Good night, Mom, I said inside my head.
Outside, the hungry night beasts started their hunt, and the whole forest shivered with fear.
Thursday
I slipped out of the bed very quietly LIKE A MOUSE. I looked at my clothes lying in a heap on the floor and pulled them on.
Dad was sleeping with his whole body curled up like a baby. I felt bad for him for needing to leave home for his opportunities and for having no shoes and for losing his company and his mom and his dad and Uncle Joshua, but I also felt mad that he did stuff that made Joshua want to die.
“I’m mad at him, too,” Clemesta said. She chewed her horse lip. “Because I think he’s trying to run away with us.”
“He is not. He’s taking us home.”
“I don’t think so. I think we are going the farthest from home we have ever been and I think I know why,” she said.
I brushed out my hair and tied my sneakers very carefully. “Hello, you,” I said to my laces when they made two friendly bunny ears.
“Have you remembered yet?” Clemesta said.
I shook my head. “Not yet. Come on,” I said. “Let’s go out and explore the lovely woods. We can pretend we’re pioneers.”
The door to the cabin creaked open. Outside, our marshmallow roasting sticks were lying beside the firepit. The moths were all dead. Their bodies were dropped around the ground like petals when they fall off the flowers.
The air was fresh and cool and lovely. Actually you could smell real trees instead of just cardboard ones hanging from car mirrors. I breathed them into my nostrils and I swatted away a tiny bug who wanted to buzz inside there too.
I tried to imagine Dad as a little boy waking up in these same woods.
I only ever saw one picture of him when he was a child. He had floppy hair and a missing front tooth and he was very skinny with long legs and big sticking-out knees and he was wearing a dirty striped T-shirt with a hole in the front. He had a stick in his hand and he was scrunching up his eyes with the bigness of his smile. He looked happy, like nothing bad had ever happened and no bears lived inside him yet.
I once asked Mom why Dad never talks about where he grew up or his mom and dad, and she just sighed and said, “It’s a long story,” but she didn’t tell it.
Grown-ups are good at that. Anything they don’t want you to know, they can lie about or pretend that it isn’t true, or they can just never talk about it. They don’t even get into trouble.
“Actually sometimes they do,” Clemesta said. “And also, you are good at pretending, too.”
I touched a hand to the trunk of the biggest tree. “How do you do?” I said to it.
Clemesta shook her head.
The woods were waking up. If you listened carefully you could hear the frogs saying good morning to each other and the lake swishing over the pebbles to turn them into hearts. The NIGHT PREDATORS had full bellies, and they were snoring in their caves. All the other animals were safe to come out. Some were crying because their beloved ones got eaten in the dark.
Clemesta and I walked around the cabin and to the edge of the trail.
“We can’t go past that line. There might be some DANGER LURKING.”
Clemesta frowned. “I think Dad is where the danger is.”
“Clemesta! You are trampling on ALL MY NERVES.”
I stomped off to examine another tree.
“This one is a million years old,” I said. “It has a house for a family of squirrels over here. Their names are the Nutskovitzes.”
I felt in my pocket for the heart-stone Dad had given me.
“He loves me very much,” I said. “With his whole heart and forever.”
Clemesta nodded. “Too much.”
“No, the perfect right amount.”
“We need to go home, Dolly,” she said.
“We are going home. How many times do I have to tell you? Now come on, be a pioneer. Say, ‘Look, we discovered all this brand-new land’ and ‘Isn’t America lovely?’ and then say, ‘I do declare this land is ours, and let all who go here go in great merriness and peace.’”
“Look at lovely America,” Clemesta said, but only with HALF her heart and not acting like a real excited pioneer at all.
“Let’s build a fire, my pretty pioneer wife,” I said. “I will go and gather sticks while you prepare us a tasty dinner.” I picked up two sticks and a leaf for the kindling.
“Dolly,” Clemesta said. “Have you looked in the NOT NOW box in your brain? I think you should.”
“Hush, horse,” I said. “Everything is just PEACHY PIE fine so stop letting your imagination run away with you to crazy-town.”
“Dolly, please. If you just let yourself THINK, you’ll remember.”
I kicked a rock with my foot and sent it tumbling over the edge of the mountains.
“STOP IT, CLEMESTA! Just stop with your silly tricks trying to get me to remember.” I plonked her on a tree trunk.
“There,” I said. “I’m ignoring you because you’re being silly and you need a good long TIME OUT to think about your behavior.”
I gave up being a pioneer. Instead I sat down and scratched around in the dirt for stones, hoping to find another magic love heart. Maybe I would give it to Dad and maybe I would save it and give it to Mom instead when I saw her again. Maybe she deserved it more. Maybe she was sorry enough for her stupid silly plan, and anyway it was all YOU KNOW WHO’S idea, NOT HERS. I know that’s true because when Mom first started talking to him, she said she never ever wanted to take me away from Dad.
“I always thought it would be too cruel,” she said. “She idolizes him so. He barely notices us most days and still he can do no wrong in her eyes.” She sniffed her tears and YOU KNOW WHO squeezed her hand.
