A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
Page 8
Either way, the situation wasn’t good, couch-wise. Fleayoncé didn’t seem to mind too much, though. She sat on Jonah’s shoulder, purring like an idling lawnmower while he played absentmindedly with her ears. A long tentacle of drool hung from one side of her mouth.
They were watching The Mothman Prophecies and passing a bowl of popcorn among them.
“Where did this hideous couch come from?” Eugene asked between mouthfuls of popcorn. Esther and Jonah both shrugged without looking away from the screen. It was up to the part where that one dude, Gordon, gets a prophecy from his sink that ninety-nine will die. Jonah paused the movie.
“You want me to believe you’re scared of some talking sink?” he said.
“That sink, with the help of moths, predicted the murder of ninety-nine people,” Esther said.
“Psychic sinks are not to be trifled with,” Eugene added.
“Punk ass sink needs to sit down and reevaluate its life choices. C’mon. Enough procrastinating. Let’s go find some moths.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to watch The Silence of the Lambs first?” Esther asked hopefully.
“Nah.”
“Fine. But if my sink starts making prophecies, you’ll be the first to hear about it.”
“Eugene, man, do you wanna come with?” Jonah said.
“Where are you going?”
Jonah whispered something in his ear. Eugene shivered. “God. No.”
That’s how she knew it was going to be bad.
• • •
THEY ARRIVED at the butterfly sanctuary midafternoon. It was a great glass structure, like a greenhouse only larger, and so packed with plants it looked like part of the set from Jurassic World. There was an admission fee, but Jonah said, “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” Instead they found a side door, and much to the protest of Esther’s wildly beating heart, snuck in without paying.
“Let the record state that I am deeply dismayed at this blatant disregard for the rules,” she said, but Jonah shushed her as he strapped the GoPro to his forehead.
“Would you shut up for two seconds and look at where you are?”
So she did shut up. And she did look at where she was.
Arching over them was a tall glass ceiling, hundreds and hundreds of shards held up by a white frame. There was a gazebo, a pond, a small bridge crossing over a stream, an unsettlingly large moth sculpture, thickets of ferns and flowers, and a grassy area where children were playing. And there were butterflies everywhere. Mostly orange ones—monarchs, she vaguely remembered them being called from elementary school—that were so abundant they made the trees appear as if fall was already here.
Jonah did his typical Jonah schtick; he led her around the sanctuary and narrated every species of butterfly they saw in a not unreasonable impersonation of David Attenborough, and Esther laughed.
Until they got to the moths.
The moths, antisocial assholes that they were, had their own small section at the back of the sanctuary, for two reasons:
Moths were evil and therefore probably plotting the downfall of all the more attractive butterflies, and thus needed to be kept contained like any villain worth their salt.
Nobody went to a butterfly sanctuary to see moths, and the moths knew it, which had only contributed to their general evilness.
It was a vicious cycle, really. The hate only led to more hate, but she couldn’t help it. Moths were nasty.
They ventured into moth territory and already she was drawing deeper breaths, because no insect had a right to be that chunky. They were huge and hairy and had these powerful-looking legs and furry antennas. There were all different species of all different sizes. There were even some of the death’s-head moths, the ones with the little skulls on their backs, which was sufficient enough evidence for her that moths were portents of doom and shouldn’t be messed with.
Esther did her best to move as little as possible. Jonah, on the other hand, was fascinated.
A furry white moth flitted over to land on his hand, this beast of a thing with black button eyes. Jonah stroked it. Straight up ran his finger down its back, like it was a miniature puppy. “Kinda looks like a Pokémon,” he said, holding it at eye level to inspect it closer. “Bring me the eagles,” he whispered. “Show me the meaning of haste!” Then he threw it up into the air and it flittered away to go and do moth pastimes. Like crawling into the mouths of corpses and terrorizing small towns.
