That night, she tossed some pizza crusts outside for Buddy, checked that the downstairs doors were all locked, and went to sleep before midnight. She had an unusually nice dream about floating in clear blue water under a bright blue sky and woke up feeling slightly less terrible. Back in Colorado her parents had told her that if she really focused on not being so dramatic and applied herself, eventually it would become easier, that faking it would, essentially, help her make it.
Perhaps if she acted as if everything were normal, everything would actually go back to being normal.
Perhaps.
10.
Lily slept so well that she didn’t dread coming downstairs the next morning. If her parents were going to stubbornly pretend nothing had happened, so would she. With the garbage mostly gone, the sun filled the den, making bright and pretty patches of butter yellow on the warm wooden boards. The huge windows showed a gorgeous view of the lake. The couches almost looked comfortable now—almost. They’d seemed moldy and clammy before, squishy enough to sink into, like quicksand. But her mom had done an excellent job cleaning everything the previous owners had left behind. For the first time, Lily smiled as she looked around.
“What are we doing today?” she asked her mom, who was cleaning out the dank cabinet under the kitchen sink.
“Our bedroom needs a lot of work,” her mom said. “If you can start on the cardboard boxes in the den, that would be a lot of help. They’re too big to fit in the recycling can, so we need to break them down, flatten them, and toss them in the dumpster. I can’t believe it, but we’re already running out of room in there.”
Lily nodded. “If I finish, would it be okay if I went out with Rachel at three o’clock? She’s coming to the dock with her boat.”
Her mom looked up, brow furrowed. “Is that the girl who brought you home yesterday?”
“Yeah. She lives on the other side of the lake. She seems really nice. Maybe a little lonely.”
And then Mom acted exactly like a mom, asking, “Did you meet her parents? Was she reckless when she was driving the boat? I don’t know how they do things around here, but it seems a little strange, letting a child drive a boat.” And then her eyebrows drew dangerously down. “And while we’re at it, what on earth possessed you to wander into the swamp alone yesterday? Your father said something about a snake.”
So Lily told her mother the safe and undramatic version of the story, making it clear that most of it wouldn’t have happened in the first place if she’d had her phone. She turned it into a simple tale of being lost in a new place, underlining how scared she was and how very much she missed her phone.
She definitely did not mention the lack of life vests in Rachel’s boat.
“I met her brother. He’s maybe fifteen. He was nice enough. And she seemed like she knew what she was doing. She drove pretty slow.”
Her mom was thinking about it. “I’m still upset about your phone, but I can’t hold you captive in this crazy old house all summer, so I guess that’s fine,” she finally said. “You can take your phone with you—just while you’re out, not for good—but I want you to be more careful. Don’t go too far away and don’t take any unnecessary risks. We don’t know this place yet. That lake looks deep. And I’m certain this area has reported necrotizing fasciitis and brain-eating amoebas in their water.” She stood and pulled Lily’s phone out of a drawer and handed it over.
Lily felt a rush of relief—and guilt. The screen was a wreck.
“Consider this a trial run,” her mom said in mom voice. “Drop that in the swamp, and you won’t get another one for a year. And you won’t see Rachel again, either.”
“I’ll be careful, I promise.” The weight of the phone was a comfort in her hand, and there was no way she’d drop it in the swamp. It was her lifeline to CJ and now Rachel, too. “Wait, do you have any bars here?” Lily asked. “I don’t. I found one for just a few seconds but…well, the texts didn’t seem to go through.”
Mom pulled her own phone out of her back pocket. “Three bars. Not bad. We may need to look into another carrier. I want to make sure I can always find you.”
Lily turned on her phone and was surprised to also see three bars. Maybe there was something about her room that made the signal sketchy. At least now she’d feel a little better exploring outside. Careful not to press too hard on the cracks in the screen, she checked her messages. There were dozens of texts from CJ, and when she was alone again, she would enjoy reading through them and sending back some of their favorite memes in return. But the weird text exchange from the night before was gone.
“Mom, did you erase some of my messages?” she asked.
Her mother looked up in surprise. “Of course not. That would be a betrayal of trust.”
Funny, Lily thought, how her mom thought erasing messages was the end of the world when the real betrayal of trust was not believing her daughter when she was telling the truth. Either way, the weird all-caps messages were gone, and nothing could bring them back.
Mom left to work on her bedroom, and after tossing some slices of bologna outside for Buddy and waiting to see if he would emerge, which he didn’t, Lily headed into the den to deal with the Amazon boxes. There were hundreds of them. They were all shapes and sizes, some already broken down, but most of them stacked inside each other, on top of each other, and leaning on each other, some still full of those strange inflatable bags that cushioned the goods inside. She found the new scissors in the kitchen and went to the smallest stack of boxes to begin breaking them down into flat pieces. Some of the larger stacks were so tall that she would have to pull them down like a giant Jenga game and just get out of their way as they fell and slid all over the room. For a bunch of messy piles made by a messy person, they all seemed to be perfectly balanced. Whoever had stacked them had shown a strange amount of care for something they obviously did not care about.
