The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 7

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Not happy,” Lizzy says between sobs. “He killed her.”

  “No, no. Look. She’s not dead. Just sleeping. Then he kisses her, and they live happily ever after.”

  “Noooo,” Lizzy wails. “Not her. Melficent!”

  They do not stay for Rock Hudson.

  3.

  “Lizzy? Put your shoes back on,” her mother says.

  Her father looks up over Field and Stream. “Where are you two off to?”

  “Town and Country. I’m taking Lizzy to the T-O-Y-S-T-O-R-E.”

  “Why? Her birthday’s not for months.”

  “I know. But everyone’s going to bring presents for the baby, and Dr. Spock says that it’s important for her to have a little something too. So she doesn’t feel left out.”

  “I suppose.” He shrugs and reaches for his pipe.

  When her mother stops the car right in front of Kiddie Korner, Lizzy is so excited she can barely sit still. It is where Christmas happens. It is the most special place she knows.

  “You can pick out a toy for yourself,” her mother says when they are inside. “Whatever tickles your fancy.”

  Lizzy is not sure what part of her is a fancy, but she nods and looks around. Kiddie Korner smells like cardboard and rubber and dreams. Aisle after aisle of dolls and trucks, balls and blocks, games and guns. The first thing she sees is Play-Doh. It is fun to roll into snakes, and it tastes salty. But it is too ordinary for a fancy.

  She looks at stuffed animals, at a doll named Barbie who is not a baby but a grown-up lady, at a puzzle of all the United States. Then she sees a Sleeping Beauty coloring book. She opens it to see what pictures it has.

  “What fun! Shall we get that one?”

  “Maybe.”

  It is too soon to pick. There is a lot more store. Lizzy puts it back on the rack and turns a corner. Sleeping Beauty is everywhere. A Little Golden Book, a packet of View Master reels, a set of to-cut-out paper dolls, a lunchbox. She stops and considers each one. It is hard to choose. Beside her, she hears an impatient puff from her mother, and knows she is running out of time.

  She is about to go back and get the coloring book when she sees a shelf of bright yellow boxes. Each of them says P-U-P-P-E-T in large letters.

  “Puppets!” she says, and runs over to them.

  “Oh, look at those! Which one shall we get? How about the princess? Isn’t she pretty!”

  Lizzy does not answer. She is busy looking from one box to the next, at the molded vinyl faces that peer out through cellophane windows. Princess, princess, princess. Prince. King. Fairy, fairy, fairy, prince, fairy, princess.—and then, at the end of the row, she sees the one that she has not quite known she was looking for. Maleficent!

  The green face smiles down at her like a long-lost friend.

  “That one!” Lizzy is not tall enough to grab the box; she points as hard as she can, stretching her arm so much it pulls her shoulder.

  Her mother’s hand reaches out, then stops in mid-air. “Oh.” She frowns. “Are you sure? Look, here’s Flora, and Fauna, and—” She pauses. “Who’s the other one?”

  “Merryweather,” Lizzy says. “But I want her!” She points again to Maleficent.

  “Hmm. Tell you what. I’ll get you all three fairies.”

  That is tempting. But Lizzy knows what she wants now, and she knows how to get it. She does not yell or throw a tantrum. She shakes her head slowly and makes her eyes very sad, then looks up at her mother and says, in a quiet voice, “No thank you, Mommy.”

  After a moment, her mother sighs. “Oh, all right,” she says, and reaches for the witch.

  Lizzy opens the box as soon as they get in the car. The soft vinyl head of the puppet is perfect—smiling red lips, yellow eyes, curving black horns. Just as she remembers. Beneath the pale green chin is a red ribbon, tied in a bow. She cannot see anything more, because there is cardboard.

  It takes her a minute to tug that out, and then the witch is free. Lizzy stares. She expected flowing purple and black robes, but Maleficent’s cotton body is a red plaid mitten with a place for a thumb on both sides.

  Maybe the black robes are just for dress-up. Maybe this is her bathrobe. Lizzy thinks for a few minutes, and decides that is true. Plaid is what Maleficent wears when she’s at home, in her castle, reading the paper and having coffee. It is more comfortable than her work clothes.

  4.

