Gripping my handlebars with his meaty fists, he leaned toward me. “Have you given any thought to my offer?”
Clenching my jaw, I bit back a sarcastic remark. “No, because I thought I’d been pretty clear before. I appreciate you asking me to the Founder’s Day ball, but like I said, I don’t intend to go, so… maybe you should ask someone else.”
He scoffed, as if what I’d said was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “I know you weren’t planning to go, but that was before I asked you to be my date.”
How typical.
“Listen,” I said, talking slowly to ensure he heard every word. “I’m not interested in being the butt of whatever little joke you and your friends have up your sleeve.”
Giving my handlebars a tug, he forced me closer, now practically straddling my front tire. “Baby, it’s not like that, and you know it. There wasn’t a joke when we went out the first time. Why would you think that now? I thought we had fun.”
I fought to regain control of my bike, but he wasn’t taking the hint. “You had fun,” I reminded him. “I got felt up at the movies, then treated to your pouting and sulking the rest of the night when I pushed you away.”
He laughed, but the sound was humorless. There was a gleam in his eye I didn’t like, as if turning him down had sparked some sort of rage in him.
“I apologized for that a bunch of times,” he growled, his voice low. “When are you going to let it go?”
Tilting my head at him, I refused to be intimidated. “When you back off. Now, let go. I have to get to work.”
Releasing my handlebars, he remained close enough that I still couldn’t get away. “You won’t avoid me forever. It’s not like anyone else in town will give you the time of day.”
“I don’t know whether to be insulted or relieved,” I snapped, rolling forward and forcing him to back up. “Why don’t you go club some other girl over the head and drag her back to your cave? I’m not interested.”
He was red-faced and practically huffing smoke, hands balled into fists at his side.
“You might want to lay off the needle,” I told him before pedaling away. “I’ve heard it shrinks the ‘nads.”
Increasing my pace, I left him behind, pedaling toward the road that would take me on the short ride to town. Lincoln didn’t scare me, despite his bravado and the ‘roid rage that made itself apparent whenever things didn’t go his way. He was more like an annoying gnat than anything else—always buzzing around and getting back in my face no matter how many times I swatted him away.
I would regret agreeing to go out on a date with him for the rest of my life. I’d decided to see a movie with him, trying to be open-minded. I didn’t like it when people made assumptions about me, so I’d tried my best not to peg Lincoln as a stupid jock when I really hadn’t known him. But, he’d proven pretty quickly that, in his case, the label really did speak of what was inside the package. He didn’t have an interesting bone in his body, seeming concerned with nothing beyond his own self and football.
For some reason, despite turning down his attempts to get into my pants, he seemed to think he could wear me down. So, he put himself in my way as often as possible, trying to chip away at my resistance with compliments and more invitations to go out with him. It never failed that once I refused him, he turned on me and began with the insults. I wasn’t sure if it was the steroids that made him that way, or if being a spoiled brat might be to blame.
Whatever the case, I didn’t have time to worry about Lincoln. I had exams to study for, and, at the moment, a job to get to.
With the sun beaming down over my head and turning the light sheen of sweat into a continuous trickle, I continued, putting school and Lincoln behind me for the weekend.
I slowed my bike in front of McGuire’s Books, Magazines, and Comics, turning down the narrow alleyway stretching between it and the coffeehouse next door. Once I dismounted, I wheeled the bike through the back door, and then left it leaning against a wall near the storeroom. Having heard the alarm, my dad called out to me from the front of the building.
“Munchkin, is that you?”
“Yeah, Dad,” I replied, dropping my bag off in the back office.
Making my way to the front room, I strode between rows of bookshelves organized by genre, then in alphabetical order. McGuire’s wasn’t a large bookstore, but with it being the only one in town, business was at least steady. Things had slowed quite a bit over the past few years, but we did the best we could.
I found Dad standing behind the counter near the register. Today’s copy of the Wellhollow Springs Sentinel blocked his face from view, but I could see his shock of curly salt-and-pepper hair. It was a bit frizzy, as if he hadn’t combed it this morning.
“Hey, munchkin,” he murmured without glancing up from the paper. “How was your day?”
The kids made fun of me because my dad is the town lunatic.
“Fine,” I said out loud. “Kind of boring. All my teachers were in finals review mode, and everyone is pretty much on autopilot until next week.”
His head bobbed as he nodded, laying the paper flat on the counter. “Some things never change. Kids are as anxious to be out of school now as they were when I was a student.”
Noticing a stack of boxes near the door, I stepped behind the counter to retrieve a box cutter. The latest magazines must have been delivered while I was at school.
“Check it out,” Dad said, distracting me from the box cutter.
Pointing to the paper laid on the counter, he smiled. I followed his finger and glanced down at the advertisement nestled among several others.
“McGuire’s Appliance Repair and Restoration,” I read aloud. “No appliance is too big or small. Mention this ad and get twenty percent off your first repair.”
Smiling, I read his name at the bottom of the ad—Nathaniel McGuire—along with his cell number. “It looks great.”
