“Neither of us is much for mornings,” Uncle Barnabas said once Nell had swept her clothes out of the old trunk at the foot of her bed and slammed the bathroom door behind her.
“I couldn’t tell,” I said drily.
He straightened out his black polo shirt and tucked it the rest of the way in his pants. Uncle Barnabas had explained the night before that he worked two day jobs on and off throughout the week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday in the Witch History Museum. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in Salem’s Pioneer Village, a “living history museum” full of men and women dressed and acting like they were Puritans in the 1630s. Which…sounded a lot like home, actually. At least it explained Uncle Barnabas’s strange clothes on Founder’s Day.
“That’s okay,” I said, folding the sheets and straightening out the pillows on my couch-bed. Seeing that Nell and Uncle Barnabas hadn’t bothered, I made their beds too.
“I’m sorry I can’t take you to school myself, but Cornelia will get you all sorted out,” Uncle Barnabas said, pulling on a gray fleece with the museum’s logo.
The tight fist around my stomach was back. “Are you sure I have to go?”
“You’d rather stay here?” Uncle Barnabas raised a brow and looked around. I saw his point. It would be freezing and kind of lonely, but it wasn’t like I was a stranger to either of those feelings. “Believe me, nothing can crack the coven’s protection spell. You’ll be safe there, and the rest is up to you.”
The bathroom door burst open, and Nell came strolling out. Her outfit had been downgraded from yesterday’s radioactive rainbow to jeans, a yellow T-shirt, and a purple sweater. It was her hair that was wild—braided and pinned in every direction over the top of her head, like a futuristic milkmaid.
“That’s an…interesting hairdo,” Uncle Barnabas managed to squeeze out. His arm tightened around my shoulder.
Nell’s hand floated up to touch the braid across her forehead, her smile falling. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
Uncle Barnabas looked like he’d realized he stepped on a piece of gum. He started shaking his hands, like he could wave his words away. “Nothing’s wrong with it. Looks great, Cornelia. Do you have everything you need for your cousin today?”
She sat down on the floor to tug on a pair of slouchy black boots, her chin tucked against her chest so we couldn’t see her face. After a second, she started to unpin the braids, one at a time, shaking her tight curls out.
I started to say something, but she disappeared under her bed, pushing aside a small, clear tub of her clothes to grab a beat-up gray messenger bag and a black North Face fleece. She sent both of them sliding across the floor to my feet.
“Here,” she said. “You can use these for now. I put some notebooks and pens in there, but we’ll have to borrow books from the library.”
Someone—Nell, obviously—had written the words What’s past is prologue in black ink on the gray bag. I brushed both it and the fleece off, trying not to cough with the dust.
“Don’t stay too late at work tonight,” Nell said, sliding her backpack onto her shoulder. “We have the thing tonight, remember?”
Uncle Barnabas cocked his head to the side, staring at her.
“The audition,” she reminded him. “The tour companies?”
“Oh yes, yes, I remember now,” he said, waving a hand. “I’ll be home by six at the latest.”
“Why?” I asked. “What kind of audition is this?”
“Nell had the idea to partner with some of the local tour-guide groups so tourists are guaranteed to end their night coming through the House of Seven Terrors,” Uncle Barnabas said, sounding distracted as he gathered up a small pile of books and papers.
Meaning a steady stream of guests and revenue. I looked at Nell in admiration. It was beyond smart.
After saying good-bye to Uncle Barnabas, Nell and I went down the back stairs of the house, avoiding the monster floors. We barely made it in time to catch the yellow school bus at the corner.
Nell kept her head down, ignoring the way the conversations around us died as we walked down the aisle, heading toward the back of the bus. I was so distracted by the way the other kids stared at us, whispering, I didn’t even think to look back at the outside of the House of Seven Terrors until we were pulling away.
