Mine

by Delilah S. Dawson

  I’m okay. I’m okay. Everything is okay. It’s my imagination. It’s the stuffy air.

  She refocused on the boxes. There was something soothing about physical labor. Each box had to be sliced where it was taped together, popped apart until it was flat, and then settled onto a stack with the bigger boxes on the bottom. When a stack got big enough, she carried the heavy cardboard flats outside two at a time and tossed them in the dumpster, where they settled as neatly as slices of bread. It should’ve been easy work, but she couldn’t stop thinking about what it felt like, poking something with the broom and imagining that it was a dead body. She couldn’t stop reliving the moment when it seemed something had crawled at her, and she’d remained stuck in that box, helpless, and the cold fingers touched her leg, over and over in her mind—and then the scissors slipped and she sliced her middle finger wide open.

  This time when she called her mom, she didn’t try to sound calm or reasonable. She’d cut deep, and the blood was welling out, dripping on the pile of dusty brown cardboard. Her mom was by her side in a heartbeat, kneeling, worried. She didn’t have to ask what was wrong. She could see it. Even through her panic, Lily was flooded with relief that finally, finally someone was taking her seriously.

  “Okay, honey. It’s going to be okay. Let me go see if I can find some Band-Aids,” her mom said calmly, stroking the sweaty hair away from Lily’s forehead.

  “But…so much blood…” Lily felt it happen—the swoon. She hated seeing her own blood. Her mom caught her as she fell, and Lily was kind of there and kind of not. Shadows danced in her vision, everything washed over red with sparkling pinpricks like fireworks.

  “Whoa, there, honey,” her mom said gently, helping her sit up. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Easy to say when you’re not the one bleeding,” Lily murmured weakly. “I’ve lost a gallon of blood already.”

  Her mom chuckled. “That’s how I know you’re going to be all right. You’re being snarky and melodramatic. Now, just stay here for a minute. Hold it for me. You’re going to be fine, I promise.” Mom wrapped Lily’s good hand around the cut and held it firmly to show her what to do. Lily tried to ignore the slippery feel of her own blood and the bright smell of salt and copper overlaying the house’s constant scent of dust and rot. She struggled to keep her eyes open. If she closed them again…that thing might come back and touch her.

  She felt the exact moment her mom left the room. It was as if the sun stopped shining. And, well, it had. The sky was gray now, and it looked like it was going to rain. That was one thing her mother had told her about Florida: You could have a perfectly bright sunny day, and then suddenly a crazy thunderstorm would show up out of nowhere and rage for twenty minutes, then go away, and it would be a bright day again.

  “Here we are,” her mom said. She was holding an ancient box of Band-Aids. Seriously ancient. They didn’t have cartoon characters on them, and they weren’t in a variety of skin colors. They were just plain, peach-colored, rubber-smelling Band-Aids.

  “How old are these?” Lily asked with a sad little laugh. “Do they even work still? Am I going to get some weird old disease?”

  But her mom, the registered nurse, was already busy taking care of things. Since they didn’t have the usual first aid supplies, she had Lily wash the cut well with soap and water in the sink and dry it off with paper towels. Then she laboriously unwrapped one of the old Band-Aids and stuck it around Lily’s finger. It was too tight and felt kind of gross, but at least she wasn’t bleeding anymore.

  “See? No big deal. Good as new.”

  Lily was trying to think of a reason to keep her mom there so she wouldn’t be alone, and thankfully her mom sensed her unease. “You just flatten the boxes,” Mom told her. “I’ll handle the scissors. We’ll finish it together and then it will be done, and then lunch. How about that?”

  It went faster that way. Mom sliced the boxes, Lily flattened them, and they worked together to carry them out and stack them in the dumpster before the rain began. Lily noted that the bean bag chair wasn’t in the dumpster—it was in the back of Mom’s car. She didn’t mention it, though. All the fight had gone out of her. Soon, wonder of wonders, the room was completely empty of cardboard. And it was transformed.

