It was a long walk home from Lucy’s, and I was about halfway there when my phone rang. I peered at the screen. Dad.
“Hey, Dad, I’m almost home.”
But he wasn’t calling about me. “Jack, listen. We’re at the police station with Noah.”
“With Noah? Why, what happened?”
“I’ll tell you when we see you.”
“Is he all right?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. Noah’s fine. He got himself in some trouble though, so we’re trying to sort it out. We might not be home for a couple of hours.”
“Oh. Okay. Anything I can do?”
“No, that’s okay. Don’t worry—nobody’s hurt. Just—your mom and I forgot to leave a note and didn’t want you to worry about us.” I hear Mom’s voice saying something in the background. “Oh, and can you let the dog out?”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll be home in, like, twenty minutes.”
Geez. Noah was only thirteen, and I’d never known him to get into anything bad. On the other hand, I’d been pretty tied up in my own life, and Noah wasn’t a big talker. I didn’t really know much about what he’d been up to, apart from the hockey.
When I got home I let out Snowball and then went into Noah’s room. I didn’t search his closet or anything; I just kind of looked around, wondering what was going on and vaguely thinking I might see something that would give me a clue. Of course, I didn’t—it was just Noah’s room. He’d seemed okay to me. A couple of times lately he’d had some kids at the house, and they looked, I dunno, normal enough.
My wandering took me back to my room, where the rats were clinging to the side of the cage, begging to come out and play. The cage was getting pretty stinky, and I needed something to kill time while I waited, so I let them run around on my bed while I cleaned the cage. I took my time and did a good job, wiping the pee off both levels and washing the water bottle and food dish. When I was done it was still only ten o’clock.
I felt like I shouldn’t interrupt whatever was going on, and Dad had said Noah was fine, but I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. I hoped Noah knew enough not to get mouthy with the police. Finally I fired off a quick text to Dad. Everything okay?
It took a few minutes, but soon I got the ping of a reply. Yes. Home soon.
I couldn’t read my parents’ faces too well, but Noah’s expression was embarrassment mixed with shame rather than oh-my-god-my-life-is-ruined, which made me feel a whole lot better. He avoided my eye, ducked his head and bolted for his room. My parents flopped down on the livingroom couch, emitting twin sighs.
“So?”
They exchanged glances: You tell him. No, you tell him—I’m too fried. How much should we tell him? Finally, my dad straightened up and gave this baffled little laugh. Not an amused laugh.
“Noah was with some kids who got caught stealing stuff out of parked cars.”
“You’re kidding me.” I pictured a gang methodically stripping all the cars in a parking lot, so could not picture my little brother as part of it.
“That’s what I said.”
The long version of the story made more sense. Noah had been at a kid’s house with some other guys after school, ostensibly working on a project. But they got fooling around and by five hadn’t got too far, so they decided to keep working and then go for pizza. By the time they were walking back from the little neighborhood plaza where they’d eaten, it was dark, and I guess one kid started checking the doors on cars parked on the street as they walked by. And then he tried a few cars that were parked in driveways, and he actually got into some and cleaned the change out of the cup holders.
My dad sighed again. “He was caught when a woman flicked on her outdoor lights and stepped out with the recycling bin. The light caught him straightening up from her car with a handful of CDs. She identified him to the cops by his red hair.” A tired smile. “So he was caught red-handed and red-haired.”
“But Noah?”
“Sounds like none of the other kids, including Noah, had anything to do with it. But they didn’t stop him either.”
I thought back to some of the dumb things my friends had done over the years. “That’s not always as easy as it sounds. What were they supposed to do—tackle him?” I was mad, all of a sudden—mad for my quiet, awkward brother, who had probably been relieved to have made some friends, only to find himself knee-deep in this assholery.
“Mmm.” Dad didn’t sound convinced. “Anyway, we’d have been home sooner if Noah hadn’t refused to, as he put it, rat anyone out. It was the kid himself, once he realized he’d been clearly identified, who admitted he’d acted on his own. And the woman confirmed the other kids had been out on the street.”