  On Saturday, Lizzy and her mother go to Granny Atkinson’s house on the other side of town. The women talk about baby clothes and doctor things, and Lizzy sits on the couch and plays with her sneaker laces. Granny gets out a big brown book, and shows her a picture of a fat baby in a snowsuit. Mommy says she was that baby, a long time ago, but Lizzy does not think that could be true. Granny laughs and after lunch teaches Lizzy to play gin rummy and lets her have two root beers because it is so hot.

  When they pull into their own driveway, late in the afternoon, Lizzy’s mother says, “There’s a big surprise upstairs!” Her eyes twinkle, like she can hardly wait.

  Lizzy can’t wait either. She runs in the front door and up to her room, which has yellow walls and a window that looks out onto the driveway so she can see when Daddy comes home. She has slept there her whole life. When she got up that morning, she made most of her bed and put Maleficent on the pillow to guard while she was at Granny’s.

  When she reaches the doorway, Lizzy stops and stares. Maleficent is gone. Her bed is gone. Her dresser with Bo Peep and her bookcase and her toy chest and her chair. All gone.

  “Surprise!” her father says. He is standing in front of another room, across the hall, where people sleep when they are guests. “Come and see.”

  Lizzy comes and sees blue walls and brown heavy curtains. Her bed is next to a big dark wood dresser with a mirror too high for her to look into. Bo Peep is dwarfed beside it, and looks as lost as her sheep. The toy chest is under a window, Maleficent folded on top.

  “Well, what do you think?” Her father mops his face with a bandana and tucks it between his blue jeans and his white t-shirt.

  “I liked my room,” Lizzy says.

  “That’s where the baby’s going to sleep, now.” Her mother gives her a one-arm hug around the shoulders. “You get a big-girl room.” She looks around. “We will have to get new curtains. You can help me pick them out. Won’t that be fun?”

  “Not really.” Lizzy stands very still in the room that is not her room. Nothing is hers anymore.

  “Well, I’ll let you get settled in,” her father says in his glad-to-meet-you voice, “and get the grill started.” He ruffles his hand on Lizzy’s hair. “Hot dogs tonight, just for you.”

  Lizzy tries to smile, because they are her favorite food, but only part of her mouth goes along.

  At bedtime, her mother hears her prayers and tucks her in and sings the good-night song in her sweet, soft voice. For that few minutes, everything is fine. Everything is just the way it used to be. But the moment the light is off and the door is closed—not all the way—that changes. All the shadows are wrong. A streetlight is outside one window now, and the very big tree outside the other, and they make strange shapes on the walls and the floor.

  Lizzy clutches Maleficent under the covers. The witch will protect her from what the shapes might become.

  5.

  “When do you get the baby?” Lizzy asks. They are in the yellow bedroom, Lizzy’s real room. Her mother is folding diapers on the new changing table.

  “Two weeks, give or take. I’ll be gone for a couple of days, because babies are born in a hospital.”

  “I’ll go with you!”

  “I’d like that. But this hospital is only for grown-ups. You get to stay here with Teck.”

  Teck is Lizzy’s babysitter. She has a last name so long no one can say it. Lizzy likes her. She has white hair and a soft, wrinkled face and makes the best grilled cheese sandwiches. And she is the only person who will play Candy Land more than once.

  But when the baby starts to co
me, it is ten days too soon. Teck is away visiting her sister Ethel. Lizzy’s father pulls into the driveway at two in the afternoon with Mrs. Sloupe, who watches Timmy Lawton when his parents go out. There is nothing soft about her. She has gray hair in tight little curls, and her lipstick mouth is bigger than her real one.

  “I’ll take your suitcase upstairs,” he tells her. “You can sleep in our room tonight.”

  Her mother sits in a chair in the living room. Her eyes are closed, and she is breathing funny. Lizzy stands next to her and pats her hand. “There there, Mommy.”

  “Thank you, sweetie,” she whispers.

  Daddy picks her up and gives her a hug, tight and scratchy. “When you wake up in the morning, you’re going to be a big sister,” he says. “So I need you to behave for Mrs. Sloupe.”

  “I’ll be very have,” Lizzy says. The words tremble.

  He puts her down and Mommy kisses the top of her head. Then they are gone.

  Mrs. Sloupe does not want to play a game. It is time for her stories on TV. They can play after dinner. Dinner is something called chicken ala king, which is yellow and has peas in it. Lizzy only eats two bites because it is icky, and her stomach is scared.

