by Carrie Jones
He looks good but I'm not about to say that.
I keep my foot pressed down on the brake and put the car in park.
I manage to pull myself together. I pivot as best I can, putting my hands on the windowsill, and face him.
He's so cute. He helped me. I have to try to be nice.
"Thank you," I say. "I wouldn't have wanted to abandon Yoko and walk home."
His eyes shift again.
"Zara," he says. "You ever need a ride you can call me, or lssie. Okay?"
His hands move so they are on top of mine, completely covering them. They're really huge and warm but they make me shiver somehow. I don't move away, though. I don't want to.
"I don't have your number." My words come out slow, stunned.
"I'll give it to you. It's my cell."
He writes it out on an old gas receipt and hands it to me with a flourish. I take it.
"What are you? Mr. Protector of New Students?" I laugh when I say it so it doesn't come out sounding mean.
"Not all new students."
I try not to melt inside. "Just me?"
He cocks his head.
"Maybe?" His voice trails off. He's searching up the road. "You really saw someone go into the woods up there?"
I nod. "Didn't you?"
He doesn't answer. Instead, he wipes his hand through his hair.
I suddenly remember how to be polite, like the semi-Southern lady I am. Hedid move my car, after all.
"Thank you," I say, "for moving my car and everything."
He smiles at me again and out of the corner of my eye I think I see something up the road. I can't stand it. I can't stand not knowing. I smash open the door and dash up the side of the road, toward where I saw the man.
"What are you doing?" Nick yells after me. "Zara!"
"I saw him again." I keep running, looking along the ground. Nick flies after me.
"What are you doing?" he says again.
"Looking for evidence," I say and stop. I point at the ground. There, on top of dried-up mud and ice and twigs, are tiny specks of gold powder, like glitter, but even smaller. I stagger backward into Nick. "Oh my God."
He squeezes my shoulders and then lets go to bend down and touch the powder. "It's like dust, but gold."
"Pixie dust," I say. "How can it be pixie dust?"
"Pixie dust? What do you mean?"
"Devyn and Issie, they have a theory about some stuff that's been happening to me. There's this guy who keeps showing up. They think he's a pixie. I know it sounds stupid. Pixie kings are supposed to leave dust like this."
He brings his glittering finger closer to our faces. My face warms from his breath. It's minty. His finger trembles, just the tiniest tremble. "Like this."
"Yeah." I step back and search his face to see if he thinks I'm ridiculous. "The whole pixie aspect of it is kind of whacked, but it could be a serial killer or someone who is completely mental. It could be his calling card or something. I don't know. I don't like it."
"Me either." He tugs on my sleeve. "Let's go back to the car."
"You don't want to go see if he's in there?" I gesture toward the woods.
"You don't have boots on."
"Oh. Right." We walk back to the car and that's when I see it on the back of his jacket, little gold flakes… like dust.
He follows me home to make sure I'm safe. In the driveway, I park Yoko and tell it, "John would be proud."
I turn off the ignition and check out the scene. I did not make it in to register the car, but I think under the circumstances this is totally acceptable. It's not every day you start believing in pixies or psych yourself out about opening the door and walking twenty feet to your grandmother's house.
"Paranoid, Zara. You are being paranoid." Telling myself this does not make it feel any better.
The sun has almost completely set. I open the door and start across the ice toward the front door.
Grandma Betty has left on the porch light and has spread some grains of blue chemical stuff across the ground so the ice dissolves in little clumps, which was very nice of her. I should do that tomorrow, help out, you know?
Something cracks a twig in the woods just beyond the driveway.
I squeal and fast-walk to the porch, lunging up the steps in a totally ungraceful and wimpy way.
I slam the door open and lock it behind me.
I check the lock.
Okay, let's face it, Maine is creepy. That's all there is to it. Creepy, creepy, creepy and too damn cold.
For a second I wish that Nick Colthad followed me all the way up the driveway. He's cute and he has that whole I'm-going-to- keep-you-safe thing going on. Not like there's anything to be scared of. What do pixies do? They frolic in flower gardens, right?
Only this guy points.
I walk over to the window that looks out at the driveway, the woods, the lawn. "I'm being ridiculous."
I stare out into the dusky lawn. The woods at the edge of it seem full of secrets, full of unexplained things.
I never should have read all those scary books when I was little. What was my dad thinking keeping them in the house? Pain wells up in my heart and then the ache comes.
My dad. It is so hard to just think of him.
I turn away from the door and sit on the couch where he used to sit. I put my face in my hands and rock back and forth a little, but I do not cry.
No more.
Betty crashes out of the kitchen, bringing the smell of burned meat with her.
"I murdered the pork chops, just fried them to death," she says.
"That's okay."
"I have Campbell's soup… chicken noodle."
"Cool."
She eyes me. "Okay. What's going on?"
"Tell me about the boy who went missing last week. What happened?"
Betty turns to glance out the windows. "It's almost dark. You should be back before dark. You don't know these roads. They're dangerous."
"I was at Issie's."
"Oh, that's good. She's a sweet girl. Jumpy. Her parents work at the bank."
