Here There Are Monsters

by Amelinda Bérubé

  “Seriously.” Sophie clasped my arms. Though she kept smiling, her gaze turned searching, like she was willing me to understand something. “I can handle myself, okay? You don’t need to protect me. Especially not from Kevin. Look. You don’t know about his stepmom, do you?”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, she’s married to his mom. They live in this cute little house in town. I had lots of deep, dramatic conversations with them last year. And Kevin was a total lifesaver. Like, he wasn’t even surprised. I think he figured it out before I did. He’s got this wicked radar for when people are faking it. It’s like bullshit is his superpower or something.”

  I frowned at my reflection for a second, digesting this.

  “That’s why he’s gone half the time, isn’t it? Because he’s at his mom’s?” It felt like I owed her for confiding in me, so I said out loud, a little nervously: “I figured he was just avoiding me.”

  “He’ll come around. He doesn’t trust you yet, is all. That’s why you’re getting the whole peacock display. It’s supposed to be, like, some kind of force field.” She tilted her head, considering. “I should figure out some way to get us all together while he’s at his moms’ place, actually. I bet that’d do it.”

  “Do what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Convince the two of you to fucking chill already? It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so dumb, the way you set each other off. He’s really not an asshole. Seriously. He’s just convincing.”

  “If you say so.”

  She’d turned the world upside down, like a snow globe, scattering everything I thought I knew about them into the air. After all, if Kevin was the kind of asshole I knew, he’d be making a million stupid raunchy jokes about her behind her back. But for all his ostentatious posturing, he’d never let it slip. Not in front of me. Then again, maybe he was smart enough to get that she’d wipe the floor with him without even messing up her hair.

  She’d do the same with me. Why did she tell me? She didn’t have to.

  “Well, anyway,” she said. “I’m going to be after William to actually ask you out so he’ll shut up about you for a while. So be prepared.”

  I was supposed to laugh, but couldn’t manage it. “I just…I don’t know.” I was off script. Sophie arched her brows. “He barely knows me, you know? He might not…like me that much. Up close.”

  “Now that,” she said, “is bullshit. Look. What’s not to like?”

  She took my shoulders again and pointed me at the mirror, and then I did laugh, blushing with a shyness I didn’t have to feign. It was hard to look that girl in the eye, a softer girl draped in shimmering sky-blue fabric that hugged her cleavage and skimmed her bare demure knees. If that was me, anything was possible. Transformation, even.

  “You’re a wizard,” I told Sophie, and gave her an impulsive hug.

  “You know it,” she said smugly.

  * * *

  When we walked in the door, Deirdre’s boots were sitting on the linoleum in a spreading puddle, black mud clinging to them in globs. One mud-streaked sock sat discarded beside them; the other was draped over one of the stairs. Smudged black imprints of toes marked her path from the door, punctuating a trail of pine needles and crumbled leaves.

  “Well, looks like my sister’s home,” I said, and Sophie snorted. I couldn’t let it show that I cared, that I’d never wished harder that I could just erase Deirdre from my life. I’d been counting on her still being outside. She’d shut herself in our room, at least; maybe she’d stay safely out of sight. But we’d barely set foot in the kitchen when a clatter, a thump, and a muffled growl of frustration echoed down the hall. I exchanged a glance with Sophie, who smothered a giggle under her hand.

  When I pushed the door open, Deirdre sat in the middle of our room, surrounded by dirt and chaos. Bare sticks and cedar boughs were scattered around her on the carpet. She’d shredded one of the flowered sheets from the linen cupboard into long strips. Mom would freak.

  She was intent on arranging a handful of the sticks in a tall tripod, frustration twisting her lips as the sticks wobbled and fell from the knot she was trying to tie around them with one of the pieces of the sheet. The room was icy cold—the window was wide open—and it smelled like a gym, stale and sweaty.

  “I need some string!” she exclaimed, barely looking at me. “Skye, can you get me some string from the kitchen? This is going to fall apart unless I hold it.”

  Beside me, Sophie looked at me wide-eyed, putting a hand delicately against her nose. I slung my packages to the floor, my face hot.

