Greetings from Witness Protection!

by Jake Burt

  Harriet pushes the door open and immediately says, “Ooh. Real hardwood floors! I love these!” Sure enough, there’s nary a carpet to be seen. The walls are painted a pleasant, soft yellow, and the entrance leads directly into a huge living room. There’s a fireplace, a big, open doorway into the kitchen, and a short hallway off to our left, which I peek down. At the end is a bedroom, I think, and a bathroom next door. There’s also a staircase heading up to the second story. Right by the door, embedded in the wall, is a fancy keypad, the controls to our state-of-the-art alarm system. The marshals thought of everything, it seems.

  Jonathan emerges from the kitchen, wiping sweat from his cheek. “Jackson and I checked out the backyard. Nice chunk of property overall. We got the storm doors to the basement open. The spiders didn’t like that so much. How was your drive?”

  Jackson comes in behind him, not sweating at all—I guess when Jonathan said we got the storm doors open, he used the term loosely. He’s fussing over his phone again, and he doesn’t look up when Harriet says hello, or when she tells her husband about our encounter at the gas station.

  “That must have been scary,” Jonathan remarks.

  “It was,” Harriet agrees, shuddering. “Which reminds me—we need to make a deal. Right here, right now. To make all this work, we have to trust one another. We have to look out for one another. So I promise all of you that if you see something strange, or you hear something that concerns you, even a little, that I will take it seriously. I want all of you to promise me, too.”

  Jonathan nods. “Needed to be said, dear. I promise.”

  “Me too,” I add.

  We all stare at Jackson, who remains riveted to the little screen in his hands.

  “Jackson, honey, did you hear—” Harriet begins, but Jackson cuts her off.

  “Yeah. Fine. I promise. Can I go to my room now?”

  Jonathan scratches his head, then grins.

  “I checked out the marshals’ write-up of this place. It’s a four bedroom, three bath. The master bedroom is down here, and that’s where your mother and I are sleeping. That leaves three bedrooms, and they’re all upstairs. Now, honey,” he says to Harriet, “you’re a lawyer, remind me … what do they say about possession?”

  Harriet grins wickedly. “It’s nine-tenths of the law.…”

  Jackson, I notice, is already slipping his phone into his pocket, and as soon as his mom finishes talking, he bolts past me toward the staircase in the little hallway. I gasp—the turret room!

  I launch myself after Jackson. As I skid around the corner, Jackson’s waiting at the staircase, chuckling maliciously. He’s got both arms spread, blocking the way up.

  “Think I’ll take my time getting upstairs. No need to rush. Not like anyone else in this family needs to pick a bedroom.”

  I stalk toward him. The staircase is narrow, the steps made from the same dark wood as the floor, and the only light is what trickles down from above. Still, I can see at the top that the brightest rays come from the right. That must be it. I’m one skinny staircase away from hexagonal heaven. I just have to get around Jackson.

  His cloying boy-cologne stench fills the entire passage, and he’s taking each step with exaggerated slowness, his legs bowed and arms low to prevent me from getting around. I might be his older sister, but Jackson’s as big as me, and short of grabbing him and jerking him back down the stairs, I’m not breaking through. The thought does cross my mind, but dang it … Rule five: happy family. I’ll need to take a different tack.

  “Hey, Jackson. What kind of room do you want? Maybe we can just figure it out from—”

  “What’s that noise? Is someone talking? Can’t hear over the sound of my feet.”

  He starts stomping a step at a time.

  Mature, buddy.

  I get up right behind him with eight steps to go. “C’mon, Jackson! Let me have the room to the left,” I whine. “I like sleeping on the left side of a house. You can have either of the other two. Just give me the one on the left, please?”

  “Oh sure!” he says snarkily. “You go left. I’m just going to go take the room that’s in that awesome-looking castle part.”

  I growl, and he laughs. So no reverse psychology.

  With three steps to go, I get desperate. This is warranted, though. That’s so my room up there.

