by Katrina Leno
“Perfect, you’re already crushing it. Think you can make my baby sister an almond milk latte she actually likes? Fair warning; she’s a tough customer.”
“I can still hear you,” Susie snapped from her table.
“Let me give it a shot,” Jane said.
She washed her hands in the stainless-steel sink, then rolled her sleeves up to her elbows. It had been a while since she’d made a latte, but she soon found that her hands knew what to do, even if her brain was a little rusty. She ground the beans, fit them into the portafilter, and tamped them down neatly. She steamed the almond milk as the espresso brewed. She even managed a design as she poured the steamed milk over the espresso—nothing fancy, just a little leaf—and Will clucked his tongue in approval.
“That is some nice work,” he said.
Jane brought the mug over to Susie’s table and made a little bow as she set it in front of her.
Susie cleared her throat dramatically and took a sip. As soon as the liquid hit her lips, her face changed. “Now, that,” she said, putting the cup on the table again, “is a latte.”
Will burst into applause. “Brilliant. You’re hired.”
“You already hired me,” Jane reminded him.
“No, no, remember I fired you? Now you’re hired again,” he clarified.
“Okay, seriously, leave me alone. I have stuff to do,” Susie said.
Will and Jane returned to the counter, where Jane dumped out the used espresso beans and cleaned the portafilter with a towel.
“So I started the book,” Will said.
“Oh yeah? The ABC Murders? What do you think?”
“I’m only a chapter into it. I like the cast of characters.”
“That’s pretty typical for Agatha.”
“I like that you’re on a first-name basis with her.”
“Of course. Agatha and I go way back.”
“Well, I’m enjoying it so far. It’s a lot funnier than I was expecting.”
“She’s so funny. It’s that quiet sort of British humor that sneaks up on you.”
Will smiled, and Jane noticed that he had the slightest space between his two front teeth, just like his sister.
A tiny bell above the door announced the arrival of a customer.
“Here,” Will said, grabbing an iPad and handing it to her. “It’s pretty self-explanatory. The password is 2665.”
Jane unlocked the iPad as Will took the customer’s order. She found the button for Latte and ran the customer’s credit card. Will finished making the drink and the customer took it to go.
“Look at you!” Will said.
“Book,” Jane replied. “That’s cute.”
“What’s cute?”
“The password is book—2665.”
Will smiled. “Hey. You got my nerd joke.”
“I’m your target audience.”
“Great. You’re hired.” He paused, winked, then added, “Again,” and for the first time that day, Jane found that she was able to think of something other than roses.
North Manor was empty when Susie dropped off Jane. The first thing Jane did was turn on strategic lights: the foyer, the upstairs hallway, her bedroom. Then she changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt and made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
She sat at the kitchen table and spread her schoolbooks out around her and sent a text to Ruth: Are you still at work?
Ruth texted back a minute later: Dinner with coworkers. Sorry I forgot to text! Be home soon.
Jane put down her phone and took a bite of the sandwich. She started on a calculus worksheet but found it hard to concentrate; the numbers kept blurring in front of her eyes.
You’re just tired, she told herself.
The rest of her shift at Beans & Books had passed quickly. Will was fun to work with, and they’d talked the entire time: about books, about coffee, about school. He’d made her a macchiato and she felt buzzy with the caffeine, but still somehow exhausted. She scratched an answer on the worksheet and had another bite of the sandwich.
She was lowering it back down to her plate when she heard it—a weird sound. It was as if someone had dropped something very small on the second floor, right above her, and whatever it was had rolled for a few seconds before stopping abruptly.
She looked up at the ceiling, frowning.
She heard Ruth’s voice in her head: It’s these old houses, Janie. They’re constantly making noises. It’s called settling; you’ll get used to it.
She tucked her hair behind her ear, took another bite of the sandwich, and turned her attention back to her homework—
But no sooner had she touched the tip of the pencil to the paper than she heard the noise again. Something dropping. Something rolling across the floor.
Something else like… laughter?
Jane stood up. She tossed the pencil on the table; it rolled slowly over the edge and onto the floor.
She looked up at the ceiling again, as if she could somehow see through it.
She picked up her phone. Had Ruth snuck in and made it upstairs without Jane hearing the front door open? She sent her a quick text—home when?—and kept listening.
You’ll get used to it, she repeated to herself.
Their house in California had been a single story, and every noise had been familiar to her. Comforting. Lying in bed at night, she could pinpoint the second her father got out of bed to use the bathroom, or the morning sounds of her mother making coffee, or the flap of the mailbox when the mail was delivered.
This house was a stranger to her, and every sound it made set her on edge, threw her off a little. Maybe the dropping sound, the rolling sound, had been the upstairs radiators coming on? Her own bedroom’s radiator produced so many strange clicking and hissing noises that it woke her up sometimes in the middle of the night. Maybe this was what that sounded like from downstairs?
