by Lois Ruby
“She ripped those dolls apart?” Brian asks, horrified. He’s such a gentle kid. He’d never hurt anything or anyone, even if he’s an annoying pest.
And so I have to tell him about the horrible pile of broken, cracked, torn dolls in the empty house. “I’m guessing that Emily got in through the same basement window I did and tossed all of them in there to hide her nasty work, so she could visit it whenever she wanted to.”
“Gross.” Brian wakes Chester and gives him a big comfort hug. “Hey, what’s that knocking sound?” Chester jumps off the bed and starts barking at my dresser.
“Just Isabella in the drawer,” I casually tell Brian, as though it’s no big deal that a doll is bumping around on her own. I don’t even have to lock the drawer anymore. She seems happy just to be there. But she’s driving Chester nuts. “Here, boy, come on back.” He turns around and gives the dresser a suspicious look, but hops up on the bed, sending the bed springs squealing.
Brian seems okay with the drawer noise and says, “Sure are some spooky things happening with those dolls. Like the day we put them in the graveyard, and they turned up in the dollhouse in the attic. That was pretty weird, but we’re not crazy.” He glances at the drawer again for reassurance. “We’re not like Emily, either, tearing those dolls apart like ripping up a comic book.” He stops to think, nuzzling Chester, whose tongue is washing Brian’s face. “Yeah, I think Emily is bonkers. I hope this doctor guy can get her over it.”
I skip ahead a few pages in the diary to one of the last entries, written just two months before Aunt Amelia died and we moved in. Emily had stopped using most punctuation, her spelling was awful, and her printing was even smaller and more cramped, so it’s hard to make sense of it:
There telling me abt Lady say I hafta find her and free her they say it over and over again slam my hands over my ears stuff ’em with coton but still here them screeming at me louder and louder and louder cant stop them what I do????? Sadie same thing happen killed her it ll kill me you hafta help me Dr. B HELP ME!!!!
“You think the dolls killed Sadie?” Brian asks, shuddering in total amazement.
I shake my head, but who knows what really happened? My blood runs cold, and at the same time, my palms sweat when I realize that both Sadie and Emily ended their diaries with desperate cries for help. Emily’s next line is frighteningly short:
evil house God help nex grl here
“Oh, Brian, that’s me! Us! We’ve inherited Sadie’s and Emily’s horrors.”
Brian’s face is pinched with worry, which worries Chester, too. He lays a reassuring paw on Brian’s leg as Brian says, “Real life is sure a lot harder than chess.”
I can’t bring myself to tell him the hardest part — that the dolls are demanding that I find Lady and free her, just like they did with Emily. Will I be blathering like Emily in another month? Another day? Ugh. Double ugh. I’ve got to shake off that idea right now. If my little brother guessed any of it, it would totally freak him out. He’s only nine. Let him stick with kings and pawns and worry about nothing more awful than the curiously missing snap-on queen.
Monday morning. Darcy’s standing by my locker, slurping away on a chocolate Tootsie Pop. “There’s a seventh-grade dance next Friday in the boys’ gym. Let’s go.”
I panic. I don’t dance. I have no sense of rhythm. I trip over my own toes. And gym floors are slick. I could slip and land on my butt and be totally humiliated. And does this mean dancing with actual boys of the opposite sex?
“Arden Kells is definitely going. He told Joel, who told Renée, and she emailed me last night with the news. So don’t leave me there alone.”
I have no idea who Joel or Renée are. They’ll probably be at the dance with every other seventh grader on earth. “You won’t be alone. All your friends will be there; you won’t need me.”
She nods, but then I see a wave flicker across her face and I realize the truth: She’s lonely. Renée probably never even messaged her. Darcy has glopped on to me because she doesn’t really have anybody else. The shadow passes and Darcy perks up, but she knows I’ve seen it.
“Okay, Darcy, I guess I can camp out at the punch bowl and watch you spin around the room with Arden Kells. I’ll ask my mom to drive us.”
“And my stepdad will pick us up. He’s usually awake till ten.”
“Your parents are divorced? Mine, too.”
