Through the Glass (A Storybook Novel 1)

by Kira Moericke

  “What?” He sounds annoyed by me just saying his name.

  “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “In there.” He points to the door he had disappeared into earlier, without looking at me.

  Without thanking him, I hurry across the Salmon Room and slip into the room. The bathroom is small, and everything is packed tightly together. The toilet is the first thing I see. It is small and dirty looking. It is so dirty that I actually start to debate whether or not to use it, but then my nagging bladder gets the better of me. Shutting the door, I slip my jeans down and hover above the toilet seat, actually afraid to touch it.

  As I go to the bathroom, I look down at my legs. Little, dark hairs are prickling up. I run a hand over them, confirming that I need to shave.

  When my bladder runs out, I clean myself up, and fix my jeans. When I close the button, I use my foot to flush the toilet. The toilet gurgles and slowly turns, sucking all the water and waste into the hole. The water that slides down the sides slowly trickles out, so the bowl is nearly empty before it refills.

  I turn on the faucet and hold my hands in the little, chipped, white sink. The water doesn’t come out for a second, and when it does, it chokes and sputters. There’s hardly any soap left in the dispenser, so I press hard and fast to catch some in its suction straw.

  “Hey, what did you do, fall in the toilet?” Max calls from the Salmon Room.

  “I’m almost done.” I turn the handles, cutting off the water, and search for a towel. I hold my dripping hands away from me as I look around. My gaze floats near the bathtub, and curiosity grabs me by the fingertips. I look down and shriek.

  “What the hell?” The door swings open a moment later and Maxwell steps in. “What are you screaming about?”

  “There’s a dead mouse in the bathtub!” I point to the flattened, decaying, little body. It looks like someone had squished all of its insides out. The thing is a blackish-brown color, its tail practically molded against the porcelain tub, and its eyes are sunken in, so all I see are two little black holes.

  Max comes near me, looks into the bathtub, and says casually, “That thing has been there ever since I’ve been here.”

  “And you never got rid of it?!”

  “Do you see anywhere where I could get rid of it?” Maxwell asks angrily. Without looking at me, he turns and heads out of the room.

  I swallow the bile that creeps up my throat and glance back at the mouse. It’s disgusting, and all I want is for it to disappear. Prying my gaze away, I look around and finally find the paper towel resting on the floor between the sink and the toilet.

  Of course, I think bitterly as I bend down and rip off a couple of sheets, I find the paper towels after I find the dead mouse. Crunching up the damp paper towels, I throw them in the trash and hurry out of the room.

  Chapter 4

  Day Three

  Bam!

  The next morning, I bolt upright, making Lynne whimper beside me. Maxwell is sitting up on his cot, looking around. His greasy brown hair is sticking up at a bunch of crazy directions. He looks just as panicked as I feel.

  He kicks away the blankets that had wound around his legs and hurries to the door. “Come on! Come on!” He tugs and turns the handle, trying to open it. “Shit!” After a moment, he sighs and looks down at the gray tray that sits on the floor.

  My heart races, drumming wildly against my chest. Maxwell’s angry voice seems far away as I stare at the tray, thinking that I’m imagining it. Is that really food I’m seeing or am I just so hungry that the tray of food is just a mirage? After a moment, I realize it must be real because Maxwell has stopped twisting on the door handle and is sitting on the floor next to the tray of food.

  “Aren’t you coming?” he asks, looking up at me from where he sits cross-leg. He starts separating the food into three piles.

  I turn, place my hands on Lynne, and shake her gently till she stirs awake. She moans softly.

  “Lynne, wake up. There’s food,” I whisper to her.

  “Food?” She’s still half asleep.

  “Yeah. Are you hungry?”

  Lynne moans, slowly nodding.

  “If you guys don’t come over here, I’m going to eat all of it,” Maxwell calls. I see that he is already popping grapes into his mouth.

  “Come on, Lynne.” I grab my sister and hoist her up off the cot with me as I head to the floor with Maxwell, who has started to eat without us. I crawl down onto the dust engraved carpet, cross my legs pretzel-style, and place Lynne down in the center of my lap so that she leans back against me.