  Lizzy wins Candy Land. Mrs. Sloupe will not play again. It is bedtime. But she does not know how bedtime works. She says the now-I-lay-me prayer with the wrong words, and tucks the covers too tight.

  “Playing fairy tales, were you?” she says, reaching for Maleficent. “I’ll put this ugly witch in the toy chest, where you can’t see it. Don’t want you having bad dreams.”

  “No!” Lizzy holds on to the puppet with both arms.

  “Well, aren’t you a queer little girl?” Mrs. Sloupe says. “Suit yourself.” She turns off the light and closes the door, all the way, which makes the shadows even more wrong. When Lizzy finally falls asleep, the witch’s cloth body is damp and sticky with tears.

  Her father comes home the next morning, unshaven and bleary. He picks Lizzy up and hugs her. “You have a baby sister,” he says. “Rosemary, after your mother’s aunt.” Then he puts her down and pats her behind, shooing her into the living room to watch Captain Kangaroo.

  Lizzy pauses just beyond the hall closet and before he shuts the kitchen door, she hears him tell Mrs. Sloupe, “She was breech. Touch and go for a while, but they’re both resting quietly, so I think we’re out of the woods.”

  He takes Mrs. Sloupe home after dinner, and picks her up the next morning. It is three days before Teck arrives to be the real babysitter, and she is there every day for a week before he brings Mommy and the baby home.

  “There’s my big girl,” her mother says. She is sitting up in bed. Her face looks pale and thinner than Lizzy remembers, and there are dark places under her eyes. The baby is wrapped in a pink blanket beside her. All Lizzy can see is a little face that looks like an old lady.

  “Can we go to the playground today?”

  “No, sweetie. Mommy needs to rest.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Maybe next week. We’ll see.” She kisses Lizzy’s cheek. “I think there’s a new box of crayons on the kitchen table. Why don’t you go look? I’ll be down for dinner.”

  Dinner is a sack of hamburgers from the Eastmoor Drive-In. At bedtime, Mommy comes in and does all the right things. She sings two songs, and Lizzy falls asleep smiling. But she has a bad dream, and when she goes to crawl into bed with Mommy and Daddy, to make it all better, there is no room. The baby is asleep between them.

  For days, the house is full of grown-ups. Ladies and aunts come in twos and threes and bring casseroles and only say hi to Lizzy. They want to see the baby. They all make goo-goo sounds and say, “What a little darling!” At night, some men come, too. They look at the baby, but just for a minute, and do not coo. They go out onto the porch and have beers and smoke.

  The rest of the summer, all any grown-up wants to do is hold the baby or feed the baby or change the baby. Lizzy doesn’t know why; it is very stinky. She tries to be more interesting, but no one notices. The baby cannot do a somersault, or say the Pledge of Allegiance or sing “Fairy Jocka Dormy Voo.” All she can do is lie there and spit up and cry.

  And sleep. The baby sleeps all the time, and every morning and every afternoon, Mommy naps with her. The princess is sleeping, so the whole house has to stay quiet. Lizzy cannot play her records, because it will wake the baby. She can’t jump on her bed. She can’t even build a tall tower with blocks because if it crashes, it will wake the baby. But when the baby screams, which is a lot, no one even says Shhh!

  Lizzy thinks they should give the baby back.

  “Will you read to me?” she asks her mother, when nothing else is happening.

  “Oh….not now, Lizzy-Lou. I’ve got to sterilize some bottles for Rosie. How ’bout you be a big girl, and read by yourself for a while?”

  Lizzy is tired of being a big girl. She goes to her room but does not slam the door, even though she wants to, because she is also tired of being yelled at. She picks up Maleficent. The puppet comes to life around her hand. Maleficent tells Lizzy that she is very smart, very clever, and Lizzy smiles. It is good to hear.

  Lizzy puts on her own bathrobe, so they match. “Will you read to me?” she asks. “Up here in our castle?”

  Maleficent nods, and says in a smooth voice, “Of course I will. That would be lovely,” and reads to her all afternoon. Even though she can change into anything she wants—a dragon, a ball of green fire—her eyes are always kind, and every time Lizzy comes into the room, she is smiling.

