“Ma’am,” he said. He shook his head back and forth. “I can’t comment on that.”
“I told you already, I took the bus for a few groceries and then was home with my daughter. You can ask her yourself. She’s upstairs with a stomach bug, but I can drag the poor girl down here if that’s what you want.” I put my hand on my middle. I never knew, but now it felt a little bit sick. It did. “Is that what you want, Officer?”
I scooted over on the step so no one could see me.
“She’s quite certain it was you, Mrs. Janes. They both are. And we’ve had a look at the side of his house. There’s evidence of vandalism.”
“If you look at my driveway, Officer Cooper, you’ll discover no car is parked around here. I don’t got a car. I don’t drive a car. I never had the privilege of even owning a car.”
“Mrs. Janes—”
“You know what type of person sees someone who’s not there? An airhead. A flaky airhead. That woman is unstable. She’s one of those vengeful and vindictive types, stealing other women’s husbands. Have you considered that possibility?”
My middle was gurgling and squirting.
The man didn’t say nothing for a minute. Then he said, “We need you to come down. Make a formal statement.”
“You want me to leave my sick child and go to the police station?”
“Exactly, ma’am. You’ll have to arrange some care.”
I heard Gloria snort. “This is laughable. Completely laughable. You know that, right? That woman is deeply troubled. She’s been attacking me since the day she met Telly. Trying to pollute my daughter’s mind. Driving around the circle at all hours, going slow in front of my house. Threatened, she is, because Telly’s getting bored of her.”
“Did you file a report?”
“No. I just rise above it all. But how much patience am I expected to have?”
He put his hand on his belt. His gun wiggled. “Do you have someone to watch your daughter, Mrs. Janes?”
“Oh for god’s sakes,” Gloria huffed. “My neighbor’s here. Erma. In the kitchen. She’ll stay.”
I leaned over and peeked into the kitchen. It was empty.
“Good,” he said. “My partner and I’ll be waiting in the car. We’d really like to resolve this, Mrs. Janes. In a friendly way.”
I watched Gloria close the door. She was talking but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. My heart slapped my chest and I put my face on the cold wall. My stomach bug was really bad. Maybe I was going to throw up. When I heard her coming close to the stairs I scrambled back to my bed.
“Maisy! You don’t move, you hear me? Not one toe leaves this room.” She closed my curtains and everything went gray. “What foolishness I got to deal with. I swear Telly got himself mixed up with a screwball nutcase this time.”
I curled up under the covers. “Gloria, my middle hurts.”
“No, it don’t.”
“I got the stomach bug.”
“Don’t be a dimwit. You’re perfectly fine.” She picked up the green syrup bottle. Then she put it back down again.
“Oh,” I said.
“I won’t be gone long. You can read or draw or whatever it is you do to waste your time.”
I sat up. I felt better. “Did Mrs. Murtry’s car get broken?”
Gloria stopped and looked at me hard. “Belinda’s car? What do you mean?”
“You took it last night.”
“What?”
“You went for a drive, remember? It made you happy. With the windows open and the music.”
Gloria smiled. She smoothed my hair. “Oh, Bids. You were so turned around last night, so I won’t get too upset about your lies. It’s an awful, awful habit you got. I honestly don’t know how you can make such stuff up.”
I heard Gloria slam the front door. I looked out my window and she got in the brown car with the star on the side. When they drove away I saw her face was all scrunched. She looked like a fish in old water. The car went to the top of the circle and then it disappeared.
Then noise started. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. I heard a clicking coming into my room through the wall. There was a leaky pipe. Water dripping.
Or maybe it wasn’t water.
I squeezed my eyes together to keep out some ideas. My awful, awful habit. I tried to take big breaths.
Then I tried to find Jenny the Head, but she was lost again. Sometimes I thought she was magic. I reached under my bed and pulled out Rowan’s book of Stories for Boys. Gloria let me have it. It had colorful pictures. I think Gran gave it to him when he lived with her. I didn’t like to think about Gran. Gloria said she was dead, but I knew she was on our front porch and Gloria was talking to her. I even heard Gran’s voice.
