“Wait.”
He reached out as she turned from him. His fingertips brushed her elbow, and Essie stiffened. She fixed her eyes on his.
“Just meet me in the park, okay?” he said. “There’s no reason to change things now.”
Essie shrugged. “No reason at all.”
He watched her leave. He wanted to follow, to apologize for always saying the wrong things when other people were around.
Why couldn’t Essie understand? At the park, he felt at home. When it was just the two of them, seated on the mossy earth, overlooking the ravine, sharing stories and more—only then could he be himself. Not here. Never here, amidst a swarm of high schoolers who did nothing but taunt and gossip and jostle and—
Lee gasped for air. The vision of the hallway bled away from his eyes, replaced by a cobwebbed ceiling. He was lying on his back, skin wet with cold sweat. The room smelled faintly of blood, and there was a sizzling sound close to his ear. With trembling hands, Lee pushed himself to a sit. Something sharp bit into his left palm, and he looked down to see a shard of glass lodged in his skin, blood peeking from the wound. Beside him lay the shattered canning jar and a circlet of violet ribbon, still neatly tied in its bow.
Lee got to his feet, his ears perked for any sounds from outside the canning room, afraid that Memory or his mother had heard the commotion. But all was silent in the west end of Poplar House. With his uninjured hand, Lee creaked open the door and peered into the hallway. His mother’s bedroom door was shut; she was probably resting. He heard no sound of Memory’s humming in his left ear; she must’ve stepped out for a walk through the wood, as she often did on sunlit afternoons.
Lee scrambled to the bathroom, where he washed away the blood from his cut and took a bandage and rubbing alcohol from the medicine cabinet. Once he was patched up, he returned to the storage room and locked the door behind him. He surveyed the damage: only the broken remains of a canning jar, none of its contents.
“Well, of course,” Lee whispered. “The memory’s in my mind. It’s mine now.”
When Lee closed his eyes, he could see it all again—relive it as he had when he had been unconscious on the canning room floor, though not quite so vividly as before. He replayed the memory. He played it again. And again. And then, just its beginning.
“Essie.”
Whoever’s memory he now possessed had known Essie Hasting. Lee had never met Essie in person. He’d seen her picture once, alongside the newspaper headline that announced her death, but this new memory of her barely resembled the lifeless, black-and-white shot. She was bright-eyed and full of color and life.
Lee played the memory through once more, this time skipping hurriedly to its end. There was nothing new there, nothing he’d missed upon his first viewing. It had been a memory of a conversation in a school hallway, and that was all. What was so terrible about that? What had been so foul about this memory to turn it thick and black, worthy of a place on the fifth shelf?
Maybe it’s just foul now because she’s dead, he thought.
Lee stared at the remaining two glass jars on the canning table. Those memories belonged to the same patient. What were the chances that they, too, were about Essie?
Lee could be clumsy and forgetful. He had broken a memory jar before. But he had never stolen one. Now, he was going to steal two. He’d decided as much even before he’d finished sweeping up the shattered remains of the first jar. He settled his plan as he snuck the dustpan’s contents out to the wood and buried the glass beneath a pile of red leaves. By the time he returned to the canning room, he had no remaining doubts. He took both jars. The glass was still hot to the touch, but his grip was now firm and unshakable.
Only after Lee had taken the jars to his bedroom and pushed them under his bed, on the side farthest from reach, did he begin to feel terribly sick. His stomach curdled with nausea, and he crawled onto the bed and shut his eyes.
“I should wait, then,” he whispered, speaking aloud to push away the tumult in his stomach. “I’ll wait until I feel better before I open the next memory. And if it’s about Essie, too, I have to figure out whose memory it is.”
Then words grew too heavy to say, and even his thoughts felt too heavy to think, and Lee drifted to sleep with one remaining string of words in his ears:
Meet me in the park.
“Hey. You. Whipple.”
Gretchen turned too quickly at the sound of her name, and the tread of her shoe caught in mulch, causing her to trip.
