
“You might as well come out and talk to me,” I told the bed. Half-baked, one bushel shy of a full crop, not playing with a full deck. “I found the letters from Carl Abrams, and I think I remember most of what happened.”
Mental. A fruitcake. A freak.
Out of my tree. Off my gourd. Completely unhinged.
I sighed. “Look, my DCFS worker is on the way, and the police will be here soon to talk to Dad about everything, and they’ll probably search the house and find you. You want to go with them full or starving?”
Goofy. Psycho. Touched in the head.
The bedspread moved a fraction, right at the bottom. I saw a little hand, just a flash of fingers, then it was gone. I jumped hard enough that I almost dropped the meatloaf trays, but managed to keep hold of them even though hot gravy sloshed on both of my thumbs.
Somebody let out a loud breath.
Then the bedspread moved a lot, and I saw the top of a head with black hair. Then I saw the rest of a head and some shoulders. . . .
And finally a whole girl crawled out, dragging her long legs until she could crouch on the floor.
CHAPTER
18
It Doesn’t Matter Anymore When the Fire Was, Does It?
Cissy Abrams stared straight at me.
I stood between her and the little bedroom door and stared right back at her. I waited for my ears to buzz and for my nose to tell me I was smelling smoke. I waited for the world to change and to see things and get dizzy and pass out and spill meatloaf everywhere.
Nothing happened, except that I felt relieved. Everything went quiet inside me, for the first time since the Abrams fire.
Nothing kept right on happening after that, except Cissy and me staring at each other, even when I squinted at her hands and arms, searching for any trace of the blood flecks from my nightmares and flashbacks. Of course there weren’t any. She would have showered since then, in the bathroom attached to the little bedroom, probably while I was at school and Dad worked. Her dark hair looked clean enough, and she had it pulled back in a neon-green scrunchie I recognized as one of Mom’s. She had on a pair of Mom’s white shorts, too, and one of Mom’s yellow tank tops. Her feet were bare, but they weren’t dirty, and she had that pale look people get when they stay inside all the time or use whole bottles of sunscreen and wear big floppy sunhats and sit under umbrellas.
Cissy must have decided I wasn’t going to scream or bite her, because she reached under the bed and helped her brother out from their hiding place. Doc escaped the bedspread faster and easier, then stood up before his sister did, his dark-brown eyes fixed on the meatloaf plates in my hand. His long, curly black hair hadn’t been combed in a while. He wore a pair of my dad’s red boxers as gigantic shorts, and one of dad’s white sleeveless T-shirts, all bunched around his skinny waist like a toga. None of that struck me as funny, because mottled, fading yellows and greens made up the left side of his face. Even in the dim lighting, I could tell that his eye had gotten punched really bad and hard, though it had gotten better in the fifteen days since everything happened.
I didn’t have any words, so I held out the meatloaf trays.
Doc looked at Cissy.
She nodded, and he came and took the meals from my hands, then ran back to the bed with them. Before I could hand him the grocery bag with the napkins and silverware, he started eating the food with his fingers. I didn’t say anything about that. I just took everything to him, except one napkin that I used to wipe gravy off my hands. Then I backed off to stand in the bedroom door again, keeping my eyes on him and his sister. That bruise on his face, it hurt me to look at it. I bet it hurt Doc to chew, maybe even to speak, but he seemed to swallow well enough.
For a time, Cissy and I just watched Doc eat. He stabbed straws into the juice boxes, drinking both of them about as fast as he ate both dinners. When he found the silverware and napkins, he used them. That struck me as a good thing. Maybe he hadn’t gone totally wild like some wolf-boy out in the forest, even though his gaze darted around the room between bites, checking on Cissy, then on me, then on the open door.
“Does he talk?” I asked her, surprised when my voice worked.
“Used to,” Cissy said, her voice quiet. She had a deep accent, like folks from way down in the Delta. “Ain’t spoke a word since that night. My mom’s supposed to pick us up. You seen her?”
I frowned. “She called. I don’t think she’s coming.”
Cissy gave me a quick, miserable look, then went back to studying her brother. “Shoulda known better than to count on her. Sorry about all the food we’ve been eating, and about your mom getting hurt with that big gun. Man, she’s laid up a long time over that.”
“She’s in Memphis,” I mumbled, “in a psychiatric hospital.”
Cissy’s eyes widened. “I’m real sorry about that too, then.”
It took me a second, but I got hold of myself. “The food’s no big deal. And Mom—” I couldn’t figure what to say about that, so I borrowed Dad’s words. “Mom is nobody’s fault.”
Cissy hung her head like she didn’t quite buy that last bit. Then she raised up straight again and looked at me. Her eyes seemed a lot more alive now that I was sure I wasn’t seeing a ghost or hallucination or flashback.
“We got to go,” she said.
My pulse jumped all over again. “What? No. Help’s coming. You stay right here.”