“Is there anybody left on the planet who has the same two parents they started with, living under the same roof?”
I could tell her that Evvie and Melissa both do, but she’s already off on another subject. I’m really trying to like her. It’s not as though I have a dozen other girls crowded around me to sweep me into their circle.
Darcy’s waving the lollipop and jabbering on about something, and I interrupt her. “The first day, last week, you talked about Emily Smythe, who used to live in my house.”
Darcy drops her backpack to the floor with a thud and does this thing with her hands opening and closing a little door on a clock. “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” she sings each time her hands open.
“I know.” Darcy is so irritating and bossy, but she might know something I need to hear. “Besides Emily being a little off the wall, tell me other stuff about her.”
“She has Rapunzel hair, straw blond, down to her waist. She sits on it. Wouldn’t that hurt? And really cool clothes, I mean, like, imported, not the usual Old Navy stuff. She has a horse, too. Musta cost thousands of dollars. Her mother used to pick her up in a midnight-blue Maserati. I swear, money leaks out of every pore of that girl.”
I think Darcy’s envious of Emily, crazy or not.
“Her eyes,” Darcy continues, her own face twisted in thought. “There’s a look like something awful lurks behind those baby blues. Her locker was two down from mine. Once she slammed it so hard that the clock fell off the wall. She was one angry chicklet.”
All that’s interesting, but I can tell that something else bothers her about Emily. Again, a hunch, and thinking with my tongue: “Did Arden Kells like her?”
“No accounting for some people’s taste,” Darcy snaps, frowning. She kicks her backpack into a position so she can pick it up without bending much. “Ciao, signorina — that’s Italian. Catch you in Language Arts,” she says, then sticks the Tootsie Pop back in her mouth and slides into the crowd.
I can learn to like her, maybe. Gotta think about it. But would I have liked Emily Smythe?
Not. A. Chance.
“MORE SOUP?” MOM ASKS HOPEFULLY. SHE’S GOT about a vat of mushroom barley on the stove, and I do not love mushrooms. Or barley. Or soup. Brian hands his bowl over for a refill. No wonder he’s Mom’s favorite. She brings him an overflowing bowl that splashes onto the saucer, and she sits beside him. “By the way, I had a clock repairman out here today. That stubborn grandfather clock upstairs is fixed. It’s only going to say five o’clock when it’s five o’clock!”
She sounds so chipper that I get suspicious. I know I’m right as soon as Mom lowers her eyes and says, “Kids, let’s talk about Thanksgiving.” Now her voice sounds strained, so it must be about Dad.
My back’s up, like Terpsichore’s when she’s around Chester. “Thanksgiving’s more than two months away. Why do we have to talk about it now?” I sigh one of those deep, silent ones that shout Why do you have to make everything so hard?
But the words that come out of Mom’s mouth are cool and calm. “Your father wants to take you two to Chicago to spend the holiday with Uncle Garrett and Aunt Fran.”
“All right!” Brian says.
“Just Dad, or does this include Terri and Marcus?”
“The whole family,” Mom says, putting on a brittle smile.
“Not me.”
“Shelby, be reasonable.”
“Who’s gonna be here for Thanksgiving?” Brian asks. “You can’t eat a whole turkey by yourself.”
Mom looks so sad that it almost makes me ask for seconds of soup. “I have a great idea, Mom. Brian can
go to Chicago, and I’ll stay home with you.”
“That’s nice of you, Shelby, but it’s not possible. The … agreement” — she always leaves out the hot word, divorce — “says that Dad gets Thanksgiving this year, I get it next year, and so on.”
“And so on and so on and so on,” I snarl, throwing my spoon down on the table and storming out of the room. Too bad the door to the dining room is a swinging one. I can’t slam it, but I make sure it hits the wall and bounces a few times.
“Come here, angry girl, come, come closer.” I hear a chorus of quiet voices as I glare at the row of dolls in the hutch. Didn’t they used to be lined up in a different order? Mom must have dusted. Or could they have rearranged themselves?
“Where is Baby Daisy?” one of the dolls demands. I’m not sure whose voice I’m hearing. “You must bring Baby Daisy back to us.”