I squeezed my eyes shut again.
My middle growled. My throat hurt, too. I opened the bottle and took a tiny sip of the green vitamins. It was hard to read the book because my head was making the words skip all over. My imagination kept doing something bad. My awful habit wouldn’t stop. I kept remembering those fingers in the basement. But I wasn’t even in the basement. I only went to the shed and hit my head and fell asleep with Chicken.
I put the book down. I took another tiny sip of the green vitamins.
It was okay to get out of bed. “Not one toe,” Gloria said. I think she said it but maybe I made that up too. My head was so cloudy. It was full of ideas and bits of a terrible movie. The fingers were sneaking out from under the door of Telly’s bathroom. Chicken was there too. He was whining like crazy. I didn’t see no surprise.
I pushed my head back into my pillow. I wanted to taste more of the vitamins. But I didn’t think I should.
Gloria said, “Not one toe.” I didn’t know what that meant. I had a lot of toes. I looked out the window again. There was nobody in the circle. I pushed back my covers and put on my bathrobe. My middle growled again. She probably meant I could get something to eat. “Not one toe” was allowed to go outside. I wasn’t allowed to go into the backyard. Or go into the woods. I shouldn’t go into the shed. Or back to Shar’s.
The hallway was quiet. I tried to go to the stairs but my feet walked into Gloria’s room instead. I looked at Gloria’s night table for a long time and then I pulled open the top drawer. It had magazines and candy bars, but no key. Then I looked in Telly’s night table. Just pennies and nickels and a blue bottle with a ship on it. I looked under Gloria’s bed. Then in her closet. There was a small box almost falling off the shelf. I brought a chair over and lifted it down and put it on her bed. I took off the lid and there were more bottles of green vitamins inside and some folded-up papers maybe from the bank. And there was a key. I knew it was the key for the basement. Maybe if I checked for the fingers and they weren’t there then the movie would fly out of my head. Some of the lies would be gone. Then when Gloria read my mind, she’d see better things.
I picked up the key. When I reached the basement door I stuck the key in the lock and turned. Chicken bumped at my legs. The lock clicked and opened up. I took it off the metal loop. Chicken barked and my heart jumped and banged so loud I couldn’t even hear. I turned the doorknob. I pulled the door. Chicken rushed down the steps. I could hear his long claws on the wood.
I looked out through the window next to the happy, happy door. I could see the circle. There were no police cars. No Gloria. No Darrell or Shar or Aunt Erma or Mrs. Murtry or Mrs. Spooner.
I could sneak down into the basement. And nobody was there to catch me.
ROWAN
Sunlight is shining on my face. Just over my eyelids. But it isn’t warm. I stretch out my hand. My fingers knock something damp and hard. I pick up a smooth rock. But when I open my eyes, it’s not a rock at all. It’s a white plastic puck. There are thin slits on the top and the bottom. I bring it to my face and smell the sharp stench of an artificial forest.
My head throbs, but I’m able to sit up. I lean my back against the bridge. I blink. But there is another cement wall. And another. Dizziness is making
the walls spin. I blink again. When did Carl get a sink? Then I see a toilet. Water gurgles down inside of it. On the ceiling a single yellow bulb glows. Beside that, a bathroom fan drones and clicks.
“Carl?” The word is only a whisper. “Carl? Are you there?”
White bowls sit on the floor beside me. Brown caked to the sides. Carl has brought me beans? The sweet smell makes me retch, but nothing comes up.
Beside the toilet my gray-tape shoes sit side by side, covered in tiny sticks and fragments of dead leaves. We’d come all the way back to the lake. I must have walked, but I couldn’t remember a single step. Carl had put me in the bathroom. I was probably bleeding. Throwing up inside the cottage.
I look up at a vent near the ceiling. There was a window before. Wasn’t there? I had glanced out at the lake while I used the toilet. I was certain I’d seen the water.
I tried to stand up, but my legs wouldn’t hold me.
