Secrets On the Clock

by Nicole Disney

  “Danielle?” Brianna murmured.

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you mix me another drink?”

  “I don’t think you need another one,” Danielle said.

  “Do so.”

  “If I do it has to be your last one tonight.”

  Brianna shot up to a sitting position, suddenly energized. “No deal!” she said and bounded into the kitchen.

  “I’m going to bed.” Danielle stood up. Brianna protested from the kitchen, but Danielle ignored her and headed to her room anyway.

  Chapter Five

  A knock at Jenna’s bedroom door sounded in unison with the chirp of her phone. She glanced at the screen and saw it was a message from Sasha.

  “What is it?” she called to the door.

  The doorknob twisted, and Callie walked inside. “Did you get more of my scar serum?”

  “I haven’t been to the store yet.”

  Callie shifted her weight and looked at Jenna expectantly. When Jenna didn’t move she sighed. “Could you?”

  “If I have time,” Jenna said. “I had a long shift yesterday, might again today.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a new job, Cal. There are probably going to be a lot of long days before I’m comfortable with it.”

  “Can’t you go after?”

  “I’m exhausted after, Callie. Why don’t you just take the Volkswagen and go get it? That’s why I gave it to you.”

  Callie stared at her like what she was saying was absurd, like it was a cruel joke. It used to break her down, but Jenna was learning how to wait Callie out.

  “It hurts,” Callie finally said.

  Jenna’s eyes pulled to Callie’s scars like they did every time Callie mentioned them. She knew Callie’s obsession with her scar serum had more to do with a desperate hope it would lessen their appearance than pain at this point, but Callie always brought up pain if she didn’t immediately jump to retrieve more. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe her. Jenna knew the skin was sensitive, even after all these years, but that wasn’t what was holding Callie back. What started as Callie avoiding her friend’s birthday party at the age of eight because of her fresh scars had somehow turned into outright refusal to leave the house by twenty, but the steps along the way felt fuzzy and out of focus.

  “Come on, Jenna, please?” Callie asked.

  Jenna frowned. “I’ll go after work,” she said. “But I want you to take the trash to the curb.”

  “You’re going to make me do chores to get my serum? That’s a little messed up, don’t you think? I need it, Jenna. It’s not like I want to need it.”

  “It’s not about the chores. You need to get out of the house. Get some sunlight and some fresh air. It’s twenty feet, a lot easier than the store. Humor me.”

  “It’s not humoring you if you force me.”

  “I don’t want to force you. Please just do it.”

  Callie turned like she was about to leave the room, but it was only for dramatic effect. She quickly turned back to Jenna, this time with her hands resting on top of her head.

  “Ten minutes in the backyard,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Come on, that’s so much longer than it would take to take out the trash.”

  “Then take out the trash,” Jenna said.

  “I thought this was about getting sunlight, but obviously it’s not.”

  “It’s about making steps toward being part of the world, sun and people.”

  “You want to humiliate me.”

  “Of course not.” Jenna stood up and started toward Callie. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Callie.”

  “Now you’re just being stupid.” Callie really left this time and slammed Jenna’s door closed again.

  Jenna sighed and rubbed her face with her palms. She flopped onto her bed and reached for her phone. She had half an hour to get ready and leave for work, which was fine under her old routine, but this getting dressed up stuff was time-consuming. She opened Sasha’s text.

  Enjoy the perks of your new job today and work from home! Going to be on the road with the new girl all day. Nothing to see here.

  Jenna smiled at Sasha’s thoughtfulness despite the fact that it was probably the worst day she could choose to work from home with her sister accumulating a demanding list of requests and an attitude to match.

  How’s she doing? Jenna texted back.

  Seems fine. Little quiet. Will crush that today, don’t worry. Wear sweatpants for me.

  Jenna laughed and fished out her laptop. Working from home was a luxury she’d never experienced before. She imagined she needed a cup of coffee to do it properly, but she didn’t want to go downstairs and deal with Callie again. She was only on her second email when her door burst open.

  “Mom won’t take her pills,” Callie said, then slammed the door again.

  Jenna sighed and shut her laptop. “Unbelievable.”

  Jenna dragged herself from the comfort of bed and headed downstairs. She started the coffeemaker and grabbed her mom’s pills before heading to her room. When she opened the door, her mom was sitting on the floor in the corner. Jenna walked over to her slowly.

  “Mom? What are you doing down there?”

  “Feels nice down here,” she said. “The walls make me feel safe.”

  Jenna walked over and sat with her back against the bed, across from her mom. She watched her mom’s gaze dart around the room, waiting for it to fall on her face though it never would. She’d scan the room endlessly if Jenna didn’t do something to ground her. She touched her hand.

  “Mom,” she said. “It’s time for your medicine.”

  “I’m not taking it anymore,” she said. Her eyes ricocheted around the corners of the room. Her auburn hair was streaked with gray and was tousled like she’d been pulling at it, covering her ears maybe.

  “Why not?” Jenna asked.

  “The government makes that stuff. It’s not medicine; it’s mind control. They’re watching us, and they don’t like anyone who knows what they’re up to. They give us that to keep us foggy.”

