Circle of Secrets

by Kimberley Griffiths Little

I rub my face with my arm in the dimness of the bedroom. I can see shadows on the wall from the outside porch light, the outline of the oak tree in the faint glow.

  As I stare at the shadows, I know what I want. More than anything else. Most of all, I want Mirage to love me more than she did. Thinking about it makes my heart hurt, but I can’t remember the last time she told me she loves me.

  Right then, the bedroom door clicks open and I freeze. I try to look like a sleeping statue. Footsteps cross the room and then the edge of the bed creaks as Mirage perches beside me.

  I suck in all the tears and go quiet as a mouse.

  “Shelby Jayne. Shar,” Mirage says, and I hear a funny catch in her throat.

  I hold my breath waiting to see what she’s gonna do.

  “You know, your daddy always calls you Sweetie Pie. And every time he does, it reminds me of sweet potato pie, my favorite in the whole world.”

  My face is against the wall, but I can’t breathe right. I’m not going to look at her. I don’t want her to think I’m crying over her. I’ll bet she never cried over me. She just cries over Mister Lenny or that stupid blue bottle tree like it’s got more feelings than I do.

  “I’m doin’ everything wrong, ain’t I?” she goes on. Her hand reaches out and she starts to stroke my hair. “I jest want you to know that I’d give anything to redo the whole last year. It was all such a terrible mistake. I wish’t I’d done everything different.”

  I hear her sniffling and her voice is shaky and weepy, but she keeps talking, slow and quiet.

  “Your grandmother Phoebe is a good woman and I know you love her, but she and I couldn’t live in the same house no more. Your daddy and I got married right outta high school, had you fast, he was goin’ to school, I was goin’ to school, we was broke. Good Lord, jest a hard, hard situation all ’round. The tension’d been buildin’ for years. Exploded when your daddy had to start working so much around the country and then overseas. Wish he could find a different job … but that’s neither here nor there. We all made mistakes, me most of all.”

  “So fix ’em,” I finally say with a gulp, still staring at the wall.

  Her breath catches when I speak, like she’s surprised I’m talking to her. “I’m tryin’ to, Shelby, I am. But it’s gonna take time. I jest want you to give me a chance, okay? Please?”

  “Aren’t I givin’ you a chance by coming here in the first place?”

  “Yeah, you are, bébé, and I’m glad you’re here, more than I can ever tell you. I also know I can’t stay out here much longer. I grew up in this house, but there are too many painful memories — and they all came back a year ago, stronger than ever. It jest — hurts. I can’t explain it any better than that. Stuff from a long time ago, some of the worst pain of my life. Staying here ain’t workin’. Feel like the guilt is goin’ to eat me alive some days.”

  Before I can wonder what she means by all her guilt, there’s a fluttering of wings and I peek out from under my hair to see Mister Lenny perching on the ledge of the bedroom door.

  “Did you know that when you were young and we’d come out here to visit your grand-mère, you and the first Mister Lenny would have a staring match every morning,” Mirage says. “You’d eat your grits and he’d perch across from you on the edge of a chair. You and he could sit there for thirty minutes straight. Then you’d share your bacon with him.”

  “I think I might remember a little.” I didn’t want to admit it, but old memories were stirring up inside my brain.

  “I have pictures if you want to look at them albums. Also used to have a swing in the oak tree. You loved me to push you for hours. My arms used to get so sore, but I remember your soft baby hair flying in the wind and you giggling so hard until you practically fell out and I’d catch you up in my arms.”

  I remember that, too, but I don’t say nothing.

  Mirage keeps brushing my hair with her hands and the room gets darker and darker as night comes on. The bed creaks as she lies down next to me and she twists the ends of my hair around her fingers. Wonder if she remembers how much I used to love that. Still do.

  I’m starting to fall asleep when she says, “Don’t know if I can even sell this old place, but I’m gonna talk to a realtor. Figure I better move back to New Iberia if I want to see you more regular.”

  My eyes fly open, but I don’t roll over. I’m stuck facing the wall and I can’t unfreeze myself because I’m so surprised. I try to imagine Mirage getting an apartment in New Iberia and me going up in an elevator to visit her.

