“Yes there is. I have thorns. I’d call that something super wrong. Am I sick? Dying?”
“No, you’re not sick.” She puts on the bandage. Scoops up the paper tabs and the thorn. “And you’re not dying. It’s not like that.”
“So what is it then? I’m not a kid anymore, and I have a right to know.”
“All you need to know is that they have to come out, and that eventually they’ll stop.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. A few years maybe.”
Callie snorts, knowing her mom hates it when she does. “So I’m supposed to what, not worry about it for a few years? Not say anything? I mean I can’t ask anybody else when their thorns stopped, right?”
Her mom grabs her arm, even tighter than she did the first night. “You can’t say anything to anyone. Do you understand me?”
Callie yanks her arm away. Stands so fast the chair clatters to the floor. “Right. Say nothing, and what if it happens when I’m in school or with Mia? Still say nothing? Be a good girl and run home to Mommy? I bet Dad would talk to me about it. I bet he’d tell me the truth.”
Her mom makes a sound that’s half-sob, half-laugh, and Callie races upstairs, slamming her bedroom door shut behind her, frustration snot-thick in her throat. She stays in her room the rest of the night, ignoring her mom when she calls her for dinner.
Funny how she doesn’t call a second time.
* * *
When the second wound begins to heal, Callie scratches it open so it will scar, too. “Hello?” she whispers when blood starts to flow, but the only thing she hears is the wet scritch of the scab tearing free.
* * *
Callie’s in Mr. Andersen’s English class when the third thorn emerges, just below her navel. Still shivery, she reaches beneath her t-shirt, pretending to scratch. The thorn feels smaller than the others, but it’s still razor-sharp. A sound creeps into her throat; she shoves it down before it can escape. She should ask to be excused and call her mom, but she doesn’t. No one can see the thorn where it is, plus she has a science test after lunch and making it up will be a pain. Fear traces a cold spiral on the nape of her neck, but it doesn’t feel terrible. Not exactly.
When she gets home, her mom texts that she has to work late. Once she does get home, Callie thinks about telling her, but when she opens her mouth the only thing that comes out is a short, clipped, “Hello.”
* * *
Hi, Dad. It’s me, Callie. I, um, I know you’re busy with work and stuff, but maybe you can call me when you’re not so busy? I miss you a lot. A whole lot.
* * *
One day turns into two; two turns into three. The thorn doesn’t grow any larger, doesn’t change color, doesn’t do anything except force her to sleep on her side instead of her stomach. She’s careful to wear loose-fitting t-shirts and lower slung jeans. Careful, too, not to touch her abdomen when her mom’s around.
On the fourth day, Saturday, her mom’s sitting at the kitchen table, hands curved around a coffee mug. On the placemat: tweezers, a bandage, ointment. Callie pretends not to see them, but her heart beats heavy and her palms go damp. She opens the refrigerator, takes out the orange juice.
“Where is it?” her mom asks.
“What?” Callie says over her shoulder, as she pulls out a glass.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Callie. Where is it? I know it’s somewhere. I can see it in your eyes. I can—”
“What?”
“Don’t do this. Where is it?”
Callie digs impressions of her front teeth into her lower lip, turns around, and lifts her shirt.
“When did it happen?”
“Yesterday.” Callie averts her eyes.
“Yesterday when?”
“I don’t know. After dinner sometime.”
“After dinner.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So last night, not just yesterday. I was here after dinner, so why didn’t you say something?”
Callie shrugs her scarred shoulder.
“This isn’t a game, Callie. You have no idea what could happen.”
“How could I since you won’t tell me?”
Her mom’s mouth goes all lemon pucker, but she doesn’t say anything, just picks up the tweezers with shaking hands. “No, don’t sit down, stand there and hold still.”
Callie crosses her arms, glaring at her mother as she kneels.
“What were you thinking? I told you they had to come out.”