“Trouble walking? It’s one foot in front of the other.”
She wished she hadn’t turned.
“I think she has trouble talking, too,” said Emma.
Dylan laughed unkindly. “Hey, can you even talk, Whipple?”
“I talk to people worth talking to,” said Gretchen, shrugging up the hood of her coat and concentrating on the school parking lot. She wished Asa would hurry.
Something hard slammed into Gretchen’s shoulder. She turned and saw a calculator at her feet. The screen had shattered and the batteries sprung loose.
“Good job,” she told Emma and Dylan. “You know those are school property, don’t you?”
“So?” said Dylan. “Your dad’s rich. He’ll buy the school ten more when he hears what you did.”
Where was Asa? He had never been so late picking her up from school. Gretchen could keep her mouth shut around Emma and Dylan, but only for so long. She knew exactly what question they both wanted her to ask next.
What did I do? she would ask.
And Dylan would say, Broke poor Emma’s calculator. Who will believe your side of things? You’ve got the worst detention record in the eighth grade.
So Gretchen wasn’t going to answer them. She’d promised herself: no more demerits. No more acting out. No more paying attention to Emma or Dylan or any of the other orange-table kids. She just wished Emma and Dylan would make it easier on her and leave her alone.
Gretchen shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets, hiding them from the biting wind. Her right knuckles bumped into something rough. She frowned, latched her fingers around the object, and tugged it out.
Of course. How could she have forgotten? It was the piece of coal she had found in Poplar Wood—the coal she had thought at first was a gray fox.
“What’s that?” called Emma. “Hey! What’s that you got?”
None of your business, Gretchen thought, shoving the coal back into her pocket.
But then the coal wasn’t in her pocket. Gretchen’s fingers curled in on themselves, clasped around nothing but lining. She frowned and pressed her palm flat. Nothing. It must have fallen out.
Emma screamed.
“Oh my God, Dylan! Do you see that? There, right there!”
Then Dylan screamed.
“Get back inside,” he shouted to Emma. “Quick, get back inside!”
Gretchen watched them run into the school, hysterical, but she felt none of their panic. She was strangely calm, and when she turned to face the thing that had scared them, she was not afraid.
Oh yes, she thought. Of course that’s what it is.
A gray wildcat sat crouched beside her, teeth bared and eyes gleaming. It wasn’t baring its teeth at Gretchen, but at the glass doors, where Emma and Dylan stood watching it, blanched with fear.
Gretchen laughed. The whole thing was suddenly funny. She knew that the wildcat wouldn’t harm her just as certainly as she knew that the wildcat had very recently been a lump of coal in her pocket. Gretchen had no idea how such a thing was possible, which was why she was laughing. She hadn’t imagined that gray fox back in Poplar Wood; it had been the piece of coal all along.
The wildcat stared at Gretchen with yellow eyes. It closed its mouth and made a soft whining sound, as though to apologize for putting on a frightening face before. Then, its ears tensed and flattened. It had heard something, and soon Gretchen heard the sound, too: the sputter of a motorbike engine.
“Asa?”
Gretchen
stared at her brother, motionless, even when he pulled his bike to the curb. She saw but didn’t hear him shout over the rumbling. Then Asa looked from Gretchen to the wildcat by her side. He cut the engine.
Gretchen turned to her wildcat, but now there was only a lump of coal in the grass.
“What was that?” asked Asa, running to her side.
Gretchen grabbed the coal and shoved it into her pocket.
“What was what?” she asked.
“That thing sitting next to you—where did you find it?”
Gretchen shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Get your hand out of your pocket.”
Gretchen let go of the coal and showed her empty hand to Asa. But she knew what he would do next, and she wrenched away from him just as he made a grab for her pocket.
“It’s not yours!” she shouted. “I found it in the wood, it belongs to me!”
“Stupid,” said Asa, but he didn’t grab for it again.
“Why were you late?” Gretchen demanded. “Where’s Whipplesnapper?”
