Bones

by Lois Metzger

  “You have to be a salesman now,” she told him. “Find some of these skeletons a home before you make any new ones.”

  I could see her point, even though I knew my father would go crazy if he couldn’t get busy putting the skeletons together again soon. Meanwhile, our apartment was overrun by bones. Dad moved the couch a foot away from the wall so a row of skeletons could stand behind it. There were two in the kitchen closet, holding brooms and mops. There were four in my parents’ bedroom, and the hallway was lined with skeletons, like a catacomb. There was even one (Charlie) that we kept in the shower, so if you wanted to use the shower, first you had to move him behind the door.

  The laundry room was the spookiest because that’s where the incomplete skeletons went. Loretta was missing her jaw, a leg, and a few ribs. Bailey had no fingers and no toes. Lefty only had a left side; no one knew what had happened to the right.

  I should have been used to all this. Skeletons had been a part of my life since the day I was born. There were even baby pictures with me posed in the lap of my grandparents’ favorite skeleton, Noel, who ended up in a classroom at Harvard Medical School. For as long as I could remember, my parents had taught me that bones were nothing to be afraid of.

  “We all have them,” Dad would point out. “Just because they’re hidden doesn’t mean they’re scary.”

  By the time I was seven, I could name most of the 206 bones in the body. And I had touched most, if not all, of these 206 bones in my dad’s workshop. I thought I was all right with bones. And I was.

  Until they came to live with me.

  My mom had told my dad there was no way she was going to allow any skeletons in my bedroom. But I knew Dad still needed space, and I didn’t think it would be a problem to share a room with a few. So I carried on until Mom relented—and Clark, Ingrid, and Montgomery came to stay with me.

  Big mistake.

  During the day, it wasn’t much of a problem. My room was pretty small, but I could usually maneuver myself around the skeletons when I needed something from my closet (which Clark and Ingrid blocked) or wanted to open my window (which Montgomery guarded).

  The worst was at night.

  My room was on the first floor, and every time a car would pass, the edges of the headlight beams would shift into my room. I would be lying in bed, trying to sleep, and for a moment the walls and ceilings would be scanned by a dim wave of light. I had grown used to this … but not with the skeletons around. Suddenly, I was beset by the scariest shadows I’d ever seen. Right there—on my walls, on my ceiling—it was like the bones were coming to life. It’s only bones, I told myself. It’s only Clark and Ingrid and Montgomery.

  As if by giving them names, they could be my friends.

  As if skeletons could be my friends.

  The first night, I eventually tired myself out and went to sleep. The second night was harder, and the third night was harder still.

  The fourth night was when I started to hear the rattling.

  It wasn’t coming from Clark or Ingrid or Montgomery. It wasn’t coming from anywhere in my room. At first I thought it might be a car out on the road. Or someone moving furniture upstairs. But it went on and on.

  Rattle. Rattle. Rattle.

  Somewhere beyond the room. Bones shifting. Bones knocking into each other. Shaking.

  I tried to ignore it. I tried to play songs in my head, tried to think of other things.

  But, as I did that, something strange began to happen.

  Lying there in my bed, I started to feel like I myself was a skeleton. Like I myself was made entirely of bones and nothing else.

  Imagine your body without any softness. Imagine the hard bones in the night air. Imagine the weight of movement. Imagine no longer breathing.

  That’s what it felt like.

  I didn’t sleep at all that night—not until school the next day, when Mrs. Cantor caught me with my eyes closed. My best friend, Simeon, made fun of me for that. I knew I couldn’t tell him about the sound, or about feeling like I was a skeleton. But I did tell him my dad had moved his skeletons to our house.

  Naturally, Simeon wanted to come over and see.

  I couldn’t really say no. Simeon’s mom worked in an art gallery, and, every now and then, she’d have to take something home for safekeeping. Simeon would tell me about it, and we’d sneak into her room to take a look. Sometimes it was a painting, and sometimes it would be something really odd that somebody was buying for a fortune—like a larger-than-life-size hamburger made out of thousands of paper clips.

  Simeon wasn’t disappointed. We’d been friends for a while, so he’d seen some of my dad’s skeletons before. But never this many, and never in my house.

  “You should invite more people over,” Simeon told me. “Charge admission. You could make some easy money.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. My father had always been clear with me: These skeletons were for science, not show. Numerous times over the years, he had been approached by “collectors”—rich people who thought it would be cool to have the skeleton of somebody else to decorate their mansion, or to be a prop at their expensive Halloween party, or (for all we knew) to become a human chew toy for a beloved poodle. My dad, like my grandparents and my great-grandparents before him, always said no.

  “These people trusted us with their bones,” he would tell me. “We have to honor that trust.”

  I could see that Simeon was going to argue with me, but then Dad came home from a meeting with one of his clients, looking grimmer than usual. Simeon said a quick good-bye, and my father retreated to the laundry room until dinner.

  At some point, my mom must have come home and gone into the laundry room to talk to him, because by the time I got to the kitchen, they were in the middle of an argument.