  On nights when Mommy is too tired, and Daddy puts Lizzy to bed, the witch sings the good-night song in a sweet, soft voice. She knows all the words. She whispers “Good night, Lizzy-Tizzy-Toot,” the special, only-at-bedtime, good-dreams name.

  Maleficent loves Lizzy best.

  6.

  Lizzy is glad when it is fall and time for nursery school, where they do not allow babies. Every morning Mrs. Breyer and Mrs. Huntington and Mrs. Lawton take turns driving to Wooton Methodist Church. When her mother drives, Lizzy gets to sit in the front seat. Other days she has to share the back with Tripper or Timmy.

  She has known Timmy her whole life. The Lawtons live two doors down. They have a new baby too, another boy. When they had cocktails to celebrate, Lizzy heard her father joke to Mr. Lawton: “Well, Bob, the future’s settled. My two girls will marry your two boys, and we’ll unite our kingdoms.” Lizzy does not think that is funny.

  Timmy is no one’s handsome prince. He is a gangly, insubstantial boy who likes to wear sailor suits. His eyes always look as though he’d just finished crying because he is allergic to almost everything, and is prone to nosebleeds. He is not a good pick for Red Rover.

  The church is a large stone building with a parking lot and a playground with a fence around it. Nursery school is in a wide, sunny room on the second floor. Lizzy climbs the steps as fast as she can, hangs up her coat on the hook under L-I-Z-Z-Y, and tries to be the first to sit down on the big rug in the middle of the room, near Mrs. Dickens. There are two teachers, but Mrs. Dickens is her favorite. She wears her brown hair in braids wrapped all the way around her head and smells like lemons.

  Lizzy knows all the color words and how to count up to twenty. She can write her whole name—without making the Zs backward—so she is impatient when the other kids do not listen to her. Sometimes she has to yell at them so she can have the right color of paint. The second week of school, she has to knock Timmy down to get the red ball at recess.

  Mrs. Dickens sends a note home, and in the morning, the next-door neighbor comes over to watch the baby so Lizzy’s mother can drive her to school, even though it is not her turn.

  “Good morning, Lizzy,” Mrs. Dickens says at the door. “Will you get the music basket ready? I want to talk to your mother for a minute.”

  Lizzy nods. She likes to be in charge. But she also wants to know what they are saying, so she puts the tambourine and the maracas in the basket very quietly, and listens.<
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  “How are things at home?” Mrs. Dickens asks.

  “A little hectic, with the new baby. Why?”

  “New baby. Of course.” Mrs. Dickens looks over at Lizzy and puts a finger to her lips. “Let’s continue this out in the hall,” she says, and that’s all Lizzy gets to hear.

  But when they make Circle, Mrs. Dickens pats the right side of her chair, and says, “Come sit by me, Lizzy.” They sing the good-morning song and have Share and march to a record and Lizzy gets to play the cymbals. When it is time for Recess, Mrs. Dickens rings the bell on her desk, and they all put on their coats and hold hands with their buddies and walk down the stairs like ladies and gentlemen. For the first time, Mrs. Dickens is Lizzy’s buddy, and no one gets knocked down.

  On a late October morning, Lizzy’s mother dresses her in a new green wool coat, because it is cold outside. It might snow. She runs up the stairs, but the coat is stiff and has a lot of buttons, and by the time she hangs it up, Anna von Stade is sitting in her place in the circle. Lizzy has to sit on the other side of Mrs. Dickens and is not happy. Timmy sits down beside her, which does not help at all.

  “Children! Children! Quiet now. Friday is a holiday. Who knows what it is?”

  Lizzy’s hand shoots straight up. Mrs. Dickens calls on Kevin.

  “It’s Halloween,” he says.

  “Very good. And we’re going to have our own Halloween party.”

  “I’m going to be Pinocchio!” David says.

  “We raise our hand before speaking, David.” Mrs. Dickens waggles her finger at him, then waits for silence before she continues. “That will be a good costume for trick-or-treating. But for our party, I want each of you to come dressed as who you want to be when you grow up.”

  “I’m going to be a fireman!”

  “I’m going to be a bus driver!”

  “I’m going—”

  Mrs. Dickens claps her hands twice. “Children! We do not talk out of turn, and we do not talk when others are talking.”