Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board (Weeping Willow High)

by Aarsen, Zoe

  The front door creaked open, and the coolness of the front hallway reached us before we even stepped inside. I felt as if I was entering a museum as I walked into Hannah’s front foyer. Everything was polished wood, and an enormous staircase led from the hallway up to a magnificent second-floor balcony that overlooked the living room. An enormous Persian rug in rich shades of turquoise, mint, and fuchsia covered the dark wood floor in the living room, and the furniture all appeared to be antique, expertly reupholstered. As we entered and Hannah kicked off her shoes, to our right I saw an ornately framed oil painting hanging over the fireplace. It depicted what appeared to be a family of four: a husband smiling politely in a dark suit, a wife with her hair curled delicately, and two gangly teenage sons. The woman, who I assumed to be Hannah’s grandmother, had her hands placed gently on the shoulders of her seated sons. Unlike in other portraits I’d seen in museums of wealthy families, Hannah’s grandparents were dressed modestly. Hannah’s grandmother wore what looked like a simple teal green silk blouse, open at the neck to reveal a delicate gold pendant instead of a thick rope of pearls or elaborate diamonds. Hannah didn’t look much like her grandmother, whose complexion was peachy and hair a dark shade of blond in comparison to Hannah’s porcelain skin and raven hair. In the portrait, the grandmother smiled warmly, patiently, filling the room with a welcoming presence.

  “This is amazing,” I said, sounding more impressed than I intended. But it was. I had never in my whole life stepped into a house like that. I didn’t even think that real, modern-day people lived in houses that enormous; it was like a house from a movie set in another time period. Oddly, there was nothing spooky or haunted about the house. The windows were enormous, filling it with cheerful sunlight despite the thick blanket of tall trees surrounding the house outdoors.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty great,” Hannah admitted. “Our house in Lake Forest was way smaller. This is fancy and all, but my parents spent a year remodeling it before we moved here. There was a ton of old stuff that needed to be replaced. Like, it didn’t even have a dishwasher. My mom was so not willing to move to Wisconsin without at least one of those. The only option we had to moving here was to sell to developers who wanted to tear the house down and put up condominiums. My grandmother would have seriously rolled over in her grave if we’d let that happen. It’s kind of a special place.”

  In the huge kitchen, Hannah went on to tell me as she pulled a box of cake mix out of a cabinet, that her father had been an investment banker back in Chicago, but that he had taken time after Hannah’s grandmother died to establish his own fund and take on private clients so that he would be prepared to work for himself in Wisconsin.

  “There are eggs in the fridge,” Hannah told me, suggesting that I should go get them. Hannah’s mother had a fancy automatic mixer, the kind that I imagined professional chefs had, and I wondered, as I opened the fridge and gawked at the abundance of food in there, what my mother would have made of the Simmons’ house. She wasn’t easily impressed by wealth, but the Simmons’ were quite obviously very, very wealthy.

  While we mixed the rich chocolate batter and poured it into cupcake pans, I learned that Hannah was an only child. She told me that her parents tried to have another child after her, but were unsuccessful, and for a long time their infertility issues put such a strain on their marriage that she was positive they were going to get divorced. She shared with me that back at her old school, she had a boyfriend named Eric, and they had decided to break up before she moved to Willow rather than try to keep in touch. The drive between Willow and Lake Forest took over four hours. They knew their relationship wasn’t mature enough to last. Hannah had been so upset about it that she’d deleted all of her social media profiles because she simply didn’t want to know any details when Eric began dating anyone new. Maybe that was her subtle way of answering one of the questions on Mischa’s list; I wasn’t sure. If Hannah had any supernatural way of knowing what was on the list, she was making a very smooth matter of answering the questions one by one.

  Hannah seemed so relaxed and open with me that I began to forget a little about the circumstances under which I had been invited over to her home. In her sunny kitchen, as she heated the oven and moved from cabinet to cabinet, it was easy to forget that Olivia had just died. That my friends had tasked me with finding incriminating evidence supporting our theory that Hannah had been responsible. That I was supposed to be digging for information.

  “What about you?” Hannah asked after the first batch of cupcakes had been gently placed on a rack in the oven. She was pouring glasses of diet soda for both of us. “Is that guy I’ve seen you walking to school with your boyfriend?”

  My heart skipped a beat and my limbs went numb. I felt blood rush to my cheeks and I paused before replying, knowing that I had been caught off-guard and would likely stammer. So many things ran through my mind: had Hannah really seen us walking to school together? Had she known Trey would be the driver of the car in the crash that would kill Olivia? I remembered Mischa and Candace teasing her on Olivia’s birthday, suggesting that she and Trey would make a cute couple. Even though at the time, it had seemed like Hannah genuinely had no idea who Trey was, the suggestion that they would be cute together filled me with jealousy now. In my head, I quickly scanned through what I knew to be factual about Hannah and Trey’s interactions; Hannah knew who Trey was, but I had no proof that they had ever spoken.