It looked like one house had been stacked atop another and the two awkwardly nailed together. Both halves were crooked, and with its dark wood and nearly black exterior, it looked like a crow in the middle of a long row of doves. The hand-painted sign outside that read WELCOME TO YOUR NIGHTMARE really added to the dire look. Or maybe it was just the fake blood splattered on it.
But the sick feeling in my already tight stomach had nothing to do with the house and everything to do with the weight of the eyes on me, picking me apart.
Wait. For once, they weren’t whispering about me.
“The freak has a new friend,” someone said from across the aisle. “Or is it her boyfriend?”
Anger prickling, I turned toward the direction of the girl’s voice, but Nell gripped me by the collar and turned me back toward the window.
“Just ignore them,” she muttered. “They’ll get bored eventually. Look—there’s the House of Seven Gables.”
Another dark wood house zoomed by in a blur.
“The inspiration for your haunted house?” I guessed.
“Mom’s,” Nell said, leaning her forehead against the window. “The haunted house was her idea. We had just finished the last rooms when…”
I knew what she was about to say: when she passed away. Her mother hadn’t gotten to see the haunted house up and running. I bit the inside of my mouth, wondering what I could say to make it better.
“Do you know that story?” she asked. “The House of the Seven Gables?”
“Uh, am I supposed to?”
“It’s an old Nathaniel Hawthorne book, all about one family betraying another and basically stealing their fortune and secrets. And revenge.” The bus lurched to a stop, throwing us both against the seat in front of us. “They turned the real House of the Seven Gables into a museum, and it’s a tourist’s dream. We pick up a lot of business being only two blocks away, and the people there even let us leave flyers to advertise. The haunted houses near the common are a little more successful, but I think we have a good word of mouth going. If we can seal the deal with these tourist agencies, we’ll be set for years. We might even be able to redo the attic so we don’t feel like we’re nesting up there like owls.”
I nodded, turning more fully to watch the town stream by. On first glance, Salem looked a lot like Redhood. It was the same kind of colonial architecture, the same narrow roads that wound up and down and around the same fire-gold maple leaves. Even the view of the glittering water out on the wharf we passed, the dozens of small boats docked there, felt as familiar as the lines of my palms.
I closed my eyes, trying to commit it all to memory for later, wondering how I would ever be able to capture the way the golden morning light flickered against the silvery river water.
But there was one key difference between Salem and Redhood. When you drove through our part of the Cape, it looked like a living history museum. There were rules about the height of trees on the lawns, about what your driveway could be made of, about how many holiday decorations you could put out, and for how long.
But Salem looked lived-in. The kids around me were in sweaters and jeans, flicking through their phones or reading. No designer purses, or stuffy uniforms, or shoes expensive enough to feed a family for months. The homes were dressed in autumn glory, spilling over with the spirit of the season.
Piles of leaves had been gathered to be burned or carted off. Beyond them, though, fake skeletons paraded and danced around lawns, and stuffed witches clutched their wicker broomsticks. Jack-o’-lanterns invaded walls, porches, gates, grinning maniacally as we drove past them.
The center of town seemed to be where most of the tourist stuff was located, including the witc
h museum and some kind of cemetery—maybe where they had buried some of the accused witches? The rest was all residential, with a few plain, modern strip malls and shopping centers that would have made Grandmother clutch her pearls in dismay.
It felt warm and loved, like a favorite sweater. There was excitement buzzing through the air, lighting the faces of the tourists who were milling around in packs—none of the careful, reserved demeanor of the old families of Redhood. Salem looked like how I always pictured normal.
“Fiends wear hats like that,” Nell said quietly, following my gaze to a house with black pointy hats dangling from the front lawn’s maple tree. “Not witches.”
Before I could answer, I heard someone snicker behind us. “Witches?”
I sat up and craned my neck around, peering over the green vinyl of our seat. Two boys who looked to be about my age were staring at the back of Nell’s head. One brought up a hand, a small wad of wet paper pinched between his fingers. Poised to throw.