  “Are you kidding me?” I demanded. Deirdre rolled her eyes in an aggrieved way and ignored me, trying to weave the cloth around the tops of the sticks again. “What are you even doing?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand,” she muttered. “If you’re going to be like that, you can just—”

  “Oh, right. Sure. If I’m going to be like that. Like what, exactly?” She glowered at me for a moment, said something under her breath, and my own breath cinched tight in my chest, a knot of rage. “Go ahead and say it! Come on, I’m dying to know!”

  She hitched herself around to half turn her back to me, her stringy hair hiding her face. Her shoulder blades poked up around the straps of her spring-green dress—the dress that had to be ruined, probably; there was no way all that mud was coming out. How was she not freezing?

  I couldn’t do this. Not now. I fought for a grip on my temper, yanking the door shut. Too late. Sophie’s smile had vanished into a look I remembered from William’s first visit. Oookay. I’d crossed a line, cared too much, gotten too intense.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “I hate sharing a room with her.”

  “Wow, poor you,” Sophie said, looking back over her shoulder as we retreated down the hall. “What a freak show.”

  She was siding with me, but somehow that made me feel worse than ever. Like a turncoat, a traitor. I couldn’t come up with a suitably offhand response.

  “Little sisters are embarrassing by nature,” Sophie offered as I flopped into a chair at the kitchen table. “It’s, like, written in the laws of physics somewhere.”

  “There’s embarrassing,” I said, “and then there’s fucking creepy. I don’t understand what is up with her lately. Ever since we moved here, she’s just been—I don’t know. Off the charts.”

  “Maybe she needs therapy or something?”

  “Probably.” Mom and Dad had been muttering about that again lately. For all the good it would do. It wasn’t as if it had ever worked before. “Mom thinks she’s just lonely. Because I’ve been spending so much time with you guys. She’s…never been very good at making friends, you know?”

  “That,” Sophie said firmly, jabbing a finger at me for emphasis, “is totally not your problem. She has to sort out her own issues. You can’t do it for her. You’re allowed to have friends, okay?”

  Friends. What a concept. Until Sophie set it there in front of me, I hadn’t really dared to think it. It broke over me like the sun—warm, comforting, a little dazzling.

  “Okay,” I managed.

  Even after she left, with a promise to text me later, I kept the thought wrapped around me, bright and buoyant. Insulation against the scuffle and clatter of whatever Deirdre was doing in the bedroom. But it turned hot and withering as I tried to hold on to it. Sophie was right, dammit, she was exactly right. It wasn’t fair. Deirdre didn’t get to make me tiptoe around her, make me fight to escape her orbit.

  I steeled myself and lifted my chin before pushing the door to our room open again. Deirdre threw me a brief, sullen glance and then turned her back on me, rummaging through the sticks on the floor.

  “Go away,” she muttered.

  “It’s my room too, Deirdre.” I took a deep breath. “Look. Make a mess if you want to. Whatever. But you don’t get to humiliate me in front of my friends.�
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  “She’s your friend?”

  The disdain—the disbelief—in those three syllables ignited something.

  “Yeah. Sure, she is. Why not?”

  “She doesn’t even know you. None of them do.”

  “Right,” I snapped. “Because you know me so well.”

  “Of course I do.” She leveled a brief, meaningful glare at me. “I know you better than anyone.”

  “You do not! That is over!” She was getting to me. She always knew how. “I’m starting over, all right? Why can’t you? Why do you have to be like this?”

  “You think you’ve changed so much?” Deirdre snarled. “You think you’re all popular now? Because they pat you on the head and let you sit with them at lunch?”

  I couldn’t breathe. I’d explode in a million pieces. “At least I’m not some spooky, grimy freak who’s trying to pretend she’s all special and magical when she’s just a loser no one can stand because she never washes her goddamn hair!”

  Deirdre wheeled and threw a handful of sticks at me in a bundle. I flung my hands up to shield my face, automatic as breathing, and they clattered scratchily against my arms, bounced to the floor.