“Had to take her to the shop. Stop crying, would you?”
“I’m not crying!”
Asa nodded at Gretchen’s pocket. “It’s not going to stay there forever. Better to let it go now.”
“And give it to you?” Gretchen snorted. “Fat chance.”
“You don’t need to give it to me. It’ll find me eventually, because it’s mine.”
Gretchen wondered if any of that was true. Asa could just be trying to steal what was hers for the thrill of it. That was nothing new. Growing up, Asa had stolen plenty of things from Gretchen: twine, red nail polish, a music box that had once belonged to her mother—if something went missing, that just meant Asa had it. The music box was the only thing that Gretchen had gotten back, and only because she’d tattled to Gram.
“I’m going to walk home,” said Gretchen, heading for the sidewalk. Asa’s footsteps matched her own.
“Not with that in your pocket. You can’t.”
Gretchen sped up, but Asa’s hand caught her by the shoulder and turned her around so hard she lost her balance and fell on her backside. Pain burst in her right ankle, and Gretchen cried out. Asa swore.
“God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Gretch.”
Asa didn’t say sorry, not unless Mayor Whipple or Gram forced it out of him. Even then, Asa never looked sorry. But that was the way he looked now. He wasn’t smiling. His eyes were concerned, and his cheeks were red, and he looked sorry. Like he had two weeks ago, when he’d slammed the door in Gretchen’s face. Something about that look only made Gretchen angrier.
“I hate you,” she said, pressing her hand to the hollow of her ankle.
“Let me help you up.” Asa reached out a hand.
“Why did you do that? I hate you. I hate you.”
“You can’t walk on your own.”
Gretchen tried. She scooted her feet on the cracked concrete and pushed, hard, with her hands. But the pain shrieked through her ankle again, and stared up at Asa, livid.
“I ha—”
“Hate me. Yeah. Got it. But you still can’t walk.” He stooped by her side. “If I carry you, promise not to bite?”
“No,” Gretchen muttered, but she let Asa wrap one arm around her back and hoist her into his grip.
He carried her with no difficulty. Gretchen found that Asa’s chest was very wide and his arms strong.
“I’m setting you down now,” said a voice with no face, now that Gretchen’s eyes were closed. The dark world around her felt unreal, and time seemed to be moving very fast and very slow at once.
Something hard and uncomfortable came down on her head. A helmet. Fingers latched a buckle under Gretchen’s chin, and the strap pinched, but she said nothing. Her ankle was still hurting worse than that.
It could be broken, Gretchen thought, and found she must’ve said so, because Asa answered, “It isn’t. At worst, it’s sprained.”
Then Gretchen found herself wrapping arms around something solid and leather, and wind was blowing in her face. And then there was warmth and water on her foot. Then something unbearably cold was in her grip, and a voice she did not like was telling her to hold it against her ankle. And slowly, the pain subsided.
And Gretchen opened her eyes.
And everything came into focus.
They were at home, in the parlor. Asa was sitting on the couch, next to her. A sandwich bag filled with ice cubes lay atop Gretchen’s ankle, which was propped on a pillow on the couch. Gretchen eyed a scar running across Asa’s right palm—the same hand that had been bandaged at Essie’s burial. He noticed her looking and closed his hand up.
“So you found it in the wood?” Asa shook his head. “I lost it there. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised it found you.”
Gretchen realized she was no longer wearing her coat. “Where’s my coal?” she demanded.
“Just there.”
Gretchen looked, and by the fireplace, a small gray cat sat washing its face. It looked at Gretchen with alert yellow eyes, then returned to licking its paw.
“It’s not coal,” said Asa, “and it’s not yours. I’m the one who bought it.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Gretchen. “Why should I?”
Asa smiled all wrongly. “Because I bought it from Death.”
Gretchen stared, uncomprehending. “You mean . . . you did a Rite? But . . . how?”
“For one thing, I’m the firstborn.” Asa raised an eyebrow pointedly.
Gretchen had nothing to say to this.