  I can’t picture her going to college, living in the city, or even grocery shopping anymore. After being here these last weeks, I’m starting to think maybe she really does belong out here with her animals and crawfish traps and healing people.

  “My biggest problem, Shelby Jayne?” she says with a strangled little laugh. “Don’t know what I’m gonna do with all those blue bottles when I get outta here.”

  I stiffen when she says that, thinking about all those pretty bottles packed up or thrown away. She couldn’t move the whole tree; it’s way too gigantic. And there’d be no yard in an apartment. I can’t imagine that tree disappearing forever, getting junked. And what if there are more notes I haven’t found yet, higher up in the branches? The thought of finding more secret messages makes my heart race.

  “Maybe the new owners will want the tree, but I may not even be able to sell at all. Not many folks want to live so far out. And” — she pauses — “even after all the sad and terrible things that have happened out here, it would be strange to never come back.”

  Once again, I wonder what she’s talking about. Such terrible things that she wants to move away forever?

  “Well,” Mirage says, finally rising from the bed, “good night, Shelby Jayne. Have some of those sweet potato pie dreams for me.”

  She closes the door and I lay in the dark as a forgotten memory floods my brain, poking at my heart like I have a pincushion inside my chest.

  “You forgot something,” I blurt out to the empty wall. Hot tears roll down my face, stinging my nose and making my eyes swell up.

  Back before she left, Mirage used to kiss me good night, tell me to have sweet potato pie dreams — and whisper in my ear how much she loved me.

  Tonight, she left that last part out. The part I want the most.

  How am I supposed to know that she really loves me if she don’t say it?

  I use the quilt to wipe my eyes and nose, wide awake now. Knowing I should get up and get my nightgown on, brush my teeth, but I don’t feel like doing all that boring stuff.

  Instead, I think about Mirage putting the house up for sale. What if it actually does sell right away? I may never get another chance to look for blue bottle notes, and I’m too curious to stop. If I find more of the notes, maybe I can solve the mystery of who wrote them and why. Are they messages from a bad imp or fairy spirit trapped inside like I been thinking — or something else entirely? If an evil spirit is writing those notes they seem to know English pretty good. And why would they be talking to me anyway? That don’t make much sense. It’s more likely a ghoul would play mean tricks on me or haunt my bedroom.

  Somebody wrote those notes. Two somebodies. With school paper and an ink pen. Somebody alive? Or somebody dead? If it’s somebody who’s dead, that means it is a ghost or a spirit come back from the beyond. But a good ghost or an evil ghost? That’s what I have to find out.

  Rolling off the bed, I tiptoe into the kitchen, glad I’m still wearing my sneakers. I snatch the flashlight and slip out the back door quiet as I can, heading for the blue bottle tree.

  Grabbing a stepladder from the side of the house, I open it up under the tree and make sure it’s steady. Then I flick on the flashlight and shine it up into the branches, checking out every bottle I can.

  Miss Silla Wheezy jumps up on the first rung of the ladder while I’m standing there, rubbing against my legs and making me feel like I’m gonna fall. “Hey, cut it out!” I tell her softly.
“I’ll pet you when I get down.”

  The cat leaps onto the trunk and claws her way up to one of the bigger branches. She sits and meows at me, cocking her head like she’s asking a question.

  “What are you sayin’, Miss Silla?”

  She keeps meowing and then climbs out onto one of the limbs, a whole spray of bottles stuck on little branches. She sniffs the bottles and rubs her head against them, then pokes a paw at the whole row.

  “You are a mighty peculiar cat,” I tell her, trying not to laugh in case I fall and break a leg.

  I shine the light on the limb she’s poking at and suck in my breath. There are notes in the bottles Miss Silla Wheezy is pawing at! How did she know that?

  Since I gotta reach so far out along the branches to get to the bottles, it takes a while to slip them off and set them on the ground without breaking the glass. I have to get up and down off the ladder over and over again.