"Uh-huh. Yeah… I kind of sort of went off the road a little bit. I didn't hurt the car! I swear. Nick pushed me out."
"Nick?" She wipes at her face with the moose dish towel and motions for me to follow her into the kitchen. "Nick Colt?"
I nod.
"You didn't get hurt? Were you speeding?"
"It was ice."
She takes it all in. "He's a good boy. Cute. Don't sigh at me. He is."
"Tell me about the boy. Please?"
"He was out alone at night. He was an eighth grader. He didn't show up in the morning."
"So what? Everything is all business as usual?"
"No. We had search parties. The state police came in." Her shoes slap against the wood floor. "You're getting all motivated again. Maybe Maine has already been good for you."
I decide to ignore her psychoanalysis. "Do the police have any leads?"
She opens the cabinet and pulls out two microwavable soup containers. "No."
"And what do you think?"
She pops the plastic top off the containers and starts prying off the metal lids. I wait while she puts it all into two bowls and plops them in the microwave for sixty seconds.
Finally she says, "I think he ran away."
I wait. She turns around and leans against the counter, like it's too hard to keep standing up. "Okay… a long time ago this happened. Almost a couple decades ago. Boys turned up missing.No girls. Just boys.
One a week. Always at night. It was in the national news."
The timer on the microwave counts down the seconds, getting closer and closer to zero.
"Mom and Dad never told me that."
"They wouldn't. It's not something anyone around here wants to remember."
"And now you think it's happening again."
"I hope to God not."
"But it might be."
The microwave beeps. She chucks the pork chops into th
e trash can. "It might be, but he may have just run away."
"Seriously, why did Mom send me here? A boy went missing."
"People don't go missing in Charleston? I bet the murder rate's a lot higher there." She swallows. She pulls in air through her nose like she expects she'll never breathe again. "She thought she was doing the right thing. It wasn't easy for her, Zara. You weren't acting alive anymore. She thought a change of scenery would help."
"Was I that bad? Really?"
She stares out the window above the sink, past the old glass insulators she collects. "Yes."
Right after dinner my cell phone goes off while it's charging and I rush over to the counter to get it, even though it's probably just my mother, but the display says it's a Maine number.
I flick it open. "Hello?"
"Hey, Zara. It's me, Ian." His voice sounds all happy.
"Hi, Ian." I lean against the counter. Betty makes bug eyes at me like she's all excited that a boy is calling me. I refuse to look at her.
"Hey. Sorry to bother you. I hope you aren't eating."
"Nope. We're done."
"Good. I was just thinking about how hard it must be for you to be in a new town and everything…"
I bump my butt against the counter because it's hard to be still.
"It's not that bad," I lie.
"Well, anyway, I was thinking maybe I could show you around after cross-country tomorrow? You know, give you a grand tour of the excitement that is Bedford, Maine."
"Oh. Tomorrow?"
Betty perks up and starts hustling around, taking dishes off the table.
"Say yes," she whispers.
"I have to go register my car tomorrow," I say, which I do.
"Oh," Ian says.
"I'm sorry."
Betty yanks the faucet to turn on the hot water and groans.
"I could come with you," Ian says.
"To the DMV?" I am stunned.
"Yeah. It's boring as hell in there, but it's better with someone else."
"Sure. Okay." I don't know what to say. "If you don't mind."
We hang up and Betty asks me who it was.
"This guy named Ian that I met at school. He wants to go to the DMV with me."
She hands me a plate to dry. "Well, there's true love."
I snort.
She says, "He's the Ian who is a runner, right? The point guard of the basketball team?"
"I don't know. I know he runs and he's in a ton of clubs."
"Classic overachiever. He comes from an old Bedford family. His father lobsters. His grandfather logged. They have hardly anything: live in a glorified shack, basically. It's amazing to see what that boy has done."
While I rub the plate with a dish towel, I think about Ian and all his clubs and all his energy. "Yeah."
"And he's obviously got good taste if he already has his eye set on you." She points at me with a fork. I put the plate away and grab the fork from her.
"He's just being helpful." "Ha. Right."
I wake up in the middle of the night. There's a noise downstairs, soft tapping across the floor. I grab the big metal flashlight that's next to the bed and slip out from under the covers. I don't turn the flashlight on, though. I grab it like cops do, ready to bash someone over the head. I tiptoe down the stairs and that's when I see her, Betty, standing by the front windows.
Her body is fierce, tight, strong. She looks like an Olympic athlete, a warrior, not a grammy.
"Betty?" I whisper her name, afraid to startle her. She motions for me to come all the way down, I stand next to her, peering into the darkness. "What are you looking for?" I whisper. "Things in the night."
"Do you see anything?" She laughs. "No."
She pulls me against her and kisses the top of my head. "You go on up to bed. I've got everything under control."
I walk away a step and stop. "Gram? Are you really looking for things in the night?"
"People are always looking into the dark, Zara. We're afraid of what we might see. It might be the dark outside, it might be the dark of our own souls, but I figure it's better to get caught looking than to never know. You get me?"
"Not really."
She steps away from the window, pushes me toward the stairs, "Go to bed. School tomorrow. Okay?"
"Okay."