  “Let me pass!” I shout, and I grab his left shoulder. He instinctively leans his body that way, thinking I’m trying to sneak under his arm. I whimper pathetically, and while he’s distracted by the sound, the contact on his shoulder, and keeping his body flush with the wall, I slip my right hand into his pocket. The phone slides out easily.

  “Oh no!” I exclaim. “Jackson, your phone!”

  I let it fall from my fingers right before he turns around, and he makes this throaty, Gollumy noise as he watches it bounce down the steps. Without a thought for me, he lunges downward, arms outstretched, and I gracefully spin to allow him to pass. Then I casually skip my way up the last few steps and into the turret room.

  It’s small, bright, and perfect. The entry into the upstairs hallway is one of three doors. All are ajar, and I can see that the first to my left is a walk-in closet. The second is a little bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower stall. The room retains the shape I saw from outside, and I can already imagine my bed under one window, a desk up against another. Maybe a thick, toe-tickling rug in the center of it all. Definitely curtains—a pale sky blue, perhaps. And crystals! I want crystals: different colors, different shapes, different sizes. I want to hang them in front of the windowpanes so they dangle down in the sunlight, casting rainbows around my happy little hexagon. When I open my windows, the breeze will swirl around my space, setting my crystals to spin, and it will be a fairy disco. I’ll lie on my carpet, look up at my crystal constellation, and I’ll …

  “You!” Jackson screams from behind me. I turn to face him, and I have to take a step back. He’s panting, and his cheeks are red. His phone is in his left hand, the screen cracked. Before he can charge in, I let out a little “Eep!” and slam the door. I jam the toe of my sneaker against the bottom, and sure enough, he shoulders the door, which rattles but doesn’t give. A jolt of pain shoots up my leg.

  Possession. This room is mine.

  “Jackson, what on earth are you doing?” Harriet yells from downstairs.

  “My phone!” he rages, and he barrels into the door again.

  I can hear heavy steps stomping up the stairs, and then Jonathan’s voice. “Calm down, Jackson. There are two other rooms. Why don’t you go cool off in one?”

  I can’t resist.

  “I hear the one on the left is nice!” I call.

  Jackson growls something indecipherable, and then there’s a knock. Hesitantly, I slip my foot away and turn the knob. When I peek out, Jonathan is standing there, hands in his pockets.

  “Sorry about that,” he says. “Jackson’s going through a lot, as you know, and…”

  I shake my head as I open the door fully. “No,” I explain. “This one is on me. I made him mad.”

  “Actually, it’s on us,” he says, his voice warm. “We shouldn’t have put you two in competition like that. What were we expecting? You’re brother and sister now, and you go and act like brother and sister. I even told Elena that the hullabaloo you two created made it seem like you’d been getting on each other’s nerves all your lives. The marshals would be proud. Way to sell it!”

  “Nobody says hullabaloo anymore,” I say with a grin.

  He chuckles and replies, “Oh, we do, Charlotte. We do. So you better get used to it. In fact, we take it as one of our solemn duties to embarrass our new daughter as much as humanly possible. It’s a parental right.”

  “You … you’re not one of those dads who takes his kids to the movies and … and…” I shudder. “Dances during the end credits music, are you?”

  “With the 3-D glasses still on, Charlotte. With. The. Glasses. Still. On.…” He closes the door slowly behind hi
m as he does his best megalomaniacal laugh. I’m still smiling as I plant my back against the door. I sink down, hug my knees, and close my eyes. I inhale the smell of this new, old house. It smells like wood and like fall. It smells like maybe it got just cold enough for the heat to kick on last night: a little bit musty, a little bit smoky, and a little bit sweet. When I open my eyes again, my little hexagonal room is still here, the redheaded maple tree waving just outside. Not Jackson Trevor, not the Cercatores, not the five rules, nothing is going to rip me from this space, because for the first time in my life, I feel like I might just be in control of what happens here.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Santa-Proof

  The rest of the day we move stuff in, breaking only for a dinner of mangoes and pretzels dipped in peanut butter. The whole time I’m trying to apologize to Jackson, but he’s not speaking to anyone; he’s got his headphones in, his hair over his eyes, and his hood up. He does cuss every time his finger runs over the cracked screen of his phone. The only time he acknowledges me is to laugh when I delicately swaddle Fancypaws in a blanket before carrying her upstairs. I carefully raise one of her paws for her so she can shoot him a rude gesture in reply.