  Finally, I get to press my eye against the mouth of the bottles — and three of them have notes! Setting the flashlight down, I shake the notes out and stick them in the pocket of my jeans. My stomach is jumping around like beans in a skillet as I replace the bottles on their branches, stash the ladder against the house, and tiptoe back inside, being sure to hook the flashlight on the wall.

  The center of the wooden floorboards creak under the rugs and I halt quick, hoping Mirage doesn’t hear me. A minute later the house is still quiet, so I hug the wall and dart back into my bedroom, making sure the latch on the door doesn’t make any clicking noises.

  After I take off my shoes and stash them under the bed, I’m panting from holding my breath so much and hurrying.

  I open up the new notes, and my hands are shaking as I spread them out and smooth over the fold lines.

  It’s the same school notebook paper as the very first note I found. And the same handwriting. Slanted letters and a scrawly hand.

  I have a plan. Come to the pier and all will be revealed.

  My mamma says we’re going

  into Lafayette today. I’m sorry!

  Do you think you have the gift? What if we mess up?

  “Wow.” My heart pings in a hundred different directions, like a pinball machine where the ball zings off the levers and bounces off the holes.

  The blue bottle notes are like a story. A mystery story and I gotta be the detective and figure out the clues. I keep thinking Mirage must have written the messages since it’s her blue bottle tree, but I’m not so sure anymore. I gotta match the handwriting somehow. I stare at the notes; the messages about the pier and some kind of gift. But who is the sender and who is the receiver? It’s almost like a conversation.

  My breath stops. I pull open the top drawer of the bureau and snatch the first two bottle notes and the rolled-up one from the blue bottle charm, then spread them across the bed to compare.

  There are six notes now, including these three new ones. All the notes have the same handwriting, except for two. I stare at the one that makes my skin crawl. An eerie feeling creeps down my legs and zaps at my bare toes.

  She’s dead. She’s dead! I’ll never forgive myself long as I live.

  And then I have one of them lightbulb moments, like out of a cartoon.

  Clutching the death note, I return to the kitchen. First I check the back door to make sure I really did lock it, and then whirl around the room, looking, looking, looking. A clock ticks on a shelf, but Mister Lenny is nowhere to be seen. He’s usually awake at night and floating around the house. Maybe Mirage let him outside tonight because I haven’t seen him and he hasn’t been following me.

  “Where is Mirage’s spell box?” I whisper to the dark kitchen. Then I spy it, up high on the cabinets next to the stove. I’m afraid to drag a chair over and try to lift it down. Just my luck I’d drop it. “Hallelujah,” I whisper, finding the next best thing to her spell box. Maybe even better. Underneath a stack of old newspapers and cookbooks and a bird-watching book sits Mirage’s recipe book for healing remedies.

  Carefully, I get the book out from under the stack of stuff and set it on the table. I try not to mess up the loose papers, or the leaves and flowers tucked into some of the pages.

  Turning the pages I see a Recipe for Cough Syrup, Recipe for Liniment, and recipes for warts, sunstroke, stomachaches, joints, sprains, you name it. There’s even one called Recipe for a Healing Spell. I wonder how it’s different than the others, but the handwriting is really old-fashioned like it’s been handed down from a hundred years ago.

  But all the other recipe pages are done in the same handwriting. I spread the blue bottle note next to one of the pages and get the flashlight again.

  I knew it. I knew it!

  The death note was written by Mirage. Even though the lettering looks sort of like a kid wrote it, the style is the same as the handwriting in Mirage’s recipe book. The same up-and-down letters, the big exclamation points with the dots slightly off center.

  The other four, which include the very first one I found plus these three new ones, are definitely not written by Mirage. I’m positive of that. So they must be written by my grand-mère? Is she the she who died?

  Then I look at the note that says:

  My mamma says we’re going

  into Lafayette today. I’m sorry!

  That don’t sound like my grand-mère wrote it. Sounds like a kid getting dragged on a trip. Who was the other person who had written these notes? Someone who was young. Or maybe my grand-mère turned senile?

  The whole thing is very odd and confusing.

  Another lightbulb pops like a spark in my head and since I’m already out in the kitchen, I go out to the backyard one last time. I can’t stop now.

