“Really,” she said now. “You should hurry up and get to school.” The truth was she didn’t want him here anyway. He didn’t know squat about holding still and blending in.
“Come with me,” he begged, this totally sad pleading look on his face, all big eyed and weird like a baby doll. To make it worse, Mike’s voice always rose at the slightest possibility of trouble, making him sound more like a five-year-old girl than a fourteen-year-old dude. “If you skip again, they’ll, like, send the truant officer after you or something.”
Olive chuffed out a disgusted laugh. There was no truant officer. If there had been, he would have been banging down her door weeks ago. She hadn’t exactly been a model student this year and had lost track of how many days she’d either left early or skipped altogether. She turned in some of her assignments, showed up for tests and usually did pretty well, despite not studying.
“Look,” she whispered down. “Either stay or go. I don’t really care. But if you stay, you gotta hold still and shut your face.”
“Whatever,” Mike said, climbing clumsily back down the tree, then lumbering off once he got to the ground, heavy backpack weighing him down. The kid moved like a bear. He was built like one, too: tall, rounded shoulders, big belly. People at school said he was a retard and he got that way ’cause his parents were brother and sister, but none of that was true. Olive knew Mike was a thousand times smarter than anyone she’d ever met. Scary smart. He could read a book and remember every single thing in it and was doing math that some seniors in honors classes wouldn’t even attempt. She felt a little bad sending him away like this, but what choice did she have?
She’d make it up to him later. Buy him one of the chocolate puddings he loved from the school cafeteria or leave a new comic in his locker. Mike loved the Green Lantern. When they were younger, they used to play this imaginary game where Mike was always the Green Lantern—he even made his own magic ring out of a short piece of copper pipe that turned his finger green—and Olive was the bad guy he was trying to catch. Olive knew Mike still carried that old ring—far too small now—around in his pocket, his own weird good luck charm.
Olive looked back at the out-of-state couple now, binoculars pressed against her eyes, and felt anger writhing around like worms in her belly.
“I banish you,” she said, which sounded dumb really, but it was something she’d read in a book once. A book about a kingdom and dragons and magical things, and she thought maybe they were magic words that might drive the people away. “I banish you.”
She was no better than Mike and his dumb old ring. There was no such thing as magic. She was fourteen years old. Too old to believe in stupid things like wishes and magic words or rings.
Their being here would ruin everything.
She would never find the treasure if she had to sneak around in the dead of night. And she had to find it soon. Time was, as they say, of the essence.
Some people said it was all a lie, a rumor, that it didn’t even exist. Even Mike didn’t believe. Not really anyway. He pretended to, just to make Olive happy. He went along with her whenever she searched for it and acted like she might find it any day, but really, she could tell he didn’t think it was ever gonna happen.
But Mike, smart as he was at math and reciting every fact he’d ever read in any book, was also clueless about so much. And of course, most people were idiots.
Olive knew better. She knew because her own mother had told her the truth.
“Of course it’s real!” her mama told her two years ago. They were in Olive’s room, doing spring cleaning—taking down the curtains, washing the windows and woodwork. Olive loved spring cleaning. She always kept her room neat and organized, but it was even better after she and Mama scrubbed everything down. Everything glowed, and the lemon cleanser smell made Olive feel bright and warm.
“She knew they were coming for her, see, and she took all the gold and silver, all the jewels, and buried it in a secret place,” Mama explained as she pulled back the bed so they could scrub the floor underneath. “Somewhere in the woods that border the bog. Then, once the treasure was safe, she tried to run, thinking she’d come back for it later.”
“But they caught her,” Olive said, dipping her mop into the sudsy bucket.
“They sure did. Her own daughter led them right to her. That’s what folks say.”
“I would never do that to you, Mama,” Olive said, wringing out the mop.
“I know you wouldn’t.” Mama ruffled Olive’s hair. “And there’s something else I know, Ollie Girl; something I’m absolutely sure of. You and me, we’re going to find that treasure. It’s our destiny.”
