Step Closer

by Scott Cawthon

Susie’s mom paused to wait for a car to pass before turning into their driveway. The car’s blinker did its click-tick until Susie’s mom made the turn. Susie mimicked the noise. No one told her to stop.

  Oliver had lost a lot more leaves. He only had a few left. Would they last long enough?

  Susie sat on the end of Samantha’s bed and watched her sister read a book. Samantha seemed tense. She held the book stiffly, and she took a long time to turn the pages.

  “I have a confession,” Susie said.

  Samantha didn’t look up.

  “I miss you guys when we’re apart. And I know you miss me, too.”

  Samantha turned a page. Her hand trembled.

  “And I miss Gretchen. Do you miss her?”

  Samantha kept reading.

  Susie never liked it when Samantha ignored her, but she didn’t let it shut her up. “I don’t know why, but I can’t remember where I hid Gretchen.” Susie chewed on a knuckle. “I don’t think …”

  She stopped talking. This wasn’t working. Samantha wasn’t going to help her.

  Why couldn’t Susie remember where she hid Gretchen?

  She remembered how angry and upset she was that Samantha was going to make Gretchen study. Gretchen was a sensitive doll. Freckled and curly-blonde-haired, Gretchen’s soft round face was painted with a shy smile, the kind of smile that told Susie that she was easily scared. When Susie hid Gretchen, she’d been wearing a pink-and-purple polka-dot dress that Jeanie made. The dress was supposed to be fun. It was supposed to help Gretchen be happier.

  But then Samantha was going to put pressure on Gretchen to “learn stuff.” Not even polka dots could win out over that.

  Susie knew that Gretchen still needed to be with her. Susie was the only person who understood her. She knew what it was like to want to be happy and have fun in a world that wanted you to learn and keep getting better at things. She couldn’t leave Gretchen alone, lost in some forgotten hiding spot. She wished Samantha would listen. Susie reached over the book Samantha was holding. She waved her hand around.

  Samantha’s face got white, and she held very still. What was she thinking? Susie wondered. She would’ve asked, but she knew Samantha wouldn’t answer her.

  Sometimes Samantha acted like this and sometimes Samantha acted normal. Their grandma used to say, “That Samantha—she’s a hard child to read. But Susie is an open book.” If Susie was so open, why couldn’t Samantha get what Susie was trying to tell her?

  How could Susie make Samantha understand?

  Samantha leaped out of bed and put her book neatly on the corner of her desk. Sitting in her straight-backed white desk chair, she opened a drawer and pulled out construction paper and crayons.

  That was it! Maybe Susie could draw a picture. Samantha would see it and remember Gretchen.

  Or maybe if Susie drew a picture, she’d remember where she’d hidden Gretchen.

  Susie stared at the paper and crayons. Would Samantha share?

  “Samantha, could you come here, please?” their mother called.

  Perfect. Susie waited for Samantha to leave the room, and then she stole a pink piece of paper and a purple crayon that had barely been used. She plunked herself down on Samantha’s blue rug and stretched out on her stomach. Tucking her tongue firmly between her lips, Susie started drawing. It took all of her concentration to make sure the drawing showed up on the page, but it did.

  Drawing was all she could do. If she wrote a note, Samantha wouldn’t read it.

  “Don’t draw too long,” Susie’s mom said, out in the hallway. “I’ll be in to tuck you in soon.”

  Susie heard Samantha’s footsteps coming. She hurried to finish her drawing. When she was done, she left it lying on the floor and retreated to the window seat.

  Tucking herself into a small ball, Susie looked out the window. She couldn’t see Oliver because the window reflected Samantha’s bright room. She could see, though, a couple of leaves pushing against the window. Leaning forward, she realized that they belonged to Ivy, the vine that climbed up the trellis above the porch roof.