She sat down again.
Her heart was beating fast, and her hands were clammy and tingly.
“It’s nothing,” she whispered aloud.
She checked her phone again. Ruth hadn’t texted back.
She bent over and picked up the pencil from the floor, and it happened again—but louder, so loud this time it was as if it had happened right behind her.
She jumped to her feet and whirled around.
There was nothing there. Of course there was nothing there.
The kitchen windows were almost black. She could barely see outside them. Just the shadowy outline of trees and the bright spot of the moon.
Her arms were covered in goose bumps.
She almost sat down again, but something wouldn’t let her.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to relax until she had gone upstairs and proved that the noise was nothing.
She didn’t want to go—her legs felt leaden as she walked to the front of the house, pausing at the bottom of the staircase, stalling.
Should she call the police?
You are not calling the police because you heard a creak in a house filled with creaks.
Halfway up the stairs she froze, listening hard into the silence, but she heard nothing. She held her breath until she made it to the second floor.
She’d left the light on.
The hallway was empty. Her bedroom door was open, as was her mother’s. The bedrooms they didn’t use were all closed, including the storage room and her grandparents’ room.
She stood for a minute in the hallway, forcing herself to breathe, to chill.
It’s just an old, creepy house, she reminded herself. There’s nothing about it that can hurt you.
But then the noise again.
It came from just down the hall.
From the storage room.
Definitely from the storage room—
Like someone had dropped something small…
And the rolling sound.
Jane stared at the closed storage-room door until a movement caught her eye. Something tiny had emerged from underneath the door
, rolling slowly across the hallway, taking a few seconds before it hit the opposite wall. It rebounded for just an inch or so before coming to a stop.
Her throat had gone dry.
Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
She wanted to turn and run but she made herself stand her ground, then she made herself take a few steps down the hall, putting one foot in front of the other until she had reached the object.
She bent down and picked it up.
It was a marble.
It was a little purple marble, a deep color with a ribbon of lighter lilac running through it. It was cold against her fingertips. It tugged at a memory, worming its way into her brain, unearthing old secrets.
She was eleven years old, and she had taken a pair of scissors to the ponytail of a girl named Claudia Summers.
Claudia was new in town; she wore ill-fitting jeans and flannel button-ups even when it was ninety degrees outside.
The only open desk in the classroom was the one in front of Jane. Claudia sat down and let her ponytail fall onto the top of Jane’s desk. Jane pushed it away angrily. They’d had almost the same hair exactly—the same shade of honey blond, the same tumbling waves, the same length. And almost immediately, they’d hated each other.
Claudia was rude from the start and seemed to target Jane specifically, pushing back against her seat so it hit Jane’s desk, causing her to smudge a paper she was writing. Leaving globs of gum on her seat. Passing her mean notes when the teacher’s back was to them.
Jane tried to ignore her.
She tried not to get angry.
But it went on for months and months.
One day Jane got to school and opened her desk to find everything gone. Her pencils, her notebooks, her library books. It was completely empty.
And there was Claudia, sitting in front of her, playing with a small purple marble.
Jane’s marble.
She kept it in her desk—a present from Sal, who collected them.
All Jane’s other things had been thrown into the trash can. When Jane fished them out, they were covered in pencil shavings and used tissues.
“Just ignore her,” Sal had whispered into Jane’s ear at lunch that day. “I’ll give you another marble. Just ignore her.”
But Jane couldn’t ignore her. She couldn’t ignore the way her body felt, almost thrumming with anger. If someone had touched their palm to Jane’s skin, they would have felt pure electricity. A palpable vibration.
They would have been scared.
Jane returned to the classroom after lunch and sat at her desk and waited.
When Claudia arrived, she sat down and let her ponytail cascade across Jane’s desk. She took the marble out of her pocket and started playing with it, making sure Jane could see.
And before Jane really knew what she was doing, before she had a moment to stop and think about it, she had taken a pair of scissors out of her desk and started hacking at Claudia’s hair, just below the hair tie.
It took Claudia a moment to realize what was happening.
The scissors weren’t very sharp, and Claudia’s hair was thick; Jane had only made it about halfway through the ponytail before Claudia started screaming and pulling away and flailing her arms, one of her hands hitting Jane’s and knocking the scissors to the floor, great chunks of her cut hair falling out of the hair tie and landing on the floor, on Jane’s desk, on Jane’s hands, everywhere.
She dropped the marble.
And with Claudia still screaming, still flailing, Jane calmly bent down and picked it up.
She held it in her hand now, looking at it.
No, not the same marble.
It couldn’t have been the same marble.
But it was the exact color, the exact size.
Jane looked at the closed door.
She took a step toward it, then another.
The marble began to warm up in her hand. It felt comforting, perfectly round and smooth, a little worry stone for her to rub her thumb against.