“I’m the one did the shooting, and I set the fire, too.” Cissy’s voice was dead calm as she moved away from me, heading toward the basement steps. “So when the police come, they’ll take me, and won’t be nobody to look after my brother.”
“Wait!” I turned and raised my hands too fast, and she flinched away from me. Doc dropped his fork and scrabbled backward on the bed, dumping potatoes on the spread. I held up both hands. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just—you did it, Cissy? The shooting and the fire? All of it?”
Her head bobbed once, her eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder. “Had to. If I hadn’t shot him, he woulda killed my brother.”
“Yeah, I know. I saw all that. But the fire?”
“I set it to keep the old jackass busy ’cause we was trying to run off, but he caught us. I thought he’d piddle around with the blaze in the barn, and we’d be gone. Your mom was gonna help us get to our mom, simple as that.” Her gaze shifted back to my face, and she looked miserable again. “At least, it was supposed to be simple.”
Across the room on the bed, Doc started sho
veling down the food again. The reality that I was having a conversation with Cissy Abrams edged into my awareness, along with the fact that she was about to leave and nobody in the universe would ever believe they had even been here.
Mom’s innocent.
My mom hadn’t done anything at all, except try to help Cissy and Doc—but if they left, how would I ever prove any of that?
“You have to stay,” I said. “The police think Mom accidentally killed you, because I thought that and I put it in a list, and Peavine’s little sister gave the list to his mom. But, anyway, they’re all coming, the police and Steph—she’s my DCFS worker—and they’re going to think Mom did all that bad stuff, and this is a total mess.”
I turned circles, pushing my palms into the sides of my head to make myself think while Cissy stared at me like she figured I really was a few clowns shy of a circus. Panic turned me completely stupid, and I knew it, but I couldn’t think of a better plan. I stopped turning circles, zipped out of the little bedroom, closed the door to the basement steps, grabbed hold of Dad’s weight bench, and slid it across the floor to block the way out to the rest of the house. Then I planted myself between Cissy and the door to the backyard. I could still see all the way into the bedroom and keep my eyes on both her and Doc.
“I can’t stay here,” Cissy said again, sounding more confused than angry. “I’ll go to juvenile, and Doc can’t be alone.”
“My friend Steph will help you.” I stood very still, barely able to breathe, heart smashing against my ribs, but I was pretty sure I was telling her the truth. I hoped she didn’t jump for the weight bench. What was I going to do, tackle her?
“Steph,” Cissy muttered.
“My DCFS worker, yeah.”
“You think some DCFS worker’s gonna help me?” Cissy sounded skeptical. She put out her hand for Doc, who ignored her and kept eating.
“She has fake hair,” I said, louder than I meant to. “But she’s okay, once you tell her what you like and don’t like.”
The mower still hadn’t shut off outside. I wished it would get suddenly, totally dark. Dad would have to come in then. He’d see everything, and he’d know.
Cissy’s eyes flicked to the door that led outside.
I held out my arms so she’d know I wasn’t planning on letting her get past me.
“Come on, now,” she said to Doc. “Get over here this second.”
“Don’t go,” I pleaded, but Doc came to Cissy like she had told him to do, and she went straight to the weight bench and started pulling it out of the way.
Desperate, I jumped forward and grabbed the edges of the seat, but too late. Cissy shoved it aside, then opened the door to the rest of the house, and she and Doc jogged up the steps, away from me. I charged after them, intending to follow them all the way across the neighborhood if I had to, but my feet tangled before I got to the door.
I screamed as I pitched forward, hitting the stairs hard on my left shoulder and arm. Agony blazed through my wrist. I screamed again and again. The world spun as I flipped and grabbed for anything to stop myself from falling down the stairs.
I landed hard at the bottom of the steps, on my left side again. My wrist pulsed with pain, and the world tried to go black. I saw darkness and Dad’s weight bench and the door Cissy and Doc had run through, to disappear forever.
Spots danced across my vision. Darkness spread, terrible and awful and trying to cover me up and eat me whole. As I tried to shake it off, hands took hold of my shoulder, and Cissy’s voice said, “Easy there. You fell pretty bad.”
Just then, something small and blond and shrieking launched off the steps and landed beside us. My head spun as I watched Stephanie Bridges grab hold of Cissy like she was some kind of robber or criminal. Doc tried to bolt, but she grabbed his arm too.
“Don’t hurt them,” I yelled, then coughed and cried out from the agony in my wrist. “You have to help them. Please.”
“Footer!” Captain Armstrong’s worried voice boomed down the stairs. “Kid! You there?” He charged into view, carrying a rifle bigger than me.
Sirens. I heard them now. They were close and coming closer.
Steph squeaked when she saw the rifle and waved her hands and tried to say something about children and danger.
“Get Dad,” I said to Captain Armstrong. “Backyard. Mower.” My wrist hurt so bad, I could barely get out the words. To Steph I said, “That’s Cissy and Doc Abrams.”
