I vacuumed a corner of the attic and stacked all the boxes there. I placed the mannequin in front of that. I dusted off the dollhouse and sat the dolls up right next to it.
Two hours later, we had the attic completely cleaned up and decided to head on home. It was cold and dark when we went outside. The moon was only a thin slice of light and it kept getting covered up by a blanket of clouds. We pulled our jackets more tightly around us and walked quickly.
When I got home, I found my mother all dressed up, looking at her reflection in the downstairs bathroom mirror. She looked like she was dressed for dancing or something: black silk dress, high heels, necklace of white pearls. Her makeup looked normal, kind of subdued, actually—red lipstick, foundation and blush, but I couldn’t even tell if she had on any eye shadow or not. Definitely subdued.
She rushed out of the bathroom and grabbed my arm, kind of affectionately and dismissively all at once. “Oh, hi, Shade! I’m so happy to see you! I’m going out, but someone I work with will be dropping something off at the house here. Can you answer the door and get the package for me?”
Ah ha! She needed a favor. Hence the friendliness. Tired of arguing with her and glad I’d have the house to myself, I simply agreed to get the package.
I thought she was going to hug me, but she rushed past me instead, calling out over her shoulder, “Thanks so much! I owe you one.”
Then the front door slammed. And she was gone, out into the night somewhere.
I made sure all the doors were locked and then flipped through TV channels for a while. I watched a couple of music videos, then went upstairs.
Before I switched on the lights, I heard weird sounds coming from my bedroom. Oink. Oink. Oink. Snort.
There in the dark, a cell phone floated in midair, Angry Birds and their piggy nemeses fighting each other across the screen.
I snapped on the lights. Brandon slowly materialized.
I stared at his vague form. “What are you doing?”
“Playing Angry Birds. Waiting for you. Why?”
“But you were invisible.”
“Yeah, so? I don’t need to be visible for myself.”
I thought about that. “Well, I guess not. I just never realized you could will yourself into invisibility.”
He got out of the Angry Birds game. “Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know that. Actually, it’s more like I have to will myself to be seen. Invisibility seems to be my natural state. It takes a lot less energy. It tires me out a lot more to show myself for long periods of time.”
That surprised me. I had never thought about it one way or the other. “Is it exhausting?”
“No, not at all. Just tiring. You know, like when you take a long walk or something. It’s not exhausting; it just tires you out more than sitting in a chair, watching TV. You know?”
“Oh, yeah, OK, that makes sense.”
At that moment, the doorbell rang. My nerves already on edge from finding Brandon in my room in a strange state going from invisible to visible, I jumped.
Brandon asked me, “Are you OK?”
“Yeah. I have to answer the doorbell, though. I promised my mom I’d take in a package someone was dropping off. I’ll be right back.”
With that, I bounded down the stairs. As I opened the front door, a bitterly cold wind gusted into my face. I shivered. I noticed that it was incredibly dark outside. The stupid light next to the door sputtered and went out.
There, standing in the sparse light falling on him from inside my house was a man who gave me the creeps. I couldn’t figure out why. He looked OK. I thought he reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who that was. I thought his name was on the tip of my tongue, but that didn’t seem right either.
He pushed a small box toward me. It had been sealed with rows of packing tape. He told me, “Hi. I have a package for your mom. She said I could leave it with you.”
I mumbled something, I totally don’t remember what. I reached for the package and studied him: a short man, stubble everywhere a guy would normally shave, expensive dress coat, intense dark eyes.
He relinquished the package to me and stared. He wagged a finger. “I remember you. I’ve seen you, snooping around my neighborhood. You need to stay away, if you know what’s good for you.”
At that moment, all the leaves in the front yard flew up into a funnel shape and swirled around the guy like a tornado. I felt incredibly frightened. I slammed the door, hard. I didn’t want the tornado ripping apart the inside of my house. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that guy inside my house.
I peeked outside. The guy was screaming. A tree branch was somehow floating in the air, smacking him repeatedly in the butt. I mean, he was basically getting spanked by a tree branch.
I locked the door and ran upstairs. “Brandon!”
I found Brandon rolling around on the floor, laughing like crazy.
I felt angry. “Did you do that to the guy at the front door?”
Brandon stopped laughing, although he was grinning like crazy. “Look out your bedroom window.”
I peered out into the night. Holy crap. The creepy guy was being chased by an enormous black dog with glowing red eyes. I pulled my window curtains closed. “You know, you have no right to do that.”
Brandon stood up from the floor and kind of floated over to the couch and sat down. “What do you mean? I was protecting you.”
I felt my cheeks flush. “Look, I don’t need your protection. I can take care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself and my mother for a very long time. I’m good at it. That guy was a piece of cake.”