  When Lily had first seen it, it had seemed like a rotting nightmare labyrinth of looming garbage and sinister shadows. Now it was just a den like any other, if a little droopy and outdated. The couch and love seat were arranged around an entertainment center that had once held dusty VHS cassettes and some old science-fiction novels. Mom had gotten rid of those early on. They just felt so personal. Same with the old leather recliner that smelled like BO and matched the destroyed one outside. Lily was glad to see them both gone—there was something sad about the matched pair. She was curious why only one of them had been dragged outside originally, though. There were now two bright spots of wood where they’d once sat.

  When the family’s storage container arrived, they would finally have all the pieces they needed to make the space feel like home. They had better couches. They had a nicer entertainment center. They had rugs to cover those odd bright spots. They had their bookshelves and books and pictures, and soon this room would not look bare and sad. It would be a place where they could make their own memories.

  Now it just felt empty. But empty was better than haunted.

  Empty was better than riddled with hiding places for…whatever that had been.

  They took a break for lunch right as the storm hit. Mom offered to go out for fast food and ice cream, but then black clouds rolled in and rain fell like a hammer, making home seem like a much drier option. The house went dark as the storm raged, so they turned on all the lights and cooked grilled cheese sandwiches in a shiny new pan. They had potato chips and apples and snack cakes. Since they had to live in the unfinished house, Mom had loosened up about junk food.

  When they were done, and Lily had made sure there was nothing else she could help with, she went to her bathroom to make sure she didn’t look like she’d been spelunking in a cave of dust bunnies. She didn’t have expensive clothes like Rachel, but she wanted to look her best, so she brushed her long, dark hair into a ponytail and changed into clean shorts free of swamp mud and bloodstains.

  Just as her mom had promised, the storm battered the house like crazy and then quit suddenly, leaving the world a magical golden green that glittered with raindrops. Lily grabbed some lunch meat on her way out and went to hang around near the dock. Her phone was now fully charged and had three bars. She had a little time before Rachel’s arrival that she planned to fill by texting CJ some Newsies GIFs. Maybe Buddy would even show up again and she could convince him to succumb to belly rubs using tidbits of ham.

  The old wood of the dock was dark and slick with rain. The water itself was cloudy black, even harder to see through than yesterday since it had been stirred up by the storm. She didn’t want to sit down on the wet, spongy boards, so she stood around hopping from foot to foot. There was no sign of Buddy, but then again, he seemed to want to remain hidden. Only the promise of food had brought him out before.

  “Hey, Buddy. Here, boy,” she called, tearing off a piece of ham and waggling it in the air, hoping he would smell it or see it and come running.

  For a few minutes, nothing happened, and she took a few pics of the creepy swamp and sent them to CJ. But then she heard a rustling in the woods. If she hadn’t seen Buddy before, if she hadn’t been a hundred percent certain that he was just a poor lost dog, she might have been afraid that something worse was coming through the forest toward her. But she could hear it now, the sound of his tail wagging at the certainty of supper. The dog appeared, trembling, looking like the storm had battered him. His thickly matted hair was wetted down and heavy, making him a dark, dirty gray, like some hideous swamp monster. His black eyes flashed through the bedraggled tendrils, desperate. She t
ossed him a piece of meat.

  The poor dog gobbled it up without even tasting it. When he looked at her again, she saw a sort of devotion shining in his eyes. She tossed him another piece of meat, and he devoured it.

  “How would you feel about some grooming, huh? Maybe a bath? You need to get shaved down. I could bring out some scissors at least. So you could see better.”

  His tail thumped uncertainly. Maybe he recognized one of those words and didn’t like it. Lily didn’t know much about dogs or their care, but she knew that this dog had been loved once and now missed it. And he desperately needed attention. She tossed down her last piece of meat and said, “Stay here, Buddy. I’ll bring you more food.”