Asa motioned to the cat, which had curled itself into a tight, purring ball atop the atlas on the coffee table. “What do you see there?”
“A cat.”
“But it wasn’t always a cat.”
“No. When I saw it in Poplar Wood, it was a fox. In the parking lot, it was a . . . mountain lion, I think. And in between, it’s that piece of coal.”
“Stone,” corrected Asa. “It’s a Wishing Stone. Did you know every town’s set of Shades has one to sell? All it takes is a Rite.”
Gretchen looked at the cat again, only now it was not a cat but a stone, smooth and black, resting atop a detailed map of Cairo.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “What does it do?”
“In theory, it grants wishes. But it works different than I thought it would. It’s not like a magic lantern. You don’t say your wish out loud. Whatever you’re feeling deepest inside, that’s what the stone takes to be your wish. That’s what it grants. And in the meantime, it does what it wants, takes whatever shape it pleases.”
Gretchen looked again to the stone, only this time it had vanished completely, and she jumped so suddenly she sent a rush of pain through her foot. Wincing, she readjusted the bag of ice. “Where did it go?”
“Wherever it wants to be.” Asa was glaring into the fireplace. “Whatever you think that stone is, it’s not.”
Gretchen considered this. “Asa. Why did you do that Rite? What did you need to wish for?”
Asa kept his dark eyes on the fire. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“What was Death like, in person? The Rite lets you see him, doesn’t it?”
Asa rose from his seat. “I said, it doesn’t matter.”
His words were cold, the way Gretchen was used to, and she found she was almost relieved by the change. This version of Asa she knew, and there was a strange comfort in his meanness.
Asa walked to the parlor door. When he reached it, he said, “Leave it alone, Gretch, and don’t touch it again. I mean it. I told you, it thinks for itself.”
Gretchen watched Asa leave the room. Then, looking back to her ankle, she saw it: a small gray hare was sitting at her feet, rapidly sniffing at the couch’s velvet upholstery. She reached out, as though to catch it, but the moment her hand touched its fur, the hare transformed once more, turning small and stony in her palm.
She’d heard Asa’s warning, and she meant to heed it.
Only not quite yet.
“When did you first see blood?”
“Day ago. Got here quick as I could. Melvin told me if anyone could cure it up, it’d be you, sir.”
Felix stood in the corner of the examination room, watching as Vince made small talk with his patient, a miner from Cullman Gully.
“Please,” he told the man, “call me Vince.”
The miner regarded his doctor with caution. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Vince since he had arrived at the back door. His face was bearded and grizzled, but his eyes shone a clear green that reminded Felix of mint. He smelled of gasoline, and his hair was slicked back from a sweaty brow. The man was, in fact, drenched in sweat. It trickled along his temples and beaded on his knuckles and dampened his shirt in muscle-guided patterns.
The miner noticed Felix looking at him, and his mint eyes lightened. He smiled kindly as though to say Don’t worry too much about little old me.
Felix didn’t want this man to die.
“When did the fever begin?” Vince asked his patient.
“Four days back, I reckon, I started feeling poorly. Would’ve come earlier, but my wife Betsy, she don’t much like the idea of my seeing you. No offense, but some folk say you’ve made a pact with the devil.”
Vince looked up, not at the miner, but at Death, who was standing on the threshold, peeling white evening gloves from his hands. What did Death dress so well for, Felix wondered, when death was the most ordinary of events?
Vince tucked in the earpieces of his stethoscope and with a grim smile said, “I might very well have done.”
“Well, ain’t my place to judge, ’specially if you give me the cure all them others talk about.”
From a pocket inside his fine jacket, Death pulled out metal pincers. The miner heaved out a cough so violent his shoulders jerked forward, and a spray of crimson showered on his collar.
“Felix,” said Vince, “why don’t you offer the good man something to drink?”
He’s going to die, thought Felix. There’s nothing to be done about it now.
Felix’s job in the examination room was to comfort the patients, to keep them at ease.
The House in Poplar Wood Page 13