She put the Mean Girls musical soundtrack on and developed a rhythm as she sliced the tape on each box and flattened it. She then picked up the discarded airbags and punctured them with tiny snips, deflating them as she went and tossing them into a large box, shoving them down to make more room as they collected. When she moved to one of the taller stacks, she shouted, “Take that, Regina George!” and punched the middle box, then danced back as cardboard tumbled to the ground in time with the music.
Somewhere behind all the remaining piles she heard an odd sound, so she turned off the music and listened hard. It came again, almost like a gasp, like the sound a cat made when it was surprised. It was possible that animals were living back there—possums or raccoons or rats—although it was strange that any wild thing would’ve stayed there once her family had moved in and started to make noise. Half-curious and half-scared, Lily kicked some of the boxes, making the huge piles shudder and dance, hoping that would be enough to send whatever it was skittering into the light.
“Get out of here,” she shouted firmly from her diaphragm to make her voice loud and imposing. “Go on. Shoo.”
There was a rustle again and a sort of sigh. Definitely something back there. She went to the kitchen and got the broom, holding it by the handle as she poked the bristled end into the shadowy darkness in the corner behind the boxes.
When the broom poked something that wasn’t cardboard, something that very definitely felt like flesh, she jerked it back, disgusted and also terrified, her hands shaking. Whatever that thing was…it was bigger than anything she’d expected. Not a cat, not a possum, definitely not some harmless little mouse. And it didn’t feel like it was alive.
It felt like a body.
11.
This time, Lily wasn’t going to face whatever it was alone. If there was something strange to see, she wanted her mom to see it, too. But she wasn’t going to set the wrong tone by acting overly dramatic. She was going to be controlled. Poised. Rational.
“Mom!” sh
e called. “I need some help, if you have a moment.”
When her mom shuffled into the room, she had that now-familiar look of exhaustion and frustration, as if she were battling a mountain on her own and making little headway.
“What’s up, honey?” she asked. “What is it?”
Lily handed her mom the broom. “Something back there made a noise, like an animal. So I poked it with the broom and…it felt like there was something there. Maybe a raccoon or something.”
Her mom walked around the remaining boxes, nodding firmly toward the work Lily had accomplished and smiling her appreciation. As she hunched over and slid the broom between the boxes and into the shadows beyond, Lily held her breath. It’s like there were two sides to this house: Sometimes she saw an old, sad, unloved place that just needed a little elbow grease and hope, and other times she saw something that was twisted with rot and fungus and overgrowth, something that had gone dark to its roots and just wanted to be left alone again to crumble away to dust. Maybe whatever happened now, with her mother there as a witness, would reveal the truth of the place.
“I just feel cardboard,” her mom said. “And right there, where you hear the straw scraping, that’s the wall. What do you think you felt?”
Lily moved to the place where she’d crouched when she’d poked something with the broom. “Try over here,” she said. “It was low on the ground.”
Her mom obligingly changed places with her, and when she shoved the broom in that same spot, Lily knew the moment her mom felt it, too.
“Huh. Yeah, there it is. That’s strange. Let’s dig it out.”
Her mom stood and began tossing down the highest boxes, letting them tumble all over the room they had so painstakingly cleaned. Lily helped, too, because she knew she was expected to, but she didn’t try quite as hard as Mom did. Something about that lump, that fleshy, yielding something, made Lily want to hang back.
Her mom waded in deeper, tossing boxes back over her shoulder. For a moment Lily couldn’t see her at all. Her mom was only five foot two, and panic raced up Lily’s spine as she considered what would happen if the boxes swallowed her mom and she never came out again. It was a silly thought, on the surface, and not something she would have considered before she’d slept in this strange house and seen the things she’d seen.
But now she was beginning to see everything differently, like the way she saw the swamp outside: Perhaps it looked simple on the surface, maybe even pretty, but no one knew what lurked underneath. Dark water hid its depths, the swamp obscured its dangers, and something in this house always seemed to wait in the shadows.
Lily moved so she could see deeper into the pile of fallen boxes. They were no longer in neat stacks but had fallen in pieces like a giant child’s wooden blocks knocked over during a tantrum. And somewhere back in the corner, on the floor in the shadows, she saw…a shape. It looked like a child curled up, their arms around their knees. And as Lily watched, two green eyes turned toward her, shining like an animal caught in a car’s headlights, as the child-thing unwrapped itself and began to crawl toward her.
Lily yelped and stumbled back. She couldn’t breathe, and her legs didn’t want to move. She tripped on the pile of cardboard, landing inside a box and falling into it with her arms and legs flailing. Her butt hit the bottom of the box, and she struggled to stand. She could no longer see over the edge of her cardboard cage, but she could hear a horrible sound coming from the corner. It sounded like wet hands and feet crawling toward her over the boxes, sure of their path and as unstoppable as a Florida storm. A cold hand grasped her ankle, soft and clammy as a mushroom, and a rough voice whispered, “Are you ready to play with me?”
“Mom!” Lily screamed, and the hand released her foot. She could hear the cardboard shifting under someone’s weight.
“Did you fall?” Her mom’s warm, normal hand grasped hers and pulled her out of the box. “I’m sorry to laugh, but you look like a confused turtle.”