  Susie smiled. She remembered when her dad had put that trellis on the house. Her mom’s ivy, which Susie had named Ivy, of course, had climbed up the porch posts at the front of the house, and her mom had wanted to cut it. Susie thought that would be sad. “Can’t you let Ivy climb higher?” she’d asked.

  Her mom said, “Well, if we had a trellis …”

  Now it looked like Ivy had reached the top of the trellis and was trying to climb into Samantha’s room. Would Ivy have better luck getting Samantha to talk?

  Samantha burst into her room and headed toward her desk. If she wanted to finish her drawing tonight, she’d have to hurry.

  Before she reached her desk, though, Samantha noticed something on the floor. Nothing besides the rug was supposed to be on the floor. But a piece of pink paper lay on it. The paper hadn’t been there when she left the room. She was sure of it.

  Her mom had been with her downstairs, the whole time. No one else was in the house.

  That meant …

  Samantha didn’t want to look. If she looked …

  No longer in a hurry to draw, Samantha stared at the pink paper for a very long time.

  Eventually, she convinced herself that picking it up was better than letting it lie there. As long as it was on the floor, Samantha could come up with all kinds of scary reasons for it to be there. If she picked it up, she’d know what it was for sure.

  Susie always thought Samantha didn’t have much imagination. That wasn’t true. The problem was Samantha had way too much imagination. She had so much imagination that she could scare herself silly with just a thought or two.

  Taking slow, quiet steps, Samantha walked toward the rug. She didn’t take her eyes off the paper as she walked. She couldn’t have said why. Did she think it was going to leap off the floor and attack her? And do what? Give her paper cuts?

  Samantha had gotten one of those when she was little. Susie had cried when she saw the blood. Samantha didn’t. Yes, it stung a little, but she thought it was more interesting than painful. How could something as flimsy as paper cut you?

  When Samantha picked up the paper, she saw some squiggly purple lines. But as she gazed at the paper and the squiggly lines, they began to form into shapes that made some kind of sense.

  The drawing had three parts, like the panels in newspaper comics.

  The first part, on the far left of the page, was a drawing of two little girls. One had a ponytail, and one had hair that was flying all around her face. The flying-haired girl held what looked like a mirror in one hand. She extended the mirror out toward what seemed to be a baby floating in the air. The other hand was held out to the pony-tailed girl. Between the baby and the girl, a big chick with spiky teeth held up its hands. Huh?

  The second part of the drawing, which was separated from the first part by a vertical line, showed the moon over a house that looked a little like Samantha’s house. The flying-haired girl was walking away from the house, holding hands with that same big chick. To the right of this second drawing, another vertical line separated the second drawing from a third one. The third one also had a moon, a house, and the flying-haired girl walking away hand-in-hand with the chick. But after the third drawing there was a heavy dark line. Samantha could see where the crayon had been moved over and over until it created a thick slashing shape that Samantha didn’t understand.

  Frowning, she stared at the picture. Had she drawn it and then forgotten?

  If only she could believe that.

  “I wish you would just talk to me,” Susie whispered. “I miss when we used to talk. I know you thought I talked too much, but you still listened. I’d really like someone to listen.”

  She was so frustrated. This reminded her of playing charades. Once, she’d played charades at her friend Chloe’s birthday party. Susie liked all games, but charades wasn’t as fun as she wanted it to be. She’d thought she was being so clear with her a
cted-out clues, but no one got what she was trying to make them see. No one guessed right. When she told her mom about it later, her mom said, “You don’t think the same way other people do. That’s a good thing. You’re super-creative.”

  Not creative enough, Susie thought as she stared at the drawing she’d left on the rug.

  What else could she do?

  Jumping up from the window seat, Susie ran to Samantha’s desk. She noticed Samantha looked up from the pink and purple drawing when she rushed past, but Susie didn’t bother to say anything. When Samantha was acting like this, there was no point. Besides, Susie wanted to draw something else.

  At Samantha’s desk, Susie grabbed a piece of pale yellow paper and a black crayon. She plopped down in Samantha’s desk chair, and started again.