Olive loved this: knowing they had a destiny. That they were a part of something that was bigger than them, connected to events that had happened lifetimes ago. She could see it so clearly that day as they cleaned together: her and Mama finding that treasure, digging it up out of the ground. They’d be famous. Rich. Mama said they could use that money to pay off all their bills, pay off the mortgage even, then go traveling around the world—just them and Daddy. Olive pictured it: how all the kids at school would turn on the TV at night, and there would be Olive, smiling out from the evening news, because she and Mama found the treasure that no one believed was real.
But then something changed. Mama discovered a different destiny for herself—one that didn’t include Olive. It started small: she got quieter, more secretive. Olive couldn’t pinpoint when it started, but Mama stopped talking about the treasure. Once, at dinner, when Olive asked about it, Mama laughed at her like she was stupid, said, “There is no treasure, Ollie. Not really. It was just a story I told you when you were a kid. But you’re getting to be too grown-up for silly stories like that.”
And Mama started acting like she hardly knew Olive and Daddy, like being in the house made her skin crawl. She got all jumpy, was always making up excuses to go out: they needed milk; it was a beautiful night for a long walk; a friend needed help with something. She started spending more and more time away from home. She even skipped spring cleaning that year, and when Olive brought it up, Mama shrugged, said the house was clean enough.
Olive heard her parents fighting late one night last summer, heard her daddy say, “Who is he?,” followed by, “Half the town knows it.” Mama denied it, asked him please for the love of God to lower his voice.
Then, in the morning, Mama didn’t come down for breakfast. Usually, she was the first one up and had the coffee perking, but that morning, Olive came into the kitchen and found Daddy pouring hot water over instant coffee.
“Mama’s not up?”
“She’s not here,” Daddy said, clenching his jaw.
“Where is she?”
Daddy didn’t answer, just looked away, dark circles under his red eyes. And part of Olive was glad he hadn’t answered, hadn’t told her the truth.
Over the next days and weeks, Olive tried hard to block out the gossip she heard around town: the hushed whispers spoken by all the adults at the general store, the library, even the kids in school. That was the worst—starting high school last fall and hearing all the older kids whispering, “Her mama ran off with some other man. Must suck to have a slut for a mom.” She walked the long, too-bright halls with her head down, pretending not to hear, pretending not to notice.
Aunt Riley, Daddy’s older sister (my bossy older sister, Daddy called her), told her not to listen to what people said. “You know your mama better than almost anyone,” Riley said. “Don’t you forget that.”
Riley might be older than her parents, but she was much cooler than them, and one of Olive’s very favorite people in the universe. Olive always gloated a little walking around town with her, hoping kids from school might see them and it would somehow elevate Olive’s status. Riley had tons of tattoos, an asymmetrical haircut with bangs that were dyed blue, and she often wore blue lipstick to match it. She lived in an a
partment in a funky old Victorian, worked at a building salvage yard, went to college part-time, and volunteered at the historical society and for Habitat for Humanity. She’d even gone down to Nicaragua one summer to help build houses for poor people. For a while, Riley was apprenticing to be a tattoo artist and kept sketchbooks full of designs: carefully inked drawings of skulls, flowers, and animals, and page after page of fancy lettering. Riley had this I’m gonna be my own person and not give a crap what anyone thinks kind of attitude that Olive totally admired and aspired to. And she really did boss Olive’s dad around (or tried to anyway). She was always telling him what to do, and he usually nodded and went along with whatever it was, whether it was something like: “Time to cut the grass, Dusty,” or “That shirt looks like shit, go put on a clean one.” Olive knew her dad and Riley didn’t have the best childhood—their mom drank and their dad was hardly ever home, so Aunt Riley basically raised Daddy and had been taking care of him and bossing him around his whole life; it was just a matter of habit now.