  “But it helps you, Mom. It makes it so you don’t hear the scary stuff.”

  “I haven’t heard anything scary in ages.”

  “That’s because you take the medicine, Mom.”

  “I’m not myself on it.”

  “Yes, you are. I know it makes you feel a little funny, but you’re still you. You still know who we are. You still have fun and talk with us. Remember last week we all made dinner together and looked at old pictures? It was just like old times. When you stop taking your medicine is when you’re not you. You start to think we’re here to hurt you. You can’t leave your bedroom. You hate it.”

  “No, I know things when my head is clear, and they don’t like that so they have to dumb me down. They’re poisoning me.”

  “Mom.” Jenna squeezed her hand. “Look at me.” Her mom’s gaze did another lap around the room before she looked back at Jenna. “Mom, I would never let them poison you. It’s medicine. I promise.”

  Her face quivered with fear and tears. “But you don’t even know what those pills do.”

  “Sure, I do,” Jenna said. “They just normalize your dopamine and serotonin levels so they’re not out of whack. It makes your brain go all haywire when they’re not right and you hear stuff that isn’t real.”

  “Really?” Seeing her mom so afraid broke Jenna’s heart. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Jenna said. “I wouldn’t let them give you anything bad.”

  Her mom studied her face carefully. Jenna knew she was trying to decide whether or not to trust her, a scrutiny that had fundamentally shaken her the first time, but was just part of life now. Finally, her mom nodded and reached for a hug. Jenna pulled her in close and held her until she finally let go and held her palm out for the pills.

  Chapter Six

  Danielle flipped through the folder Sasha had given her that detailed all the cases they were
assigned to even though she’d practically memorized it over the course of her first week. The Clarks were the only case she was working with Jenna. She was shadowing Sasha on all the others, which she found disappointing despite Sasha’s natural talent as a trainer. She figured she should be relieved, that working with her supervisor ought to be more of a pressure than anything, but she couldn’t stop anticipating the next time she’d work with Jenna. When she confirmed what she already knew, that the address punched into the GPS was not among her papers, she redirected her attention to Sasha.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “We’re swinging by for a visit with the Andersons.”

  Danielle pretended to read through her papers again. “I don’t see them here.”

  Sasha glanced over and scanned her a few times before she sighed. “No, they’re not ours. We’re helping Adam out.”

  “Adam?”

  “One of the other caseworkers. I’ll introduce you to him sometime. He’s a sweetheart. He’s not in today, though.”

  “Oh,” Danielle said. “So, when you call out you have to get someone to take your visits for you?”

  “Not exactly.” Sasha shifted. “You just call your supervisor and they have the scheduling department reschedule for you.”

  “So the scheduling department assigned it to us?”

  “They probably would have,” Sasha said. “If he had called out.”

  “And you lost me.”

  Sasha laughed. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s kind of awkward. I don’t want to ask you to keep secrets when you’re so new, but this visit is kind of on the down low.”

  “Oh.” Danielle was generally fine with keeping quiet. She’d never been much of a tattle, despite her own tendency to stay within the lines, but she still wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Adam is having problems with his boyfriend,” Sasha said. “Bad problems. They might break up.”

  “And he doesn’t think they’d give him the day off for that,” Danielle surmised.

  “Jenna is his supervisor.” Sasha finally made eye contact, her hair catching in the light and falling around her face when she turned.

  Danielle shrugged, confused again. “Jenna seems cool. She wouldn’t be okay with that?”

  “Jenna is extremely cool.” Sasha laughed. “She’d probably give him a day off to catch up on laundry if he asked and he meant it.”

  “What’s the problem then?”

  “I don’t know how much you’ve heard about everyone, but Jenna is a brand-new supervisor, and Adam is one of her best friends. He’s the only friend of Jenna’s they’re letting her actually supervise, and she’s taking it as a sort of test. If she starts letting Adam get away with stupid shit like calling out to fight with his man—”

  “She’ll look bad,” Danielle said. “That makes sense, I guess.”

  “Adam told me this morning what was going on, and I just didn’t even want it to make it to Jenna’s plate, you know? She’s already dealing with so much. So I just said I’d cover for him. I’m sorry if it puts you in a weird spot. I hope you’re not—”

  “It’s fine,” Danielle said. “Really, it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s nice. You guys are pretty close, huh? You and Jenna?”

  “Yeah,” Sasha said. “She’s my best friend. We got hired together along with Adam. Cole, Val, and Suzie were hired together after us and joined the group. They’re pretty close from training together, but we all hang out. Almost cost Jenna the promotion.”

  “How so?”

  “I guess they thought it would be a problem, us all being tight.”

  “I feel like I’m missing out a little on the whole group training thing.”

  “You’re right,” Sasha said. “You’re our first orphan in a while. They usually hire small groups. I think it’s nice, gives people instant friends. Don’t worry, though.” Sasha smiled. “We’ll adopt you.”