When I glanced back up at him, I found him beaming with pride, his dark brown eyes glittering with excitement. My mom always said I’d been born with his eyes, despite having inherited everything else from her. One thing I hadn’t gotten was his affinity for machines and fixing them. He was never happier than when he could pry something apart and tackle its insides with a toolbox.
“I’m hoping it’ll bring in some more income,” he said, facing me and leaning against the counter.
I tried to maintain a pleasant expression, hoping my doubt wouldn’t show outwardly. He was great at what he did, but few people were willing to look past his eccentricities in order to appreciate it. It was bad enough they looked at him from the corners of their eyes when they came into the store, as if afraid he was going to leap over the counter and begin foaming at the mouth.
“That would be great,” I replied. “Maybe I’ll look for some extra summer work, too. Something to do in the hours I’d usually be at school.”
Sighing, he gave me a wistful glance. “I would rather you enjoy your summer, munchkin, not spend it working to pay bills. That’s why I put that ad in the paper.”
Standing on tiptoe, I reached up to hug him, barely able to get my arms around his neck. My dad was a big man—both tall and brawny with just a bit of a paunch in the middle caused by his love of pasta and pastries. He enveloped me in a tight hug, the scent of his aftershave a familiar comfort.
“I don’t mind,” I told him. “McGuire’s is important to me, because it was important to you and Mom. This place was your dream, and I’d hate to see it closed. If that means I need to get a job to help make ends meet, then it’s what I’ll do.”
He patted my shoulder, and then pulled away to look down at me. “I just wish you would enjoy your last year of childhood. You’ll be eighteen and in college next year.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “High school sucks, and work experience will look good on my college applications.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But nothing that requires late hours.”
I nodded, going back to t
he task of stocking the magazines. “Agreed.”
He wouldn’t say why he didn’t want me working late, but I already knew the reason. For my father, nighttime in Wellhollow Springs could be a nerve-racking experience.
“Now that you’re here, I need to go balance the books,” he said, already turning to make his way toward the back.
“I’ll hold down the fort up here,” I responded.
Heavy footsteps grew fainter as he retreated to his office, not bothering to answer me. It was because he trusted me to run things in his absence. Truth be told, my mother had always been the face of McGuire’s—knowing the perfect books to recommend to shoppers, possessing a knowledge of many different nonfiction genres, and well-versed in the classics. We’d both been forced to fill her shoes in a lot of ways, and while we did our best, neither of us would ever be good enough.
Pushing those depressing thoughts aside, I resumed my work, quickly emptying the boxes and neatly lining the magazines up on their appropriate racks. I had to pause a few times to help customers, but had it all finished within half an hour. After disposing of the empty boxes out back, I resumed my place at the front counter. I perched on the wooden stool matching the varnished kiosk Dad had built by hand and glanced back at the newspaper.
Flipping it to the employment section, I began perusing the listings. There wasn’t much. Wellhollow Springs was such a small town, and most of the local businesses were family owned. I circled a few waitressing and cashier positions, but didn’t really feel a pull toward any of them.
Spotting an ad requesting a summertime babysitter for two young kids, I paused. It promised good pay and daytime hours, both of which appealed to me. Picking up the receiver for McGuire’s landline, I quickly dialed the number.
A man’s voice answered on the third ring. “This is Ezra Wu.”
“Hello, Mr. Wu,” I replied, using my most pleasant voice. “My name is Bellamy, and I just saw your ad in the paper for a summer babysitter. I was wondering if the position was still open.”
“It is,” he replied, his voice sharp and clear. “If you are interested in coming for an interview, I can see you tomorrow morning at ten.”
“I’d be glad to come.”
“Great,” Ezra replied. “Let me give you the address.”
I quickly reached for a pen, yanking and tearing off a bit of receipt paper from the register. While writing down the address, I furrowed my brow. This couldn’t be right. Yet, when I read it back to Ezra, he assured me it was correct.
Baldwin House.
The mansion on the hill overlooking Wellhollow Springs, where the wealthy and mysterious Baldwin family lived. Why these people needed a babysitter was beyond me. I always assumed rich people had live-in nannies.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Bellamy,” Ezra said before ending the call.
Hanging up the phone, I stared down at the address and pursed my lips. The Baldwins were practically royalty, being the richest family in town. Their property development company owned, and had built, most of the town and its surrounding housing developments.
Baldwin House had been shrouded in mystery ever since the family’s eldest son, Tate, had vanished. He’d been a student at my school back then—popular, smart, athletic, handsome. No one knew why he’d gone missing, and the rumors had grown more outrageous in the two years since. Around the same time that he disappeared, his parents had gated off the property and stopped accepting visitors. Their annual Halloween masquerade party had faded into obscurity, and only family, staff, and a close circle of friends were ever allowed to step foot over the threshold.
It seemed odd to me that the Baldwins would want to hire a babysitter, given how reclusive they’d all become. Despite the fact that I was usually pretty levelheaded, I couldn’t help letting my imagination run away with me.
A lot of people said Tate had gotten sick, and many even whispered he’d been disfigured in some sort of accident. Some claimed the house was haunted, others that the entire family were a bunch of psycho ax murderers.
