Two Girls, a Clock, and a Crooked House

by Michael Poore

  If she’s going to eat us, Amy thought, now would be the time. Would it be a surprise? She decided it would be. She was coming to trust Ms. Goolagong, whether or not it was wise.

  They sat.

  They prepared to be surprised (however a person does that, exactly).

  “You can come out now,” said Ms. Goolagong. “It’s quite safe.”

  And someone crawled out of the oven. Someone—something?—furry and not too clean.

  Amy and Moo nearly ran, but Ms. Goolagong captured them with her two long, strong hands and said, “Steady, girls.”

  Wild-eyed, Amy and Moo evaluated the thing that had emerged from the oven and discerned that it was a boy. A rather thin boy, with hair like a haystack and the same look in his eyes that a rabbit has when it is trying to decide if you have seen it or not, and whether or not you are dangerous.

  “Pancake batter,” remarked the bird.

  “This is Amy,” said Ms. Goolagong to the boy, “and this is Gertrude. Girls, let me introduce—”

  Oliver, said Moo.

  “Oliver!” gasped Amy.

  “Oliver,” said Ms. Goolagong.

  OLIVER DIDN’T SPEAK.

  Not at first.

  He simply advanced into the middle of the room and stood there looking around at shelves and the fireplace and the ceiling. Looking anywhere except at Amy and Moo.

  Is he part ferret? asked Moo.

  “Is he part ferret?” asked Amy.

  Oliver made an offended noise.

  “Don’t be offended,” Amy told him. “Moo is part cow, mentally. I’m part lightning. It’s okay to be made up of different recipes.”

  “I’m one hundred percent person,” said Oliver, sounding tired. “I’ve just been hunting wild mushrooms most of today. I don’t always look like this.”

  A glowing spirit-eye hovered over Oliver’s head. It seemed to scan the room and the world as if it were on guard duty.

  Why was he in the oven? asked Moo. I don’t like that he was in the oven. A kid-eating witch, if you think about it—

  “Why were you in the oven?” Amy asked the boy.

  “Heard you coming,” he answered. “Wasn’t a hundred percent sure who it was. I HOPED it was Ms. Goolagong, but it sounded like more than just her.”

  Who’s he afraid of? asked Moo. It’s too weird. He hides in the oven, HOPING the witch comes back?

  “Did you know everyone thinks you’ve been eaten?” Amy asked. “They do.”

  “Girls,” said Ms. Goolagong, “give him some room. Perhaps Oliver would rather—”

  “It’s okay,” Oliver interrupted. “It’s good to talk about things. Secrets are bad for people, if you really think about it. Knowledge is like light. The more you see, the more you know. Yes, I know everyone thinks I’ve been eaten. The important thing is, I haven’t.”

  Not yet, said Moo.

  “Not yet,” said Amy.

  Oliver smiled at this and said, “That’s right. Not yet.”

  There was a space just then, a silence, that was perfectly made for someone to hop in and suggest that everyone might be hungry, and that’s exactly what happened. Ms. Goolagong bustled across the cabin, nudged Oliver into an armchair, and said, “I believe I’ll put some noodles on.”

  This was followed by a pandemonium of pots and pans being clanged and banged and filled with water.

  The moment their host said “noodles,” Amy’s mouth became a waterfall and her stomach said, “Pittsburgh!” (Which is what your stomach says when it’s empty. Listen closely next time, and you’ll see.)

  Moo’s stomach said, “Purple horse!” (which is the other thing stomachs say), and so did Oliver’s.

  “Purple horse,” repeated Tuba. “Pittsburgh. Marshmallow Jell-O.”

  There was no talking while Ms. Goolagong cooked. At first this was because of the sheer noise the witch produced. The pots BANGED, wooden spoons KNOCKED, boxes THUMPED, water HISSED from the spigot. Then the children were quiet because the cabin was warm and they were tired, and all three fell into an exquisite, dreamless doze.

  They awoke to an abrupt cry of “Noodles!”

  Ms. Goolagong presented them each with a red, steaming bowl. The cabin had filled with a hurricane of smells, some wild and spicy, some sudden and sweet.