  Danielle felt a twinge of pain at the word adopt. It felt too on the nose. She’d come out to her parents two years ago and had promptly been disowned. She’d held out some flimsy hope they would come around, but once she hit the year mark without hearing from them, she accepted it would probably never happen.

  “Really, though,” Sasha said. “We should all have a get-together, welcome you aboard.”

  “You don’t have to go to any trouble.”

  “Get out of here, having a party isn’t trouble. You’ll get to see what everyone is like when we’re not in our polo shirts. We’ll have a blast. Promise.”

  Sasha pulled into a cracked driveway. The windows on the old house were boarded up. The only thing that tipped them off anyone lived there at all was the hollow echo of dogs barking from the backyard. Sasha put the car in park and glanced at Danielle.

  “Ready?”

  Danielle nodded and got out of the car. She had an awful feeling about the place. There was a frightening quality to the neighborhood, to the way people walked down the street like it was a dare, to the sagging windowsills that seemed to gape at her and the boarded-up windows that looked like dead eyes. It was very much fact in Memphis that being the wrong race or wearing the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood was enough to get you hurt or killed. She got the feeling this was one of those places, and while being Asian usually put her on fairly neutral ground, she felt anything but safe now.

  She passed through the chain-link gate and led the way to the door. She knocked, but nothing happened. Sasha knocked too. They let a full minute pass before they looked at one another. Danielle knew Sasha was feeling the same things she was. Danielle knocked again, harder, eager to get out of public view.

  A swish blew the corner of the yellow drapes in the window to the left of the door. The movement seized Danielle’s attention, but she saw nothing. She knocked again as loud as she could. Small fingers curled around the yellow drapes and timidly pulled back the edge, revealing two large, round brown eyes staring curiously into Danielle. Danielle and Sasha went to the window and leaned over to level with the small, tear-streaked face.

  “Are you okay, honey?” Sasha asked through the glass.

  The curly haired child stared at Sasha, but made no attempt to respond.

  “Is your mommy home?” Danielle asked.

  The child nodded.

  “Can you get her for me?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?” Sasha asked.

  The child looked over his shoulder and pointed at something neither of them could see. Danielle looked at Sasha.

  “What now?”

  Sasha didn’t answer right away; she seemed to be searching for an answer. “Can you pull back the drapes?” Sasha asked the boy. He stared blankly. Danielle tried to motion it out, but he wouldn’t move.

  “I’m going to check the other windows,” Sasha said. “See if I can see any more somewhere else. You keep talking to him. He likes you.”

  Sasha disappeared around the corner. Danielle looked back to the small brown face in the window. She put her hand against the glass. The boy cracked a smile and put his hand on the other side, matched up with hers.

  “Very good.” Danielle smiled. She put a finger on the glass and waited until he did the same. When he finally did, she had an idea. If she could get him to copy her, she could get him to pull the drapes back. She methodically alternated between something productive and something engaging, making faces at him, inching him to the left, doing a little dance, inching him over again. Finally, she made a sweeping motion with her arm, and he copied. The drapes swished away from the glass, and Danielle saw a woman on the floor twenty feet behind him in the kitchen. There was foam trailing from her mouth.

  “Sasha!” she called, but she didn’t wait for her. She removed the screen and motioned for the boy to back away. When he did, she broke the glass.

  “What the hell?”

  “There’s a body,” Danielle said.

  “Wait!”

  But she was already climbing through. The smell of death hit her so har
d she thought she’d physically been stopped. She had to hold her breath to suppress a gag. The room was hot and the air thick. Sasha was behind her recounting what was going on into her phone, saying she needed an ambulance. Danielle had dropped onto a couch on the other side of the broken glass and felt stinging on her back. She must have cut herself though she hadn’t felt the contact. Her focus shot around the room and landed on the curly haired boy. She reached out to him, and he stumbled into her arms. She realized his face was not only moist from tears, but also sweat from being trapped in the house as it had warmed up over who knew how long. She picked up the toddler, then unlocked and opened the front door. Sasha was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide.

  “Yes, we’ll be here,” she said and hung up the phone.

  She stared at Danielle with a look that said her disapproval was only one of a thousand thoughts she was having. Sasha assessed the room, glancing from Danielle to the toddler in her arms, from the body in the kitchen to every corner of the room.

  “I’m—”

  Sasha cut her off with a sharp motion of her hand. She stood like stone, listening. Danielle finally realized she was trying to figure out if anyone else was in the house. The thought was horrific to Danielle, that anyone would be ignoring a corpse in the kitchen. Danielle glanced over her shoulder to the body, careful to keep the child in her arms facing the other way. She thought she saw movement. Sasha seemed to see it too because she looked back to Danielle.

  “Get him out of here,” she said.

  Danielle stepped onto the front porch and cradled the toddler’s face against her shoulder, but she wouldn’t leave. She watched Sasha carefully inch inside, checking over each shoulder incessantly. She leaned over the body for just a second before she bolted upright again and strode briskly back toward to the door.

  “Bugs,” she said. “Lots of bugs. Super dead.”

  Danielle could see Sasha’s muscles tense and disgust take over her expression no matter how hard she tried to stay stoic. Danielle led them away from the house.