I shivered. I could not place where I knew him from.
Brandon interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, OK if I disappear for a bit?”
Lost in thought, I mumbled, “Sure, sure, that’s fine.”
I lay down on my bed and stared up at the canopy. For the first time, I noticed distinct shapes in the lace: stars and moons. Kind of cool, like gazing up at a white lace sky. Clouds of lace.
Then I remembered where I knew that guy from. I bolted out of bed. I started pacing around my room. He was one of the guys who had pushed that girl into a van on Halloween night after I had met up with Annie. Before Annie had shown up, they had been yelling at the girl and she had been crying.
Oh God, oh God! My mom was working with him.
OK, OK. Calm down. Just calm down. Breathe. Breathe. Take some nice slow breaths. I tried to do that. But I couldn’t. I told myself that I was overreacting, that I had a tendency to do that. I reminded myself that, on the spot, when the girl was actually being yelled at by the two guys, I had realized that maybe she had done something bad, maybe they were related to her and they were just reprimanding her.
But the guy had threatened me tonight.
I wanted to talk to my mom, warn her or something and ask her opinion. I knew that wouldn’t work. She’d never listen to me. She’d probably end up telling the guy what I had said, and then I’d be in serious danger.
I pulled the bowl and knife out of my nightstand drawer. I locked the bedroom door. I got ready to swipe the sharp blade across my arm when it was pulled out of my hand and thrown into the wall.
I was mad. “Goddamn, Brandon! Knock it off! I thought you were tired.”
I dashed over to the knife and wrapped my hands around it. As I tried to pull it out of the wall, it turned burning hot. The palms of both my hands immediately blistered and turned bright red. I screamed in agony. I ran into the bathroom and ran my hands under cold water, shaking and crying uncontrollably.
In the next second, an incredible healing sensation came over me. My hands healed in an instant.
When I came out of the bathroom, I saw the knife float out of the wall and into my nightstand drawer. The bowl lifted up, did the same; and the nightstand drawer closed. The hole in the wall closed up.
And Brandon reappeared.
I was so angry, I tried to pummel him with my fists. I went right through him and slammed into a
sharp corner of my desk. Screaming in pain again, I went over to my bed, curled up in a fetal position and just sobbed.
I hated my life. I wanted to die.
Brandon went over to my desk, grabbed a pile of papers and started reading to me from Leotard Girl. She was talking about Mars. She was saying some pretty cool stuff, actually. She explained how some elements from the Martian soil had been woven into her red tights and had seeped into her skin when she wore them, giving her superhuman powers. In addition to that, she could shoot a laser beam out of the third eye in her forehead when she became both emotionally charged and focused. This power had been given to her thanks to an earlier incident with her teacher, Mrs. Watts, who had pierced Leotard Girl’s forehead with laser beams shooting out of her own eyes. Turns out that Mrs. Watts was actually a humanoid robot who had spent time on Mars before the government placed her in charge of educating children. They retired her from that job after the laser beam incident took place with Leotard Girl.
Brandon put the pages back down. “This is really good. Galactic Shade Griffin, you have got to make a choice. Either you’re going to keep destroying yourself or you’re going to snap out of it and take your life in a positive direction. You’re hurting your chances for a good life. You’re also hurting me. If you refuse to let me help you, I’m not getting out of Purgatory. I’m going to stay trapped in this netherworld until some later time when maybe, possibly some other person will move up into this attic room who will actually help me. Maybe no one else will ever move up here. Maybe I’m going to be punished forever. What the hell are you punishing yourself for? Do you think you’re to blame for the way your mother is? Is that it? Do you blame yourself for losing your Dad and other father figures? Well, in continuing to punish yourself, you’re punishing me, too. And you’re turning your back on your natural gifts. You could be helping the world by giving them the superhero Leotard Girl. And who knows what you could accomplish with your writing in years to come if you get better and better at it?”
He was right. In that moment, I realized that he was absolutely right.
It was stunning, actually. I blamed myself for ruining my mother’s life. She had gotten pregnant with me. Her life had changed at a very young age, before she had been ready to be a mother, and I believed that I had wrecked the entire rest of her existence. I admitted this to Brandon.
He looked at me with sad eyes. “She’s such an addict, though, Shade. That’s all her own doing. That has nothing to do with her getting pregnant so young. Did you ever stop to think that maybe, for her, the pregnancy and the drug use ... and her impulsively changing her name to Poppy ... might be because she has some very serious problems with self-control? Also, her breaking up with men and moving around so much? From what you told me, her last boyfriend was a great father figure for you and she left him. She could have stayed with him and finally gotten her life together. She even had a job as a substitute teacher in the exact field she enjoys: art. But she’s getting drunk and using drugs and not even showing up for work a lot of the time. You’re pretty easy now. You’re no longer a baby or a little kid. You actually take care of her half the time. She could easily get her life together now. But she doesn’t want that. She’s like self-destruction at high speed. Let it go. Let whatever irrational guilt you have go. Save yourself and save me. Please. I’m begging you.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Wow. You are better than Alateen.”