  There isn’t much food on the tray for three people; seven slices of bread, a small vine of grapes, a bag of generic crackers, and a small pitcher of water with a couple Dixie cups set next to it.

  “Here’s your pile, and here’s Short Stuff’s pile,” Maxwell says, passing out the slices of bread. “Two for you, two for her, and three for me.”

  “Why do you get three?” I ask frowning, my gaze snapping from him to the third piece of bread that he had placed into his pile.

  “Because,” Max says, stuffing another grape into his mouth and not giving a real answer.

  “What about Lynne? She needs more nutrients then either one of us,” I state. “At least split half of it with her.”

  Maxwell stares at me for a second with his eyes furrowed slightly. It’s like he wants to pinch my head off my body like he did with the grapes from the vine, and flick it across the room. But a moment later, he rips the slice of bread into thirds.

  The little act surprises me but I take the third piece gratefully.

  “Here, Lynne.” I grab her third piece of bread and hand it to her.

  With groggy eyes still thick with sleep, she takes the piece and brings it slowly to her mouth. With her first bite, her face crinkles. “Sarwa, I don’t like it.”

  “You have to eat it,” I urge, grabbing my own piece. I take a bite and let the tasteless softness melt in my mouth. “Mmm, yum,” I lie, hoping she’ll eat.

  Lynne watches me as if studying me. After I take a few more bites, she takes another bite and swallows.

  “Here’s some grapes.” Max slides six grapes over towards me and a pile towards Lynne.

  I look over at him with the right side of my lip slipped up into a smile. “Thank you.”

  Maxwell looks at me, his face expressionless. It is as if something, like a silent thought, passes between us. Then, in the next heartbeat, he looks away to sort out the crackers.

  I dip my head down, letting a greasy strand of hair fall against my cheek.

  We eat in silence. Not even Lynne peeps a sound. I don’t know if it’s because there is nothing to talk about or if we are just happy and enjoying our food. Either way, the silence is awkward.

  With the silence and the awkwardness hanging heavily like molasses between the three of us, questions run laps around my head.

  Why didn’t we get food yesterday?

  Why now?

  Why so little?

  Who wants us like this?

  “Sarwa?” Lynne looks up at me with tired eyes.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you get this?” She picks up a grape from her pile and holds it up to me.

  “Sure.” I grab the grape and move my arms around her so I can rip the piece of fruit apart. The sticky, warm juice squirts over my fingers. “Here.”

  She takes both halves from me and sucks on one as her large brown eyes take in the food that we had gotten.

  I shift, feeling my feet start to grow prickly and tingly as numbness blossoms in the core of them. Lynne’s butt shifts along with my legs. Fear and irritation makes my mind go blank. I know that substance that shifts against my leg. And it isn’t good.

  “What?” Maxwell asks, seeing the dismay that I must show on my face.

  “Her diaper,” I say deadpan. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? Of course she was going to poop. “It’s full.”

  “She still wears a diaper?” He frowns and
looks oddly at Lynne as if she tooted or something.

  “Yes, she still wears a diaper.” I place a hand on Lynne’s warm head. She squirms. I sigh. “What are we going to do?”

  “You mean, what are you going to do.”

  “What? You’re not going to help me?”

  “Hey, she’s not my sister,” he says in defense.

  I groan. “Come on, Lynne.” I get up–irritated with Maxwell–and pick up my little sister with me, carrying her to the bathroom even though the image of the dead mouse floats to the top of my mind. I have no idea of what I’m going to be doing in there. I hardly ever had to change Lynne’s diaper, and when I did, it was because Mom was busy. Besides, we don’t have any more diapers down here. What am I going to do?

  “Sarwa,” Lynne whines as she squirms in my arm. “I wanna go down!”

  “We have to change your diaper,” I explain to her, shutting the bathroom door with my foot. I get down on my knees and lay Lynne down on her back.

  “No!” Lynne screams, struggling to sit up.