“Hello?”
Slow drumming inside my head. Wasn’t there flower wallpaper before? How can a window vanish?
I rub my eyes. Colors pop and burst out of nowhere and won’t stop. Then I notice something. A corner of paper poking out between the cement wall and the cabinet. I reach forward and with my fingernails, tug it out. A magazine slaps onto the floor. Gun Digest. I pull it closer and look at the sticker near the bottom.
I rub my eyes again. My head is making things up.
I lift it close to my face.
No, the name and address hasn’t changed.
Mr. Theodore Janes. 17 Pinchkiss Circle.
The magazine belongs to Telly.
I look at the door. At the walls. At the ceiling. The sink. The toilet.
And it hits me. Almost knocks me backward. I hold my aching head. Too much piling in at once.
I want to go home.
You are home.
MAISY
It was dark down there. I listened hard but all I could hear was a windy sound. A breeze went on my ankles. I stepped down and kept my eyes open big, but only black got in. The dark was so thick it was hard to breathe. On the bottom step I pulled the string and the light came on.
I saw a box full of cans on the floor. That might be different, but the black couch was the same and the cupboards were still open with the winter coats inside. The same huge fan was still on the floor, and Chicken raced right past me to the bathroom door. Like he did last time. His long fur whipped all around from the fan. I took more steps. Chicken had pushed away a blanket and now he was pawing at the bottom of the door. He got something white out from there. I think it was one of Telly’s old T-shirts. I blinked a lot. My mouth and legs and arms were full of static.
Everything was weird because it was already all in my mind. It was the exact movie I saw last night.
I swallowed.
I didn’t want to get too close. Chicken barked and the fan whished, but I still heard something from behind the door. It was someone laughing or someone crying. My skin got goose bumps. “Chicken!” it said. “Hey, Chicken. Hey!”
Then, in the tiny, tiny space under the door, the dirty fingers pushed out. I pinched my arm real hard. Tears came in my eyes. I could feel the hurt. Feel it a lot.
Those fingers were real.
And I knew who owned them.
I stopped breathing. I sat down on the floor. All my body went cold. This wasn’t my awful habit. I found Rowan. I found him. He wasn’t grabbed from under the bridge, or stuck in the trash on the bottom of the lake. He was hiding in our house. My middle felt sick and excited.
Chicken pawed and licked the fingers. He spun in circles and pawed at them again. I didn’t understand how Rowan could be hiding there all this time. How could nobody know?
I lay down and I moved my face up close to the door. There was black stuff on the other side. I couldn’t see in. He sounded far away like there was wind in there, too. A noisy wind.
I reached out and touched his fingers. They were cold and dry. They got yanked back inside. I tapped on the door. “Rowan,” I said. “It’s me.”
I thought I heard “Turtle,” but it was real quiet.
“Rowan? Are you in there?” I looked at the lock. It was a different color. But almost the same as the one upstairs. “I’ll get Gloria,” I said. “She’ll help.”
There was a thump. “No!”
I jumped. Above the whishing fan a sound came down over the stairs.
A car door slamming.
Gloria was home.
Rowan tapped more on the door. It wasn’t very hard. I pushed my ear in. I think he said, “Don’t tell her. Don’t.”
Why wouldn’t I tell Gloria? A shiver went all the way from my teeth to my toes. I raced up the steps from the basement and through the hall and up the other stairs. I tripped on my bathrobe. My knees hit. But I got up again and hurried. I ran into her room and put the key back and threw the box into the back of her closet. I shoved the chair away. Then I ran into my room and jumped on my bed.
I heard her stomping over the porch. “Wasting my time,” she growled. “Lies from a sicko woman.” Then she came inside and slammed that door, too. As soon as I heard her throw off her shoes I got up and started to go down the stairs. I smiled as hard as I could.
“Hi Gloria.”
She looked up at me. I think she was mad. “You stayed in your room, miss?” My face got hot. Gloria made a clicking sound. “You were out of your room?”
I nodded. I couldn’t tell a lie. She’d just look inside my mind and know what I did.