  “Trey’s my next door neighbor,” I confessed, giving her only information that she would easily be able to obtain on her own. “We’re sort of… friends. He has a weird reputation at school, you know? Like weeks ago when Mischa and Candace were talking about him, I didn’t say anything because they wouldn’t understand. We’ve known each other since we were really little.”

  “What about before him? Did you ever date anyone at school?” she probed, her eyes huge and innocent. For no particular reason other than a very strange suspicion, I got the sense that she was up to something. Like a lion slowing down its pace and dancing a little bit as it moved in on its prey. My mind was racing, trying to outrun her. I wanted to stoke her curiosity about my past, but not give her any details that she could use to endanger me. Moxie’s death was still too fresh in my mind, and I hadn’t even mentioned it to Hannah.

  “No,” I said with a chuckle, figuring that if I was just totally honest with her I would at least avoid being caught in any lies. “I lost a lot of weight over the summer. Up until then I was not very popular. Boys did not give me a second look. Ever.”

  Hannah blinked once, evidently surprised by my admission. Surely she must have known that I’d been heavier before junior year; everyone at school knew that, anyone could have told her. “I never would have guessed that,” she said, and I could tell she was lying. Maybe having a psychiatrist for a dad was an advantage I hadn’t considered before. Dad could always tell immediately when someone was fibbing, and maybe I had gained that skill through my careful observation of him.

  “So, what about the dance?” she asked, changing her course. “Are you going with Trey?”

  I shrugged, not wanting her to know that I didn’t have an answer. Instinctively, I wanted to go to the dance because that was what everyone in the junior and senior classes would do, and I wanted to be like everyone else. But truly, in my heart, if there was a chance the dance would make Trey uncomfortable, I didn’t want to go. The more I thought about it, if we were to go together and step out onto a dance floor, there would definitely be pointing and staring. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure if my heart’s really in it right now. Everything was different a few weeks ago.”

  “Oh my god, McKenna!” Hannah exclaimed. “You have to go! I mean, look. It’s terrible that Olivia died. But this is still our junior year. Life goes on, you know?”

  The baking cupcakes filled the house with a delicious aroma, and the sun outside the windows of Hannah’s kitchen began to set. Wearing oven mitts, I withdrew the first three trays of cupcakes, and Ha
nnah set the next three in to bake. When she leaned back from the heat of the oven, she winced in pain and her hand flew up to her chest.

  “Ouch,” she muttered. The locket around her neck had heated to a scalding temperature while she had been arranging the trays in the oven, and when she had leaned back, it had burned the skin on her chest, leaving a small red mark.

  We stepped into the family room through a doorway in the kitchen to watch television for thirty minutes while the next batch baked, and then Hannah flipped through pages in her mother’s thick cookbook until she found the recipe for buttercream frosting. Into the mixer went a huge bag of powdered sugar, a dash of vanilla, and sticks of room-temperature butter. As the blades of the mixer whirled, I realized it was getting to be around dinner time. I hadn’t eaten since I’d gulped down my salad at lunchtime, and my stomach was rumbling.

  “Sample,” Hannah ordered me as if she could hear my belly growling. She handed me a chocolate cupcake, still warm from the oven, with a thick layer of vanilla frosting on top.

  I waved the cupcake away with my hands, refusing. “No, no, I can’t eat that.” Somewhere nearby, I heard the buzz of an automatic garage door opening, and a car’s engine shutting off.

  “McKenna,” Hannah said sternly. “You can’t just avoid eating forever. It’s just one cupcake.”

  I shrugged, really wanting that cupcake. “I eat plenty. I just can’t have cupcakes. Even if it’s just one, it’s hard for me to stop after one.”

  Elsewhere in the house, presumably a few rooms away, I heard a door open and close, and the clicking of high heels approaching on a hardwood floor. Hannah frowned at me, looking concerned. She set the cupcake back down on the plate with the others from the first batch. “It sounds to me like maybe you need help, McKenna. Maybe you’re taking your weight loss a little too far.”

  I momentarily was filled with panic, wondering what Hannah was getting at. I hadn’t lost weight over the summer by any drastic means. But my concern about what she might have been plotting for me was quickly abandoned as soon as a well-dressed woman with smooth brown hair to her shoulders wearing a beige wool suit entered the kitchen carrying a briefcase. She was just as pretty as Hannah, with the same bright blue eyes.

  “Hi Mom,” Hannah said, barely turning around to look at her mother. “This is McKenna. She’s running for Treasurer and we’re making campaign cupcakes.”

  “Well, that’s very sweet,” Mrs. Simmons said, smiling at me. “Have you lived in Willow long, McKenna?”

  “My whole life,” I replied with a hint of pride.