  No one said a word at first. Then all three children just said, “OHHHhhhhhhhh!” in a way that was like a rising wind, and then they were busy awhile, eating. Tuba received a bowl of his own and was quiet and happyish like everyone else.

  “Good?” asked Ms. Goolagong. “You can thank Oliver, in part. They’re flavored with the mushrooms he picked.”

  I thought mushrooms were poisonous, said Moo. Some of them, anyway.

  Amy repeated this concern.

  “Some are poisonous,” said Oliver. “You have to know what to look for. There’s this one kind of mushroom called a pondhouse. It looks like a cross between a mushroom and a sweater: red, yellow, and black stripes all around it. Then there’s another mushroom called the deathwatch, which looks almost the same, except the red and yellow stripes touch. The pondhouse tastes like a cross between candy and smoke; there are pondhouse mushrooms in these noodles. The deathwatch mushroom also tastes like candy and smoke, but it paralyzes your lungs and you die.”

  Moo and Amy froze in midslurp.

  “Oliver,” Ms. Goolagong admonished.

  “Well, it’s true,” he said.

  “Did Ms. Goolagong teach you about this?” asked Amy. “About mushrooms?”

  “I already knew,” whispered Oliver, looking at the floor.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” Ms. Goolagong said to him.

  “Talk about what?” asked Amy.

  “I’d like to tell,” said Oliver. “It’s a happier story than ‘Poor Oliver got eaten up by a witch.’ ”

  “Oliver got eaten up by a witch!” crowed Tuba, stretching his wings. “Oliver got eaten—”

  “That will DO,” scolded Ms. Goolagong. Turning to Oliver, she nodded, saying, “Very well. You talk while I get dessert ready.”

  She turned again to the stove, only this time she seemed to make an effort not to bang things around.

  Amy was just wondering, since the noodles had been so sweet and fabulous, what dessert was bound to taste like, when Oliver said, “I used to be a ghost.”

  Amy and Moo stared at him.

  Had Ms. Goolagong raised this kid from the dead? You had to be 80 percent of a witch to do something like that, surely!

  “Not a real ghost. It’s just how I used to think of myself, because I was invisible.”

  Cool, said Moo.

  “Not really invisible. My parents just didn’t look at me, usually. I had the kind of parents who never really wanted kids. And don’t look at me like that; I don’t feel sorry for myself, so there’s no reason you should. Here’s the thing: if you don’t get used to your parents paying attention to you, it’s not like you miss it. Besides, I saw what they were like when they paid attention to each other, and they weren’t very nice. One time I counted, and they told each other to ‘shut up’ eighty-four times in one night.

  “They weren’t usually paying attention to each other, either, though. They paid attention to the TV. I mean, that’s the picture I have of them in my head. On the couch, in the middle of the trailer. They didn’t blink or move, and they’d turn out all the rest of the lights and sit there with that weird TV flicker going on. They were like zombies. One time they sat there and sat still for so long, so completely, that my dad peed his pants because he forgot to get up and use the bathroom.”

  Moo said, My mom’s like that, a little bit.

  “That’s what I mean,” Oliver continued, “when I say I was a ghost. They didn’t see me, or anything else. They forgot to do stuff like unlock
the door and let me in. Or make dinner. Or breakfast. Or go shopping. I’m serious. They were, like, undead, just staring into TV space. Until someone came and got the TV, because of money. They didn’t usually have jobs, so sometimes there were hassles like that.”

  “Were they on drugs?” asked Amy.

  “Dur,” said Oliver. “Normal people don’t just spend their lives sleeping with their eyes open. Anyway, that’s the reason why I got good at finding mushrooms. And mulberries, and mint leaves, and walnuts. You have to crack walnuts open with a rock. Also, if you put a rock in your mouth and suck on it, you don’t feel as hungry.”

  Speaking of hungry, something dessert-like began drifting around in the air. Something that was part peppermint and part tiger went crouching and snarling up Amy’s nose.

  Oh. My. God! she thought, struggling not to drool.