Poor Noah. Of course he didn’t want to be the new kid whose claim to fame was throwing someone to the cops.
And that’s why I didn’t tell my parents—again—about my trip down the rabbit hole.
LUCY
After Jack left I got into the shower and stood under it for a long time. At first I was having nice smitten-girl thoughts, picturing how the muscles in his forearms flexed as he chopped vegetables, and the lovely way his whole face opens up when he smiles. Remembering our kisses. Okay, and fantasizing about having him in the shower with me—of course I was. But honestly, I was kind of glad he wasn’t actually in there yet. I had some not-so-great encounters with guys when I was playing teen runaway, and the fact that Jack wasn’t pushing things along too fast made me feel like I’d be able to trust him when the time came. Of course, there had been a fairly major distraction to deal with…
And with that my whole mood changed. She hovered in my mind, floating with her lost eyes and skinny legs, and although I did pity her, I had the sudden conviction that the Match Girl was not just sad—she was dangerous. The shower closed in on me, claustrophobic, and I was reminded of an old movie called Psycho. Ali had made me watch it with her; her dad is a film nerd with a huge DVD collection. You’d never believe a black-and-white movie with a corny soundtrack and no special effects would be scary, but it’s impossible to take a shower after watching that movie and not feel a bit freaked. That was how I felt now. I slammed shut the taps and yanked open the curtain, feeling stupid because of course she wasn’t there. Still, I barely toweled off before jamming my legs into my pj’s, feeling dumb again as the flannel stuck to the dampness, but damn, being naked is not a good thing when you’re spooked.
Then I checked the lock on the door and walked around turning on lights, trying to dispel every dark corner. I wondered how things were going for Jack, if his parents were sitting in Emerg with him at this very moment, and I almost texted him but decided I shouldn’t interrupt. I made a pot of tea and sat at the kitchen table, waiting for my mom to get home.
The look on Mom’s face—surprised, then sort of cautious, like she was girding herself for bad news—didn’t exactly encourage me to pour my heart out. But I really just wanted company anyway. And I could hardly blame her—I was always in my room when she got home, probably not asleep but reading or listening to music or finishing up homework. She’d poke her head in the door and say, Goodnight. Don’t stay up too late, and that would be that. Hard to say which of us was avoiding the other.
“Hi. You’re still up,” she said. A+ for observation.
“I made some tea—want a cup?”
She started to shake her head, then stopped herself. “Sure.”
I was surprised, and a little annoyed, at how glad I was when she said yes. It was just a stupid cup of tea, for God’s sake.
We sat together, and I poured for us both. It was my third or maybe fourth cup, but I didn’t care. Then my mom decided she was hungry too and made toast fingers for us both. That felt nice, a cozy remnant from my childhood.
We did How Was Your Day and Hasn’t the Weather Been Nice and then my mom said carefully, “You don’t often wait up for me. Not that I’m complaining, but—was there something you wanted to talk about?”
Yes, Mom, this boy and I are having a j
oint hallucination of a dead girl from an old story, and we don’t know what to do about it. I didn’t want to tell her that, didn’t want to ruin this nice almost-normal mother-daughter moment. Instead, I smiled at her and confessed, “I met a boy at school I really like. He cooked me dinner tonight.”
She grinned at me, and even though I could also see the relief on her face, it was still a nice, genuine smile, like she was really glad for me. She asked me the obligatory mom questions and teased me a bit, and then she yawned, looked at her watch and said, “I’m beat. And you should get to bed too.” As she headed toward the bathroom, she called over her shoulder, “Turn the lights out before you turn in. It’s lit up like Christmas in here.”
I went to bed and texted Jack.
TEN
JACK
You know how every time there’s a freak storm or a huge earthquake or a flash flood, everyone starts talking about climate change, and then the next day the sun comes out and there’s something else on the news and we all forget about it again? I keep thinking that people—if there are any left—will look back on our time and wonder how we kept ignoring the obvious.