  Samantha had felt the air shift, but she didn’t want to think about why it shifted. She also knew, somehow, that she couldn’t turn around.

  Samantha covered her mouth with her hand so she wouldn’t giggle. Samantha wasn’t normally a giggler. Well, sometimes, her dad could get her to giggle by tickling her. But this wasn’t a tickle-giggle. This giggle came from some terrified place inside of her, a place where she was “hysterical.” That was a word her dad often used for her mother before he left them all. Samantha didn’t want to be hysterical.

  She counted her breaths like she did in therapy.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  The air in Samantha’s room had become thick and sticky, like molasses. Samantha didn’t know what would make air feel like molasses, but it didn’t feel right to be inside of air like that. She had to get out of here.

  Leaving the drawing where she found it, she started to run from the room. But at the doorway, she stopped. Something was lying on her desk.

  Another drawing.

  Samantha winced and shrank away, but she couldn’t remove her gaze.

  Like the first drawing, this one had three boxes. In the first, the same flying-haired girl was walking away from the front door of the same house. The moon was a thin sliver, kind of like the moon Samantha had seen the previous night. In the second box, the same girl was walking away from the same door, but the moon was a bigger sliver. And then, in the third box, the girl wasn’t even there. This box just showed the house’s door and an even bigger moon.

  “Are you ready for bed?” Samantha’s mom called.

  Ignoring the weird air in the room, Samantha gathered the drawings and shoved them under her covers. She’d look at them later, by flashlight.

  Susie usually waited until their mom left to crawl into bed with her sister, but tonight was different. She didn’t want to waste a second being apart.

  Curling up on the window side of Samantha’s bed, Susie watched Samantha go through her funny bedtime ritual.

  First, Samantha had to sit at her desk and write a paragraph, at least a paragraph, in her diary. Then she had to go across the hall to the bathroom and brush her teeth. Then she had to pee, and then she had to drink half a glass of water. “That will just make you have to pee again,” Susie had told her sister one night. Samantha just stuck out her tongue.

  After the water, Samantha touched her toes four times, and she brushed her hair fifty times. Then she went to her doll bin and said goodnight to her dolls. Then she got in bed.

  None of these things were funny by themselves, but the way Samantha did them all the same way every night, in the same order, was funny. At least to Susie.

  Tonight, the routine was a tiny bit different because Samantha got her small flashlight from her nightstand drawer. When Samantha slid under the covers, she pushed the flashlight under the covers with the drawings she’d stuffed under there, and the drawings crinkled. Susie listened to them rustle as Samantha shoved them further down and then arranged herself sort of like a sleeping princess. Finally, she called out, “I’m ready, Mom.”

  Susie studied Samantha’s profile while they waited for their mom to come into the room. Samantha had a little bump on her nose about halfway up from the rounded tip. Susie liked that bump. Susie didn’t have a bump, and she thought bumps made noses interesting. She also liked the little check mark–shaped scar under Samantha’s right eye. Susie did have a scar, but hers was hidden under the hair at the top of her forehead.

  Susie got her scar because she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to do. Samantha got her scar because Susie was doing something she wasn’t supposed to do.

  Susie loved to climb on things when she was little. One of her favorite things to do was get up on the porch rail and try to walk all the way around the house on it. She was good at balancing on the rail, but climbing around the posts that held it up could be hard because her arms were too short to wrap around them. She fell a lot, usually landing in her mom’s flower beds and getting in trouble. Their mom was super-serious about her flowers.

  One day, while Susie was brushing off the dirt from her latest fall, Samantha said, “There’s a better way to get around the posts.”

  “Who says?”

  “I say.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do, and I know how to do it, too.”

  “Okay, then show me,” Susie said.

  “No. Mom said not to get up there.”

  “Well, then why did you say that?”

  “Because there’s a better way.”