Lily stood, but everything inside of her sank. She’d never been this scared before, like she was being hunted by some horrifying creature, and her mom was just…laughing at her?
“Did you see it?” Lily asked, scanning the crazy pile of boxes. She didn’t see anything unusual now. The child-shaped thing was just…gone.
“See what?” Mom answered. Which meant no. If she’d seen what Lily had seen, felt, and heard, there would have been no question, no calm discussion.
“The thing behind the boxes,” Lily pressed. “What was it?”
“Oh, that. Pretty weird. It’s a beanbag chair, still in its plastic bag. I guess they must have ordered it, and it wasn’t what they wanted. Maybe they were going to return it? It looks like it’s in perfect condition. Do you want it?”
Mom dragged an awkward object over and dropped it in front of Lily. It was indeed a lime-green beanbag chair. It looked like it would be comfortable for watching TV. And a part of Lily wanted it. But the louder part of her, the scared part of her, knew that if it was still in its plastic there must be something desperately wrong with it. Maybe not with the chair itself. But there must’ve been a reason that it hadn’t been used, which made her not want to use it.
And touching it would always remind her of that soft, fleshy mushroom feeling, of the crawling child-thing that had gripped her ankle.
“No thanks. Wouldn’t go with my room.”
Her mom considered it. “Then maybe we should donate it. Seems like it would make some kid pretty happy.”
But Lily didn’t want to touch it, and she didn’t think that giving it to anyone else would be any better. Not that she could explain that to her mother in any way that would make sense.
“Maybe,” she said. “But it still seems kind of gross, just passing it on. There could’ve been bugs laying eggs in it or something.” She paused before asking, “So there was nothing else back there? No sign of…animals?”
Her mom shook her head. “Nope. Just the beanbag. But to be fair, when you poke it with a broom, it does feel a lot like…I’m not going to say an animal, but it feels like something that definitely isn’t cardboard. Gave you a scare, huh?”
Lily didn’t even know how to answer that question. Her mom, who’d known her every day of her life and who was trained to help people who were scared or suffering, clearly couldn’t tell that she was terrified out of her mind right now. Lily wasn’t being melodramatic, she wasn’t trying to get attention; she was overwhelmed with panic and could barely speak. Whatever she was seeing, whatever she was experiencing…her mom just didn’t get it. And maybe she wasn’t ever going to.
Being scared like this made her feel small and uncertain. It was the opposite of drama—it took something away from her, robbed her of her confidence and control. When she was acting or being melodramatic, she knew exactly what she was doing and why. She had an audience and made herself big for them, connected with them. But this feeling—knowing she wasn’t trusted, wasn’t seen—made her want to shrink into a puddle.
And, of course, she knew what happened to people who saw things that weren’t there. They ended up in the hospital, talking to doctors all day, trying to prove they weren’t crazy. She just felt so adrift, like she couldn’t tell what was true and what was imagination.
“It was just weird,” she finally said. “Do you know if anything unusual ever happened here? At this house?”
Mom looked up, wary. “Unusual like what?”
“Like…I don’t know. Someone dying here?”
Mom sighed, nudging the beanbag with her foot. “Well, it’s Florida, so they don’t have to tell us anything. I’m sure it’s just a normal house and whoever lived here had some bad luck.”
She met Lily’s eyes, and Lily thought maybe her mom wasn’t telling her the full truth.
“Hey, listen. There’s nothing you need to worry about.” Mom reached out, rubbed Lily’s
shoulder. “Your imagination can be such a gift, but it can also be scary. It can make a story out of anything, can’t it?”
Lily wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult, but she could tell she wasn’t going to get any more info out of her mom on the topic. “I guess. But, um, would you mind taking the beanbag thing out to the dumpster while I keep on with the boxes here?”
Her mom gave her that understanding kind of mom smile, the kind that said that Lily wasn’t making sense, but she was just a kid, so that was okay.
“Sure, honey. You’re doing a good job. I couldn’t do it without your help—all this cleanup. It felt pretty hopeless at first, but now it’s actually coming together. I think we’re going to be really happy here, once our stuff shows up, and we do a little DIY.”
“Hope so,” Lily said. Even though she’d practiced her smile in the mirror millions of times, it felt unnatural and strange just now.
Her mom hefted the beanbag awkwardly and dragged it toward the door. She had to contort it to get it through, and Lily shivered as she realized it looked like the beanbag was fighting her mother, trying to wriggle back in through the door.
12.
Lily felt immediately better the moment the beanbag chair was out of the house. She remembered Mrs. Burrell explaining fight or flight in biology last year and assuring the class that any kind of busy activity would help dispel that shaky feeling, so the moment her mom was back inside, she returned to the pile of cardboard. With quivering hands, she began viciously breaking down the boxes, trying not to think too hard about the cold, dead fingers that had grasped her foot, and the raspy, ravaged voice that had spoken to her, as intimate as a whisper in her ear. Even if she had imagined it, it was not a pleasant thing to imagine. Why couldn’t her brain imagine fun things, like unicorns and cupcakes and randomly meeting the cast of Hamilton in a Starbucks in Times Square?
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