Couplogagophobia fear of being the third wheel
That night I dream about my dad, all night long. He's standing at the end of Betty's driveway. It's snowing. There are giant paw prints on the snow. His mouth is open and moving, but no sound comes out.
I make myself wake up. The room is cold. The wind blows tree branches against the house, making scraping noises. I turn on the lamp next to the bed, trying not to freak out.
"It's just a dream," I whisper, but the truth is that when my dad died, his mouth moved and no sound ever came out.
When my dad died, we had just come in from our daily morning run. We always ran before breakfast, before the Charleston heat overwhelmed us and made running too much effort. We were talking about gay marriage. He was the one who got me started on writing letters for Amnesty International. I was maybe in first grade, complaining about writing being boring and stupid and a waste of my six-year-old time, and he sat me down at the dining room table and told me stories about people who were suffering.
He told me writing was never a waste of time, and that's when I wrote my first letter.
But when he died, we weren't talking about Amnesty, we were talking about his friends Dave and Don.
Don, the artist, needed health care and Dave's company wouldn't cover him. My dad opened the door and let us into the house.
"It's ridiculous. Get me some water, honey," he had said, smiling, bending over to catch his breath and leaning on his knees for balance. He'd already taken off his Red Sox hat and his silver hair beneath it was wet from sweat.
I grabbed two Poland Spring waters out of the fridge and pivoted around, and it was like my dad wasn't there anymore. That's the only way I can describe it. He cringed. White and gray erased the normal ruddy color of his skin.
"Daddy?"
He didn't answer, just sort of lifted up a hand to wave me off. Then he pointed toward the sink. "The window. He's… I saw him. Run."
"What?" I said.
"Don't let him take…"
"Daddy?"
I started to turn and look at the window but then he fell over on his side, his mouth wide open, trying to grab air. His blood didn't know what to do because his heart had failed him.
I dropped the water bottles on the floor. One rolled into his shoe, the other went back toward the fridge, hiding, I guess. I wanted to hide too. My own heart started beating crazy rhythms, out of control, against my ribs. I reached out for his hand and grabbed it. He squeezed back but not hard, not tight and strong like normal. He was weak.
"Mom!" I screamed. "Mom!"
She thundered down the stairs and stopped at the entrance to the kitchen. She sucked in her breath and grabbed the big palm plant next to the sink. Her words came out like a whisper, "He's having a heart attack." My own heart stopped then, and my dad's eyes widened and he looked at me, pleading. He had never looked at me that way before. His mouth moved. No sound came out.
At school Issie and I sit together at lunch and in all the classes we share. Devyn sits with us in the cafeteria too, and he and Issie laugh so much about the stupidest things it's hard not to laugh with them, even as I check to make sure I haven't gone transparent.
It's actually hard to get annoyed by them because they are so cute together.
"So," I say. "I think I might believe you about the pixie guy."
"Why?" Issie asks.
I chew on my bagel. "I got stuck in the ice yesterday. I went off the road."
"Nick told us," Devyn says.
"Did he tell you about the dust, too?" I ask, watching Devyn rip into a roast beef grinder.
"Yep," he says with his mouth full.
"It's weird," I say. "Especially wi
th the boy that went missing last week. I think they might be connected."
"You know about the Beardsley boy?" lssie asks.
"Betty told me that it happened before," I say. "I'm thinking about going to the computer lab and looking for info."
"I'll come with you," Devyn says, mushing the rest of his grinder in.
"Me too," lssie says, collecting his garbage and her own.
"You should be a couple," I tell lssie as we throw away our trash. "You aren't already a couple, are you?"
"Me and Devyn?" she squeaks.
"Yeah, you and Devyn," I say, elbowing her in the side. "I think he likes you."
She drops her soda can into the recycle bin and turns to stare back at Devyn.
He waves.
Her smile is huge.
"Really?" she asks.
I toss my apple core into the garbage bin. "Really."
She links her arm through mine. "I'm so glad you're here, Zara. I'm glad you aren't hanging out with Megan and her people."
She glances over at Megan, who is holding court over a throng of admirers.
Megan lifts up her eyes and meets mine. I swear if she could shoot fire at me she would, or at the very least, laser beams.
"She hates me," I say. "No big loss. I'd rather be your friend any day."
This is so corny, but lssie eats it up.
"Really? You have to come over again, you know. There's so much stuff I want to tell you." She pulls me back to the lunch table, almost hopping the entire way. "Devyn, guess what Zara just said."
"That she adores snow?" Devyn asks. "And is no longer a victim of cheimaphobia?"
lssie licks some honey that's run off her sandwich and onto her fingers.
"No."
"That she has called her mother and no longer resents her for sending her to Maine, thus ending future decades of therapy and massive loss of revenue for my revenue-hungry parents?"
"No."
I stick out my tongue at him.
"That she has indeed freed all the political prisoners throughout the globe?"
"Devyn!"
He laughs. "Okay. Okay. I'll play nice."
He turns to lssie and says all sweetly, "What did Zara say?"
"She said that she'd rather be my friend than Megan's, any day."
"Zara's no idiot," he says. He raises his eyebrows at me. "I knew you had it in you."