by Zoe Aarsen
Trey studied me for a moment, concerned, and asked, “Why Jennie and not you?”
I nodded, unable to say anymore, afraid that I’d cry.
“Don’t you remember anything about the night of the fire?”
I didn’t know how Trey thought he might remember details from that night that I didn’t. I was the one who’d been engulfed in flames, who’d choked on smoke and watched the roof cave in.
“The reason you weren’t killed in the fire with Jennie?” He searched for some kind of recognition in my expression.
“You actually remember that night?” I asked. It wasn’t completely impossible that Trey would have remembered it; after all, it had happened at the end of his street and was probably the only noteworthy thing that had happened in our small town during his entire childhood.
“I remember a lot about that night,” he insisted. “My mother woke me up because she smelled smoke. I remember watching her run through the front door and down the street in her robe, and the night sky above your house was glowing because of the flames. She had told my dad to keep me in the house, but after a few minutes he put my coat on me and we followed her to the corner, where your old house used to be. You were standing outside in the street with your dog, barefoot, in your nightgown, just watching the flames climb higher and higher. The dog was going nuts. She was barking her head off, and wouldn’t let anyone near you. I remember thinking it was just so weird to see you standing there alone. I’d always thought of you and Jennie like a pair, you know? Like two socks that go together.”
“You knew it was me standing there, and not Jennie?” I asked, surprised.
Trey nodded. “Of course. I could always tell you apart. Jennie’s posture was different. Her eyebrows were a little heavier. She bit her fingernails down to the quick.”
Unbelievable, I thought to myself, that Trey had known instantly that I’d survived and Jennie hadn’t, but my own parents hadn’t been able to tell the difference between us.
“I don’t think I’d ever seen one of you without the other before that night. You could ask my mom about it, if you want. Back then she used to tell anyone who would listen that the dog must have gotten you up and led you outside.”
I tried so hard to remember that night, but my memories were what they always were: little more than the unbearable tightness of smoke in my chest, the roar of the flames, and a sense of urgency that I needed to get outside. Had Moxie awakened me? Had she run through the screen door, as she was fond of doing when she was a puppy—she’d figured out how to stand on her hind legs to press the handle with her front paws and open the door—to inspire me to follow her out onto the lawn? I really couldn’t recall. I didn’t remember much about even being in the street, other than the moment when I saw my mother’s silhouette emerge in the doorway, the wall of orange fire behind her. If Trey’s mom was right and Moxie had nudged me awake, then why me and not Jennie? Would Moxie have gone back into the house to rouse Jennie if the flames hadn’t risen so quickly? There had been a gas leak in the basement, the fire department had determined during their investigation. That was why the whole house had gone up so quickly, and it could have been started by anything, even a tiny spark from static electricity.
“So if you’re wondering why you made it out and not Jennie, the answer is Moxie. For whatever reason, she was able to wake you up, but not your sister. It’s as simple as that, McKenna. You can’t question it.”
I lay quiet for a moment, thinking about life and the energy of the universe and how something as simple as the sensitivity of my skin to a dog’s wet nose had probably made the difference between life and death for my twin and me.
“We kept her here with us, you know,” Trey told me. “Moxie. We had her here for two or three weeks while your family stayed somewhere else. I kept hoping you’d move away forever so that she’d just be my dog.”
I shook my head in surprise, touched that he had cared enough to remember my dog with such kindness. No wonder he had been so sweet about helping me bury her. “I didn’t know that,” I admitted. The weeks following the fire were a blur for me. I distinctly recalled missing school. After our time in the hospital and Jennie’s funeral, Mom and I went to Missouri to stay with my grandparents for a few weeks while Dad stayed in Willow at a motel and dealt with the insurance paperwork. I remembered very little about those weeks in Missouri other than the most random details: a red patchwork quilt spread over the brown plaid couch for me, turkey sandwiches with thick mayonnaise prepared by my grandmother, and my mother disappearing behind a closed door to her childhood bedroom to cry for hours on end without my seeing it. But now that I was trying to remember it all, I was sure of it: Moxie hadn’t been with us.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “That we didn’t move away forever.”