“Come down here,” she said.
I went to the bottom stair and I wrapped my arms around the rail.
“Tell me exactly what you were doing.”
“I—I watched a show.” That was kind of true. I was watching a show in my head.
“What were you watching?”
“Cartoons?”
She looked at my chest. “Must’ve been some awful cartoons. You’re out of breath.”
When I looked I could see my nightgown shaking from my heart. Then in the corner of my eye, I saw Chicken. He used his snout to push open the door so he could get out of the basement. The lock was hanging open on the hook.
Gloria saw him, too. And she saw the lock. She looked at me and her eyes were small and angry. “You’ve been sneaky,” she said. “You’ve been a very sneaky little girl.”
Everything went drifty. I slid down onto the stair. I hugged the railing tight. I could hear Gloria but she seemed a long ways away. I started to cry.
“Don’t think you can pass out on me, miss.
“Do I not do enough for you?
“Do you think this is what I want to come home to? More nonsense from you?
“Do I not have enough on my plate?
“You just want to pile it on.”
Her finger pushed in my nose and the back of my head hit the railing. “Pile it on, pile it on. Hurt Gloria. Is that your idea of fun?
“You been so sneaky. Just lie and sneak. Lie and sneak. That’s all you do. A sneaky little thing.
“How can I trust you?
“You’re not a little kid no more. Grown-ups make decisions and it’s none of your business. You hear me? You don’t got to know why things happen. You’re too young and too stupid. Stupider than Shar. But there you go. Sticking your big fat nose in. Skulking around. I always knew you were like that. A sneaky little spy. You get that from Telly’s side. It’s disgusting. I’m completely disgusted in you. A sneaky dirty spy. There’s nothing worse in this whole world.”
Her hands were flying around in front of my face.
“Do you want them to take you away? Enormous men are going to show up on our doorstep and you will be gone, Maisy. Do you get that? Gloria can’t do a single thing about it. Gone, gone, gone. They’d probably toss you in a filthy jail somewhere. With all the other sneaky nasty little girls no one can stand. Can’t mind their own beeswax. Is that what you want?”
My mouth was open. No air was coming in.
“You’
re not saying a word, but I hear you good and plenty. You want to be gone. And I won’t stop them, you know that? Even if I could, I won’t lift a finger. They can cart you off and do what they want.”
I put my head on the wall. I was in so much trouble. More trouble than I ever was before. “Not one toe,” she said when she left. I was supposed to stay in my room. Rowan was in the basement. That wasn’t a good thing. Gloria knew he was there. She wanted him disappeared forever. Now she was going to disappear me, too.
“Do you get me, miss? Everything I’ve done was to protect you, and now those men are just waiting. Right around the corner.”
I nodded.
“All I got to do is open the door and wave my pinkie finger.”
I nodded again.
“So you better keep away from that little idiot down there.”
I nodded again.
“And if you want to stay under this roof, you won’t tell a single solitary soul.”
MAISY
Through my bedroom window I could hear Chicken snoring on the front step and Darrell’s motorcycle roar and pop. Shar was skipping rope in front of her house, and she must’ve been singing loud because I could hear that, too. “And how many big boys will I kiss? One, two, three…” She never got past three.
I wanted to go skipping with Shar, but I wasn’t allowed out. After I found Rowan in the basement, Gloria sent me to my room and said she didn’t want to see my sneaky spy face for the rest of my life. I pulled Rowan’s pillow out of my closet and cried into it until my nose was stuffed and my eyes were so fat I couldn’t even see.
A long, long time went by. Chicken barked and the screen door creaked when Gloria let him inside. Then Aunt Erma called Shar in for dinner. Finally, Gloria came into my bedroom. She brought me a peanut butter sandwich and it was cut in the shape of a heart. She sat on my bed and blew out a lot of air.
“Bids,” she said. She sounded sad.
I tried not to cry again. Everything inside me was full of holes. Like when Chicken took Jenny the Head’s oatmeal body and chomped Jenny’s heart up.
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