Celestial
Page 31
Three
She didn’t see The Girl again. But she kept her bedroom curtains securely closed at night, so she couldn’t really be sure if The Girl had come back or not.
When a counselor at her school had brought Molly to her office to ask how she was dealing with her mother’s death, Molly had confided in her about The Girl. The counselor had replied that trauma can make us imagine things. Molly was handed a psychologist referral to give to Uncle Devlin—but he’d tossed it away without even looking at it.
Six weeks went by—each day a day without Mama. Molly was on a train speeding away from a mother she’d had to leave on the platform. And she couldn’t get off the train. Not ever.
Molly learned that her uncle and Sashelle’s interest in her was in how quickly she could fetch them things or clean up messes. If she wasn’t quick enough, she’d get a tap to the head—which became slaps as the days went on. When they’d had so much to drink that their words went wobbly, their hands would turn into fists. Their words for each other were the worst—words as bitter, dried-up and hateful as Mrs. Hodge’s expression whenever Molly used to bounce a ball outside her window at the apartment block.
As soon as her uncle and his girlfriend had spent the money Mama had saved up in the bank—all thirty-two thousand of it—Molly felt the change, like a wintry chill. They turned the loathing they had for each other onto her. She became their punching bag, their stress relief, their burden. They hadn’t thought far enough ahead to realize that once the money ran out, they’d be stuck with a child.
Rubbing her right arm, Molly sat on the stool in her bedroom. Uncle Devlin had given her a sharp hit to the arm when she’d walked between him and the TV show he was watching, angrily claiming she was disrespecting him. There seemed to be a hundred ways in which she could disrespect her uncle. And a hundred ways in which she could annoy Sashelle. Molly didn’t know the rules—couldn’t even guess at them. All she knew was that a punch or a shove against a wall would come out of nowhere, and she was somehow to blame.
Uncle Devin had sent her to bed. But she knew by now that if she laid herself straight down in bed on a sore limb and slept on it, it would hurt even worse in the morning.
A crawling feeling wound from her legs up to the sides of her body. There was someone else in the room. Someone who wasn’t Uncle Devlin or Sashelle.
Molly looked from the corner of her eye without turning her head. The Girl stood next to the window.
She wore jeans and a shirt, her long hair tied back. “I know you can see me. Don’t be scared.”
“You’re not real.” Molly moved her face until she couldn’t see her. “You’re not really there.”
“It’s okay to think of me as a dream,” she said. “I just want you to listen to what I have to say. Can you do that?”
Molly nodded, a tremor zipping across the back of her shoulders. If listening would make the girl go away, she’d listen.
“Good. There’s something I want you to do. Molly, you have to tell. You can’t let your uncle and his girlfriend hurt you anymore. Do you understand?”
“I just have to learn how not to do the wrong—“
“No, you don’t have to learn anything. You don’t deserve to be hit.”
“He told me that if I—“
“I know what he said,” said The Girl. “But you must be brave. When we don’t tell about the things that hurt us, it’s like keeping shadows deep inside us. And each day, the shadows grow. Until we live in shadows. All of us are shadow keepers, Molly. We keep too much to ourselves. I want you to find someone you trust, and tell them what’s happening to you. Good people to go to are your teacher—Mr. Harper—or the school counselor. Can you do that?”
Molly told her she could. But she wasn’t brave. Locking her arms around her knees, Molly realized she was a little less scared of The Girl than she was a moment ago. Molly wondered how The Girl knew her teacher’s name. “Are you a ghost? Or an angel?”
The Girl gave a small sad laugh. “Neither. I’m a person, just like you are.”
“What’s your name?”
“I can’t tell you that. Not yet.”
She vanished.
The room suddenly felt empty without her.
Four
For days and days, every time she thought she could tell, something stopped her. Cold fear would wrap around her heart. Uncle Devlin said he’d bury her mother’s photographs where she’d never find them if she told. Sashelle told her she’d hurt her in a way she’d be sorry she ever said anything.
Every day when she walked into the schoolyard, she’d see the other kids playing and laughing and wonder what was wrong with her. She did bad things that made Uncle Devlin and Sashelle angry with her. And she sometimes saw a strange girl who couldn’t be real. It was like there was an invisible wall between her and everyone else. She couldn’t get through that wall. She couldn’t tell.
In her bedroom that night, she eyed the pictures of her mother she’d hung on the wall. Her favorite photo was the one at the carnival, taken just two months ago. It had been one of Mama’s happy days. A day when she didn’t worry about money or the future. They’d ridden the wild teacup ride together and laughed as they raced each other down the giant slide.
Stepping over to her chest of drawers, Molly pulled out the dress she’d worn that day at the carnival. It was denim with tiny white dots. She tore off her school clothes and slipped into the dress—and then climbed into bed still wearing it. The dress still smelled slightly of popcorn and of Mama’s apple shampoo.
When she looked back at the carnival photo, The Girl was standing in front of it. But this time, Molly couldn’t see through her. She looked solid, just like any real person.
Slipping from her bed, Molly stepped toward her. More than anything, she wanted The Girl to hold her. Just to hold her.
But The Girl shrank away, her cheeks blanching. “I have to tell you something. We must never, ever touch each other.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
Molly crawled back into bed and rested her chin on her knees. “I couldn’t—“
Sighing, The Girl nodded. “I know. You couldn’t tell. It’s the hardest thing to do.” She stepped around to sit on a stool next to Molly’s bed. “Can I tell you a story?”
“I’m too big for stories.”
A smile indented her face. “It’s not a story for little children. It’s a story for the brave.”
Molly didn’t answer, because she thought she wasn’t good enough to be told such a story.
But The Girl started telling it anyway. “This is the story of a girl who lived at the end of a lane with her terrible uncle. He was mean and angry and cruel. Years went by like this, when one day, the girl decided to run away. She thought she could run away and look after herself. But she fell into an even worse place—a dark place with no doors and no way out. Five years went past until she was freed. By then, everything had frozen, everywhere. Monsters had come to her world and destroyed it and made it turn to ice. Bad people helped the monsters so that they could rule the world. Some of the girl’s friends turned bad, too. Because they were afraid. The girl tried very hard to never give up. She never ever felt brave. She was scared all the time. But she fought back, as best she could. One of her most treasured friends—a girl named Cassandra—told her that being brave doesn’t mean you feel brave. It means that even though you’re scared and shaking in your boots, you step out and do what you can to make things better.”
“How does the story end? What happened to the monsters?”
The Girl hesitated, linking her hands together. “A story can be a circle, Molly. It can go on forever.”
Molly shook her head. “Stories end.” Her words burned her throat as she remembered the clods of dirt hitting her mother’s coffin.
The Girl plunged her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I want to show you where I live. Will you come with me?”
“I can go there now?”
“Yes.”
Molly glanced at her dubiously. It was night, and if her uncle discovered her not in her room, she would get into enormous trouble. “Is it far away from here?”
“It’s very, very far away. But don’t worry, you can come back again.”
Squeezing her eyes closed for a second, Molly nodded.
A tall oval of black smoke formed in the middle of Molly’s bedroom.
“Step through,” said The Girl, “and I’ll follow.”