hey girl
Back at home, Anna made her way down the second-floor hallway and heard the faint creak of the basement door closing downstairs. She knew better than to disturb Jack when he worked down there. The door was always locked and Jack kept the key in his back pocket. Like the grass on their front lawn, Jack bent easily with the wind on certain subjects, but when it came to his all-important things in the basement, he was a brick wall.
Anna closed her bedroom door behind her, finding relief, as always, in the orderly structure and soft palette of her bedroom. She sat cross-legged in front of her full-length mirror, tweezers in hand. She had her mother's brows, full with a nicely shaped arch. She didn't mess with them much, but it had been a while and she was due for a pruning.
In the mirror she could see the framed photograph of her mother’s face behind her on the bureau. The faded freckles on Helen Fagan's nose and cheeks were visible on her clean and smiling face.
Jack took the candid shot on their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. It wasn’t posed like other pictures of her parents, both of them wearing pasted-on smiles. Those were all lost long ago in the ocean of Jack’s hoard. There were no pictures of Helen on display anywhere else in the house. Anna suspected that seeing his wife’s picture was painful for her father, that he saw the demon and its gleeful, malevolent grin instead of the woman he married. So why then did she leave a large picture of her mother centered on her bureau, knowing it was the first thing he'd see if he came into her room? Was it to punish him or to keep him and his mess out? She wasn't sure.
Anna braced against a stab of grief, raking her fingers through the small rug in front of the mirror. The grief deepened the pain thudding behind her eyes. Pain that built into a tortuous crescendo until, finally, something clicked inside her skull and a chaotic need flooded through her. Anna had to see Craig’s Instagram, now.
The pain settled when Anna found her phone. She began reading the comments that girls, especially Sydney, had posted on his page. She looked at the mirror, seeing the inadequacy of her frizzy hair, the small bump on her nose, the dull pallor of her skin. Disgust rose in her chest. There she was in all of her non-glory, not her exactly, but the collection of parts and blemishes that were so obviously not good enough. How could she help Dor, or anyone in Bloomtown, if she could barely stand her own reflection?
Geneva’s faint voice echoed inside her. Mirrors can be a doorway into your soul, if you really look at yourself. Was it possible? Geneva said that one must be brave to mirror gaze. Anna had her share of imperfections, but bravery she had in spades. Didn’t she?
Anna dropped her phone and locked eyes with her reflection, fighting the urge to dismiss the whole thing and go back to analyzing her enormous pores. But after a minute or two of quiet breathing, a distant calm began to soften the edges of her unease. She continued to hold her own gaze. Who was she anyway?
There were gold flecks in the hazel of her eyes that she’d never noticed before. Anna stared, fascinated by this undiscovered part of herself. Then, a stirring in her solar plexus, a strange awakening that felt both light and powerful, a force that lifted her head, making space in her chest and throat. A rush of cool air filled her lungs, muting the pain in her head.
This lightness, it reminded her of something: a memory, a glimpse of a fireplace illuminated by beams of light. Her breath tasted mildly sweet, as it had when she was a kid in gymnastics class. She would tumble and bend so much that after a while, muscles hot and loose, she felt almost detached from her body yet in total control of it. But that wasn't quite it.
Anna felt more like she had in the hours after swim practice in junior high. Swimming lap after lap through the water, she’d catch flashes of her coach standing poolside when she turned her head to suck in air. Always the swimmer in front of you and counting breaths; stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. At the wall, a flip turn and push off, followed by moments of coasting, arms straight, head down. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. Over and over, slicing through the water until it became mindless. After practice she’d felt clear and calm, her body warm and tired, her breath sweet.
Her phone emitted a loud ping, the alert for an incoming text message. Anna ignored it, keeping her focus on the mirror. More pings erupted from her phone, louder than usual and demanding her attention. The dull pounding in her head lurched back to life and fought for dominance against the new lightness inside her.
What the hell was wrong with her phone? The pain behind her eyes surged and she closed her eyes, gritting her teeth against the wave of rage that accompanied it. No. She didn't want to be taken over by this dark mood. She looked to the mirror again, determined to reconnect with the glimpse of serenity she’d discovered. But something caught her eye, a movement.
Every muscle in Anna’s body stiffened. The picture of her mother in the mirror no longer reflected Helen Fagan. It was the demon from eight years past, its tongue flickering out of its grinning mouth. Anna’s jaw clenched, and the picture once again framed the face of her smiling mother. The loud pings continued from her phone. Anna picked it up with shaking hands. It was a text from Craig Shine.
hey girl
And just like that a crazed joy bloomed inside her, despite the foreboding atmosphere that now surrounded her phone. Even in her frazzled state Anna recognized that foreboding as a warning from her intuition, a warning she’d had before.
At ten years old, Anna had wandered away on a class trip to a nearby park. She ran ahead of the group, planning to jump out of the trees to scare Freddy and Dor. But she quickly lost her bearings and came across a path in the woods. The trees around the mouth of the path took on the same dark quality now encompassing her phone. Stay away. But danger and excitement are often interchangeable in young minds, and Anna started down the deserted path. Almost immediately a man came out of the trees, clean-cut and dressed in a blue tracksuit. She moved aside for him to pass but he followed her stride, remaining directly behind her, quiet and menacing.
The panicked teacher yelled her name, out of sight but close by, and the man darted into the trees. He wore sneakers without shoelaces, his shoes flopping open as he ran. Long white cords dangled from his clenched fists. Anna still thought about Park Man and what he would have done to her. Would she have fought back or remained frozen in terror, succumbing to some nightmarish, violent fate?