Steph seemed to realize who she was holding on to, and her mouth came open. She let Cissy and Doc go and covered her mouth with one hand. With the other, she took the rifle Captain Armstrong handed her.
“I knew you didn’t sound right on the phone,” Captain Armstrong said as he stepped over me. “I called 9-1-1 and told them to send a car right away, and an ambulance in case—”
He stopped. Cleared his throat.
“In case I was losing it, like Mom?”
Captain Armstrong frowned. “Not that, exactly. But you’ve been through a lot lately. I know how that can be. Help’s coming, Footer.”
I thought about being mad at him, but my wrist hurt too bad, and he was only being nice. And right. Some part of me knew that.
He headed for the basement door without saying anything else. Steph kept her hand over her mouth and held the rifle away from her like it would start dancing and shooting all on its own. I tried to sit up as Cissy Abrams knelt and helped me get upright, then shook her head at the black and purple wrist I cradled against my chest.
“That’s broke, Footer,” she said.
“I know.” Tears leaked out of my eyes. I didn’t know if I was crying because my wrist hurt or because I was alive or because Cissy and Doc were alive or because I was pretty sure I wasn’t crazy or because Mom wouldn’t get in trouble for all my mistakes.
“That woman’s gonna pass out if somebody don’t take that rifle away from her,” Cissy said as she got up again.
“I know,” I repeated. Talking hurt.
Cissy inched toward Steph, who didn’t so much as twitch or take a breath. I heard men talking, but I didn’t hear Dad yet. “I want my father,” I whispered, but nobody heard me. I cried harder, and that hurt too.
Flashlights danced across the walls. A lot of people in uniforms came running into the basement, from out back and from down the stairs.
“It’s okay, ma’am,” Cissy said as she gently removed the rifle from Steph’s immobile fingers. “You won’t be needin’ to use this.”
When she handed the rifle to the police officer nearest her, an older lady I didn’t know, the lady must have recognized Cissy. I heard her whistle, then say, “Well, I’ll swanee. You’re one of those missing kids.”
An EMS worker dropped to his knees beside me and held out his hand to examine my wrist. When I moved my hurt arm, that nasty blackness finally caught up to me.
“Dad,” I whispered again, but he still wasn’t there. All the sounds and lights faded to nothing. As my eyes closed, I couldn’t stop wanting to see him, and I couldn’t do anything to stop the darkness.
CHAPTER
19
Dark . . .
Dad?
Dark . . .
Dad!
My stomach clenched and my eyes came open, and I squinted at the blazing white light. White walls. White sheets. Machines. Everything smelled like alcohol.
Hospital!
I sat up, pulling tubes with me, then coughed and cried because moving hurt my wrist so much. It had some kind of stiff brace on it. I grabbed at the Velcro straps.
“Easy there, Miss Davis.” A nurse moved my uninjured wrist back to my side and patted my hand, which had a butterfly-shaped needle in it, covered by tape. The needle was hooked to a tube that went to a bag next to a machine with numbers on it.
“This is an IV,” the nurse explained. She was tiny and blond and looked a lot like Steph. “We use these to give you fluids and medicine if you need it. And this”—she gently touched the fiberglass brace—“you
need a cast on that wrist, so we have to keep it immobilized until it’s set. That way we won’t have to take you to surgery to do it.”
Surgery? No way. I stopped moving my hurt arm and my good arm too. My hurt arm could lie there until the cast people showed up, or however that worked. No problem.
“I want my dad.” My voice sounded crackly like school speakers when I talked, but I sounded like I really meant it, and I think I did.
“Okay. I’ll tell him you’re awake.”
Dad was here somewhere.
My muscles went weak, and my head sagged, and I breathed in and out, in and out, listening to the sound and knowing that Dad was nearby and he’d come and sit with me.
The nurse slipped out of the cubicle, letting the sheetlike curtains sway behind her. After she left, I let myself really look around. White everywhere, except the silver tray near the end of the bed. It had weird-looking scissors on it, and white tape like the tape holding my IV.
My heart started beating funny, a little too hard and a little too fast. It didn’t feel good. Mom hated hospitals. I hadn’t had to be in one before as a patient, but I thought she had a point. It seemed weird. I sort of felt tied down, with the IV and the wrist immobilizer, and also because the bed was kind of high. I’d probably break something else if I tried to get down.
Were Cissy and Doc here too? I looked around a little more, but I didn’t see any shadows moving around outside the sheet-walls. Did they run away? Did enough people see them to know they were alive and Mom didn’t kill them?
I closed my eyes and tried to think about that YouTube video I watched on calming down. It didn’t help much, but I breathed as relaxingly as I could, letting my stomach move up and down with each inhale and exhale.
“Footer.” Dad’s voice rumbled through the tiny curtained space, sounding relieved and worried at the same time. “How’s my girl?”