“Tolkien knew a lot of stuff, but he knew nothing about the dark souls of moths. No way a moth would’ve helped Gandalf,” Esther said. “Least believable part of Middle-earth.”
“Your turn,” Jonah said, pointing to the largest moth in the enclosure, a brown monstrosity with wing patterns that would have made a nice wall hanging for Urban Outfitters.
“I am not touching that thing.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Gross.”
“C’mon, they aren’t skittish. Not like it’s gonna get up in your face or anything. It’s the butterflies you gotta watch out for.”
“I’ll do it on one condition.”
“Okay.”
“Tell me how you got into my locker every day.”
“A magician never reveals his secrets.”
“Good thing you’re a pickpocket and not a magician then.”
Jonah smiled as the big moth crawled onto his hand, flapped its big wings a few times, and then settled there. “Hephzibah gave me the combos to the locks and helped me with the tape.”
“That weasel. And the magnets?”
“Eugene makes a good double agent.”
“I’m surrounded by traitors.”
Jonah held out the moth to her. “They both think you facing your fears is a really good idea.”
“Hypocrites!” she shouted. Then she put one hand over her mouth to: a) stop herself from vomiting, b) stop herself from hyperventilating, and c) stop herself from screaming. “Oh my god,” she said through her fingers. “It’s so big.”
“That’s also what she said.”
“Shut up or I’ll punch you again.”
“Please, spare me the pain.” Like with the last moth, Jonah ran his finger down this one’s back. As she looked into its big beady eyes, Esther supposed that the insect didn’t really seem that evil.
“Poor moths get the real short end of the stick,” Jonah said. “Everyone’s always talking about butterflies and their effect. What about moths? What happens if they flap their wings? All moths get is some Richard Gere movie.”
He held the insect out to Esther again, and she let it amble onto her hand; to its credit, it didn’t do anything for the next few minutes except chill there. When she finally admitted that okay, maybe moths weren’t that bad, maybe they were kind of cute, Jonah coaxed it back onto his fingers and set it back on a tree branch.
“Split?” said Jonah.
“The torture’s over already?” she asked. “Hell yeah.”
As they headed toward the exit in the main butterfly area, a kid tripped and slammed into the base of a tree, which sent the monarchs up in a storm of orange. The whole greenhouse seemed to take to the air, as if gravity had been momentarily suspended. All the adults in the general vicinity ran to the aid of the screaming (and therefore clearly alive) child, as Esther and Jonah turned in slow circles, staring up through the growing firestorm. She put her hand up into the burst, so bright and frantic that she wondered if it would burn her. They moved like slow birds, churning upward toward the sun as a single creature. One butterfly landed on her outstretched fingers, and then another, and then another, before they too were swept up in the tornado.
A few minutes passed before all the butterflies were settled enough to land, once again bringing premature fall to the greenery.
“That,” she said, “was insane.”
 
; “Hey! Hey, you two! You need to come to the front office and pay your admission fee!”
“Oh shit, run,” Jonah said, already bounding toward the exit.
Esther was not a runner. She was more of a shot put kind of girl. Still, in times of absolute need, she was able to improvise, and since going to jail for the second time in as many weeks didn’t seem worth it for an illicit visit to a butterfly farm, she followed Jonah. He threw open the side door and they plunged out into the bucketing rain and ran and ran and ran. There was far too much running associated with this boy as far as she was concerned, but Jonah was loving it, sprinting through the rain and clicking his heels as they made their great escape. Esther did the best she could to keep her cleavage from detaching by holding her hands to her chest.
They came to a stop under a tree and waited to see if the butterfly guy had followed them, but who was gonna chase two teenage hoodlums through the rain for minimum wage? And for that matter, how many people were so desperate to look at butterflies that they broke into the butterfly sanctuary? Couldn’t be many.
Esther peeled off her white gloves. Her pillbox hat was missing, lost somewhere along the getaway. Her Jackie O costume was soaked.