And here she was again, pressing on into possibly dangerous territory. Or maybe she was just losing it? It was just a phone, not a pedo in a park! The transformation of her mother’s picture was probably a hallucination brought on by stress. Anyway, it wasn't important. Nothing was more important than Craig.
hey girl.
All of existence shrank down to those two little words, and her jittery heart flapped about in her chest like a newly caged bird. Another jolt as her phone rang. It was Doreen. Anna forwarded her call to voice mail and replied to Craig’s text.
what r u up 2? ☺
Craig texted right back.
blasting tunes so mom stays out. Ur webcam on?
He wanted to see her. A webcam box appeared on Anna's laptop across the room. She scrambled over her bed, reaching the laptop on her desk in record time. It was Craig's face! Live-action Craig! His tousled black hair was slightly matted and his face had an oily sheen, but Anna barely registered it. A longing for him welled inside her, pulsing along with her quickening heartbeat. Moisture drained from her mouth.
Another text from Craig on her phone.
u alone?
yes, she replied.
turn ur cam on wanna c u
k hold on
Anna rushed to her mirror, applied lip gloss, flipped her hair, brushed it, flipped it again and then took the black tape off the camera on her laptop. Craig smiled in response and typed on his cell.
u look hot
Can u turn ur mic on? she asked. Why were they still texting? She wanted to hear his voice.
Craig shook his head.
wanna listen 2 tunes and c ur sexy body. K??
☺, Anna replied.
serious, he texted.
The butterflies in her stomach morphed into a murder of crows. Was she supposed to act like the women in Izzy’s posters? Was that what Craig wanted? Arched back, pouty lips, that kind of thing? Or should she just pose and flex like a bodybuilder? She stepped back and then playfully sashayed toward the camera, hands on hips, lips parted. Craig was smiling and singing to himself. He was into it. He was into her. It was a rush like no other.
u r hot lemme c ur bra
Was he kidding?
no way, she texted.
its no big deal? I know about hastings, he replied.
A gut punch. Craig knew about Michael Hastings and her last year. Anna cringed at the memory. The beer on Hastings’s breath, her wanting to know what the Fuss Was All About, their complete lack of chemistry. And if that wasn’t letdown enough, Mike went and ran his mouth about it, after swearing on his little sister's life that he wouldn’t. It went buzzing through the whole school. Sydney and her cronies were all over it, telling anyone that cared to listen (pretty much everyone), making him out to be this big player and Anna a slut. Such a glaring double standard, but that was how the Mikes and Sydneys of the world liked it.
So what? Craig assumed that because of Hastings she was fair game? An urge to tell Craig to go screw himself was on the verge of manifesting.
Jk hastings is a doosh, just wanna c u, Craig texted. think about u all the time.
Heat blew through her. She felt light and giddy like the time she drank wine at Freddy’s house during a Seder dinner. Attention from Craig was an elixir that made everything else fade away, and this was her chance to connect with him, to give him what he wanted. For a quick second, Anna lifted her shirt at the webcam, grateful as hell that she had a cute black bra on. Craig was singing again, bobbing his head and wearing a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He typed.
take the bra off
There was a muffled crash from downstairs. No, the basement. Whatever Jack was up to, he wasn’t going to screw this up for her. She texted Craig.
not gonna happen ☺
But then a second muffled crash rattled the walls. Something was wrong. She sent Craig a final text.
Brb
Anna rushed out of her room, down the stairs and into the kitchen. She yanked on the basement door handle, but it didn’t budge.
“Dad! What's going on?”
She rattled the doorknob hard, hearing only muffled coughing until Jack finally screamed, “I’m okay!” And then a strangled, high-pitched “Tripped!!”
“Come upstairs!” she yelled through the door.
This was ridiculous. She pulled on the doorknob, feeling resistance from a middle and upper latch. But there wasn’t an upper latch on the outside of the door. The basement door was locked from the inside? What the hell? Bending down she peered underneath the door. Nothing. Total blackness. Jack couldn’t work down there without a trace of light.
Anna foraged through the hoard under the kitchen table, finding an old wire hanger. After straightening the hanger’s pliable tip, she poked it under the basement door and then withdrew it. Pieces of dark blue foam were stuck to the metal tip. Jack had placed some kind of a barrier, a seal, on the inside of the basement door. To keep her out or to keep something else in? Below, Jack’s coughing fit ended in a nauseating retch.
“Can you move?” she yelled into the door.
“I’m fine!”
“Then come upstairs!” She was screaming through the keyhole now.
When Jack didn't reply, Anna decided that she’d had enough. She followed the path into the unlivable living room and starting kicking around the hoard piles, looking for something with some weight. Ow. Her foot found something heavy, all right. Who knew they had a bowling ball? Was there anything that Jack wouldn’t hoard?
Anna lugged the ball back into the kitchen, stomping on any of Jack’s hoard that had fallen into the narrow path. Back in front of the basement door, she held the bowling ball with both hands and swung her arms between her legs, gaining momentum. One, two, three. She let go, heaving the heavy bowling ball at the doorknob. Bull’s-eye!
The door buckled inward and the doorknob popped off, falling to the kitchen floor along with the bowling ball, which bounced heavily, cracking the tile. But the top lock of the basement door was still stubbornly latched from the inside. Anna picked up the bowling ball, her arms burning, and hurled it again, higher this time. The bowling ball hit the top of the door, cracking the molding and breaking the inside top latch. The basement door busted inward, exposing the dingy light below. The bowling ball went crashing down the basement steps, and Anna was right behind it.