  “Lynne, we have too. You’re not potty-trained yet.” I struggle to keep her down, which isn’t as easy as it seems. There is a lot of swinging arms, screaming, and kicking legs.

  “Uh-huh,” she lies.

  “Nuh-unh.” I shake my head as I lift up the bottom of her dress and yank down her pants with the elastic waistband.

  “No!” she screams again as tears spring into her eyes. She tries to lift her upper body off the ground so she can grab her pants and pull them back up.

  “Lynne, stop it,” I order, struggling with her.

  “No!” Her face is turning pink.

  “Yes!” I yank her pants off from around her feet and toss them aside so she can’t grab them. As I struggle to undo the straps of her diaper, her screaming gets louder and her face goes from pink to red.

  “What are you doing to Short Stuff? Torturing her or what?” Max teases through the door.

  “Max, get in here and help me!” I unfold the loaded diaper from Lynne and press my lips tightly together, trying not to gag. It is packed full. I don’t even know how it hadn’t unstrapped itself in her pants.

  A moment later, the door swings open, and Maxwell steps inside. “Whoa.” He freezes in the doorway, his face twisted into disgust.

  “Hold her down for me!” I shout, trying to pin Lynne’s arms and legs down at the same time she tries to fend me off.

  Slowly, in no rush, Max walks around the two of us and kneels by Lynne’s head. He reaches over, grabs her pudgy arms, and pins them to the floor. “Man, she smells,” he says, wrinkling his nose in disgust

  “No, duh.” I use my knees to hold down her kicking legs and reach for the paper towels. I know I should get them wet, but Lynne is being too much of a pain that I can’t risk letting up on her legs. Holding the wad of paper towels, I clean her up.

  “Are you almost done?” Maxwell asks over Lynne’s wails.

  “Almost,” I confirm. I quickly wipe Lynne clean and pick up the dirty diaper, throwing it in the trash. I know I have to potty-train her now that we don’t have any diapers, and it makes me a little nervous. “Done!”

  Maxwell lets go of her arms as soon as I say the word. We quickly back away from Lynne as we watch her scramble to her feet and run from the room, leaving her pants in a crumpled ball on the floor.

  “Does she always do that?” Maxwell asks, leaning against the bathtub. He looks exhausted, as if helping me hold Lynne took all his strength.

  I sigh. “Always.” Getting up, I wash my hands and wipe them dry on a clean piece of paper towel. When my hands are dry, I throw it into the trash and head for the door. I’m almost out when Max grabs my arm and yanks me towards him. “What the heck?”

  “By the way, don’t ever call me ‘Max’ again,” he says, looking at me with his eyebrows furrowed.

  “Why?” I spit out.

  “Because that’s not my name.” His voice is sharp like a knife. “If I wanted people to call me Max, my name would be Max.”

  “Sorry, Maxwell,” I reply nastily.

  He glares and pushes past me to the Salmon Room.

  I follow after him and head over to Lynne who has stopped crying and is sitting on the floor, her dress fanning around her, nibbling on crackers.

  “Lynne.” I sit down next to her and wait for her to look at me before I continue. “When you have to go potty, you have to tell me, okay?”

  She stares blankly back at me as if she doesn’t know what I’m saying.

  “You don’t have a diaper on,” I explain. “So tell me when you have to go.”

  She nods and finishes up her cracker.

  I hope she understands, even though I have some doubt. With a sigh, I pick up a cracker of my own and take a bite.

  Nothing else happens. Of course, what else can happen? It’s the three of us trapped in a musty, disgusting room. After we had finished the food, I had gotten the three remaining figurines off the dresser and gave them to Lynne to play with. When I walked up to the dresser to grab them, I saw the broken elephant. For some reason, seeing the cute little figurine with the blueish-gray skin and big raindrop eyes and the little trunk curled up off its mouth made me sad.

  “Where arwe they?” Lynne had asked as she wobbled over to me. She looked up at me expectantly.

  “Here they are.” I grabbed the bird, cat, and dog figurines and placed them gently on the floor. “Now don’t break any of them.”

  “I want you to pway with me,” she said.