“Don’t be sorry about that,” Trey teased, nudging me with his arm. “If you had moved away forever instead of into the house next door, I would have been watching someone else get undressed for the last few years.”
My eyes shot wide open and my jaw dropped. “Trey!”
“Probably some gross, hairy guy,” Trey continued tormenting me. He leaned over and took my face in both of his hands and kissed me right on my protesting frown.
* * *
Strangely, Candace returned to her old self that week at school. It was as if the promise of a trip to Hawaii had pointed her mania in a different direction. In the cafeteria, she rolled her eyes at Violet and didn’t appear to be affected by the taunts and jeers of lower classmen who had heard about her homecoming rampage. I continued to sit with Violet, Tracy, and Michael at lunchtime but made no attempt to hide my friendliness toward Mischa and Candace. With midterms approaching and the leaves beginning to fall from every tree in town, I busied myself with preparations for our first junior class fund-raiser of the year. It was my goal to organize a weekend yard cleanup service, which I had decided to call “the junior class rake sale.” I created a series of posters encouraging classmates to sign up for six-hour shifts to help our class “rake in the money” for the ski trip that Violet was organizing for January. The amount of money that we needed to raise by the end of January was fairly daunting. Wealthy kids at our school probably could have asked their parents to write checks to cover their costs, but everyone else could raise the majority of the cost of their trip by working their shift. No one liked doing manual labor, but I was hopeful that people would take advantage of the opportunity to pay for their trip with a few hours of hard work.
To my great surprise and relief, the sign-up forms were nearly full by Wednesday afternoon at lunchtime after having been posted in the cafeteria for only three days. It definitely seemed like kids were open to working off their fee to go on the trip; the big remaining question was whether or not people in town would be interested in hiring high school kids to clean up their leaves, mow their lawns, and trim their hedges. We lived in a town where everyone’s family had thousands of dollars’ worth of lawn equipment in their garage, so it was a gamble whether or not anyone would be willing to pay for assistance.
Candace’s mom checked Candace out of school from the principal’s office on Thursday to drive her to Sheboygan to meet with my father’s former colleague Dr. Hernandez. Candace had actually been looking forward to the examination, hoping that Dr. Hernandez would take her side on the topic of the sedatives and antidepressant drugs she had been taking for the last month. She was insistent that the drugs were dulling her senses and making her feel stupid, and was eager to be free of her prescriptions. Mischa and I walked Candace to the first floor before lunchtime and watched through the slats in the blinds on the windows of the principal’s office as she greeted her mother. They exchanged pleasantries with the office administrators before stepping back into the hallway. Mrs. Lehrer shifted her oversize sunglasses from the top of her head back down over her eyes in an attempt to avoid the stares of curious teenagers as soon as she was back in the busy high school hallway. Candace held perfect posture as she s
trode toward the high school’s western exit, a set of double doors leading to the guest parking lot, not especially caring who observed her leaving school midday with her parent.
All afternoon, I was lost in thought during my classes, wondering if, when Candace resurfaced later that night, she would be able to provide some kind of logical, reasonable explanation for everything that had happened in the last few weeks. Even despite all the proof that I’d gathered, I was still holding out for some kind of plausible reason for all the weirdness I had witnessed. My father had taught me that logic was the greatest defense against doubt, and while I was certain that what I’d seen with my own eyes was real, I desperately wanted a reason for it not to be so. Not surprisingly, Candace reconnected with Mischa that night before calling me. Mischa had already texted me the disturbing message, She’s in total denial, ten minutes before my phone rang. I smiled politely at my mom and crept down the hall to my room to speak in privacy. “So, what’s the word? Are you bonkers?” I teased.
