Thirteens

by Kate Alice Marshall

  Otto led her to a corner table when they arrived, which was already occupied by two other students. The other two kids, a girl and a boy, sat so close together they kept bumping shoulders, and they were whispering about some show they had watched the night before.

  Ms. West spotted Eleanor and smiled, then walked over with a textbook and a tidy stack of papers.

  “Eleanor, isn’t it?” she asked. “Welcome to Eden Eld Academy. I’m Ms. West. Obviously!” She chuckled, like this was a grand joke. She had skin that reminded Eleanor of dough that had just finished rising. Soft and somehow vulnerable. She set the textbook and the papers in front of Eleanor and tapped them twice with nails painted the color of overripe blueberries. “Here’s everything you need for now. I’ve already checked out the textbook under your name, and this is right where I was going to put you.” Her eyes strayed to the empty seat on Otto’s right, but just then the door burst open and Pip skidded into the room, her cheeks bright red from exertion.

  “I’m here! The bell hasn’t rung!” she said, just as it did.

  Ms. West laughed. “Just in the nick of time, Pip! Well, now that we’re all here . . .”

  Ms. West made her way up to the front of the class, already rambling about the plans for the week.

  Pip scurried to the empty seat next to Otto and fell into it with a gusty sigh.

  “You literally live on school grounds, Pip,” Otto said, eyes twinkling. “How are you always late?”

  “My mom was on the phone with subject three,” she whispered. “I was trying to listen in. I got this dish thing in my spy kit that lets you listen to conversations from far away, and I was testing it out.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing interesting,” she said. “Just ‘How are things going? Oh, very good here, too. Everything should be set for the big event.’ And then goodbyes.”

  “It’s probably just some January Society thing,” Otto said.

  “Obviously it’s a January Society thing. An evil January Society thing.” Pip’s voice barely rose above a whisper, and Eleanor got the feeling she wasn’t supposed to be listening—but she couldn’t help it.

  Otto rolled his eyes. “They are not evil. They do bake sales. Evil cults don’t hold bake sales.”

  “Apparently they do,” Pip said.

  Eleanor couldn’t tell if she was joking. She had been trying not to stare too hard while they talked, but Pip fixed a hard look on her.

  “Are your parents in the January Society?” Pip asked.

  “No,” Eleanor said at the same time as Otto. He blushed a bit.

  “Eleanor just moved here,” Otto said. “Remember?”

  “I know. But she’s a Barton. So your family’s from here, aren’t they?” Pip asked.

  “Shemovedheretolivewithheraunt,” Otto said, very fast and rather loudly. “At Ashford House.”

  “And I don’t think Ben and Jenny are part of any societies. They donate to the ACLU?” Eleanor supplied, uncertain if this counted.

  Pip lit up. “Wait, do you really live at Ashford House? That’s awesome. You should have told me that yesterday, Otto! Jeez.”

  “Pip! Please keep cross talk to a minimum,” Ms. West said. Pip’s ears turned scarlet at the tips, and she started quietly scribbling in the margin of her class notebook, twisting lines with jagged bits like thorns.

  Eleanor glanced out the window as Ms. West handed out study packets. It looked out over an empty meadow beside the school, more of a random break in the looming pines than anything intentional. The grass grew a good foot high, and a low morning mist clung near it, giving everything a hazy, spooky look.

  In the middle of the field stood the black dog. Steam spilled between its fangs. A gob of saliva dripped from one side of its jowls, and though she couldn’t hear it, she was sure it was growling.

  Ms. West had reached her. She followed Eleanor’s gaze and smiled. “It’s such a lovely campus, isn’t it?” she asked. She set her hand on the back of Eleanor’s chair and sighed. “Positively picturesque. Oh, that I were a poet, and could describe it as it deserves. But that’s what I have all my budding young Wildes and Byrons and Shakespeares for!” She clapped Eleanor on the shoulder and wandered away again.