  She ran inside and grabbed some more meat before her mom could see it. She also snatched the crusts from her grilled cheese from the top of the trash can. Then she picked up the scissors, being careful to hold the points clutched in her fist while she jogged outside. She was painfully aware that now was not a good time to forget scissor safety.

  Buddy was waiting for her. He must’ve understood that more food would be coming, or at least he had high hopes. She tossed down the crusts and patted his head. This time he didn’t flinch. After some comforting scratches and pats, she grabbed up a wad of the long matted hair on his forehead and snipped it off with her scissors. Buddy jerked away in surprise, but then he looked at her with eyes that were actually a warm chocolate-cake brown, and she could almost see him telling her thank you. As she fed him bits of meat, she used her scissors to snip off the bigger clumps of fur and freed his tail so that it could fully wag again. She snipped around his legs, where old mats made it hard for him to move. He didn’t seem to like the process, but he didn’t hate it. Maybe he was ready to trust again.

  Buddy heard Rachel’s boat right before Lily did. He bolted into the forest and wouldn’t return no matter how many times she called him. Rachel deftly parked at the dock and waved.

  “Kyle said you wouldn’t be here,” she said. “But I thought you might. Was that your dog?”

  Before stepping onto the boat, Lily rubbed her hands on her shorts, hoping that she didn’t smell like lunch meat and old, dirty dog.

  “Not mine. But he used to live here, I think. He had a collar on when I saw him the first time, and the tags had this address. His name is Buddy. Have you seen him before?” She sat on the boat seat, but Rachel kept looking at the house, too curious to pull away from the dock.

  Rachel’s brow drew down. “I think I’ve seen him? He used to look a lot better, though. He would get loose and go for runs. I saw a little kid on the main road once, hollering and squeaking a toy. A girl. She had short hair. But when I called out to her, she ran away.”

  Rachel paused. It looked like something was bothering her, or maybe she wasn’t sure what to say. And Rachel didn’t seem like someone who was often at a loss for words.

  “I don’t know if it was this house,” she said. “But I remember something happening around here, on this side of the lake. Couple of years ago. We saw the lights through the trees. Fire trucks and ambulances. Lots of police, red and blue flashing, you know? Everybody on the bus was talking about it. And then Kyle said there was caution tape on the dock for a while. I never really thought about it, but…I think maybe something really bad happened here.”

  Rachel’s eyes went wide. “Somebody said the little girl died.”

  13.

  Lily’s heart fluttered for a moment, but then she connected the dots.

  “I bet it was the old man. I heard my parents say it was natural, and I found some old prescriptions he didn’t fill, so I think he actually died here. That’s why the house is so gross. The little girl probably went to live somewhere else after that.”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said, staring toward the house, shielding her eyes with a hand. “There’s this urban legend about a little ghost girl running down the middle of the street at night. Kyle said he saw her once when some junior was driving him home in the rain. He said the ghost looked like she was confused, looking for something.”

  “Do you know what her name was?”

  “The girl who lived here, or the ghost girl? Neither. This kid at my school named Jaiden said she was murdered, but he lies all the time.”

  “Where do you go to school?” Lily asked her, switching subjects before Rachel thought she was weird for asking too many questions about ghosts.

  Of course, she couldn’t stop thinking about a murdered ghost girl running barefoot down the long, dark road, but her next biggest worry was definitely school. Mom hadn’t yet mentioned which school she would be attending, but she knew there were several choices in the area.

  “Amblewood Prep. It’s off the highway, a couple of miles down. It’s a private school. I kind of hate it, but I think I would kind of hate any school. Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Not yet. We’ve only been here a couple of days. We don’t even have Wi-Fi yet.”

  Rachel shrugged and steered the boat into the lake. “Oh well. We’ve got two months until school, so who cares? Now I’ll show you the cool parts of Lake Silence.”