And that’s what it was like for me with the Match Girl. This completely weird, inexplicable, scary thing had happened, but the next day I still had to get up and go to school and then go to rehearsal for The Importance of Being Earnest. Once past the silent tension at breakfast—Noah shuffling down, shooting me an imploring look that I easily translated as Just. Don’t. Say. Anything; Mom grimly focused on lunches and dishes—it became a day like any other. Sam Heffernan, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, set fire to his own shirt with his Bunsen burner in chemistry, causing brief panic followed by high hilarity. Practicing how to kiss Amelia Patel in the play was kind of odd but in a really normal way—two awkward kids trying to act like kissing a random person onstage was no big deal. And by the end of the day, the Match Girl was already fading back into unreality.
Lucy and I, by unspoken agreement, avoided all talk of “it” at school. Honestly, I was reluctant to bring the Match Girl up at all. It’s not that I believed just talking might summon her or something—not really. I just felt like maybe it was better to let it lie.
And anyway, I had better things to do with Lucy. Who wouldn’t rather make out with their new girlfriend than sit around beating their brains against an insoluble problem?
There was also the Halloween party to talk about. A kid named Jordan, whom I barely knew but who seemed okay, was having a party in his parents’ barn on the outskirts of town. He seemed to be inviting everyone he crossed paths with—including me, when we nearly collided on the stairwell. “Hey, man, you should come to my party!” And then he was gone, hurtling down the stairs like a SWAT team was after him. It was definitely the kind of potentially sketchy situation that made my parents imagine an entire Hell’s Angels chapter showing up at the door—but intriguing. City kids don’t get to party in barns too often.
“So will there be, like, hay and stalls and stuff?” I asked. The subject had come up at lunch, and Rafe and Alex, who knew Jordan better, allowed that they’d like to go.
“No, man,” Alex scoffed. “It’s sort of half-finished, like a bad basement rec room. And they have a couple of big electric heaters, so if we get enough people in there, it should stay fairly warm.”
“What about costumes?” Rafe asked.
Alex looked blank, then slightly horrified. “Oh no. Shit. I friggin’ hate costumes.”
“What? Why?”
I didn’t need to ask to know Rafe loved costumes. He’d taken every drama course he could and was trying to get into the Ryerson performing arts program—costumes were a second skin for him.
“I never know what to wear. Always end up looking like a tool, and uncomfortable as hell all night. Itching or sweating to death or all”—Alex made a struggling gesture that reminded me of Noah when he was little, fighting his car-seat straps—“bound up.” He looked morose. “Annie will harass me into wearing one, won’t she?” Annie was his girlfriend, and she did seem like she might put a lot of stock in costumes.
“Don’t worry, man. We’ll help you find something.” Rafe looked at me confidently. “Won’t we?”
“Yeah, sure.” Ha. I had no idea what to wear myself. “Let’s just make sure that costumes are actually happening though, right?”
LUCY
I was lukewarm on the party from the get-go. I’m not a fan of big, crowded events full of drunk people, and out in the country it’s not always so easy to get home when you’ve had enough. But it would be more fun with Jack there, I thought—he wouldn’t be getting totally wasted, and his easiness with people would help me relax. So I was actually disappointed when the achy headache I went to bed with the night before the party bloomed into a fever high enough to keep me shivering and sweating in bed, counting down the hours until I could take the next dose of Tylenol.
My mom was already at work when I woke up the next morning; she’d left me a note reminding me that she was doing a shift for somebody named Wanda who had a wedding to attend. I tottered to the bathroom, wishing I had my granny Kay’s walker to hold me up, and grabbed my phone on the way back to bed. I called the café to tell them I couldn’t make my shift. Then I huddled under the covers and sent Jack a miserable text:
SICK!!! Cant go 2nite. Just leave me here to die. XO
It was too bad, I thought, as I clamped my eyes shut and willed myself to sleep. I wouldn’t even need makeup for my costume—I pretty much already looked like Zombie Girl.
