After life, p.21
After Life, page 21
“Don’t—” I called and put my hand out. “Leave the light on.”
Troy laughed. Not a nice laugh, a comforting laugh, or a conspiratorial laugh. No, it was a laugh laden with all the meanness he could muster. And in that one split second, as his hand hovered above my light, I could see pure annoyance in his eyes—like I was just a fly buzzing around his superior head. He and his family would be downstairs in their little nest, and I would be left alone upstairs—exactly the way he wanted it.
“Go to bed, Mara,” he said.
And I couldn’t help myself. “You can’t make me go to bed.”
“Fine. Don’t go to bed. You know what? Why don’t you just keep on with whatever little game you’re playing, because it’s working out really well for you. Or better yet, if you want to tell ghost stories, why don’t you go do it at your dad’s house. I’m sure he has a better tolerance for that kind of ridiculousness …and there are no little kids over there for you to scare.”
I couldn’t think of a response fast enough. By the time my mouth formed around a snappy comeback, Troy was gone. He’d disappeared back down the dark hallway and hit the steps two at a time, each footstep a punctuation mark to his anger. And as I pondered Troy’s unnecessary response, I grew angrier—my righteous indignation hit a fever pitch. I would not let their disbelief silence me.
They could take Soren downstairs and try to comfort him all they wanted, but I knew the truth: until we figured out why David and Brick wanted our attention, the ghosts and nightmares would haunt us forever. Soren’s memories of Cole might fade, but the spirits would remain. They’d remain because it was still Cole in there, and they knew it. Troy wanted to threaten me, but he had only bolstered my sense of urgency. I would solve this. I would save us. I shifted to my back and stared at my ceiling.
“Come back,” I whispered to the walls. “Come back and tell me what you want. I’m listening.” They didn’t answer.
24
We tried to eat breakfast like a normal family. Everyone sat at the table eating buckwheat waffles, but I couldn’t stop looking at Troy and waiting for him to apologize to me. He didn’t say a word as he flipped his newspaper over and read the sports section with exaggerated slowness. As the seconds ticked by and Troy continued to ignore me, I turned my attention to Soren.
“Have a good day at preschool, little man,” I said. “What are you learning about again? Caterpillars.”
Soren looked at me and said, “And tadpoles. And about the farm.”
“Learn any fun farm songs?” I asked. Troy hated preschool songs.
Without prompting, Soren launched into a modified version of Old McDonald. I sat back and listened and ate and stole little glances to watch my stepfather’s annoyance grow. It took longer than I expected.
“Okay, Soren, that’s enough,” Troy said as Soren launched into his fourth verse—Old McDonald had a duck, with a quack, quack—and Soren ignored the request and kept on singing.
“That’s a fun song,” I said over the melody. Troy glared at us in turn. He snapped his paper shut.
“I said enough,” he said again, but I couldn’t tell who he was saying it to. Soren started on moose, which I was certain was a late addition, and Troy stared at his son and growled. “Doggone it, Soren. When I say stop, you listen to me!”
The tone sent Soren to tears. His fingers went into his mouth, and he climbed down from the chair and walked over to my mom, who was staring at all of us like she had entered the Twilight Zone. “What on earth is going on?” she asked as she picked up Soren into her lap. “Doggone it? When did you become a sixty year old man shooing kids out of his yard?” she asked. I tried to control a snicker. “And when did you become interested in kid songs?”
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I checked it.
Sam: Hey. Remind me to show you this funny video when we get to school. It’s a cat that beats up a dog.
Me: Okay. You’re so weird.
Sam: You know what I just remembered?
Me: What?
Sam: I need a prom confirmation stat.
Me: You never actually asked me.
Sam: I did ask you. You forgot to answer.
Me: You said you’d ask at midnight and you never did.
Sam: [1/2] Crap. I think you’re right. [2/2] Okay. I have something to ask you when you get to school.
Me: […]
Sam: Whatever.
“You texting Carlie?” my mom asked. “We haven’t seen her around as much lately.”
“No, I bet she’s texting Sam,” Troy said. “That’s why you haven’t seen Carlie around.”
I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t look up from my phone screen even though it was blank, so I pretended to shoot off a few more texts to buy myself a reason to stay quiet.
“Right. Sam.” My mom said his name like a bad word. I turned to stare at her.
“What did Sam ever do to you guys?” I asked. “Maybe you and Troy could let me live my life in peace,” I said without truly understanding what that one little sentence would unleash.
“Excuse me?” Troy asked.
“What are you talking about?” My mom took a sip of juice and sent Soren back to his own chair.
“Troy threatened to send me to my dad’s last night. Didn’t he tell you?”
My mom didn’t look at her husband, and I thought that was a telling moment. She cleared her throat and wiped imaginary breakfast off her cheek.
“Sweetheart,” my mom said, and she put her hand out to reach for mine, but I kept my hands on my phone. Her endearments were kind, but her tone was not. “I don’t want to talk about this here and now…I figured we’d discuss it later…”
“You’ll have to explain why you’re frustrated with me,” I said. Five minutes until I’d have to leave for school. It was a small window—too small for anything to escalate out of control. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Who is Abby?” Troy asked.