Yes, I know she belongs with them, not me, and not with those shattered dolls heaped in the basement of the abandoned house.
Mr. Caliberti said that Betsy Anne, the one with the perky magenta ribbon and sweet smile, represented Sadie’s better side. I’m beginning to think I don’t have a better side. I’m blunt and irritable and jealous and, well, just plain angry. A lot. I unlock the hutch and take Betsy Anne out. She’s warm in my hand. “What do you know that I don’t?” I whisper, putting her back with her friends. There’s Dotty Woman, who may have poisoned Sadie, and C.B., the Caliberti doll in his knee pants and sailor hat. Miss Amelia’s hair is a tangled mess. She looks ragged and weary, as if she never gets enough sleep. They all seem harmless. And yet, Sadie and Emily said they were evil dolls, and Emily buried them in the doll graveyard.
Which they got out of, over and over again.
Where is Lady?
All their eyes are locked on me. In my mind, I hear their pleas and their threats of revenge. Quickly, I stash them back in the hutch, next to that weird pipe Aunt Amelia gave Brian, which Mom thought was so beautiful that it should be displayed for everyone to see. Not that anyone comes way out here. I don’t even bother standing the dolls up. When I lock the hutch, I give them one last glance. They’re just piled together, like the large, broken dolls in the house up the hill.
Mom and I have sort of made our peace and are perched on two different green velvet couches. At least we can both be in the same room, the ugly parlor, without being snippy (me) or sighing pitifully (Mom). She’s crocheting a pot holder in SerenaStockPot.com signature colors, red and purple. She’s done about twenty already and plans to put one in each mail-order package. If she ever gets an order.
Brian’s upstairs with Mom’s laptop, playing chess against some famous chess pro, and Chester’s curled in front of the roaring fire, probably deep in a doggy dreamland of meaty bones. Everyone’s cozy-content but me.
I’ve zoomed ahead in The Giver, still racking my brain for an A-plus project, but as usual, my mind’s wandering and spinning. The dance Friday night. Emily at the mental hospital. Darcy — is she going to turn out to be a friend? What’s going on in Grandmother Truva’s head? Where’s Lady? Dad and Thanksgiving in Chicago. The broken dolls. Revenge. I gaze into the flames, searching for answers and comfort.
Just then, a cinder flies out of the fireplace and singes the rug at my feet. For a split second I freeze, watching a hole expand, then I lurch into action. Forgetting that I’m barefooted, I stomp out the trail of fire that’s eating through the carpet. Searing pain seizes the sole of my foot! I hop around on the other foot, shocked to see that the cinder has burst into flame, and the carpet is disappearing before my eyes. I jump away, onto the uncarpeted floor. Mom bats at the flames with a magazine, which ignites, so she hurls the blazing paper into the hearth and picks up a couch cushion to snuff out the fire. That only sends the flames vaulting higher. Chester is leaping on and off the couches, howling like a wolf, a sound I never want to hear again in my whole life.
Through Chester’s wails and the crackling flames, I dimly hear Mom yelling, “Get out, get out!”
The heat is at my back like a mean sunburn, so hot, so hot, and the flames are leaping across the parlor, nipping at the corner of the foxhunting tapestry, and I know I have to get out of here now, because the whole room’s turned orange; I can see it even through my closed eyelids. How could it happen so fast?
“Shelby! Out of the house. Run down the driveway!” Mom hollers, and Chester locks his teeth around my shirt to drag me away. Mom backs off from the blaze and jabs at her cell phone for 9-1-1, waving Chester and me toward the door as the fire nearly reaches the height of the mantel. The wooden mantel will burn like kindling!
But for some strange reason, the fire dies right there, even though a second ago, the room was engulfed in flames. And now everything is smoldering, smelling like burned toast.
Mom shouts, “Shelby Constance, get out of the house this instant. It could all catch again in a flash.” She dashes out the door, motioning for me to follow.
I’m petrified. Fire’s always been my scariest fear, but I suddenly remember my brother, and I’m hurtling up the stairs.