  Hannah and her mother drove me home an hour later, and I couldn’t help but cringe when their fancy white Audi pulled up in front of our plain one-story house. Over dinner I asked my mother if she knew of any influential families in town with the last name of Simmons, trying to get a better sense of who Hannah’s grandparents had been, and how they had come into their wealth. My mother, who had grown up outside St. Louis, had never heard of any Simmons’ in town, and she encouraged me to call my dad, who had grown up in Ortonville. When I dialed his number, it went to voicemail, and even as I left a message I knew he wouldn’t return my call that night. I should have felt proud of myself as I composed my email report to Mischa and Candace with all of my findings about Hannah’s life prior to her arrival at our high school. But instead, I thought of the sinister expression on her face as she had waved goodbye to me from the dark front seat of her mother’s car. I had unknowingly given her something that she wanted. I was sure of it, and just wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

  Later that night, as I was getting ready for bed and growing uneasy about the moment when I would have to turn off the lights, I received a text message from Trey. His message was one word: Homecoming?

  I texted back after a moment of deliberation: Up to you.

  When there was no reply after almost ten minutes, I looked at my bed with my hand resting on my light switch. I flipped the switch off and stood perfectly still for about three seconds before I admitted I was far too afraid to be alone in my room to actually fall asleep. So I decided to try sleeping with the light on and climbed into bed. Even with my comforter pulled over me, I felt like a weirdo closing my eyes with the light fixture in my ceiling still flooding my room with light.

  I heard a soft tapping at the window, which made me jolt in fear. When the tapping paused and then began again, I rationalized that an evil spirit would probably not have the manners to knock before entering. I moved quietly to my window, and raised the blinds. Trey was standing outside in a white t-shirt and sweat pants, shivering. Surprised to see him outdoors, I raised my window.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered, not wanting my mom on the other side of the wall to hear us.

  “Why is your light still on?” he asked.

  “Because,” I sputtered, “I’m afraid to be alone.”

  He motioned for me to lift the window, and I did, knowing that my mother would murder me if she knew that I was inviting a boy wearing pajamas into my bedroom at such a late hour. It took me multiple tries to lift the window screen, which was jammed because I couldn’t remember ever before lifting it. Trey hoisted himself up and then climbed through silently. Once he was inside my bedroom and we’d lowered the screen and closed the window again, reality hit me: I had a boy in my room at bedtime. He looked around my small room in wonderment, as if trying to take it all in, even though he had been there recently without me the day he had retrieved Moxie for burial.

  “Something weird happened last night. It felt like there was something in here with me,” I hurried to explain. I realized as the words were departing my mouth how preposterous I sounded, but a lot of strange things had happened in a short amount of time, so I didn’t feel any need to explain myself. “Remember how the night we were outside with the kittens, you said it felt like someone was watching us? It was like that, only… creepier.”

  “I’ll stay if you want, at least until you fall asleep,” he offered in a whisper, continuing to look around my room as if I had a trap set somewhere.

  “No—if you stay, I need you to stay until dawn,” I requested, positive that whatever had interrupted my sleep the night before would do the same, just after Trey left. I knew I was making a bit of a presumptuous request, asking a boy to spend the whole night in my room with me, but I was so terrified of falling asleep alone that I asked anyway.

  “Okay,” Trey shrugged.

  I flipped the lock on my bedroom door just in case my mom tried to open it in the morning, even though she rarely did that.

  “Lights off,” Trey commanded, “just in case your mom is curious why they’re on. I don’t need any weird lectures from my parents about adult responsibilities right now. I’ve had enough family time in the last two weeks to last me the rest of my life.”

  We both crawled into my narrow double bed, and it occurred to me once we were both laying parallel beneath my comforter that Trey might have come over with intentions in mind other than protecting me from evil spirits. But without even trying to kiss me or touch me greedily, he set his head down on my pillow and put one arm protectively around me. Our eyes adjusted to the dark of the room, and I relaxed a little when I could actually see the whites of his eyes mere inches from mine.

  “So, did you find out anything useful at Hannah’s today?” he asked. “Or did you guys just braid hair and eat Hot Pockets and do whatever girls do?”

  “You mean, like tickle each other with big feathers, and call cute boys and then hang up?” I teased.

  “Was that you who kept calling?”

  I shared with him all of what I’d learned, which had seemed important while I was in Hannah’s kitchen, but seemed embarrassingly insignificant now that I was repeating it all back to Trey. My mention of Hannah’s grandmother’s passing, and the inheritance of the magnificent house behind the trees, seemed to capture his attention.

  “So, this grandmother… she recently died?” Trey asked in a low voice. “That could
be something.”

  “It sounded like she died two years ago. Hannah said her parents spent a whole year renovating the house.”

  Trey mulled that over. “So the timing is right. Was she especially close to her grandmother?”

  I tried to remember Hannah mentioning anything that hinted at noteworthy closeness between herself and her grandmother, but came up dry. “I don’t remember.”

  “So, that book from the library says that oftentimes a spirit will use an object from their own life to connect to the medium,” Trey mused aloud. “Is there anything that maybe Hannah’s grandmother gave to her that might be some kind of a channel for communication?”

  I tried to clear my mind to form a picture of Hannah. In my head, I envisioned her long hair, those long lashes… but then I became distinctly aware of the breathing sensation I had experienced the night before.

  In, out.

  I dug my fingernails into Trey’s arm and whispered hoarsely, “Do you hear that?”