  “But if you’re not going to show it to me, who cares if there’s a better way? You’re just being a know-it-all.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  The girls faced off next to the yellow begonias at the side of the house. Hands on hips, they glared at each other, practically nose-to-nose. Even though Susie was a year older, she wasn’t any taller than her sister.

  “I think you’re lying about a better way,” Susie said.

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  By now, they were yelling.

  “What are you girls fighting about?” their mom called.

  She was inside the house doing laundry, and Susie wanted her to stay there so they could keep playing. She leaned toward Samantha until they touched noses, and she whispered, “Yes, you are.”

  Samantha made her Pekinese face and said, “Fine.” Then she marched around Susie and climbed up onto the railing next to one of the posts.

  Susie’s mouth dropped open.

  Samantha put her back to the post. “See, you have to go around it facing out, not facing in. That way, the weight of your butt doesn’t pull you off the railing.”

  Samantha started to demonstrate, but her foot slipped. She lost her grip and fell forward off the railing and into the flower bed. Susie had fallen there before and just gotten dirty, but somehow Samantha’s face struck the top of one of the stakes holding up their mom’s clematis.

  Samantha was mad at Susie for days after that, not only because she had to have stitches but because she got in just as much trouble for being on the railing. “It was her idea!” Samantha had yelled, pointing at Susie.

  “You know better than that,” their mother said to Samantha. “You don’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

  She was right about that.

  Like now.

  “Not that story,” Samantha was saying to their mom. “I want you to read the one about the happy ghost.”

  Susie smiled. This had become Samantha’s favorite story lately.

  Susie’s mom looked like she was going to argue, but then she sighed and picked up the top book from the neat pile on Samantha’s nightstand. Susie’s mom sat on the edge of the bed.

  Susie wished she could do something for her mom. She looked so pale … no, more than pale. She looked like her skin was turning invisible. Susie could see her mom’s veins crawling over her forehead and up her hands and arms. They looked like blue worms.

  The first time Susie had seen veins like that on an old lady, she’d tho
ught they were worms, and she’d screamed. Her mom had explained what the blue jagged lines were.

  “In a tall, old house, on top of a tall, old mountain, the tall, old ghost floated through the main hall,” Susie’s mom began reading.

  Susie plumped the pillow under her head, and scooted closer to Samantha. Samantha’s breath caught, and she turned into a Samantha log, as if an evil witch had suddenly frozen her.

  Susie sniffed and backed away. Why was Samantha so mad at her?

  “The tall, old ghost in the tall, old house wasn’t a pretty ghost,” Susie’s mom read. “But he was a happy ghost. He was a very, very happy ghost.”

  Susie noticed her mom’s eyes were shiny and wet. Susie also noticed her mom’s voice sounded choked and crackly.

  “Keep going,” Samantha said.

  Their mother sighed again.

  Susie’s mom returned to the familiar story about the ghost who was happy because he got to spend forever with his family … until he found out he wouldn’t spend forever with them, since they were moving. That part always made Susie as sad as it made the ghost in the story. She couldn’t imagine moving out of this house. Who would take care of Oliver?

  Susie’s mom read quickly, until she got to the part where the ghost found out that if he went away from the house, to a special place of sparkly light where the truly happy ghosts hung out, the ghost could never ever be separated from his family no matter where they went. She slowed down over that part, and she cleared her throat a lot.

  Susie thought it would be very nice to be in a place where you’d never be separated from your family. She loved being with her mom and Samantha. Samantha could be a pain, but she was Susie’s sister.

  When the story was done, Susie’s mom stood, hesitated, and went to the door. “Sleep sweet,” she said.

  Susie wished her mom would kiss and hug them goodnight like she used to. But Samantha had decided they were too old for that, and she wouldn’t let her mom do that anymore. Apparently, her mom thought Susie agreed with Samantha—but she didn’t.

  As soon as her mom turned out the light, Samantha curled onto her side.