  On about the third day of training at Glynco, I asked Janice whether our house was going to have one of those massive banks of video monitors, a real honest-to-goodness basement lair. Maybe a panic room we could lock ourselves in. She said no. Well, okay, she told me to “drop the nonsense,” but same difference. Then I inquired about setting up trip wires and deadfalls, or if I could dig pits. And no, she hadn’t seen Home Alone; I asked about that, too. When I did, she handed me a fifty-eight-item list of things to check. I even had to memorize it.

  “Number nineteen is windows, Jackson. Gotta make sure they’re all latched at night.”

  “Get out of my room!”

  “Oh, you already put up your angsty posters! A for effort! ’Cept, if you want, I could rip that one in half.… That’d knock you down to a B-minus, and you’d be within the safety limits.”

  I duck a black sneaker and skitter down the hallway, testing the latches and seals on the windows there, too. After that, it’s making sure the emergency supply kit has batteries and bandages, looking outside before it gets dark to see if there are any suspicious cars or loiterers, and triple-setting the alarm system. It’s stressful work, actually, since every time I touch something, I imagine exactly how the Cercatores might take advantage of a slipup to exploit the mistake.

  My last thing to check is the fireplace—yes, apparently hit men have been known to Santa their way in—and once I’ve confirmed that the flue is closed, I pause to look at the pictures Harriet arranged above the mantel. It’s amazing, really, the job the techs did. They’re all nicely framed, and they portray Harriet with blond hair and a much younger face, Jackson seeming happy (so that’s what it looks like!), and all four of us posing, arms around one another. My fingers drift over these pictures, touching my own face, my smile. I recognize the angle of my posture. I was talking to Erin and A.J. one day just like this, making that gesture with my hand. The marshals must have taken the image off a security feed and Photoshopped it in. But even I had trouble telling at first.

  Harriet catches me staring at one such picture, and she steps up next to me. “Did you see this?” she asks. In her hand is a small portrait. Harriet’s there, her face radiant, looking like it was born to be framed by blond layers. She’s waving at the camera, and in her right arm, sitting perfectly in the crook between her elbow and breast, is a little girl, dark-haired and giggling. Her own small, slender fingers are outstretched in a pantomime of Harriet’s wave. This image I’ve seen as well, complete with this little girl sitting in another woman’s arms. It resided on my grammy’s piano for years, until she died and I was swept into the foster system. I guess Janice must have gotten it from Wainwright.

  “It seems so real, doesn’t it?” Harriet asks softly.

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “Look, I don’t know where this picture came from, but you’re clearly happy, and I’d never dream of trying to replace—”

  “You can’t,” I say abruptly. That’s not how I wanted it to come out; I meant to say that she didn’t need to. But it hangs there anyway, and something stops me from correcting myself.

  “Still, it’s a nice picture,” Harriet concludes after a few moments. “With your blessing, I’d like to put it up there next to the others.”

  I nod, and she nestles it in between the one of all of us and a wedding photo of her and Jonathan. I point to that last one by way of asking, and she shakes her head with a smile.

  “Fake, too. As fake as my engagement ring.”

  Wistfully, she holds up her hand, tilting her fingers to try to get the rhinestone to catch the light. It’s halfhearted, though, and with a sigh she slips the ring off and puts it on the mantel.

  “Think tonight I’ll put my real ring back on. It’ll be our secret. Promise I’ll switch them tomorrow before we go out.”

  “Go out?” I ask.

  “Oh, we didn’t tell you? Janice called while you were upstairs checking the windows for the tenth time. You and Jackson are all set to start school on Monday.”

  I gasp, and my brain sends freak-out signals to the rest of my body. “Monday? But that gives us only three days!”

  “Exactly, which is why, young lady, we are going shopping tomorrow! Now upstairs and brush your teeth. It’s been a long day.”