I turned.
“Oh yeah,” he continued. “Soren told us about going to meet his sister Abby at ice cream after we calmed him down last night.” Troy turned to Soren and said, “Sor, you’re not in trouble. Why don’t you tell Mara what you told us?”
I could see my chest rising and falling; everything inside of me went tight and loose all at the same time. One little tug and I’d completely unravel. He’d told them. Oh God, he told them. My mother’s breakfast, the silent war between us, it was all calculated and measured, because they were waiting to pounce.
“Abby is my other sister. She was just a baby when the shadow killed me.” How I loved my little brother and his honesty and bravery. He said his truth with such a sense of calm and ease. I wanted to applaud him, while I also wished that he would stop talking.
“And?” Troy pushed. My mother grimaced. She drank the rest of her orange juice and fiddled with a napkin.
“When I died, the shadow wrapped me in a blanket and when the police came, they took the blanket with them.”
He hadn’t told me that before, but I pieced it together with what Soren had mentioned to Abby in the parking lot, and I realized that he remembered more than he had told me. Maybe more than he had told anyone.
“Okay, no more,” my mother said, and she rose from the table and cleared her throat. “I didn’t want you to talk about any of this with Soren ever again. I asked you to leave it alone, practically begged you to forget it. And not only have you continued to discuss it, but you’re arranging meetings with strangers behind our backs? I don’t even know what to say, Mara. I don’t even think grounding would cover the consequence of lying, putting your brother into a dangerous situation…”
“It wasn’t like that…”
I had the chance to lie. There was a window of time where I could have spun my own version and convinced my parents that I was merely a victim of misunderstanding. Soren was four, after all. Maybe Abby was a friend from school, and maybe he brought it up, and maybe he got it all wrong. But for all the times I distorted the truth a bit, I couldn’t do that to him. I believed him. I believed everything about his story, and I couldn’t forsake that now. I would risk my own punishment for Soren to understand that someone in this house knew he was telling the truth.
“Go get your things for school,” my mom said. “We’ll talk more about this in the car.”
Wordlessly, I hopped up and walked to my room. I grabbed the handle and flung the door open wide, and then I screamed.
It was an involuntary response to the fear that coursed through me. Shadows and feelings were one thing, but this was something else entirely. I must have kept screaming, because I could hear the ringing of my call in my own ears long after I thought I stopped.
Troy and my mom rushed down the hall as I stood with my hand on the doorframe, my eyes soaking in the atrocity before me.
He killed us. He killed us. He killed us. He killed us. He killed us. He killed us.
Scrawled in a childlike script along my far wall in black crayon, the message was broadcast big and bold.
He killed us.
“What the—?” Troy started then stopped.
My mother put her hand over her mouth.
I took a step forward, then another. I walked over to the wall and put my hand over the writing. It was crayon, and when I brushed my hand over the letters little flecks stuck to my skin. He killed us.
“Wipe that off, right now, you…you…” Troy stammered. He wanted to say bitch—I could hear it waiting on his tongue.
I spun. “I didn’t write this,” I said, and I looked up at the far reaches of the lettering. It started in the top corner of my room and wrapped itself around each available space. This would have taken me an hour or more to write with such a methodical pattern. My mom leaned down and picked up a discarded shirt of mine, and I didn’t even have time to protest before she used it to scrub the wall. Instead of disappearing, the black crayon smeared and flaked and turned that section into a streaky mess.
“We might have to paint over this. Shit, shit!” my mom said. I never heard my mom swear. She was one of those annoying prissy people who said things like, “Oh, baloney” and “Buckets to Betsy” as if people would judge her for letting a four letter word fly.
I stood aghast and afraid and accused. The message mocked me—I had failed to help David and Brick despite their presence in my house and in my life. I had ignored them, and now they were torturing me for it.
“It wasn’t like this last night,” Troy yelled. His voice trembled with anger.
“I didn’t write it! I didn’t do this!”
“Soren can’t write…but is that what you’re trying to tell us? He learned how to write overnight and snuck up here and vandalized your room?”
“No,” I stammered. “No…I didn’t say it was Soren.”
“So, a ghost wrote it?” my mother asked, and I couldn’t tell if she was trying to understand or patronizing me.
“Maybe! Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
“Dear God.” She closed her eyes, dropped the crayon-smeared shirt, and disappeared back down the hallway toward the kitchen.
Troy pointed to my wall and lowered his voice. “You will paint this. You will paint over every inch of this…and…” he stopped himself. “Jesus.” He turned and walked away. I walked over and slammed the door after him, and then sat down on my bed. I was swallowed by the words—they surrounded me—I could not escape from them.
He killed us.
“Who killed you?” I whispered. I knew even as I asked that it would be a dangerous question. Not because I didn’t want to know the answer, but because the ghosts of Soren’s past might actually talk back. I took my phone out of my pocket and angled it toward the wall, snapping a picture to show Sam. Or Carlie. Maybe.
My phone buzzed, and I started at the sound. I checked the text instantly.
Sam: Bought you a Dutch coffee. Meet you by the main doors. On your way?
