by Zoe Aarsen
“Wow, you live, like, in the middle of nowhere,” I commented. I was already wondering how on earth I would ever give my mom directions later that evening to pick me up.
“Yeah, kind of sucks. It’s so far from everything, even the grocery store.”
The shade of the trees lining the private road made me feel like I was entering another world. The rain had temporarily subsided, and sunlight making its way through pine needles left patterns across the pavement. The heavy, wet scents of soil, pine, and decaying leaves crept in, and the chirping of birds overhead was dizzying.
After a bend in the wooded road, I could see the house emerge ahead of us. The road gave way to gravel, and turned in a circular drive wrapped around a grand fountain at the front of the house, where Violet parked. White cement steps led to the home’s front door, and the house appeared to be three stories high, with elaborate latticework over its windows. Fluffy red geraniums grew in huge ceramic flower pots at both sides of the front door. The Simmonses’ house was more like an English manor than any house I had ever seen before in Willow.
“How did your parents ever find this house?” I asked, not only for the purpose of information gathering, but also out of my own personal curiosity. Why would any family with enough money to purchase a lavish home like this one choose to live in Willow, Wisconsin?
“Well, it’s not so much that they found the house. It was more like it found them.” Violet sighed, pulling her keys out of the zippered pocket on her backpack. We climbed up the front steps. “It’s the house my father grew up in. When my grandmother died two years ago, my uncle wanted to sell it, but my father really wanted to keep it in the family. I used to come here for summer breaks when I was a little kid, and I thought it was like a castle.”
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 Violet’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 Violet 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 Violet’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, Violet’s grandparents were dressed modestly. Violet’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. Violet didn’t look much like her grandmother, whose complexion was peachy and hair a dark shade of blonde in comparison to Violet’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. There was nothing spooky or haunted about it. 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,” Violet 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.” She hesitated for a moment, as if she were a little embarrassed by her next admission. “Technically, it’s mine. My grandmother left it to me in her will. So it was my choice whether or not we should keep it in the family or sell it to developers who wanted to build condominiums on the property. My dad and my uncle got into a big legal thing over it, which was totally awkward. But my grandmother would seriously have rolled over in her grave if I’d let that happen. It’s kind of a special place.”
My heart beat a little faster than normal as we kicked off our shoes. Trey had asked me if anyone close to Violet had passed away recently, and a beloved grandmother who adored Violet enough to bequeath her an enormous mansion certainly counted. I had a hunch that Violet’s inheritance would have raised James W. Listerman’s eyebrows.
In the huge kitchen, Violet went on to tell me as she pulled several boxes 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 Violet’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,” Violet told me, suggesting that I should go get them. “We can freeze the cupcakes today, and I’ll frost them on Sunday.” Violet’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 Simmonses’ house. She wasn’t easily impressed by wealth, but the Simmonses were quite obviously very, very wealthy.
While we mixed the rich chocolate batter and poured it into cupcake pans, I learned that Violet 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 three hours. They knew their relationship wasn’t mature enough to last. Violet 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 Violet 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—and keeping me wary of the danger I was in while I was a guest in her home.
Violet seemed so relaxed and open with me that it felt kind of like we were just normal friends hanging out under normal circumstances. In her sunny kitchen, as she heated the oven and moved from cabinet to cabinet, Olivia’s death seemed like a faded memory. It would have been easy to forget that I was only there because my friends had tasked me with finding incriminating evidence supporting our theory that Violet had been responsible. That I was supposed to be digging for information.
“What about you?” Violet 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 Violet 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 Violet 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 Violet and Trey’s interactions; Violet 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 abou
t 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 Violet.
“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.”
Violet 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 homecoming?” 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!” Violet 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 Violet’s kitchen began to set. Wearing oven mitts, I withdrew the first three trays of cupcakes, and Violet 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.
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. 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 Violet, with the same bright blue eyes.
“Hi, Mom,” Violet 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.
Violet drove me home later that evening, and I hated myself for feeling a little ashamed when her 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 Violet’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 Simmonses in town, and she encouraged me to call my dad, who had grown up in Ortonville. When I dialed his number, it went to voice mail, 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 e-mail report to Mischa and Candace with all my findings about Violet’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 good-bye to me from the dark front seat of her car. I had unknowingly given her something that she’d wanted. I was sure of it, and just didn’t know 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 after the ghostly visit I’d received earlier in the week. 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 when my room wasn’t even dark.
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 sweatpants, 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 the day he had retrieved Moxie for burial.
“Something weird happened the other 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 justify 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 other night would just wait until Trey left if it intended to visit me again. 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 lying 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, 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 Violet’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 Violet’s kitchen, but seemed embarrassingly insignificant now that I was repeating it all back. However, my mention of Violet’s grandmother’s passing, and the inheritance of the magnificent house behind the trees, sparked Trey’s interest.
“So, this grandmother . . . she recently died?” Trey asked in a low voice. “That could be something.”
“It sounded like she died two years ago. Violet 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 Violet mentioning anything that hinted at noteworthy closeness between herself and her grandmother, but came up dry other than Violet’s insistence that the house was a special place. “She must have been. I mean, the grandmother left the house to Violet, and it sounded like her uncle was pretty upset about that.”
“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 Violet’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 Violet. In my head, I envisioned her long hair, those long lashes . . . but then I became distinctly aware of the breathing sensation I had experienced on Monday night.