“Well, maybe it’s the lesser of two evils,” he said, and that’s when he planted the worst and most evil idea into her brain like a POISON SEED that grew into a dark and thorny and evil tree.
I tried to chop the tree down, but maybe only in my dreams. Mr. Angry Bear was there too. I think he ate YOU KNOW WHO and then threw him up in the toilet. It left a big mess.
I took another rock and threw it as hard as I could. It went rolling down the mountain, maybe knocking an evil forest-rat on the head. That would be a very good service to the whole National Park and they would throw a party. I kicked my foot over another rock to loosen it for throwing. Some litter bug had thrown two empty beer cans in the dirt.
I heard the door to the cabin open. Dad’s voice called my name and I ran over to him.
He stretched his arms over his head. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
I watched Clemesta out of the corner of my eye. I felt the wiggly loose tooth with my tongue.
“I’m ready to leave,” I said. “We can start driving home right now. I promise I won’t complain about driving all day and being bored in the back.”
Dad rubbed the scratchy stubble on his chin. He looked at the fog kissing the tops of the trees. “I’m sorry to leave here.”
“We have to. We’re going home.”
Dad nodded. “Sure we are.”
“Promise?”
He nodded again.
The rock in my stomach went sinking down. Clemesta on her time-out tree sent a word into my brain with her telepathy powers. LIAR is what it said. I put that in the NOT NOW box and went inside to get my things.
Before we left, Dad grabbed his baseball cap and the glasses.
“That’s your secret mission disguise. To get us home extra fast,” I said.
“Exactly.” He started up the car and we drove back the way we came.
“Goodbye, Your Loveliness,” I called to the mountains.
“DEAD SQUIRREL,” I said, looking at the red blood smeared like paint on the side of the road.
“That’s probably Mrs. Nutskovitz,” Clemesta said.
“No!” I said.
She shrugged. “I’m just being honest. Hone
st is good. Not honest is bad.”
“I’m honest,” I said.
“Ha!” Clemesta turned her horse nostrils up in the air.
Dad knocked his hand against the dashboard and then said we needed to make a gas stop.
“I hate this stupid car,” I said. “It really is PREPOSTEROUS and LAMENTABLE and INCOMPETENT.”
Dad filled up the tank and then peered at me through the window. “Wait here,” he said. I tried to make my eyes roll in my head.
I kicked off my sneakers but not my socks, because I didn’t want my bare feet touching the yucky carpet which was for sure INFESTED with bugs or some kind of contagious and deadly diseases that I could catch through my toes.
Dad came back with bottled water and two newspapers and one banana full of black spots. He shoved the papers on the floor of the passenger side, but I could read the words DAUGHTER MISSING before he folded it over.
“Probably the daughter is missing her mom,” I said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Clemesta said. She folded her horse arms and turned to look out the window.
Dad handed me the banana. “It’s as healthy as I could find.”
I took it from him and set it on the seat. “It’s rotten,” I said. “It will give me food poisoning.”
Dad took the winding back roads again. I missed driving on the interstate. At least there was more to see. Here it was only trees and silence and a million miles of blank road. The road, the road. The road knows. The road knows everything, probably. It hears everybody talking and it collects secrets.
“Like you,” Clemesta said.
“I hate secrets,” I said. “I don’t want to collect them anymore. Now I’ll only collect seashells and butterflies.”
Dad wasn’t saying much. He kept looking back at me in the mirror and catching my eye in his. Then he’d look away.
We passed through a stretch of trailer homes, all hidden away in the trees and surrounded with piles of trash. One looked like every single thing from inside had been tipped right out onto the lawn. There was a sofa and a refrigerator and a knocked-over barbecue and an inflatable pool that was leaking out its air and filled with leaves. A chained-up dog ran up to the fence as far as he could get without snapping off his neck. He barked at us with angry yaps and said, “GET AWAY, FOREIGNERS. YOU DON’T BELONG HERE.” A little boy in a white T-shirt went over to him and flicked his ears to shut him up. Then he went back to dragging an old lawn mower over the dirt like it was lovely green grass and not just a pile of stones.
I looked back at him through the window. “I don’t think this is America anymore,” I said.
The dog started barking again and Clemesta put a spell on him to make him disintegrate within a week. I bet no one would miss him ONE LITTLE BIT.
Further down the road, there was a stuffed toy lying facedown in the mud.
“Why didn’t anyone pick her up?” I said. “Poor little bear. I hope you get home soon.”
“She can’t,” Clemesta said. “She’s dead.”
Dad was driving slowly. He followed a road that went nowhere, with nothing around it except for weeds and dirt. The car crunched over the stones and then stopped. Dad turned around.
“Dolly,” he said. “We have to do something now. And you’re not going to like it.”
His face was not joking and not laughing and not smiling. My heart went thumping and everything else went frozen.
Dad scratched in one of the shopping bags from the day before and pulled something out.
“Why did you buy scissors?”
“Because we need to cut your hair.”
“We don’t,” I said. “My hair is healthy and lustrous.”
Dad nodded. “I know. And I promise it will grow back.”
“What do you mean grow back?”
“I mean that we need to cut your hair,” Dad said.
“But I don’t want to.”