  Otto bumped Eleanor’s hand with the very tip of his smallest finger. He looked down at his paper as he whispered. “Don’t stare at it,” he said. “You don’t want them to know you can see.”

  Eleanor’s fingertips felt cold again, ice creeping up toward her knuckles.

  He’d seen it.

  She wanted to ask him what he saw, but he had his head down, reading the story in the copied pages. Pip had the exact same pose, shoulders bowed, head down, but her eyes were lifted to Eleanor. Her look was intense and serious. She saw it, too.

  She’d seen it yesterday. She’d pretended not to, but she must have. Why hadn’t she said anything? Surely she knew that Eleanor could see the dog, so why let her think that she was the only one?

  Why let her think she was alone?

  Eleanor chanced one last look out the window. The dog was gone.

  * * *

  • • •

  LOOK OUT OF the corner of your eye, her mother had said to her, sometime in those last few horrible days. Don’t look straight on. Always look at them sideways. That’s how to keep yourself safe.

  She’d never told anyone. Certainly not now. They’d think she was like her mother. They’d think she was sick and needed help. Maybe she was.

  But Otto and Pip had seen it, too. That had never happened before.

  Lunch was quinoa and a fall vegetable curry made from locally harvested vegetables (ALL WITHIN THIRTY MILES! said the placard in the lunch line). At Eleanor’s old school, Thursdays were usually sad, flat hamburgers that didn’t even have any toppings. She wished she were hungry enough to enjoy the change.

  Otto and Pip found Eleanor in the lunch line. As soon as she had her food, they dragged her off to the edge of the front courtyard near the hay bales. There was a little wooden sign next to the decorations that read DONATED BY THE JANUARY SOCIETY. Pip kicked it over with her toe as she sat down.

  “So,” Pip said, as soon as they were all sitting. “You saw it. The dog.” Her voice was hushed.

  “The one with glowing red eyes?” Eleanor said at a normal volume, and they both shushed her.

  “Don’t stare. And don’t talk about them too loudly,” Otto said. “That’s how you stay safe.”

  “Talk about who?” Eleanor asked, bewildered and more than a little afraid. “Stay safe from what?”

  “Them. The wrong things,” Pip said. “Like the dog, but there are others, too. The dog is new. But there’s other stuff.”

  “Like what?” Eleanor asked.

  Pip hesitated. “I’m not sure we should tell you. It’s safer if you don’t notice them, and once someone tells you about them, it gets harder not to notice them. If they notice you noticing, or if someone overhears you talking about them . . .” She made a slicing motion over her throat.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Otto said. He’d pulled a little bag of crumbs and birdseed out of his pocket and was making a small pile an arm’s length away. Within seconds, two squirrels bounded across the courtyard and began snacking, apparently unconcerned that he was right there. “No one’s going to kill you. But nobody will believe you, either, and you don’t want anyone thinking you’re crazy.”

  “Millie Jenkins talked about the wrong things, and she disappeared,” Pip said.

  “Millie Jenkins moved to Cleveland,” Otto said.

  “Like that sounds real,” Pip said, rolling her eyes. “The January Society got her.”

  “What’s—” Eleanor began, but Otto cut her off with a shake of his head.

  “We shouldn’t talk about this now,” he said. “Millie might have moved to Cleveland, but August definitely go
t sent to an inpatient clinic and given a bunch of really strong drugs to make him stop seeing things that no one else believed were there. Don’t worry. We’ll help you. But you can’t go around looking right at wrong things and saying stuff in the middle of the school courtyard.”

  “You guys brought me here,” Eleanor pointed out.

  “Yeah, because it’s our spot,” Pip said. She jabbed her fork toward Eleanor’s untouched tray. “Are you going to eat that?”

  “Um. I guess not,” Eleanor said. Pip, who had finished off her food while they talked, started in on Eleanor’s. Something about it made Eleanor’s stomach give a happy flip. Like once someone stole food from you, you were destined to be friends.

  She hadn’t realized until she met Otto and Pip how much she wanted a friend. She’d thought she’d walled off that part of her, after the fire. But there it was.