  “You’re a victim of your own success,” she was telling him. “The skeletons you build last too long, so the schools don’t need new ones. What you need are some really clumsy medical students to wreck the ones they already have.”

  My father flinched at that. Seeing this, Mom went over and put her arms around him, hugging him so her chin nestled into his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just a joke. I’m trying to think of other possibilities. But there aren’t any more shifts for me at work—everyone needs the extra hours nowadays. I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

  Dad shook his head. “I really wasn’t expecting them to say no today.”

  “Times are tough all over,” my mother said. “Except for really rich people.”

  We didn’t talk about it again at dinner, and I tried not to think about it for the rest of the night, but trying not to think about it was as pointless as trying not to think about how I was made of bones. Everything I touched—I imagined the bones beneath my fingers. Every time I breathed—I imagined my lungs pressing against my ribs.

  It was even worse that night. The rattling was louder, more beseeching. It wasn’t coming from my parents’ room—no, they were asleep. And it wasn’t coming from outside the window. It was coming from another part of the apartment.

  I tried to block out the sound. I couldn’t. I tried to remind myself I wasn’t bones—I was skin, I was muscle, I was blood.

  But it was bone I felt.

  About three in the morning, I finally got out of bed. I had to find out where the rattling was coming from.

  I didn’t turn on the lights. I didn’t want to wake my parents. So when I tried to guide myself down the hallway, it was like being in a maze of bones. As I walked through the dark, I touched skulls, arms, ribs, fingers. Silent bones. Watching bones. A forest of bones, with the rattling in front of me. The pulse of bones. Beating. Beating. Beating.

  Finally, I got to the laundry room.

  It was coming from behind the door.

  Louder.

  Louder.

  I knew I just had to open the door. I had to go inside. But I couldn’t. It was like the door itself was a breastbone, guarding a he
art. And it wasn’t going to let me through. Instead, I would be tortured by the sound. Tortured, until I could figure out how to make it stop.

  That night, I wanted to sleep like the dead. But instead I lay awake.

  No way to shut my eyes.

  No way to shut my ears.

  No way to scream.

  At school, Simeon was relentless.

  “Five dollars a person,” he told me. “Twenty people at a time. Fifteen minutes. That’s a hundred dollars for fifteen minutes.”

  I told him no.

  He asked again.

  I told him no.

  He asked again.

  I told him why.

  “Think of it as a science field trip,” he said.

  When he put it like that, it didn’t seem so wrong. Dad and Mom were both always talking about how people needed to see what their bodies were made of, so they wouldn’t be scared of them and would instead understand what “incredible machines” we were.

  A science field trip.

  A hundred dollars for fifteen minutes.

  My best friend.

  I told him yes.

  We had to wait a few days before giving the tour. My mother wasn’t the problem—she was working long hours and usually got home just before dinner. It was my dad who got in the way; he was home all the time, like a ghost wandering aimlessly through the place where he had once lived. He tinkered a little with the incomplete skeletons in the laundry room, but mostly he dusted the other ones, making them as presentable as possible, as if at any moment a scientist might ring the doorbell and say he wanted to buy the whole lot. Which, of course, never happened. Word had gotten out about my father’s predicament, and every now and then he’d get a call about his “inventory.” But these weren’t scientists calling. These were collectors. Dad was always polite with them, but he always said no and looked sad after he hung up.

  Finally, he mentioned that he was going to be meeting with my uncle for lunch on Friday. Our school happened to have a half-day, but I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I told Simeon to line up the twenty kids for our fifteen-minute field trip.

  That night the rattling sounded like it was coming from the house itself. Every wall was a bone. Every piece of furniture was a bone. And they were all quaking, all knocking against each other.

  I ran fast through the hallway. I knocked down one of the skeletons but didn’t think about it. I threw myself at the door.

  This time, it opened.

  I was in the laundry room. The dark laundry room.

  The washer was off. The dryer was off.

  But the noise of bones was in my ears.

  The next morning, Friday morning, my mother came into my room before she left for work. “What happened?” she asked. At first I thought she knew about everything. But then she went on: “One of the skeletons was knocked over last night. Dad’s fixing it right now. Were you wandering around? You have to turn the lights on, sweetie.” She sighed, looking even sadder than I’d seen her recently. “It’s much too dangerous in the dark.”

  It’s much too dangerous in the dark.

  She had no idea.

  In the end, Simeon got twelve kids to come to my apartment, not twenty. Still, it was sixty dollars.

  Right away, things started going wrong. We’d told them not to touch anything, but they couldn’t help daring each other to touch everything. Marley (the person) got caught in John (the skeleton) and nearly knocked three skeletons over trying to get out. I couldn’t watch everyone at once, so I’d be trying to tell Eddie in my bedroom not to shake Clark’s hand, and then I’d hear a scream from the laundry room and see that Michael had turned off the lights and closed the door on two girls in our class, Ashley and Hannah, trapping them inside.

  “This has to stop!” I yelled to Simeon. But he looked helpless, too.

  And then my dad came home.

  He was early, and he had my uncle with him. The minute he opened the door, he knew what was going on. Everyone knew what was going on. Suddenly, kids were darting out of the apartment. Simeon shot me a sorry glance and went with them.