  I should be excited. No, I am excited—I have a list of three dozen things I need for my room alone, along with clothes and school supplies. And who doesn’t dream of a shopping spree? But the notion of starting school so soon hadn’t occurred to me. Even though I’ve jumped into several schools midyear, bounced around more than my fair share of first days, none has been quite like this. I manage a nervous smile for Harriet’s benefit, and I dutifully scurry up the steps after she heads back into the kitchen.

  Once I’m inside my room, I open my left hand.

  There, in my palm, is Harriet’s rhinestone ring.

  I panic when I see it, and I drop it to the floor, where it attempts to roll away before coming to rest at my feet. It has left a little round imprint in my skin, already fading but still traceable. I rub at that circle with my fingertips, then sit down in front of the ring. I think about going downstairs and replacing it, but what if Harriet or Jonathan see me? Or worse, Jackson? I’m less than a day in and I’ve already broken at least one of the rules. Trying to return it seems like a good way to start a bad fight. Instead, I pick it up and slip it into the top drawer of my dresser, hidden between two white socks. I brush my teeth, position Fancypaws just so on the bedside table, and jump into bed. Then I close my eyes.

  Nope. Nothing doing.

  You know what will keep you awake longer than a triple shot of espresso?

  Guilt, mixed with all the weird scrapes, clangs, trickles, and snuffles of an old house. After about two hours of lying there, I’ve got most of the noises cataloged. Ktchick-scrizzle? That’s the maple outside my window saying hello. Vurr-puthocka-puthocka? The baseboard heaters firing up. Click-sliv-tipply-tipple? The tank of the toilet in my bathroom topping itself off. There’s even a cadence of sorts to them, and it’s finally enough to calm my nerves, to help me settle in and fall asleep.

  Or would have been, if a sudden, strange rhythm hadn’t just sliced through the melody.

  I sit bolt upright, my heart beating so hard I can see it beneath my T-shirt. My brain tries to account for a creak-pause-creak with a subtle, swishing bass line.

  I stop breathing, stop everything, and focus on the door to my room, as if I could somehow push through the wood to see what lurks beyond. The eerie sound obliges me by repeating itself, only louder. I try to rationalize it: new, wonky heater sound? Downstairs refrigerator practicing ventriloquism? Mice … the size of mastiffs? Absurd, I know, but imagining the ridiculous is way better than going to the most logical conclusion: a person, slowly and secretivel
y dragging something along the hallway. Something soft but heavy. Something like a body.

  It’s ultimately the flicker of the tiny hallway light coming through my keyhole that forces me into action; someone is definitely out there, definitely sneaking. Daring to sip only the thinnest of breaths through my clenched teeth, I will myself to move. Every shred of my intention goes into being silent: my foot eases off my bed so slowly I can feel it moving the molecules of the air out of the way. My hands follow, and I crawl my way to the keyhole to peer out.

  There is someone there, creeping toward the staircase. He’s carrying something so strangely shaped that it’s hard to discern. It’s blobby, and part of it drags behind him like a thick, lazy tail. Only when he reaches the stairs and actually starts tripping his way down do I understand: Jackson’s got all his pillows, his blanket, and his comforter from his bed, and he’s clinging to them like a guy who’s just been handed a parachute and told to jump.

  I wait until he’s seven thumps down the stairs before I ease my door open to follow.

  When I get downstairs, I peek around the corner and see Jackson. He’s standing at the door to Harriet and Jonathan’s room, silhouetted by the moonlight that seeps through the blinds—blinds that I closed as part of security protocol number twenty-nine. He’s still got his pillows and blankets in a headlock with his left arm, but his right is free, and it’s the only part of him that moves. I watch as he slowly reaches up for the knob. Just as his fingertips extend, but before he actually makes contact, he stops, and his hand retracts like he just got burned.

  After mumbling something, Jackson starts anew, his fingers actually closing around the knob this time. Again, though, he pulls away. He presses his hand to his temple, and he quietly bangs his fist there several times before running those fingers through his dark, greasy cowlick. He takes a deep, ragged breath—a sob, perhaps?—and turns back toward the staircase. Stifling a gasp, I spider my way up a few steps, just to be safe.