“I know,” Dad said. “I wish we didn’t have to do it, but we need you not to look like Dolly for a while. Just a short while.”
“But I am Dolly.”
“Dolly,” Dad said. “Please listen.”
“You’re scaring me.” Clemesta held my hand tightly. She was scared too.
Dad got out of the car and opened the back door.
“Please let’s not make this any more difficult than it already is.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I told you,” Dad said. “I need you to not look like Dolly. Just until we’re safe. Until we get home. It’s very important. I wouldn’t make you do it if it wasn’t.”
I didn’t move. “I’ll wear the cap,” I said. “I’ll wear it the whole time.”
“It’s not enough.”
He reached his hand to my seat belt to unbuckle it. He took my arm and started to pull.
“You’re hurting me.”
He didn’t let go.
“Come on,” he said. “Just stand still and let me do it and then it will all be over. Just a few minutes and we’ll be done. And then a few days more and you can be Dolly again. I promise.”
“You keep promising me stuff,” I said. “I think you’re just TELLING LIES. Big ones. Bad ones.”
“Please, Dolly.”
He was still gripping my arm. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He looked at me with eyes that were begging and pleading and desperate. “Please, Dolly. I know it’s a lot to ask but it’s for your own good.”
I looked at the scissors in his hands. I pulled my arm away and rubbed it where it was red and burning.
I turned my back so that my hair would be hanging down in front of Dad.
I heard him take a breath. Then he started to cut. I held my hands over my ears so I wouldn’t have to listen to the sound of the scissors chopping away my beautiful chestnut hair. It came floating down to the ground, falling and falling and then landing on my socks. I kicked it away.
I bit down on my lip to stop myself from crying.
Dad brushed my shoulders with his hand, flicking off the hair that was sticking to me.
“All done,” he said. He rested his hand on my neck and I moved to get away. I didn’t want him touching me. Maybe EVER again.
I looked at him with my flaming angry eyes and then I bent to look at myself in the rearview mirror. I didn’t feel like me anymore. I felt a little bit like I was broken into pieces and a little bit like I was made from steel.
Dad cleared his throat. “I have some new clothes for you too,” he said. “You should put these on.”
He held out a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. The T-shirt was green with THE INCREDIBLE HULK stuck on the front.
“Boy clothes,” I said.
“Yeah. Just for a while.”
I pulled off my clothes and threw them onto the gravelly ground. I put on the shorts. They were too big and I had to roll them up twice. Dad looked at me and he nodded.
“Yeah, that’s good.”
“No. All the good is gone and you took it.”
I climbed back inside the car and pulled the door shut with a loud bang.
Clemesta looked at me. I saw that she’d been crying.
She spoke some words into my ear.
“Are you sure?” I said.
She nodded her head. She insisted.
“All right,” I said.
I opened the door and stuck my hand out.
“Here,” I said to Dad. “You have to do Clemesta too.”
Afterward, Dad sat behind the wheel not moving and not driving.
“Thank you, Dolly,” he said.
I didn’t say anything back. I watched my chopped-off reflection in the window. I could see my hair in a pile on the grass, lying there like another dead animal on the side of the road. My clothes were there too, not like a dead animal but like a child who got vanished by bad magic.
Dad set off, the same way as before, keeping us off the interstate and driving on the empty roads. The wind was blowing cold on my bare neck. I liked feeling col
d on the outside. Inside it felt like there was a firepit.
I touched my hair. It felt like it belonged to someone else now. It was sharp and spiky, like a Stegosaurus. Clemesta’s was too. She had some clumpy parts on her head and other parts where the plastic was peeking through. She didn’t look like a magical horse queen anymore, but I didn’t tell her that. I just held her against my chest. Her heart was angry and pounding.
We passed another town and then a stretch of fields with a few trailers hiding in the trees. The blue X’s of all the flags were waving to us as we went by, reminding us that everything was all wrong.
“I hate it here,” I whispered to Clemesta. “I hate everywhere we’ve been.”
She nodded. She held my hand and sent kisses to my sad heart.
Dad kept looking back at me in the mirror, like he was checking to see if I was still there. He didn’t say anything.
I hate you, I said to the back of his head.
We kept driving. Just driving and driving. I felt like I would never get out to stretch my legs and run and play and feel the ground under my toes, or go to class and ask Miss Ellis all the questions I had been building up in a big pile of head-notes.
Like how come young girls like Jolene can sit in front of the TV all day instead of going to school, and what’s the tree called in Virginia with the purple blossoms, and what does the bumper sticker WHITE PRIDE mean? I bet she would have all the answers. She always does.
BUCKLE UP BUTTERCUP it said above a sign for the next exit. Mom likes a song called “Build Me Up, Buttercup.” Sometimes we sing it in a duet when we play the America’s Got Talent game. We have a good dance for that one, and we do it like synchronized showgirls which means we do the exact same moves at the exact same time. Mom is very good at dancing, just like me, so I guess that’s one talent I got from her as a gift.
I watched the sun fall behind the clouds and then disappear completely. The sky turned cloudy and dark. I shivered in the back and my skin went goosey.
All the Lost Things Page 17