“As long as they pay me and don’t try to murder and eat me, I don’t care what their secrets are,” I muttered out loud, laughing at myself for entertaining the rumors for even a second.
I had just dropped spaghetti noodles into a pot of boiling water when Dad came stomping in, his heavy tread echoing against the floorboards.
“Spaghetti’s almost done,” I called out, bending over to check on the garlic bread baking in the oven.
Without responding, he continued back to his room, the sound of him walking eventually fading away. With a frown, I lowered the heat on my sauce and left the kitchen, peering down the hall after him. The door to his bedroom hung open, the light casting a yellowish square against the opposite wall.
He’d stayed behind after closing to finish the books and balance out the register, urging me to go home ahead of him. Because we lived in the housing area closest to town, he often chose to walk to save on gas, and today had been one of those days. I usually worried about him walking home alone at night, because I never knew what might happen.
Edging slowly down the hall, I held my breath, listening for any sound. He murmured under his breath, and it sounded as if he were rifling through a drawer in search of something. My hands began to shake, and I clenched them into fists to still them as I reached the doorway.
He sat hunched over his desk, the pencil in his hand moving rapidly over a sheet of paper. The muttering had stopped, but he didn’t lift his head… not even when I called out to him.
“Dad?”
He continued his task, tremors causing his shoulders to spasm and jerk as if he were being shaken from the inside.
I could hear the worry in my own voice when I tried again. “Dad, are you okay?”
Still no answer. Glancing at the wall behind his desk, I found a familiar sight. Several sheets of paper lined the white space, held up by thumbtacks. They were drawings of people—but these people didn’t look human.
Ghosts, he called them. They looked half-mangled—some of them sporting gaping wounds in their faces or holes through their midsections. One looked as if an animal of some kind had ripped a huge chunk of flesh out of her face, showing her teeth through the hole in a grotesque display. Also tacked on the wall were newspaper clippings—obituaries. More sheets of paper with his messy handwriting had been attached, some with names and dates, others with causes of death.
Strangled. 10/25/12. Jennifer Davis.
Drowned. 6/05/10. Name unknown.
Lead poisoning. 1/19/11. Troy Bennett.
Some of the photos had pieces of colorful yarn connecting them. I once asked him why, and he told me it was because he believed their deaths to be connected in some way.
He was at it again, which meant he believed he had seen another ghost. When he got like this, I’d found it was best to leave him alone. After a sighting, he always wanted to document it while the memory was still fresh. I wouldn’t be able to pry him from that desk if I tried.
Retreating to the kitchen, I finished cooking dinner and made two plates. Putting Dad’s in the oven to keep it warm, I sat at the table alone with my book, happy to read in silence for the time being.
After I’d eaten two helpings of spaghetti, I remained at the table reading for at least another hour because the book had gripped me so thoroughly. There were only three chapters left by the time he finally emerged from his room.
His face was haggard and drawn, the lines around his eyes more pronounced than usual.
“Your dinner’s in the oven,” I said, giving him a quick glance before going back to my book.
He retrieved his plate and sat across from me, eating in silence. After a while, I couldn’t take the quiet any longer.
“Where did you spot this one?” I asked, dog-earing my spot and closing the book.
Pausing with the fork halfway to his mouth, he met my gaze. “Not far from the house, actually. That’s the third one in the neighborhood this month… I can�
��t figure out why.”
Frowning, I watched him go back to his food, head lowered. A lot of people judged my dad for what they assumed was some sort of mental disorder. However, he functioned normally in every other aspect of life, and had never given me reason to doubt his sanity. It was only when night came that he claimed to be visited by ghosts. He believed they wanted something from him, yet was never able to figure out what, exactly. So, he documented them, often going so far as to research the manners of their death, hoping for some sort of clue.
The phenomenon had begun not long after Mom died, and, at first, I figured it was just his way of coping. Over time, it had only gotten worse, becoming exhausting—wondering if he truly saw the things he said he did, worrying he might actually have something wrong with him, being angry with the people in town who whispered about him behind his back and called him crazy. Whatever was happening, my father genuinely believed he saw these ghosts.
There is so much about the world we don’t understand, my mother often said. Who are we to tell others what is true, or what they ought to believe?
I always thought she referred to things like religion, but maybe she meant convictions like my dad’s as well. She would have trusted him, so I tried my hardest to believe, too.
“I have an interview tomorrow morning,” I said, breaking the silence that had fallen between us. “It’s for a babysitting job.”
“Babysitting, huh?” he asked. “You always were good with your little cousins. What family is it?”
Hesitating for a moment, I watched his face for a reaction when I replied. “The Baldwins.”
Raising his eyebrows, he gave me a quizzical look. “I’d think a family that wealthy would have a nanny.”
I laughed. “That’s what I thought, but when I called, they still hadn’t filled the position. Maybe they lost their nanny or something. I don’t know, but it’s for the whole summer, and all I’d have to do is keep them busy during the day while the parents are at work.”
His mouth worked as he seemed to mull that over for a moment. “I suppose it sounds like a good job, but I would still prefer you spend your summer swimming, relaxing, and going to the movies… you know, kid stuff.”
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