Me: Yeah. Soon.
I hesitated and wondered if I should tell him what had happened, but I wanted to wait to say it in person. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I was staring at the back of my closed door. Whether the letters were new or I just hadn’t seen them before, I didn’t know. Black crayon from the top to the bottom of the door, in lowercase letters, and so faint that I had to squint: nikki.
Troy took Soren to preschool, so my mother drove me in silence. It would have been easier if she had yelled at me, but she didn’t say a word.
“I didn’t do it,” I said eventually when the oppressive nature of the car ride got to me and I couldn’t take it anymore.
She nodded once. “Noted,” she replied.
“You have to believe me,” I said.
“I don’t have to believe you.”
“I’m sorry about Abby…it wasn’t dangerous…she’s just a girl…”
“Please stop talking to me,” my mother replied in an abrupt and perfunctory manner. It lacked emotion, range, or understanding. She was done. I felt panicky, but I knew the more I pushed, the more she would withdraw, so I met her icy silence with my own. Shifting my body further away, pushing my face against the cool window, I didn’t even feel like crying.
Nikki.
He killed us.
Nikki.
That damn babysitter kept on popping up at the most inopportune times, and I had to find out why.
I needed to locate her without my mom knowing. I had to settle this once and for all, or I would never get my life back.
My mom pulled into the school. I looked at the clock and realized I was late. Sam was standing in the breezeway holding a Dutch Bros. coffee, his expression stern, worried. Next to him was our principal, a walkie-talkie in his hand. I hesitated before opening the door.
Mr. Thorn waltzed over to my mom’s car and made the universal roll down your window sign, which my mother obliged with a heavy sigh.
“Punctuality is an issue I feel strongly about,” Mr. Thorn said to my mom from the passenger window. “Why don’t you come inside and let’s have a chat about how we can get Mara to school on time.”
It reeked of patronization, and for one brief second, I thought my mother was going to lean across me and spit at him or raise her arm and sock him in the jaw. Instead, she pointed a finger in my direction and threw me under the bus with a quick and deliberate push.
“This doesn’t concern me,” my mother said. “I’m merely the chauffeur. But I support any disciplinary decision you deem necessary to teach my daughter a lesson about responsible choices.”
Mr. Thorn had the audacity to smile. Then he checked himself and wiped it off his face, and he pointed to Sam. “That young boy is also tardy because he was waiting to give your daughter a coffee.”
“She’s going to be even later to her class the longer you keep talking to me about this,” my mother replied. Mr. Thorn blanched at her brazenness. I felt glued to my seat, unable to move forward. If I hadn’t been mad at her, I would have felt an immense amount of pride at her standing up to the jerk, but everything she did was tainted by our fight—her disrespect was monumentally embarrassing.
Sam took a step forward toward the car, and he held the Dutch Bros. out like a peace offering. He looked nervous. Thorn motioned for him to slide up beside him, and Sam obliged.
He passed me my coffee through the open window and I stared at the lid. He had written in black Sharpie on the top: Prom? He’d also tried to draw some picture of a cat with long claws.
Mr. Thorn cleared his throat, “It would appear that Mara cannot get a pass to her first period class without first dealing with Mr. Saechao’s question.”
I realized faster than my mother that this was an elaborate set-up. But instead of feeling grateful, I felt frustrated. This was a special moment, and I didn’t want to share it with my mom and my principal. It cheapened everything.
“Excuse me?” my mother asked, and I leaned over and showed her the top of the cup. She made an exasperated noise and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. “I see. We’ve had quite the morning, Principal Thorn…but you have to understand that prom will not be…”
“Yes,” I said loudly, pushing aside all of the anxiety of the moment and answering before my mom had time to finish her sentence. “I’ll go to prom with you.”
I opened the door and took a step out onto the curb. Mr. Thorn clapped, pleased with himself for a ruse well-executed.
“My job here is done,” he said to us. “Now, seriously, get to class.” He pointed a finger of pretend admonishment, and sauntered back inside.
Once he was gone, my mother cleared her throat, and I looked back at her. She pointed a finger at me, “Prom? Really? After everything—”
But I turned away before she finished, took one long look at Sam, and kissed him. I locked my lips onto his and held steady for a solid three seconds—I counted in my head: one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi— before I pulled back. There was no tongue, no movement, just a big, steady, prolonged liplock. And after I was done, my lips still held the kiss like a phantom, as though we hadn’t stopped. They tingled.
Sam was wide-eyed, and he laughed a little, embarrassed. He licked his lips and made them shine, and I tried not to stare.
Our first kiss.
Done to shut up my mother.
Because I knew it would get to her—this brazen display of public affection in the wake of her anger.
“I will talk to you later,” she said as a threat and sped away.
“Rough morning?” Sam asked as the van disappeared out of sight.
“You have no idea,” I replied.
He looked to the ground, then looked back up at me, shifted his weight, and smirked. Then he started to lean in toward me again, but I put a solitary finger into his chest.
“No,” I said. “One kiss doesn’t mean endless kisses. One kiss. You have to earn the others…they aren’t free. Today…one kiss.”
“It was just for show,” he said with sudden realization.