Chester’s running up and down them, confused about what to do.
“Brian!” I shout. “The house is on fire!”
He stumbles out of his room in his pajamas. Panic sweeps across his face when he smells the smoke. I grab his arm, and we tumble down the stairs, Chester behind, herding us out the door like a sheepdog.
Mom’s frantically looking for us. As we pour out of the house, she wraps an arm around each of us. “Thank God! I didn’t know where you were.”
“We’re right here, Mom,” Brian assures her. “Chester, too.”
The fire truck careens into our driveway. How’d they get here so fast? We can see flames jutting wildly again in the parlor window as a fireman asks, “Anybody inside? People? Pets?”
I can barely shake my head. Both my arms are locked around myself, holding me together as if I might burst open and spill my insides. And my burned foot’s killing me.
“Door locked?”
No, again. My arms are so tight that my fingers are going numb.
“Run down the driveway,” the firefighter commands as he lugs the hose off the rack, zooms into the house, and blasts our front room with water stored in the truck.
It’s freezing outside, and Mom’s shaking like a tree in a storm. Her teeth are chattering, and she’s clasping her hands open and closed. “Mr. Caliberti! Oh, I have to go get him in case the flames leap to his place. You two, stay right there. DON’T MOVE! Chester, keep an eye on them.” She runs behind the house to Mr. Caliberti’s cottage.
Rubbing my arms to keep warm, I’ve stepped so far away from our house that I can clearly see the other two houses up the hill, swept bright in the dark night by the headlights of the fire truck.
Mom comes around the house with Mr. Caliberti in his red, ankle-length nightshirt. Terpsichore and Chester are having a standoff, the cat hissing and Chester growling low and ugly. Brian holds Chester’s collar, afraid he’ll pounce and turn the cat into a midnight snack.
Finally, the fire’s still hissing, but the flames have died off for good. Most of our parlor is ruined, and the firemen have carried the three green velvet couches and all the pillows out to the trash, soggy stuffing dangling out of everything.
One fireman says, “I’ve radioed a disaster service. They’ll be out within the hour to set up a wet vac and industrial dryers for your carpet, Mrs. Tate. Be okay in no time.”
It’ll never be okay as long as we live in this house. My knees are knocking and my heart’s going a mile a minute. We came so close to broiling in that fire. What if Brian had been in a deep sleep? What if we’d all been upstairs and didn’t see the fire starting to leap? We could be totally charred, left as ashes.
I have a sick, nagging feeling about how the fire started, how the cinder leaped out of the fireplace and lit up at our feet, but I don’t dare tell Mom.
“Thank you, thank you,” we all murmur over and over as the firefight
ers jump onto their truck and pull away. Trudging up the front steps, Mom says, “I’m grateful that we’re all safe. Furniture can be replaced. People can’t. Do you want to stay with us tonight, Mr. Caliberti?”
“Kind of you, but Terpsichore and I shall exit stage right and repair to our humble abode. As the great Bard of Avon once wrote, ‘O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention, / A kingdom for a stage, princes to act / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!’ ”
“You got that right!” Brian says with a bright, silly grin.
Mr. Caliberti lays his hand on Mom’s cheek and whispers, “I always knew Amelia’s kith and kin would be lovely people,” and he ambles slowly to his cottage with the cat at his side.
Inside, the house smells sharp and bitter, and our feet squish through what’s left of the carpet in the parlor. Only two things in the room seem to have escaped the fire. One’s the snap-on chess table and the other’s the portrait of Mrs. Thornewood, which I’d have been happy to see changed into kindling.
I spot a third thing that survived. It’s the size of a jawbreaker in a puddle where a couch once stood to cover it. A doll’s head. I snatch it up before Mom sees it and stuff it in my jeans pocket.
“Can I go back to bed?” Brian asks, rubbing his eyes with the corners of his two index fingers.
“Sure, sweetie,” replies Mom. “I’ll wait down here for the dryers and I’ll turn on all the fans to air out the smoky house. You two go on up. Just open all the windows upstairs and cuddle under lots of blankets.”