  All the notes I’ve found so far have been on the left side of the tree.

  When I get back outside, Miss Silla Wheezy’s eyes are glowing in the dark. She’s perched on a limb that stretches long and gnarly — to the right of the blue bottles where I just found the other notes.

  I scratch the top of her head and stare straight into her green eyes. “You are one spooky cat. I swear you are readin’ my mind.”

  It takes a few minutes of searching, but then I find another cluster of bottles — with folded notes inside. “I knew it!” I whisper and Miss Silla Wheezy yowls at me like she knew it all along.

  My legs are trembling now as I climb down the ladder, dump out the notes, and run back inside.

  I double-check the lock, replace the spell book under its bed of papers, and let out one of those big sighs of relief when I make it back to my bedroom.

  The thrill in my stomach is exhilarating.

  “Dern!” I mutter as my fingers fumble on the tightly folded notes.

  Finally, I lay them out and just stare and stare.

  Yeah, Mamma says I do. Don’t believe her. Annoying!

  My boat sprung a leak, dad gummit! In town gettin’ it fixed. Don’t start without me!

  Got my baby alligator charm today when ‘Daddy took me to town. But he says if he ever catches me with a baby gator he’ll give me a whippin’. Gotta be more careful.…

  My mind is worked up like crazy.

  My hands are shaking as I pull on my nightgown. I decide to skip the teeth brushing because Mirage will hear the water running. Just as I yank the curtains closed — a figure peeks out from behind the blue bottle tree.

  It’s the girl again! My heart leaps into my throat as I cup my eyes against the glass. Is it really Gwen? The girl looks up at my window, staring, staring, staring.

  I wave back, flapping my hands at her, but she doesn’t seem to see me.

  A moment later, she buries her face in her hands like she’s crying.

  And runs away into the swirly fog rising off the swamp water as it gently laps against the banks.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, MIRAGE KNOCKS SEVERAL TIMES before I hear her.

  I’m dreaming that I’m dancing with Gwen under the blue bottle tree in the moonlight. We leap and float
in our nightgowns, our faces pale and ghostly. Gwen and I hold hands and run along the bank, jumping over the elephant ears and splashing in the water. When we get tired, we sit under the tree and write notes to each other on crisp, lined paper. An angel floats down from the sky and taps our heads with a magic wand.

  The next instant, I’m standing on the broken pier, alone and sobbing.

  Gwen has disappeared.

  Rotting wooden planks like jagged teeth fence me in so I can’t escape back to dry land. I can see the blue bottle tree, but I can’t get to it. My hands are full of notes to stick inside the bottles, but I’m stuck. I want to go home so bad my bones ache.

  “Shelby Jayne!” Mirage calls through the door and I hear her voice through the dream fog.

  “Yeah,” I finally croak and slit open my eyes. My lids are crusty and I’m sweating. My heart is racing like I’ve been running a marathon.

  “It was just a dream,” I whisper aloud, but the dream world and Gwen were so real, my mind is still caught up in it all.

  I glance around and the bedroom looks cheerless in the hazy morning light. I remember that I wanted to go home real bad. But where’s home? With Daddy in the Ukraine? Or New Iberia with Grandmother Phoebe? Or right here in the spooky swamp with Mirage, my mamma who ran away and doesn’t tell me she loves me?

  I woke up sweaty, but now I get a peculiar shiver. Soon as I’m dressed, I head out to the porch. It’s warm and muggy and foggy. The feeling of the dream is so strong; I head down to the banks behind the blue bottle tree and look for footprints.

  Strands of wispy fog rise from the flat surface of the bayou. Cypress knees and a forest of trees stretch as far as I can see like there’s no end ever in the whole world.

  It’s damp and muddy, but I can’t find no footprints at all.

  Maybe I’m just tired after all those trips up and down the ladder last night.

  I wish I’d taken Miss Silla Wheezy in my room with me last night. Would she have seen the girl in the fog? If Miss Silla had looked out the window when I saw the girl and meowed, then I’d know for sure I wasn’t seein’ things.