JACK
Alex’s dad pulled into the turnaround at the end of the long laneway, and we piled out of the car into a frosty cold night. He leaned out the driver’s-side window. “Okay, guys, behave yourselves, eh? Just ’cause you’re partying in a barn doesn’t mean you should act like you were raised in one.” He snorted at his own joke.
“Dad.” Alex looked pained. “Thanks for the ride. We’ll be cool.”
Mr. Curcio had already ensured we had the numbers of both cab companies and enough cash between us to share a fare back into town. My mother would approve. We’d had a testy exchange about this party, which she was clearly envisioning as Country Kids Gone Wild, and about my own personal-safety precautions.
“You should give one of your friends the glucagon, and teach them to use it.”
Glucagon is a rescue treatment for a low so bad I’m unconscious. I pictured a drunk friend trying to plunge that fat glucagon needle through my jeans into my thigh. No thanks.
“Mom, it’s only ten minutes out of town. They can just call an ambulance.”
“What if the ambulance is delayed?”
“You never worried about that in Montreal. They can be delayed anywhere. And anyway, I’m not going to need it.”
Big sigh. But she’d given up, and here I was.
We went up to the house with another clump of kids who had just arrived and went through an odd little security check with Jordan’s parents, who made us all introduce ourselves (I guess to make sure we weren’t party crashers) and asked a girl who had driven to deposit her keys in a bowl. Presumably, there would be some kind of sobriety test before she got them back. Then we were ushered out the back door and pointed toward a looming dark shape. The moon, white and full in a sky darker than you ever see in the city, lit up the path better than the handful of feeble little solar lights stuck in the grass along the way.
When we dragged open the barn door, a wave of noise washed over us. The music was poppy crap (IMHO, ha-ha) but loud and danceable. I glanced into the cavernous space, wondering how they’d managed to fill the place with sound, and saw a bank of speakers arrayed along what I guessed would have been the floor of the original hayloft. Impressive. A couple dozen kids were there already, standing around in clumps, yelling at each other over the music, swaying but not dancing yet—and there was room for plenty more.
We made our way farther into the room, the old carpets underfoot changing color and texture as we pro
gressed. We found Jordan, who waved at us and pointed toward the back wall, where we found a pile of coats and a big old fridge.
“Sweet!” Rafe yelled. “Cold beer tonight.” We unloaded our cans of Pabst from our backpacks, and Rafe tucked them into the fridge. Thank you, Alex’s older brother.
“Jack?” Rafe held out a can, his grin turned into a hideous leer by his Joker makeup. His costume put my zombie (shredded old paint clothes and face paint from the kit we’d used when we were kids) to shame, but on the other hand, I looked damn good beside Alex, who had thrown on a plaid shirt and tuque to become a half-assed lumberjack. Annie, hanging on his arm, had on this floor-length black velvet dress that she said had belonged to her grandmother. Even I, fashion-challenged as I was, could tell it was spectacular, and she was wearing just enough vampire makeup to make her look exotic and awesome.
I didn’t intend to drink much—despite what I’d told my mom, we were more like twenty minutes out of town, and I had no interest in testing the local ambulance service. But there were a lot of kids here I didn’t know, and a little social lubricant wouldn’t hurt.
“Thanks, man.” I cracked the tab and took a long swallow. Too bad Lucy couldn’t come. I really wanted to dance with her tonight.
I was most of the way through my beer, and the “dance floor” under the speaker bank was filling up, when a blond, willowy girl in a skimpy black-and-white outfit planted herself before me.
“Hi, Jack.”
“Hi. Um…Becky, right?”
“Geez, I’d have hoped you wouldn’t have to guess.” She did a fake pout, tipping her head to look up at me from under the drama of her eyelids. I saw the little white frilly cap pinned to the back of her head, and the light went on.
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