  “How could you do this?” Dad asked.

  I was trying to find the words to explain. Then Michael came up, looking snotty.

  “I want my money back,” he demanded.

  Simeon had the money. I didn’t.

  With the most disappointed look I’ve ever seen, my father asked Michael, “How much?”

  “Five dollars,” Michael said. At least he didn’t lie.

  My father took out his wallet and paid Michael five dollars.

  I wanted to disappear. I wasn’t worthy of bones—or skin or breath.

  “Go to your room,” my father said.

  I did. But, even from there, I could hear him and Uncle Ron arguing.

  “You see—even your kid is desperate!” Uncle Ron shouted.

  I couldn’t hear my father’s reply. But Uncle Ron wouldn’t let up: “The answer to everything is in that box, Greg. All you have to do is put it together and sell it. Just one. Legally, the bones are yours. You got them fair and square. People would pay a lot of money for them, and you know that.”

  My father kicked him out of the house. Then he shut himself in the laundry room. He didn’t even check to see if my “tour” had done any damage.

  That was left to me.

  That night I found it.

  The source of the rattling.

  The box.

  I’d heard what my uncle had said, and now I knew what to look for. Not for a skeleton, but for a box. A box of bones.

  It was hidden behind the water heater. A wooden box.

  As soon as I touched it, the rattling stopped.

  As if now that I had finally found it, it didn’t need to call to me.

  Carefully, I opened the lid. Quietly, I took out the first bones. A finger. Exactly the size of my finger.

  Then a tibia. Exactly the size of my tibia.

  A skull. Exactly the size of my skull.

  There wasn’t much room on the floor of the laundry room, but I laid it all out. The skeleton of a boy, all ready to be assembled. Every single bone, 206 of them, was there.

  I stood over the skeleton like it was my X-ray shadow. I hooked together the foot and put it up against my own foot. The exact same size. Then I picked up the skull and stared into the empty eye sockets.

  “Tell me what to do,” I whispered.

  And I got an idea.

  The next day, I called my uncle. I told him what I’d found. I didn’t tell him what I was going to do. I wanted to make sure I had the right box. He said I did. He said he knew people who would pay big money for it.

  “That kid was famous,” he said. “They called him the ‘million-dollar boy’—you know how they say some kids are gifted? Well, it was like he got the biggest gift of all. The things he could create when he was just six—it was incredible. You weren’t born yet, so you wouldn’t remember. And then, one day, his brain just fails on him. He was about your age. People couldn’t believe it. And then everyone wanted to know what made him tick. Not just the scientists—obviously, the family was okay with scientists checking him out. But all the rich people who’d bought his stuff … they wanted more. Rumor has it that one of his nannies smuggled out a few of his drawings from his playroom and made a fortune.”

  I didn’t want to hear any more. At least now I knew for sure where my idea had come from.

  He was still creating, through me.

  I got my sixty dollars from Simeon and went to the store to buy supplies.

  I knew it was risky. Even though I was dying to get out of bed, I had to wait at least an hour until my parents’ last sounds of the night. Then I tiptoed through the darkness. This time, the skeletons in the hallway kept their distance.

  I went into the laundry room, closed the door, and worked all night, until daybreak. Also the next night. And the night after that. During the day, I kept what I was doing well hidden—in the closet of my room.

  Wa
s I betraying my father? My grandparents? My great-grandparents?

  Would they understand?

  It took four nights before I was finished. Everything my father had taught me, I put into it. I didn’t know if he’d be proud or if it would destroy him.

  I took pictures of what I’d done and sent the pictures to the right people, recommended by Simeon’s mom. I waited for a response and got one immediately.

  We will pay you, the response said. We will pay you a lot.

  The hitch was: In order to receive the money, my parents had to know about it. I was too young to be paid. So I had to tell them.

  I waited until my mother got home. I waited until my father emerged from his bedroom, where he’d been lightly polishing Betsy.

  “I have something to show you,” I said.

  I had put it in the middle of my room, right in front of the bed. I led my parents to the door and opened it. They didn’t even come inside. They just stood in the doorway and stared.

  I watched my father’s expression.

  Surprise.

  Confusion.

  Shock.

  “What is that?” he asked. Then, “Who is that?”

  But he had to know. It was the boy from the box.

  Only … it wasn’t.

  “How did you …?” my father said.

  “You taught me,” I said quietly. “You taught me the bones.”

  My mother just stared.

  “They’ll pay me fifty thousand dollars for it,” I told them.

  “But what is it?” my father asked again.

  “It’s art,” I said.

  I had put together the boy’s skeleton—not the real skeleton but a second one, duplicated in blue clay. Because I knew bones, I could do it. It looked real.

  “Do you have any idea who that is?” my father asked, looking at me for the first time.

  “Uncle Ron told me. But I didn’t tell anyone else. No one will ever know. His bones are safe and his story is safe.”

  I could tell from the look on my father’s face that he, too, would keep this secret. Because I knew, too, that he realized the idea hadn’t come from me. It had come from the bones.