It couldn’t have been the same marble.
It wasn’t.
She took another step and then she was close enough to reach out and grasp the doorknob. So she did. And she twisted.
Locked.
She felt a draft against her feet, and she looked downward.
The crack under the door was really quite large. Large enough for the marble to roll out from under, and it was a pretty big marble, maybe an inch in diameter.
If she couldn’t get into the room, she might be able to at least get a peek of what was inside it.
She lowered herself to her knees, slipping the marble into her pocket so she wouldn’t drop it. She put her palms down and inched her chest lower until her belly was on the floor. Then she put her forehead against the door itself and squeezed her left eye shut to focus better.…
And she didn’t see a single box.
The room was dark, of course. She could see the outline of long, white curtains at the windows, but barely any moonlight was making its way through them.
But even though she couldn’t see much, she could tell that this was definitely no storage room—there was a bed in the corner; she could make out two of the legs and a bed skirt that just kissed the hardwood floor. There was a rug in the middle of the room. Something that looked like a dollhouse on the opposite wall.
But nothing to indicate what might have made the other dropping and rolling sounds.
No other marbles she could see.
She got to her feet slowly and a little sloppily, almost tripping, catching herself on the door handle, getting her balance back.
She felt dizzy, and slightly off balance, like she didn’t know which way was up and which way was down and what was real and what wasn’t.
Just to be sure, she tried the door again. It was still locked.
She reached her hand into her pocket and felt the marble. It was cool to the touch.
It wasn’t the same marble.
That was impossible.
And yet Claudia’s face was so clear in her mind, a face she hadn’t thought about in years.…
It was almost like she’d been sent a reminder.
She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to calm down—
And jumped a mile when the doorbell rang.
Had Ruth forgotten her keys?
Jane made her way downstairs, unlocked the dead bolt, and opened the front door.
There was no one there.
She stepped outside, sweeping her eyes across the front yard, but Ruth wasn’t parked in the driveway. There was no one out there.
Faulty wiring, she told herself.
She took a few more steps outside.
It was a mild, peaceful night and the sky was crowded with stars. She had never seen this many stars in Los Angeles; they shone so brightly that she wondered whether some of them might be planets. She picked out constellations she had only ever seen in books. The crooked throne of Cassiopeia. The three stars of Orion’s belt. The Big Dipper. The Little Dipper.
She walked out onto the driveway, transfixed by how beautiful it was, by just how many stars there actually were, by how impossibly big the sky was.
She tried to imagine what her life would have been like if Ruth had never moved across the country, if Jane had grown up in Maine. Would she have been close with Emilia? Would she know more constellations? Would her body be more used to the cold? Would they have spent holidays at North Manor?
North Manor.
She looked back at it.
It was large and imposing in the darkness.
She had left the front door open.
From the driveway, the house looked like a giant entity, and the front door was like its mouth, and to step inside it was to allow yourself to be swallowed up into the belly of it.
She walked across the front yard, cutting the quickest path to the mouth.
And only when she was a few feet away did she pause.
Only when she was a few feet away did she
see it, in the light that spilled out of the mouth from the chandelier in the foyer.
Lying right in front of the door.
So that she couldn’t get inside without stepping over it.
A single red rose.
She moved forward and knelt down to pick it up, careful to avoid the thorns that dotted the slender stem.
This one wasn’t black like the ones on the rosebushes had been; instead it was a deep, dark crimson, so thick with color that it almost glowed in the moonlight. Jane studied it. Brought it up to her nose and smelled it.
She stepped back into the house and shut the door.
She felt numb—not from cold, from something else. From something too big for her to understand, to wrap her head around.
Where had the marble come from? Where had the rose come from?
Headlights swept across the foyer, and Jane peered outside to see Ruth’s car pulling into the driveway. She tossed the rose onto the entranceway table and waited by the door.
There was a mirror hanging over the table.
She caught sight of herself, held her gaze in the reflection. She looked tired. Different. Like the time in Maine had already changed her. Just subtle differences. A shadow underneath her eyes. Slightly darker hair. A sunken look to her cheeks.
But then she noticed something else.
Something else in the reflection.
Something impossible.
She was holding the rose.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She was three feet, at least, from the table. From where she had tossed the rose.
So it was impossible.
She was just tired.
She was just seeing things.
But she moved her hands and felt a sharp prick, and she knew even before she looked down at them what it was.
When she finally let her gaze fall, she was bleeding. She was holding the rose. One of the thorns had pierced the fleshy part of her palm.
She was holding the rose and it was covered in blood.
And when she was good
When Susie picked Jane up for school the next morning, her eyes were rimmed in red, she was quiet and somber when she backed out of the driveway, and as soon as they’d made it out to the main street, she told Jane that Alana wouldn’t be coming to school, her cousin had died the night before.