Having been on the receiving end of way too many spitballs to count, I threw a hand out just as the boy launched it. It stuck to my palm with a sickening thwack. I looked at it and grimaced. Great. He’d laced gum in it, too.
“What’s your problem?” I demanded, ignoring Nell as she tried to pull my arm down.
“Oooooooh,” the boys crooned back. One wore a shirt that read SALEM TRACK AND FIELD. Blond hair stuck out from under his baseball hat. The other, the one who’d actually thrown the spitball, had darker skin and hair, and was big enough to look like he was a year or two older than us.
Nell yanked me down with a furious look. “I can take care of myself!” she whispered.
“Really? That was taking care of yourself?”
The bus’s brakes shrieked as the driver pulled into the drop-off lane. Nell glanced back over her shoulder once, and just as we were about to come to a complete stop, she tilted her head toward the boys.
They slammed face-first into the back of the seat in front of them.
“They really need to get the brakes on this thing checked,” she said casually to me, standing to collect her backpack.
“Definitely,” I agreed.
The bigger kid had blood spurting from his nose onto his plaid shirt. As he shoved his way up the aisle, shouldering kids aside, Nell said sweetly, “You should probably go see the nurse about that. It looks painful.”
His eyes narrowed to slits as he spun away. His friend, the one in the track shirt, shot Nell a curious look.
“He hates that you ignore him,” the boy told her, sounding at least a little apologetic.
“Whatever, Parker,” she said. “You don’t reward your dogs for their bad behavior, do you?”
Before he could respond, she tugged me up and off our seat. The cold morning wind tugged at us as we stepped off the bus and fell into the herd of kids shuffling toward the brick building.
Thump, thump, thump went my heart.
Twist, twist, twist went my stomach.
Ha! Ha! Ha! went the fiend, sounding like he was basking in my anxiety, rolling through it like a flower field.
I took a step forward, ignoring Nell’s quiet, frantic “Wait!”
Too late.
It felt like I had walked into an electric fence. A white-hot current ripped through me, throwing me back a few steps. When I opened my eyes, I half expected to see my clothes charred.
“Wow, cousin,” Nell said loudly, “you are so clumsy!”
The other students glanced down at me in alarm or ignored me altogether as she helped me back to my feet. The blood drained from my face, leaving it numb.
“The protection spell,” she whispered. “You have a fiend in you. I have to invite you to pass through the boundary.”
She maneuvered so she stood facing me, with her back to the school. I saw the perimeter of magic now, the way it rippled a faint green against the air.
“Come in, come in,” Nell whispered, holding out a hand. “And let our work begin.”
Glancing around to make sure no one had heard or was watching, I took a tentative step forward. This time, I passed through without so much as an errant breeze to greet me. “Do all spells have to rhyme?”
“No, they’re just easier to remember that way,” Nell muttered. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”
But my feet wouldn’t budge, no matter how much I tried to convince myself to take another step forward. The sooner you begin, the sooner it’ll be over. The sooner you begin, the sooner it’ll be over….
Nell glanced at me once, then led me off to the side toward a cement planter, out of everyone else’s way.
“Can’t we just ditch?” I asked finally. “I won’t tell if you won’t!”
Nell did not look impressed by the suggestion.
“Is that how you get out of things you don’t want to do at home? You just skip out on them?” She shook her head. “Come on, cuz. As Shakespeare said, it’s time to screw your courage to the sticking-place.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means,” Nell said, yanking on my arm, “time to suck it up and put your big-boy panties on.”
I glared and reluctantly followed her up the cement steps, my hand trailing along the metal guardrail. It seemed like there were two separate wings of the school, attached by these cool enclosed glass walkways; even now I could see kids walking through them. To my right was an official-looking man, tugging the American and Massachusetts state flags up the pole, barking at the students standing on the patch of grass marked with several signs that read DO NOT TREAD ON THE WINTER GRASS.
“Nell, hey!”