  “Shut up!” she yelled. “You don’t understand! I’m making things!”

  “Like what?” I kicked at the sticks on the floor. “What the hell is this supposed to be? You’d better clean it up before Mom gets home, or she’ll—”

  Deirdre’s lip curled in an attempt at a sneer, but tears spilled over to slide down her cheeks, leaving tracks through the smudges of dirt.

  “You don’t understand. I knew you wouldn’t understand. They told me you wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, give me a break, what are you talking about now?”

  “I’m not telling you,” she hurled at me. “You’re just like Tyler. You’re just like all the rest of them!”

  I didn’t think it was possible for me to get any angrier, but I was halfway across the room before I realized it, my hands in fists.

  “Get away from me.” She folded her arms, hunching her thin shoulders. They were shaking. I forced my hands open, forced myself to breathe.

  “It’s my room too, remember? And I’m not cleaning up after your little art project, or whatever it—”

  This time it was a rock she threw at me, her face twisted up into an awful grimace. It left a mark where it hit the wall, a little dent in the drywall.

  “What the hell, Deirdre?”

  “Get out!” she screamed. “I hate you! You’re not my sister, you never were! Get out!”

  I slammed the door so hard, the sound echoed all over the house. From the thunk and rattle behind it, more rocks followed the first.

  “You are going to be in so much trouble,” I yelled at the door, and stalked away, making my footsteps as heavy as I could. Her wordless shriek followed me down the hall. It was like she was two years old. Like she was an animal. And worse, I wanted to scream back. She always dragged me down with her.

  * * *

  To my relief and shame, both our parents took my side. It was humiliating, after all this time, going to them for justice. Still, it was surprisingly satisfying to be vindicated. She did cross the line this time. It wasn’t just me. Served her right.

  Marching Deirdre through cleaning up took more than an hour, but Mom stuck it out, her orders and Deirdre’s protests ringing across the whole house. Mom emerged from the battle as I was setting the table for the pasta Dad was making, and collapsed into a chair with a sigh, rubbing her temples. Eventually, it occurred to her to ask about my shopping trip.

  “Sophie talked me into buying a dress,” I admitted.

  “Skye in a dress?” Mom summoned a laugh. “Okay, this I have to see. Go put it on.”

  I hurried to our room, ignoring Deirdre, who was curled on her bed with her back turned to me. But when I rummaged through my purchases—quickly once, then again, more thoroughly—the slinky blue fabric was nowhere to be found.

  I sat back on my heels, reaching for calm, but rage took up a drumbeat in my head, deafening.

  “What did you do with it?” I said through my teeth. Deirdre, predictably, didn’t answer, just sniffed and swept her hair away from her face. “Goddammit, Deirdre, what did you do?”

  Mom appeared with a sigh to intervene, to broker peace. “What is it now?”

  “I can’t find it! The dress I bought! She took it, I know she did! And she had scissors in here before!” I seized Deirdre’s shoulder, dragged her around to face me, refusing to let her twist out of my grip. “What did you do with it? Tell me!”

  Mom tried to pull me away, but I was adamant, immovable, shaking Deirdre, yelling in her face, and Mom was yelling too, hauling on my arm until I gave in, threw up my hands, stalked back to my side of the room. Deirdre, her hands over her arms where I’d gripped them, let loose a long, tearful whimper. Great. Now I was in for it.

  “Skye, that was unnecessary,” Mom snapped.

  “Are you even going to ask her? Go ahead, ask her what she did with it!”

  Mom leveled a look at Deirdre, who pulled her knees up and buried her face in her arms. The whimper became a wail.

  “You hate me! You all do!”

  “Oh, Deirdre, for heaven’s sake—”

  I wasn’t staying to listen to the rest; I’d heard it all before. I collected the rest of my bags and left the room.

  Mom tried to extract answers, apologies. She finally declared that Deirdre wasn’t getting any supper until she talked, but even the next morning, Deirdre wouldn’t budge. She just folded her arms and looked away from me, sticking her chin out. Mom grounded her from going outside for the rest of the week, but by then, even she could tell it was a lost cause. She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment as if to ward off a headache as Deirdre flounced out to catch the school bus—without a fight, for once.