  She felt bad, though, smelling dessert smells while Oliver talked about his parents not feeding him. Was he for real? Amy thought about what Moo had told her, about her father. Amy wondered how many other kids she knew with secret troubles at home.

  Amy’s thought-train stopped in its tracks. Did she know kids who looked like everyone else on the outside but had horror stories inside them? She thought of going to Pangles with Moo, stealing cheese and crackers. There must be kids, she realized, who faced that kind of problem every day. Kids who sat next to her in science class, maybe. Thinking about it made her stomach turn sour and her face grow hot. She felt the same kind of mad she had felt seeing Heather getting her arm twisted or seeing the Big Duke looming over her town and her parents….

  “Why didn’t you say something to the cops?” she asked Oliver. Actually, she kind of snapped at him, without meaning to, as if it were him she was mad at.

  Oliver seemed to expect the question.

  “Who knew what would happen then?” he said. “At least I knew what to do, with zombie parents. You go in the woods and find something to eat. The woods are like a grocery store. You keep a sleeping bag tucked under the propane tank, in case you get locked out at night. See? So I was doing all right.”

  Oliver’s version of doing all right, Amy thought, and her version of doing all right were very different.

  “And then things got better,” said Oliver.

  Oh! thought Amy. Good!

  “One day…you know what a sinkhole is? Where there’s, like, a huge cave or something growing just underground, and one day the ground caves in and everything just falls down into the earth? One day a sinkhole opened up under the trailer, and—”

  “O-LI-ver!” snapped Ms. Goolagong.

  “One day,” said Oliver, “they fell asleep with their eyes open and didn’t wake up.”

  He was quiet for a minute.

  Amy almost got up to give him a big hug.

  “I’m not a hugger,” said Oliver.

  Can he hear, like we can? Amy asked Moo.

  Moo shook her head. I can’t hear him, she said. Maybe he just sorta picks up on things. Some people are like that.

  Oliver said, “I wasn’t there when it happened. I came home from school, and when I got close, there was an ambulance and a cop car and another cop car, and they were taking my mom and dad out all covered up. Like you see on TV sometimes. So you probably think, ‘Well, that would have been a good time to say something to the cops,’ and I thought about it. But I wanted to think about it for a while and not decide anything right away. So I backed up and went off into the woods, and stayed there for a long time. I wandered farther than I ever had before, and after a while I realized I had a problem. See, you have to cook mushrooms. Before, I would take the good mushrooms, like the pondhouses, into the kitchen, and Mom and Dad didn’t care if I used the stove to cook stuff, as long as I didn’t ask them to do it. Well, it wasn’t like I could do that now, right? Plus, it was getting colder, and I had left my sleeping bag under the propane tank, and thought if I went back for it…well, I thought they might be looking for me.”

  “They were,” said Amy. “Plus, the kids in your class have a thing about people sitting in your desk.”

  Oliver seemed surprised.

  “They do?” he said.

  “Yep,” said Amy. “And Mrs. Barch stares out the window like she’s looking for you.”

  Oliver looked all big-eyed just then, as if he might cry.

  “I’m not going to cry,” he said, and he didn’t. He looked as if he was probably an expert at not crying.

  Amy wanted to DO something. Mrrzzl! It made her so mad, and it was so confusing, how you could have people with perfectly good hearts over their head who had no idea how to help people who needed help!

  We should take him back to school, she thought at Moo.

  What do you mean?

  I don’t know. They love him there, obviously, even if they didn’t used to do a good job of showing it. Maybe now, if we take him—

  Shhh! Hey! Loud Girl!

  Don’t call me that! Amy seethed.

  Well, what are you thinking? Do you want someone to take US back to school?

  No, but that’s different.

  Is it? How do you know? We’re not the only ones with a complicated story. If you want to help, fine. But don’t think you can just barge in and take over someone’s life.

  Amy clenched her fists really hard. Her whole self clenched, actually.

  I kinda barged into YOUR life, she said.

  But you didn’t try and take charge, did you? All you did was show up and figure out how to be my friend.

  Amy bit her lip. What Moo said made sense. It also made her want to cry.