  She chewed the edge of her lip. A logical, rational part of her brain told her that none of this could be real. But a more rational part pointed out that if that was true, Pip and Otto couldn’t have known what she saw.

  “I used to see things like that. When I was little,” she said. “But I stopped seeing them a long time ago. I thought I was done with all of it.”

  “It’s Eden Eld,” Pip said. “There’s weird wrong stuff everywhere, but there’s tons of it in Eden Eld.”

  “We don’t know why,” Otto said. “I’ve tried to track the frequency so I can form a proper hypothesis, but it’s hard to gather data on other locations when my family only takes one vacation a year to Pasadena to visit my grandma.”

  “So all we’ve got is ‘Eden Eld is weirder than other places,’” Pip concluded.

  Eleanor thought. She stared off into the distance, and though her thoughts wanted to race, she forced herself to think slowly. Think carefully.

  She wanted to be normal. She’d been oh so careful. But this—

  If this was real? If this was true? If Otto and Pip saw the things she saw, if they could find answers or reasons or even just be in it together, that was a hundred times better than normal.

  “You said you wanted to see Ashford House, right?” she said.

  “Yeah?” Otto replied, already smiling. The squirrels had finished their meal and scurried away with satisfied squeaks.

  “So come over after school. We can talk there, without anyone overhearing. You can tell me about the—the wrong things,” Eleanor said.

  “We can give you the crash course,” Pip said with an enthusiastic nod.

  “And you can give us the grand tour,” Otto added.

  “Deal,” Eleanor said. She shook Otto’s hand, then Pip’s.

  She’d made two friends in her first week. Aunt Jenny would be so pleased.

  Six

  At the end of the day, Pip got on the bus with Eleanor and Otto, and the bus driver didn’t protest. “Don’t you need a pass or something?” Eleanor asked.

  Pip shrugged. “My mom’s the headmistress. I get away with basically anything. Everybody’s terrified of her, and she doesn’t really care what I do. So it works out okay.”

  “My parents practice free-range parenting,” Otto said, shaking his head so his hair flipped out from in front of his eye. It flopped right back again, but he seemed satisfied with the operation. “Also, I have triplet two-year-old siblings and seventeen pets, plus the ones I’m helping my dad rehabilitate. It creates a sort of protective chaos, especially since my older sister’s off at college. I’ve got at least a couple hours before anyone notices I’m gone.”

  They sat crammed together on a bench really meant for only two people. Eleanor sat squished against the window, Pip squeezed in the middle, and Otto balanced on the edge. Eleanor watched the morning’s landscape slide by in reverse as they chatted about some kind of seventh-grade drama that had unfolded after lunch. It was amazing to Eleanor that they could focus on that kind of thing. Could they be pulling her leg about the wrong things and the dog and all the rest?

  Trees gave way to meadows and back to trees again. And there, in the shadows beneath the branches, was the dog from earlier. Big red eyes, mist falling from between his yellow teeth. Eleanor’s hands went icy cold.

  “Guys!” Eleanor said, and pointed. Pip craned around her, but they were already past.

  “What is it?” Otto asked, half standing in his seat and trying to look through the rear window, which was hopelessly grimy.

  “The dog,” Eleanor said.

  “Yeah, it’s been showing up for like a week,” Pip said. Her eyes darted around the bus, checking for eavesdroppers. “But seriously, keep your voice down.”

  “Usually the wrong things stick to one place, but it’s been following us around. Maybe other people, too, but you can’t exactly ask,” Otto whispered. “Pip thinks we should try to attack it.”

  “I said we could try to attack it. Not should,” Pip said.

  “Your exact words were ‘Just let me at it,’” Otto said.

  Eleanor shivered. She was cold all the way through now. All the way to her heart, which seemed to beat so hard she could feel it in the tips of her shoulders.

  “It hasn’t done anything to us,” Otto said. “It just watches. Maybe it’s been there all along. Maybe we just didn’t notice it until now.”