It’s Callie’s turn not to answer, but it’s a short-lived victory. Her mom hums and the tweezers tug, the pain bright and sharp. Callie squirms, biting back a yelp. The voice, if it is a voice, whispers something low and unintelligible.
“Hold still a minute more. There.”
The end of the thorn glistens with Callie’s blood and something that resembles an eyelash thin tail. Her mom’s gaze darkens. “Are you sure it was last night?”
“Yes Mom, it was last night.” Callie punctuates her words with a roll of the eyes. “So will you tell me now what’s really going on?”
Her mom wraps the thorn in a napkin and tucks it in her pocket. Covers the wound with the ointment and bandage. “No, you’re too young.”
“Right. But I’m not too young to have it happen. It isn’t fair not to tell me, and it isn’t fair for you to be all pissed off about it when I don’t even know what’s wrong.”
“We are not having this discussion. I’ve told you everything you need to know.”
“You’ve told me nothing.”
“And that’s all you need to know.”
“I heard it. The voice. Who does it belong to? Where is—”
“You heard nothing.”
“I bet if Dad were here—”
“Well, he isn’t. He left us.”
“No, he left you, Mom.”
“Oh, honey. He left us both.” Her mom looks as though she wants to say something else, but she closes her mouth, shakes her head.
“He’s busy, that’s all!” Callie says. “He’ll call me once he isn’t. I know he will.”
Her mom reaches out, but Callie moves before she can make contact. She storms from the kitchen and stomps up the stairs as hard as she can. Her dad did not leave her. She wasn’t the one who argued with him all the time. She wasn’t the problem.
* * *
When the final bell rings at school, the hallways become a river choked with broken branches. Callie pushes through the crowd to her locker with Mia at her heels.
“Are you okay?” Mia asks.
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know, you just seem different, that’s all.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Just different different.”
“That’s so helpful.”
“Sor-ry,” Mia says.
Callie touches her abdomen, rubs the ridge of bandage there. “It’s just stupid stuff with my mother.”
“Want to come over and do homework?”
“Sure.” Callie almost hopes a thorn shows up for Mia to see; then her mom will have to tell her the truth. But she thinks of the kids at school, what they’d say, what they’d do, and pulls a face.
Her mom’s still at work when she gets home. Surprise, surprise. In the bathroom, she puts her nose close to the mirror. Thinks of Mia’s words. Same old face in the mirror, though. Same Callie. And she isn’t sure if she’s hoping to see something else or not.
Instead of finishing her English homework, she draws another girl with thorns and uses a red pen to add drops of blood. When her mom finally comes home, she hides the picture in her underwear drawer.
All night, she catches her mom looking at her. Not regular looking, but looking too long and too hard, and Callie fights the urge to run and check the mirror again every time. She ends up retreating to her bedroom and runs her hands along her arms and legs and torso. Nothing out of place. Nothing different. No thorns.
* * *
Unable to fall asleep, C
allie kicks off the sheets. Turns on her side. Flops on her stomach. Her mom’s television is still on, which wouldn’t be a big deal if she shut Callie’s bedroom door after peeking in on her. (Callie could’ve told her to shut it, but she was pretending to be asleep.)
She climbs out of bed and pauses by the door to listen. It isn’t the television. It’s her mom. Callie creeps down the hall, careful to avoid the spot near the bathroom where the wood creaks. Her mom’s door is open a tiny crack because the latch broke a month ago and Callie’s dad’s the one who always fixed stuff. Her mom’s cross-legged on the bed, facing away from the door, a small box open beside her.
“Leave her alone,” she says. “Please.”
Someone—or something—speaks in return, too low for Callie to hear the words, but she recognizes the voice.
“You can’t. She’s all I have. She doesn’t deserve this. Please let her go, let us both go.”
Another response Callie can’t hear. Her mom drops something into the box, closes the lid, and gets up, box in hand. Callie retreats to her room, her arms all over goosebumps while anger threads through her veins.
Why does the voice want her? What does it want? And why won’t her mom tell her the truth?