  I think, Moo concluded, that Ms. Goolagong will know what to do. How to help him.

  Amy found that she agreed.

  Oliver had paused to catch his breath. Now he took up his story again.

  “So one day I was thinking that if I didn’t find a solution to my food problem, I was going to be a ghost for real before long. And while I was thinking this, I came over a hill with a bunch of mushrooms in my pockets, and there was this house.”

  “It’s a cabin,” said Ms. Goolagong, without turning away from the stove.

  “A cabin,” said Oliver. “And I knocked on the door, and here I am.”

  Quiet.

  “Here you are,” sniffled Amy.

  She jumped down off the couch and hugged Oliver whether he liked it or not. It was like hugging a pile of laundry (which is to say that it was like hugging something made of clothes, and it was kind of squeezable, but without much inside it, and it didn’t hug back or say anything).

  “Thanks,” said Oliver stiffly. (Okay, so he did say something.)

  Amy returned to her place on the sofa just as Ms. Goolagong turned around, balancing five red bowls in her long hands.

  “Pondhouse Peppermint Paradise!” she announced. “Here, come and take them; my hands are full.”

  The children obeyed.

  “Peppermint breath mints,” said Tuba, accepting his bowl with a happy, spinning emoji. “Mouthwash. Q-tips. Deodorant. Foot powder.”

  Inside her bowl, Amy observed, was something like ice cream. It was pink and white and swirly, with little red and yellow stripes here and there, barely visible.

  And chopsticks.

  How did you eat ice cream with chopsticks?

  Ms. Goolagong told Oliver to scootch over and joined him in the quilt-covered chair. Then she lifted her bowl to her lips and used the chopsticks to kind of shovel the ice cream into her mouth.

  It wasn’t neat or pretty. She got some on her gown.

  Amy did the same, and—OW! It was hot!

  “Careful,” warned Ms. Goolagong. “It’s hot. It’s not ice cream at all. It’s Pondhouse Peppermint Paradise.”

  They all emptied their bowls in silence.

  “So,” Amy couldn’t h
elp saying to Oliver when she had finished, “they are looking for you. And a lot of people seem to seriously think you’ve been eaten by a witch. At some point, don’t you have to…don’t they have to come and get you, and you go live with—”

  “A foster home,” said Oliver.

  “Yeah,” said Amy.

  “No,” said Oliver.

  Oh.

  Ms. Goolagong cleared her throat and said, “Young Oliver and I have made other plans.”

  “Ms. G. looked in her crystal ball and saw that a foster home wouldn’t work out too well,” said Oliver.

  Ms. Goolagong gave Oliver a look.

  “Maybe,” she said, “I hadn’t planned on telling Amy and Gertrude about that.”

  “Yes, you had,” said Oliver, sounding pretty sure of himself.

  Amy raised her hand as if she were in school and said, “When you guys say a ‘crystal ball,’ you mean it like kind of a metaphor…?”

  But Oliver and Ms. Goolagong both seemed to cut their eyes sideways at the same shelf, where something like a bowling ball made of glass sat between a piggy bank and a pair of tennis shoes.

  “Ah,” said Amy. “Wow.”

  What did she see? asked Moo.

  “What did you see?” asked Amy.

  “Foster homes can be very good places,” said Ms. Goolagong, “and they can be very bad places. In any case, I am Oliver’s foster home.”

  “Exactly,” said Oliver.

  “Is that…legal?” asked Amy. “I mean, I’m not an expert, but don’t you have to fill out papers, and go to court and get permission, and—”

  “Look!” cried Ms. Goolagong, pointing at the ceiling. “A spider in red pajamas, reciting the Gettysburg Address!”

  The children all looked and then felt silly.

  “Any more questions?” asked Ms. Goolagong in a voice that suggested there shouldn’t be any more questions.

  Still, Moo asked, can she look in the ball for us?

  She sounded meek. She sounded like she really, really, really, really, really wanted Ms. Goolagong to look in the ball.

  Before Amy could relay the question, Ms. Goolagong said, “I’ve already looked.”