  They were out all afternoon. Rachel had brought supplies: sunblock, bug repellent, fishing poles, bread, binoculars, a birding book, and, most important, snacks. Lily was glad to learn that even though Rachel looked like one of the popular girls from back home, she was nice and not catty at all. She was kind of a nerd, too. She had a list of birds in the back of her book and she got really excited when she got to check off a new one she hadn’t seen before. Her enthusiasm actually made Lily kind of care about birds for a little while. And when Lily told her there was a musical for Tuck Everlasting, which was one of Rachel’s favorite books, Rachel promised she’d listen to the soundtrack. Then Lily caught her first fish, a bluegill, and she was glad that Rachel didn’t mind removing the hook so they could throw it back. But Lily absolutely refused to kiss the fish on the lips, a weird custom that Rachel said meant she would catch the fish again. Lily did not want to catch another fish badly enough to kiss this one. There were, apparently, limits to her drama, and kissing fish was one of them.

  The sun was just starting to set when Rachel pulled the boat back up to Lily’s dock. Lily had told her that she needed to be home before dinner, not only so her parents wouldn’t be annoyed with her again, but also because it just got creepy out here after dark…especially after hearing about the caution tape and the ghost girl.

  “Thanks for the tour,” she said as she stepped onto the wobbling dock.

  “No worries,” Rachel said with a smile. “It’s cool to have someone nearby to hang with. Our neighborhood is mostly rich old people, and they kind of hate seeing anyone under sixty having fun. If you want to come over tomorrow, we can jump on the trampoline and swim and play video games or whatever. Kyle won’t be there, so we’ll have the house to ourselves.”

  “Your parents let you stay home alone all day?” Lily asked.

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “No. Carla is always there, even though we basically ignore her. She’s been around since Kyle was a baby.”

  Lily hadn’t been alone that much in her life, either. Her mom had always arranged her schedule so that she could be home in the afternoon, and her parents didn’t go out on dates very often. She needed to ask her mom when she would start her new job at the hospital and what her hours would be like here. She hadn’t considered the possibility yet, but she didn’t really want to be alone in the new house, especially after dark.

  She thanked Rachel again, and the boat pulled away, leaving a shimmering wake in the colors of the sunset. Back home in Colorado, Lily mostly stuck with CJ and the drama kids en masse, and her social calendar was always busy around the fall musical and spring play. She’d never really hung out with just one person who lived nearby. Of course, Lily knew she wouldn’t be going to the expensive private school that Rachel attended—
the only reason they were here was that they were super broke—but it would be nice to know she had someone within walking distance to hang with on the weekends. And hopefully for the rest of the summer.

  She quickly got off the rickety old dock—it just never felt safe. The green weeds of the yard still sparkled with raindrops. She could see the path Buddy had taken when he hurriedly escaped into the forest, because he’d left a dark trail through the droplets. The afternoon was edging into dusk, but there was still a blazing orange light limning every edge as the brilliant sun sank behind the stark black trees, a legacy of the storm. Lily had not yet gone into that part of the forest, over on the right side of her house, so she took a few steps in that direction, following Buddy’s path and wondering where he spent all his time.

  It was an odd sort of forest, very different from the tall old trees in Colorado with the mountains always standing vigilant behind them. This patch of woods seemed very sharp by comparison, with low spiky plants that looked like something dinosaurs would eat, shaped like giant pineapples or cacti without the spines. The plants grew tightly together and were difficult to get past. As she tried to push in deeper, the leaves plucked at her shirt and scratched her legs. Overhead, the larger trees were hung with gray moss that cast shimmering, shivering shade on the silvery ground down below. Those strange, striped shadows seemed to move in a breeze that never quite reached Lily’s skin.

  “Here, Buddy,” she called, but she didn’t hear him hurrying through the brush. The sky was getting rust-colored now, like the blood she’d dripped on the cardboard earlier. The shadows darkened, and suddenly Lily remembered the snake in the swamp. There were more snakes like that everywhere, and her sneakers wouldn’t save her from venom-filled fangs.