  “You want me to play?” I smiled and knelt down across from her.

  She nodded.

  “So what one do you want me to play with?” I looked between the three figurines.

  “Um . . .” Lynne glanced at the three of them, debating which one she didn’t want to play with. After a moment, she had picked up the little blue bird and thrusted it out towards me. “This one.”

  “Thank you.” I took the bird and started to make it fly. “Tweet, tweet.”

  “Woof! Woof!” She picked up the black dog and made him walk. “Woof! Woof!”

  “What does the cat say?” I asked, loving the way she does animal imitations. Her high-pitched voice makes everything she says adorable.

  “Meow.”

  I smiled and made the bird land. “Hello, Dog.”

  “The dog’s name is Bwakie,” Lynne stated.

  “Oh?” I didn’t know that she had named the animals. “What’s the bird’s name?”

  “Bwue,” she replied.

  “And the cat’s name?”

  “Pwincess!” she had shouted happily.

  Blue, Blackie, and Princess, I thought, amused. She gives two obvious names and gives the cat a name like Princess.

  “Bwue,” Lynne squeaked using “Princess” as the character, “what arwe you doing?”

  “Flying,” I replied sweetly. “What are you doing?”

  “Pwaying,” she replied. “Meow.”

  “Tweet.”

  “Can you guys stop that?” Maxwell groaned from his cot. He laid on his back with his arms crossed over his eyes.

  I looked up and glared at him. “I’m trying to occupy her.”

  He groaned again, more louder and more dramatic.

  “Where’s Blakie?” I had asked as I turned back to Lynne’s little game.

  “Right herwe.” Lynne grabbed the dog and placed it roughly between us. “Hi.”

  “Hi, Blackie. How have you been?”

  Our game continued like that for some amount of time. It’s a while, I know that. There were times when I would laugh at Lynne because every time she would play with “Princess” she made her voice high and squeaky and when she had played with “Blackie” she had made her voice really low. A couple times I even heard Maxwell stifle back smiles. I didn’t even know the guy could smile. After some time, though, I backed away from the game and headed back to the cot where I picked up The Lords of the Rings.

  “Little kids are pathetic,” Maxwell
says, craning his head so he can look over his wide span of chest to look at Lynne who is still playing on the floor.

  “Why?” I ask, flipping to the next page. “Because they can make a game out of anything?”

  “Exactly.” He lets his head plop back onto his pillow. “You can do anything and they think it’s amazing.”

  “That’s exactly why we love them,” I say. “They’re just so precious even though they don’t know it.” I look over at Lynne and smile. “I just love her so much.”

  From his cot, Maxwell makes a weird noise.

  “What?” I look over at him and frown.

  “Nothing,” he replies casually.

  “No seriously, what?” I frown at him, keeping my fingers pinched between the pages I’m reading.

  “I said, nothing,” he says a little harshly.

  “Fine.” I look down at the book. “Whatever.”

  “What does that mean?” He twists to look at me.

  “Nothing,” I reply, keeping my eyes on the black and white pages.

  “Tu m’as.” He slowly nods his head and lays back down on his back.

  “What’s that?” I ask, never hearing the word before.

  “It’s French.”

  “I know that.” I roll my eyes. “What does it mean?”

  “Means ‘you got me’.” He cranes his neck over his pillow so he can look at me. He has a small smile on his face.

  I smile as triumph warms me from the inside out. It feels good to beat him.

  More hours passed. Lynne had played on the floor with the figurines until she got bored and decided to play dress up with the clothes in crumpled boxes. I finished The Lord of the Rings after about a million different positions. At first I had laid flat on my stomach until my shoulders and elbows hurt from prompting myself up. Then I had flipped onto my back then had prompted my prickly legs up against the wall.

  “Can you sit still?” Maxwell grumbles.

  “No,” I shoot back. “These cots are so uncomfortable, and there is nothing to do down here.”

  “So?”

  “So I want to get comfy.”

  “Comfy?” He chuckles without humor. “This place is Hell. Being comfortable isn’t an option.”