After Mama left, Riley suggested to her dad that maybe she could move in. “Just for a while. To help you guys out until Lori comes back.” Daddy said he appreciated the offer but that they were doing fine, really.
Riley was always bringing Olive strange gifts: kumquats, a slide ruler, a piece of amber with a bug trapped inside. “What can I say—weird stuff always makes me think of you,” Riley would say with a wink and a ruffling of Olive’s hair as she handed the gifts over.
Riley had her own collection of weird stuff in her apartment: animal bones, a crystal ball, tarot cards, and pendulums. She was always meditating and setting up little altars for various occasions, like if she wanted a new job or for some guy she liked to like her back. She liked to talk about dreams and always made Olive tell hers when she spent the night. She believed dreams were important and bought Olive a little blue journal with a sun and moon so she could write them down. Olive thought the notebook was too pretty to write her dumb dreams in, so she put it on her bookshelf to save for a time when she might have something worthwhile to use it for.
“Have you ever had an experience where you knew something was going to happen before it did?” she asked Olive once. Olive said she hadn’t and Riley looked disappointed. Sometimes she’d read Olive’s tarot cards, to tell her future, which always seemed hopeful and promising when Riley interpreted it—even when she got cards that scared Olive, like the Tower, which showed a tower on fire after lightning struck it and blew the top off, two people tumbling out of it to the ground.
“The Tower, that’s turmoil, sudden change. Your life might feel like it’s in upheaval, but really, you’ve got to remember that with change comes positive stuff, too. You’re gonna grow from this. With destruction comes transformation, right? Sometimes you’ve gotta break down the structures you surround yourself with to get to the truth, to find the core strength of who you are. Does that make sense, Ollie?” And Olive nodded and they’d finished the reading, drinking bitter herbal tea that was supposed to help them both get centered and find clarity.
Riley tried hard, almost too hard, to make things better for Olive. She’d always been a fixture at their house, mostly hanging out with Mama. Riley and her mom went to antique shops, went out to play bingo and to hear bands perform at the Cider Mill out on Route 9. Daddy would get irritated (or at least pretend to be) when Riley showed up at the house to take Mama off somewhere. “My god, woman,” he’d say. “You spend more time with my sister than you do with me!” She’d laugh as she hurried off on some adventure with Riley, say, “I only married you so I could have the best sister-in-law ever.”
But now it was Olive Riley came to take out on adventures. Olive figured that maybe Riley was lonely, too, missing Mama and looking for company. She took Olive out for milkshakes, went for walks in the woods with her, invited Olive to come stay at her place on the weekends, where they’d watch old black-and-white horror movies and eat piles of candy. Riley always got a big bag of Swedish Fish for Olive because they were her favorite. They never talked about Mama. That felt like the point; that Riley was trying to take Olive’s mind (and her own, too, maybe) off Mama, to help her forget that her own mother had just up and left her and Daddy. But no amount of horror movies, popcorn, and Swedish Fish could make Olive forget.
Daddy, he pretended not to hear the rumors about Mama, either. He went to his job (he worked maintenance for the town, fixing roads and culverts and driving a snowplow in the winter) and came home each evening. He stopped playing cards with friends or going out for a beer in the evening. He stayed home and cooked microwave dinners for him and Olive. They were too bland and greasy—Salisbury steak, fried chicken, and mashed potatoes that didn’t taste anything like actual potatoes—but Olive smiled and swallowed them down. The only time he actually cooked real food was when Riley came, and then it was always spaghetti with spicy Italian sausages. He even splurged and bought garlic bread and a bag of premade salad. They pretended, Daddy and Olive, that this was how they ate every night, so that Riley wouldn’t worry about them.