“Totally not bonkers. Easily distracted and suffering typical symptoms of grief, but I’m afraid that’s all,” Candace sighed. “Sorry to disappoint.”
I didn’t want to press her for more information and risk upsetting her, but at the same time, I was desperate to hear more about the psychiatrist’s assessment of the circumstances of Olivia’s death. “Did he ask you about Olivia and the accident?”
“Duh. Of course he did. We talked for a while about the emotions people go through when someone close to them dies. All of it made total sense. I realized when I was trying to tell him about Olivia’s party that I don’t even really remember too well what happened that night. I still think Violet is shady. But, I mean, how similar was her story about Olivia’s death to what actually ended up happening?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. It was as if Candace had been brainwashed. She took a deep breath on the other end of the line.
“I am open to the possibility that I may have imagined a lot of the details that were upsetting me most.”
A million objections sprang to mind, but I kept myself calm, not wanting to disrupt whatever solace she had achieved during her meeting with Dr. Hernandez. “I don’t think you really imagined all of it,” I commented gently. “Mischa and I were there too, and we’ve both thought for the past few weeks that Violet was involved in Olivia’s death. Did he say anything about the possibility that we were all hypnotized into thinking weird things because of the game?”
Candace paused, and then said, “Honestly, McKenna, I don’t think it’s healthy for me to dwell on that game any longer. I just want to get my midterms over with and fly to Hawaii. That’s all I want to think about: getting a tan. And I don’t think it would be such a bad idea for you to talk to a psychiatrist too. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you might very well have some unresolved issues from your sister’s death.”
Naturally, I bristled at that and couldn’t stop myself from wondering if this was speculation on Candace’s part or if Dr. Hernandez, who I’d never met but who surely knew all about me, having worked with my dad, had formed that opinion of me. Our conversation drifted to a close, and Candace asked if I was prepared for that weekend’s fund-raiser. I was surprised that the rake sale was even on her mind. Candace had been generally so checked out of normal high school life for the last few weeks, I doubted that she read the posters on the walls or listened to morning announcements.
Although I’d hoped my dad’s psychiatrist friend could have provided me some kind of plausible explanation for what we’d been experiencing since playing the game, now I regretted recommending that Candace visit him. She seemed to be completely oblivious to the danger she was in, even when I pointed out to her that beaches in Hawaii fit perfectly within the story Violet had told for her at Olivia’s party. One way or another, Mischa and I were going to have to find a way to talk Candace out of going on that trip.
As Candace seemed to be distancing herself from Violet’s involvement with Olivia’s death, the disturbance in my bedroom had been growing stronger all week. I had taken to keeping myself awake until the wee hours of the early morning with my lights on, waiting until I was absolutely certain my mom was asleep and that my trot down the hall with a blanket to the living room couch wouldn’t wake her. Sleeping over in Trey’s room on Sunday night had been enough to scare me out of attempting it a second time soon; either the alarm clock on his cell phone had failed, or Trey had absentmindedly turned it off after its first ring, and we’d overslept. The sound of his mom knocking loudly on the door had sent me diving beneath the comforter, certain that a very uncomfortable and oddly baseless conversation with my mom about sex was in my not-too-distant future.
On Friday morning, my mother was waiting for me with her hands on her hips in the kitchen when I surfaced for orange juice after a restless night.
“When I got up this morning, one of the burners on the stove was on, and it looked like it had been burning all night,” she said in a barely controlled, angry voice.
Already having a good idea of who was to blame for the oven being turned on, I feigned interest in the stovetop and noticed that an area around the burner in the front left corner was darkened from heat.
“Sorry,” I said, not sure what to say. “I don’t even remember the last time I turned the stove on.”