CHAPTER 12
In Creative Writing class the next day, Mr. Hoffman handed back the last assignment we had done. I figured I had flunked. It was a really tough assignment. We had to write an entire short story based on one starting image: a little girl playing on the beach, with the sun shining brightly and waves in the background.
We had read our stories out loud. It was amazing how different they were. There was horror: the little girl eventually ran into the waves and drowned because her parents weren’t watching her. (Sadly, in real life that could have been me, except my parents had never taken me to the beach.) There was science fiction: the little girl was an alien from another planet who had just placed foreign microbes in the ocean that would eventually wipe out entire fish populations and cause a plague to spread among the humans. There were stories in the literary genre that were so beautiful and sad, I just wanted to weep. And not only because they were sad, but because they were so well written, I despaired that I would ever succeed at having a career as a writer. My story was fantasy: the little girl jumped into the ocean, turned into a mermaid and eventually missed her life back on land.
A+. I was shocked. Mr. Hoffman always handed our papers back facing upside down on our desks. I turned over the top edge and saw in bright red marker: A+. Holy cow. I turned over the entire paper. Other students were free to look at it. I was so proud of it. And so convinced that that might be the last time in my life I’d ever have a grade worth showing off.
After classes, on my way back to my locker, I decided to check out the bulletin board outside the library to see what had been posted there recently. I was hoping for a writing contest or something. What I found was much better: a part-time job for a high school student at a local newspaper, just writing little announcements and stuff, but one of the perks listed was the opportunity to learn about careers in journalism.
There was a phone number to call. I walked outside and called on my cell phone, my hands shaking so badly, I had to redial the number three times before I got it right.
I managed to explain what I wanted. And I got an interview! It was for the very next day, right after school. I only had to email my list of writing credentials to them prior to the interview.
Good. Only one night to obsessively worry about it, to sweat profusely and lose sleep.
As soon as I got home, I emailed a list of everything relevant that I could think of: writing for the school newspaper, helping to run the school forum, my work on Leotard Girl, and the English Literature and Creative Writing classes I had taken.
The next day, school dragged by. It was as if the whole day had gotten gummed up with some kind of sticky substance that was slowing down time.
I was dressed up. Everyone stared at me. George and Kailee both stopped me in the hallway to ask what was up with me. I told them. They wished me luck.
After school, I walked to a bus stop and took a bus downtown to the newspaper office. The sign on the building read: The Daily Buzz.
That was it. The place where I would be interrogated ... umm, I mean: interviewed.
I opened the front door which was made of solid glass. A set of bells tinkled overhead to announce my arrival. Very quaint.
A middle-aged woman sat at a computer typing. She looked up as I entered. She had on a gray dress with white pearls, kind of plain, although she had red hair and was wearing red lipstick which kind of balanced out the blandness.
When I told her who I was, a smile flashed across her face. She stood up and came over to meet me. She actually shook my hand. I felt distracted by two tiny dots of lipstick on her front teeth.
She introduced herself. “So glad to meet you, Shade. My name is Eleanor Sims.”
All I could think of was The Sims computer game. I had never thought of that as a real last name for real people.
She led me over to her desk, wheeled over a chair and asked me to sit down.
Then the interview began.
Eleanor Sims read over the email I had sent her. She asked me about everything I had listed. She seemed interested in everything I had to say. When we were done talking about my writing background, she asked me when I could start.
My mind went blank. For a couple of seconds, I had no idea what she was talking about. When I could start what? Then I realized she meant the job. When I could start the job? The real, actual job ... as a writer? I let her know that I could start right away, at any time.
She said, “Well, we’ve received emails from around twenty students interested in this particular job. I still have a few more students to int
erview and then I’ll be letting everyone know our decision.”
I thanked Ms. Sims for her time and left. I felt devastated. I figured I had done something wrong to change the course of the interview. She seemed like she wanted to hire me and then she didn’t. I had failed at the real-life Sims game is how I saw it.
I planned to go home and mope when I received a text message from Kailee: Can you meet at our new clubhouse tonight?
I texted back: Sure.
She answered: Cool. 7:00?
I answered: OK.
Wow, I had some impressive writing skills, didn’t I? In my everyday life, I wrote such lines as “Sure” and “OK,” real Shakespearean talent there. I felt like such a loser.
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