  “Mom—” I started, but the words ran aground. I didn’t know what to say. This was bad, even for Deirdre. Didn’t they notice? Weren’t they going to do anything?

  “I know, Skye,” she sighed. “I’m looking into it. I need referrals, and the people at her school are useless, and—well, don’t worry about it. Okay? It’s not your job.” She bumped my cheek with a kiss. “I have to get going. I can’t keep going in late like this.”

  * * *

  Dad got the new window for my basement room installed that Saturday. He let me help him carry sheets of drywall inside, showed me how to score through its paper skin with a box cutter and snap it open to reveal the dusty chalk inside. He held the sheets up while I wielded the drill to fasten them in place, and he didn’t say anything when I fumbled and sent screws pinging to the floor. With one wall covered, it actually started to look like a real room, somewhere people could live, instead of the skeletal underworld of the house.

  I caught a glimpse of Deirdre once, slouched and scowling in the doorway, watching us. I busied myself filling in the little craters the screws made in the smooth, white expanse of the new wall. I refused to look back that way long after the pressure of her sulky, jealous glare on my back had faded.

  Tile, baseboards, paint. Soon the room was finished, fresh and cool and gleaming. A blank slate, just like I wanted.

  “We can expand your plant stand, if you like,” Dad offered, and I hugged him and said sure, even though I knew it would be months before he thought of it again. When he left to go upstairs, I stretched out on my back in the middle of the floor, threw my arms as wide as I could on the chilly, unyielding tiles. It was mine. Mine, mine, mine. An oasis. The sun fell over my face and chest like a warm blanket.

  But a sharp noise at the window—a bang and a scuffle—made me jump. Outside the glass loomed an impressive black bird. A raven, maybe? Were crows that big? Its shadow stretched across the floor. I stared at it; it cocked its head to stare back at me with one beady eye.

/>   And then it slammed its beak into the window.

  Bang. Bang.

  “Jesus,” I exclaimed, and jumped to my feet. “Shoo, get lost! Get out of here!”

  It hopped an unhurried few paces from the glass and took off, into the trees. Its assault on the window had left a mark: a faint scratch that stood out white against the green shadows of the woods beyond.

  * * *

  I was trying to puzzle out math homework on the couch when Deirdre came marching past, looking determined, her arms loaded full of a stack of familiar cardboard boxes. Her dioramas. She hauled them past me into the kitchen, avoiding my stare as studiously as I’d avoided hers. There was a rustle and a crash from around the corner.

  “Deirdre?”

  She didn’t answer, but stalked back to our room—her room now—and returned with another armload. I followed her into the kitchen. She’d smashed the first few, crushed them into the recycling bin, leaving sparkles and feathers scattered over the floor. She set the next stack down beside it, ruthlessly squashing the pile together.

  “Deirdre, what are you doing?”

  “Starting over,” she said coldly.

  “But—”

  She wasn’t listening, had already disappeared back into the living room. I pulled the Queen of Wands from the wreckage, smoothing her bent limbs. Her tinfoil crown was gone. Isn’t this what you wanted? she asked, looking up at me through lidded eyes. Isn’t this what I’d said she should do? Move on? Grow up?

  There was no taking this back, anyway. The smashed dioramas made a crunching rattle when I nudged them. Well, I hoped she wasn’t going to decide this was a mistake and have some sort of meltdown later.

  She took one last box overflowing with paper downstairs. When I caught up, she was pushing it into the woodstove, snapping a match against the carton until it flared to life.

  “Deirdre,” I blurted, unable to bear the thought any longer. “Deirdre, you’re not doing this because I said—”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said flatly, and poked the match into the paper, which curled and blackened and sprang into flames. We watched for a few moments as the fire leapt up, and then she pulled the screen closed and looked around at me. Amazingly, she smiled. Maybe a little mockingly. Aww, the smile said. I’d have been annoyed if it wasn’t so disconcerting. If she hadn’t suddenly seemed so much older than me.