“Your mama will be back,” he promised Olive when they were alone one night, eating their crappy microwaved Salisbury steak dinners with fake mashed potatoes and little square apple pies. “And you know what I think?” Suddenly his eyes were bright again for the first time in what seemed like forever. He looked around the kitchen, as if he had never seen it before—the dingy walls with patches of missing wallpaper, the peeling Formica on the counter. “I think we should surprise her. Fix the house up real nice for her, what do you say?”
Of course, Olive said yes. And this was how the renovations started.
. . .
The spare bedroom wall got knocked down first, her father letting Olive take the first swing with the sledgehammer. She stood looking at the wall through fogged safety glasses. “Are you sure?” she asked, testing the weight of the heavy hammer.
“Hell yes, I’m sure,” Daddy said. “Knock it down, baby. Know it all down.”
She gave a few tentative swings, hating the destruction. Then Daddy took over, smashing away with a frenzy that frightened her. They were tearing down the wall to make a larger bedroom for her parents.
“Your mama always wanted a master bedroom,” Daddy said between swings, plaster dust covering his arms and face. “A closet all her own.” He hit the wall with renewed vigor, smashing right through to the other side.
They put in two side-by-side closets: his and hers. Olive helped her father hang all of her mother’s abandoned clothing up in the closet on the left side. As she handled her mother’s best dress, her favorite leather coat, she believed her father, believed that her mother would actually come back. Because there was no way she would have left all this behind. Not her favorite dress and coat. Not every pair of shoes. Not the treasure. Not Olive.
Renovations aside, Olive was more determined than ever to find the treasure, sure that once she found it, her mother would return. Wherever she was, she’d see Olive on TV, hear about it on the news: about the girl who’d found the buried treasure, the girl who was now rich.
If that didn’t bring her back, then Olive would have all the money she needed to find her. She’d hire an army of private detectives, do whatever it took to bring Mama home again. And Mama would see the new master bedroom, her own huge closet, and she’d never want to leave.
In the meantime, Olive kept searching.
. . .
Now, Olive listened to Mike’s footsteps as he made his way clumsily down the path. She pressed the binoculars to her face, watching the outsiders. They stood, their arms around each other, stupid smiles plastered on their faces that said all their dreams were coming true. Olive hated them. She couldn’t help herself.
She bit her lip, watching the flatlanders. They were kissing now. Totally gross.
I banish you, she thought again, concentrating as hard as she could.
The woman pulle
d back from the man, looked right in Olive’s direction.
Olive didn’t flinch. Just held tight to the tree, concentrated on blending in, on being part of the landscape. Because she was a part of the landscape. And this place, it was a part of her. All of it: the trees, the animals, the bog, the wind in the trees.
CHAPTER 3
Helen
S MAY 19, 2015
Something was being eviscerated.
That’s the only way she knew to describe the sound she was hearing: a horrible, keening screech. A creature being tortured, split open, and gutted. It was a desperate, high-pitched scream. At first, it sounded like it was right outside the trailer; then it seemed to move—or was it being dragged off?—farther back into the woods. Out in the direction of the bog.
She’d been awake for hours, unable to sleep in the cramped bed, listening to every strange sound—breaking branches, howling dogs, hooting owls—so unfamiliar from the hushed buzz of highway traffic that she heard at night back at the condo.
Now there was this terrible scream that made her chest tighten, heart pushed all the way up into her throat.
And Nate was sleeping through it. Typical.
She gave him a hard shove.
“Nate!” she whisper-yelled, trying to control her breathing, to not sound totally panic-stricken. “Nate, did you hear that?”
She sat up, bumping her head on the ridiculous shelf on the wall above the bed in the tiny bedroom of the trailer. The bedroom was wide enough only for a double bed. No closet, so there were shelves everywhere. Making the bed was a nearly impossible feat involving acts of contortion Helen hadn’t imagined herself capable of.
“Hear what?” Nate asked, rolling from his side to his back.
“It was a scream. An awful scream.”
He sat up, bumped his own head on the shelf, mumbled, “Shit!”
The Invited (ARC) Page 4