* * *
After school, Callie drops her backpack on the kitchen table and heads to her mom’s bedroom. There used to be a framed picture of Callie and her dad on the dresser, and another one of her parents together, both wearing Mardi Gras beads and wide smiles, but the pictures are gone now, only odd empty spots hinting they’d ever been there at all.
One by one, she opens the dresser drawers, checking underneath the clothes and in the corners, being as careful as possible not to mess anything up. There’s nothing under the bed but storage boxes full of winter clothes. She finds things in her mom’s nightstand she’d rather not see and slams the drawer shut, her cheeks flaming.
One side of the closet contains her mom’s clothes; the other, only a few white plastic hangers her dad left behind. An empty suitcase, winter boots, and a box of old photographs of her mom as a child sit on the top shelf. Callie huffs out a breath and crosses her arms, tapping the nearest shoe box with her toes and dislodging the top, revealing not shoes but more old photos. The box next to it holds shoes, as does the one next to that, but in the far corner, almost buried by the hems of hanging dresses, she finds another with photos in it and hidden under the pictures, a small wooden box that rattles when she shakes it.
Inside, resting on the bottom, are the thorns. But there’s too many, way too many. No voice, though. Only a brittle clacking as the thorns slide over and around each other.
She scoots out of the closet and dumps the thorns on the floor. They’re all varying sizes and shades, all sharp. There’s a wet shimmer on the bottom edge of one, and her finger comes away streaked with red. She’s pretty sure it’s blood, but no way she’s going to taste it to check.
It isn’t one of her thorns, of that she’s sure. Hers are a different color. Only one, the one from her abdomen, has the little tail and her stomach twinges. She takes the thorn that came from her wrist, easy to tell because it’s so big, and lowers it to her skin, lining the edges with the scar.
The weird feeling takes hold of her spine, and the scar opens, with neither blood nor vein within but a vast darkness. The space between the almost-connection wavers; the voice drifts into the air. A lullaby, a promise of something else. The sensation in her back intensifies, hot and cold at the same time, a touch shy of pleasure, a whisper from pain. The voice gathers weight, its presence in the air a strong perfume, and then it whispers her name.
She cries out and pulls the thorn free. For one long moment, it won’t come loose, tethered by an invisible force, and for an even longer moment, she doesn’t want it to. Then it gives way, as though severed with a blade. She rocks on her heels, and her skin closes, the scar exactly as it was. Heart pounding, she balls up one of her mom’s scarves and uses it to sweep all the thorns into the box.
Did the other ones come from her mom? If so, she has to know what they mean. And why would she keep them if they were so bad? Callie rubs her wrist, then yanks her hand away, afraid her skin will open again and swallow her up.
* * *
Hi, Dad. It’s Callie again. I guess, I guess just call me back when you can? I really miss you. Oh, and there’s something really important I want to talk to you about. Mom won’t tell me anything, and I know you will, even if you don’t really know. Just call me, okay? Pretty please?
* * *
Callie’s washing her hair when her fingers find the thorn in her scalp. Her hands drop to her sides. She last washed her hair two days ago, and this morning when she brushed it, the bristles caught on what she thought was a tangle. Has the thorn been there the whole time? She didn’t feel it come in, didn’t feel anything strange at all. She rinses out the rest of the shampoo without touching her hair, and pads to her mom’s room clad only in a towel, tweezers in hand.
“I have another one.”
Her mom’s mouth works, but nothing comes out. She nods, scrubs her face with her hands. “Let me have the tweezers.”
“Not until you tell me what they are.”
“Callie, it’s late and you have school tomorrow. We don’t have time for this.”
“It isn’t that late.”
“Maybe this weekend …”
“Right, and I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Callie—”
“Tell me what they are, what they mean! Just tell me this one time, and I won’t ask again!”
Her mom’s shoulders slump. “They don’t mean anything.”
“I don’t believe you. If that was true, then you wouldn’t be so upset.”