“Why is it I always end up wet when you’re around?” she said as she wrung out her gloves. Jonah collapsed to the damp grass, flat on his face, unable to breathe from laughing so hard before Esther realized what she’d said. “Oh God. Oh God,” she muttered as she walked quickly back into the rain, her cheeks tight and burning.
Through gasped breaths, Jonah yelled, “Wait, wait!” She didn’t wait, but he caught her anyway and buried his head into her shoulder and was still laughing, the bastard.
“Sorry I get you wet all the time,” he said.
“It’s not funny!” She yanked her shoulder away from him. “You’re not funny!”
“It’s a little funny.”
“I’m going home.”
“You gonna walk all the way there in the rain? ’Cause I’m not game to get my moped back until they’re closed.”
“That’s what I did the night you mugged me.”
“Pickpocketed, Esther. I pickpocketed you. Don’t say mugged. You make me sound like a thug. Pickpocketing requires finesse.”
“Whatever. I’m calling my mom. Maybe she can give us both a lift.” Esther knew that Rosemary wouldn’t answer, not if she was at the slots, but she rang her three times anyway. “I can’t get a hold of her.”
“You can come to my house if you want. ’Til the storm finishes. It’s not far from here. We can walk.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s just . . . It’s not nice.”
“Neither is my house.”
“Yeah, but this is different.”
“It’s up to you.”
Jonah rubbed the side of his neck. Esther thought, for a moment, that he would say no. But then he looked up from the sidewalk, his uncertainty replaced by a grin. A grin that she noticed, for the first time, had a layer of sadness behind it. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes,” he said, rubbing the material of her sleeve between his fingers. “Maybe you should bring spares from now on. You know, if you’re always going to end up wet around me.”
“Are you ever going to let me live that down?”
“Don’t think so, Solar. Don’t think so at all.”
11
SHAKESPEARE, STARS, AND AN AQUATIC OPTIMUS PRIME
“NOT FAR from here,” as it turned out, was an overstatement. Jonah’s house wasn’t much closer to the center of town than Esther’s, but the subdivision was newer. His street was nice, but his house looked more sad and disheveled than the rest, like one of the starters you move into at the beginning of The Sims when you’ve got no money, six children, and no other choice.
They didn’t go inside. They ran through the rain to the backyard. The lawn backed onto unkempt wilderness; the grass was taller than Esther’s head.
Jonah let her in the door to the screened-in back porch.
“Well, this is my kingdom,” he said, taking off his wet jacket.
Esther took off her dripping jacket and wrung out her hair and tried to find something safe to start a conversation with. She didn’t stare at the fist-sized hole punched through the plasterboard, or how one of the screens had been boarded up with cardboard and duct tape. Her eye was taken and held by the walls and ceiling. Every square inch of available space was painted. The ceiling was a sea scene in swirling green and bright coral, Starry Night if it were an ocean. In the eddies were mermaids and fish and sharks and, strangely, Optimus Prime with a tail. Jonah saw her staring at it.
“It’s not as bad as it looks. We just try to hang out here and stay out of Holland’s way,” he said as he pulled blankets down from the top of a bookshelf. “My sister Remy likes pictures, so I paint her what she wants. Sometimes that means giving Transformers gills.”
There were the stories from Esther’s own childhood, mixed with the tales of a kid who’d either a) grown up too fast, or b) had impeccable taste in entertainment, depending on your perspective on what’s appropriate for elementary schoolers. There was a picture of Vincent Vega holding a gun to Oscar the Grouch’s head, Ryuk from Death Note hovering in one corner, and Deadpool singing Christmas carols with Justin Bieber.
Even patches of the floor had been painted so that it appeared the walls were waterfalls.
And behind her, painted on the door that led into the rest of the house, was the Grim Reaper from Esther’s head: darkly robed, dripping tar, scythe resting gently in his long-boned hands. But—like every other story on the walls—this one had been changed, hybridized, made ridiculous. Death wore a flower crown of orange and purple blooms, and around his neck was strung a plaque that read: BALL SO HARD MUHFUCKAS WANNA FIND ME. Two small figures danced at his feet, tying his toe bones up in a web of twine: a small, peach-haired girl and a small, dark-skinned boy. Both tricksters. Both unafraid of Death.