  “We usually notice the wrong things, though,” Pip said, sounding disturbed by this idea.

  “Not always. You didn’t notice the whirly light until I showed you, and that was right outside your house.”

  Eleanor thought of the clock in the hall. The clock she had not seen until yesterday morning. Or had she?

  She frowned and shut her eyes and thought about coming up the spiral staircase the day she arrived, her sad little duffel bag of everything she owned under her arm. She’d looked down the long hall and counted the doors. Three on the left. Four on the right. And across from the room where she’d sleep—the clock.

  She was sure of it. It had been there all along. She just hadn’t noticed.

  She opened her eyes, still frowning. “There’s something you guys have got to see when we get to the house,” she said.

  * * *

  • • •

  FROM THE OUTSIDE, Ashford House looked like a haunted mansion by way of Dr. Seuss. A turret stuck up on the west side of the house, like it had been pilfered from a medieval castle and attached with glue and possibly duct tape. The house was studded irregularly with round windows and square windows and rectangular windows and arched windows and even a triangular window, tucked up under the eaves.

  Rooms and wings and awnings stuck out of it randomly, added on after it was built in the 1880s by Bartimaeus Ashford. The Ashford family had lived in the house all the way until the 1970s, when Eleanor’s grandparents had moved in. Her grandparents had a lot of money for some reason Eleanor wasn’t really clear on, and it had all gone away for reasons she was even less clear on. Jenny and Ben just had the house and Ben’s job, and whatever Jenny made from selling her paintings, which wasn’t much. Ben did what he could to keep up the house on the weekends, but there were shingles missing and windows cracked, and random boards and bits of metal heaped up near the side of the yard.

  “Sorry it’s kind of a mess,” Eleanor said, feeling embarrassed even though she had nothing to do with the state of the house.

  “I like it,” Pip said. “It’s scrappy. Everything in Eden Eld is so perfect. I’ve never even seen moss growing on a roof.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool,” Otto agreed. “It has character. All the houses in town look the same.”

  “Cookie cutter,” Pip concurred, and they both nodded, like that settled the matter.

  Eleanor led Pip and Otto up the drive to the winding concrete walkway that led to the front door, which was made from a big slab of wood full of knots and whorls and had an iron knob shaped like a rose.

  Gray paw prints dotted the con
crete, like a cat had tracked dirt right up to the stoop. The paw prints hitched back and forth a few times and then trailed off into the grass.

  “Big cat,” Otto said.

  Eleanor nudged one of the paw prints with the tip of her shoe. It smeared. Not like dirt at all; more like ash. “We don’t have a cat,” she said. “Must be a stray.” She shivered even as she said it.

  Aunt Jenny was in the drawing room (because Ashford House was the sort of place that had a drawing room). Jenny used it as a second studio for her painting, since the sun came in just right in the mornings, flooding the room with light, but in the past few weeks Jenny’s fingers had started hurting too much to paint, and she couldn’t sit in one place for long, either. Now she was lying back on the couch, half a dozen pillows propping her up as she talked on the phone.

  “Yeah, but they say it can last for days like this. My mom was in early labor with Claire for two weeks.”

  Eleanor squeaked a floorboard, and Jenny looked up, a guilty expression flitting over her face. Because she’d mentioned Eleanor’s mom, Eleanor knew. Jenny quickly smoothed the expression into a smile—a smile that grew bigger when she saw Pip and Otto hovering behind her.

  “I’ll call you back, Lena. Eleanor just got home.” She hung up and levered herself into a more upright position, groaning and putting both hands on either side of her big belly. “How was your second day? I see you picked up some souvenirs.”

  “It was fine. This is Otto. And Pip. They’re going to help me catch up with some schoolwork. Since I started so late.” Once you told a big lie, telling smaller ones was easy. It got easier than telling the truth. Sometimes Eleanor had to stop herself from lying about things that didn’t matter at all.

  “That’s lovely.” Jenny grimaced suddenly.