“I’ll tell you this much,” her mom says, mouse-whisker quiet. “If we leave them in, they’ll change you. They’ll destroy you. Please, no more questions tonight. Let me take it out and have done with it.”
Callie bites the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood, but she keeps her mouth shut while her mom parts her hair.
“We won’t be able to put a bandage on it, but it’s a small one so it should be okay.”
“Fine.”
Humming tunelessly, her mom yanks out the thorn, and the voice whispers one word: Liar. Her mom’s mouth tightens for a brief moment and her cheeks turn pink, but she says nothing at all.
* * *
The letter from her mom to her dad is marked Return to Sender. Callie traces her dad’s name on the envelope, knowing she shouldn’t open it, but her mom won’t ever know if she rips it in little pieces and buries them in the trash afterward. She carries the letter to her room. Shuts and locks the door.
Michael:
For the record, Callie still doesn’t know the truth. She wouldn’t be trying to call you if she did. If I’d known this was the way things would end up, I would’ve told her from the beginning that you were her stepfather.
I know I said I didn’t want you involved in her life, but I was angry. We both said a lot of hurtful things. I never thought you’d take off and move away.
What you’re doing is cruel. She loves you. You’re the only father she’s ever had.
Lydia
Callie rocks back and forth on her bed, holding the letter to her chest. It can’t be true. It can’t be. He is her dad. He’s always been her dad. Her mom’s lying, like she is about the thorns. Sobbing, she calls her dad, but he doesn’t answer—he’s busy with his stupid job and she hates hates hates it—and she’s crying too hard to leave a message this time.
She wipes her eyes, hides the letter between her mattress and box spring, pushing it way into the middle, and races into her mom’s room. When she returns, she has a thorn pinched between thumb and index finger. With her door locked again, she holds the thorn above the scar on her wrist until the space between wavers and her skin opens.
“Tell me what you are. Tell me the truth,” she whispers into the darkness. “Please.”
* * *
On Friday nights, Callie’s mom always drinks two glasses of wine to unwind. Callie pulls the stopper from the half-empty bottle in the fridge and pours in the sleeping pills she pilfered from the medicine cabinet at Mia’s house and crushed with a meat tenderizer. She only took two; she doesn’t want to hurt her mom, just make sure she goes to sleep, and she doesn’t know how quickly they work. In the movies they work in an instant, so her mom might never get to the second glass.
After dinner, her mom pours a glass before she dons her pajamas and curls on the sofa with a book. Callie sits on the other end, her own book in hand, sneaking peeks from the corner of her eye. When the glass is nearly empty, Callie extends a hand. “I’m going to make popcorn. Want me to refill your glass?”
“Yes, thank you.” Her mom sounds sleepy, but Callie can’t tell if it’s regular sleepy or not.
Some of the pill dust has settled to the bottom of the wine bottle, and Callie shakes it until it’s all mixed up again. Still awake, her mom takes a sip when Callie gives her the glass, makes a small face, but takes a second sip a few minutes later.
When the glass is still two-thirds full, her mom touches a hand to her forehead, darts a look, her lids heavy and her brow creased, at Callie. Callie tosses popcorn in her mouth, tries to pretend it’s an ordinary night.
“Callie? What …” her mom says, her words slurred.
Her eyelids flutter shut. Callie tosses the bowl of popcorn on the table and runs upstairs. When she returns, her mom is still asleep, her mouth slightly open. Callie’s hands shake as she lifts her mom’s pajama top. There, on the skin of her abdomen, almost hidden by the faint tracery of stretch marks, are tiny scars. The voice told the truth.
She takes a thorn from the box and holds it above her mother’s skin, moving it slowly from side to side. One of the scars opens, revealing the same darkness Callie saw in her own. She hesitates a moment and the voice says, “Don’t worry.”
Her mom’s eyes open. She tries to lift one hand, but it flops back down. “Callie? What are you doing?”
Callie sets the thorn in place, grabs another. “They said you’d be okay. They said if I did this, they’d leave me alone.”
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