“Oh yeah. The newest edition,” Jonah said, and his voice was strange, almost like he was . . . sheepish? Since when was Jonah Smallwood sheepish? He cleared his throat. “I, uh . . . I kind of painted that one for you.”
Esther had already guessed this, because although the Reaper took up the whole door, it was the girl—no larger than a forearm—who shone with the most detail. The outline of her body was spun gold, and even the numerous freckles that dotted her skin glistened in the light.
Esther was pretty sure most teenage girls had fantasied about the idea of some guy painting a goddamn mural with them in it, but this was dangerous territory. Murals were a well-known gateway drug to feelings, and she couldn’t have any of that. Losing him the first time had sucked, and had taught her a valuable life lesson: If you didn’t let people get close to you, they couldn’t hurt you when they left. So that’s what she’d done, and what she intended to continue doing now.
You couldn’t tell people that when they’d painted you into a mural, though. You couldn’t immediately throw the gesture back in their face and be all like, “Sorry, but I’m far too emotionally damaged for my likeness to be included in murals.” So she said, as he draped a blanket around her shuddering shoulders, “It’s beautiful.” Because it was.
Outside, the sun was setting, its dull orange beams leaking through the screens of the porch, casting their long shadows on the wall so that they were taller than the Reaper. For a moment they were very close together, her chest almost pressed to his, both larger than Death, and she supposed it would be very easy to kiss him, and she thought he very much wanted her to, but she didn’t. Mural notwithstanding.
When the sun set, they turned on the lights and lay on the floor together, staring up at the ceiling. Jonah pointed out all the little hidden Easter eggs around the room that she’d missed the first time around. He had been working on the painting for years, he told her, changing parts of it every few weeks. There
were constellations up there, hidden in the tumbling waves, one for his sister and his mother and himself. Jonah pointed them out. Virgo. Scorpio. Cancer. He couldn’t always be there to read to Remy or help her with her homework, so he did the next best thing—he gave her the stars.
“Tell me about them,” Esther said, so he did, smiling to himself as he talked. His mom, Kim, had died in a car accident nine years ago. Esther, who’d only met her a handful of times as a child, remembered her as a short yet commanding woman whose laugh was so ridiculous and infectious it would leave anyone in the room smiling. Jonah said she liked to wear coral: coral clothes, coral shoes, coral lipstick. She liked the way the color popped against her black skin, said it made her feel like a sunrise.
Remy, now nine, was her mother all over: fiercely intelligent, a little rebellious, halfway obsessed with Shakespeare. She was independent during the day but at night she demanded to be within hand-holding distance of Jonah at all times.
“Why you wear costumes everywhere, Jackie O?” he said when he’d finished.
Esther didn’t want to tell Jonah the truth. That the costumes were, in part, because of him. After he left elementary school, left her to the cruelty of their classmates, she couldn’t bear it anymore. Couldn’t bear the name-calling, and the unkind laughter, and the way eyes left hot tracks on her body as they moved across her skin. People were going to tease her no matter how she dressed, so one morning not long after Jonah disappeared, Esther decided to dress as someone else entirely: a witch.
Kids were still mean, but somehow, when she was in costume, it hurt less. The words were meant for whatever character she was outfitted as, not Esther herself; eyes and words slid over her, a weapon glancing off armor.
And then later, when the curse had befallen her brother and mother and father, Esther kept wearing the costumes as a way to hide from fear. Death was looking for Esther Solar; as long as she never dressed as herself, she hoped he’d always have trouble finding her.
Esther wouldn’t tell Jonah this though, of course, so she gave him the only explanation that made sense to her: “I guess I don’t like people . . . looking at me.”