I knew better than to flat-out deny my own involvement; there were only two of us in the house, and if I blamed Olivia’s ghost, my mother would cart me off to the insane asylum to have my head checked faster than I’d be able to say, Just kidding. I was not surprised that Olivia had managed to tinker with the gas stovetop, seeing as how she was probably annoyed that I was foiling her attempts to harass me in my bedroom. I had taken down all the shelves and framed photographs in my room, and had boxed up my music boxes and CDs. In frustration, Olivia was obviously trying out her strength in different areas of the house, and it occurred to me that I should probably fear that she might try out her tricks in my mom’s room.
“Honestly, McKenna,” my mom said in wonderment, staring me down. “What is going on? You’re up at all hours of the night, doing absentminded things like this. Are you sleepwalking? I am really concerned.”
“I don’t think I’m sleepwalking,” I said, not sure how to get myself off the hook for this kitchen disaster. “But I guess anything’s possible. I honestly don’t remember turning the burner on. I didn’t cook anything yesterday.”
Mom was not buying my act of innocence for a second. “Maybe this whole Student Government thing was a bad idea. If you’re under too much stress, then something has got to give.”
“It’s not too much stress,” I assured her quickly. “I’m enjoying it.” But even as I was speaking the words, I knew I was trying to convince myself as much as her.
That night, Trey told his parents he was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and crept through my window with his backpack. He looked around at my stark walls in wonderment, shaking his head. “It looks like you’re moving out,” he commented. Olivia’s spirit was strangely quiet, not causing any disturbances at all. It was so eerie, I half expected to open my bedroom door in the morning and find the rest of the house missing.
* * *
In the morning, my alarm clock sounded at dawn, and I left Trey sleeping in my room when my mom gave me a lift to the shopping center where juniors would assemble for the rake sale. Violet and Tracy were already there, waiting and sipping lattes in Tracy’s car. Mom and I had brought with us a table with folding legs and posters that Violet, Tracy, Michael, and I had made during the week, and Violet and Tracy walked across the parking lot to greet us as Mom pulled the table out of the trunk.
“Hi, girls,” my mom said, unfolding the legs of the table. I could tell that she had no idea which girl was Violet and which girl was Tracy. I made fast, bashful introductions, eager for my mom to drive away before volunteers from school began to arrive.
“This was such a great idea of McKenna’s. She’s really a genius at t
hinking up ways to raise money,” Violet gushed.
My mother looked at me with a quizzical expression. “I don’t know where she gets it from. Certainly not from my side of the family.”
Thirty minutes later, there were a handful of students roaming around the parking lot for their shift, and holding signs along the roadside to catch the attention of cars passing by. It was nine in the morning, and our services were officially available for the day, at least according to the hours of service we’d written on our posters, and the story that had been written about us in the Willow Gazette. Kids had arrived carrying rakes, hoes, bush pruners, and gardening gloves as they had been instructed, and were now just eager for some customers. I tried to happily greet everyone who had arrived for our first shift and felt a little guilty as I saw Erica’s mom’s black SUV pull into the lot. Erica’s mom greeted me by loudly announcing, “McKenna! You’ve lost so much weight! I never would have recognized you!” I blushed furiously, wishing that Mrs. Bloom hadn’t reminded everyone in the parking lot that I had been thirty pounds heavier the previous October.
By ten in the morning, several cars had pulled into the lot to book services for the day. I staffed the reservation table with Tracy, and Violet kept track of which kids we would assign to each appointment. In pairs of two, kids accepted slips of paper on which we had written the address and phone number of the house where they were being sent, and drove off to mow lawns and trim bushes. Fortunately, our town was small enough that we knew by name most of the people who requested our services. We sent Jeff Harrison and Tony Fortunado from the basketball team over to the Highlands’ house to clean the gutters of the coach’s in-laws. Sarah Chaney and Crystal Blomquist went to the home of the owner of our town’s largest grocery store to plant orange chrysanthemums and marigolds. A husband and wife with a handful of young children stopped by and asked for three kids to come by, claiming they had an acre of property and could use all the help they could get. It felt like a gift to be actually busy, for once occupied with something other than ghostly business.