She and I turned as one. My eyes scanned the kids coming up the stairs until I landed on the boy who was waving enthusiastically at us. Nell laughed and waved back.
“You missed school last week, I was worried,” he said, huffing as he jumped up the last two steps. I stared at him, eyes growing wider by the second. Every single bit of the clothing he wore—socks, shoes, pants, shirt, sweater, hat—was a bright shade of blue.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, then did a double take as he saw me. “Were you that upset about the play?”
“The play?” I repeated, and it was only then that the kid seemed to notice me.
“The school play,” he clarified. “Who are you?”
“Why would you be upset about the school play?” I asked Nell, something tickling at the back of my mind.
She ignored me, as usual. “Everything’s fine, Norton. And he’s my cousin. He’s temporarily enrolling for the next few weeks while his parents travel the world.”
The kid stuck out his hand, gripping mine in a crushing shake. If he noticed that the other kids were giving him a wide berth, he didn’t seem to care.
“Nice to meet blue—er, you,” I said. “Um…sorry about that, it’s just…”
He was…so…blue…?
“Norton is participating in a performance-art piece,” Nell explained. “He only wears one color a day, and it reflects his mood.” She turned back to Norton, watching him dig through his brown lunch bag. “Why so blue today, Nortie?”
He dug a hand into the lunch bag and fished out a plastic sandwich bag. “Mom only had bread ends left.”
“That does suck,” I agreed.
“Anyway, nice to meet you—maybe we’ll have some classes together?” he said, with hope curling in his voice.
“I have no idea,” I told him honestly. “Nice to meet you, though.”
At the top of the steps, just before we reached the door, Nell reached into her backpack and pulled out a red file folder.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Your new life,” she said.
The first bell rang, but neither of us moved.
“Hey, I know this has been…really awful is kind of an understatement, isn’t it? But I just want to say…” Her lips pressed together. “I just wanted to say that you should listen to what my dad said and see this as a fresh start. You aren’t a Redding he
re. No one knows your name. Maybe it’ll be easier for you to act like the person you want to be, instead of the person you think you are.”
“So I’m just supposed to pretend to be something I’m not?” I demanded. “What if I don’t know how to do that?”
“It’s easier than you think,” Nell said. “It’s method acting—you become the character, living and breathing life into him, creating him from what bare-bones info we’ve given you. There are no mistakes, just constant creation.” Nell opened the file for me to see. “Your name is Ethan White, and you were born in Portland, Maine, on December twenty-second to Mary and John White. The rest is up to you to decide.”
The doors to the school opened with a burst of warm air, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the file, even as Nell continued her lightning-tongue pace. “It’s easy once you get used to it. And I’ll be here to help you. Because, you know, it doesn’t matter how great the lead cast is if the supporting actors don’t back them up.”
The folder was filled with a xeroxed copy of a birth certificate for one Ethan White, who was definitely not a twin. A fake list of vaccinations was stapled to it, along with fake report cards from some middle school in Portland, and copies of two driver’s licenses—one for Mary Elizabeth White, a dark-haired woman with a too-perfect smile, and another for John Adams White, six-feet-two-inches and 220 pounds of pure stranger.
“You know, it’s okay to pretend to be braver than you are,” Nell said, stepping inside. “I do it all the time.”
It was a good thing that I liked Nell okay for the most part, since we had every single class together—well, every class but one. An elective. Nell was enrolled in theater, but I was stuck with a study hour in the library during the last hour of the day.
“Ready or not,” she said, handing me a printout of my schedule as we walked down the hall. “Here we go.”
And just like that, I was shaking hands with Mrs. Anderson, my new science teacher. I had her first thing in the morning for homeroom to listen to announcements and do the whole Pledge of Allegiance thing, but I wouldn’t be back until later that afternoon for real class. I sat with Nell at the very back of the classroom, staring at the two aquariums that lined the side of the bright room: one with swarms of rainbow fish, the other with an extremely large, extremely hairy tarantula named Eleanor.
The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding Page 12