Our boy is all set!” Ozzie announced, emerging from the store with her arms over her head. She yanked open the door on the driver’s side and climbed inside.
“You want to drive?” Grace asked.
“I want to drive!” Ozzie clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “I am re-fucking-energized!”
“Great.” Grace climbed into the passenger seat while Nora and Monica got in back. “I’m exhausted.”
“You should have seen Ozzie,” Monica shook her head. “Like some kind of Doctor Dolittle in there. They were eating out of her hand!”
“I still can’t believe anyone was even in there,” Ozzie said. “They said they were working late, doing inventory.” She stuck the key in the ignition. “Actually, the one guy seemed kind of thrilled. He hooked Elmer right up to a little feeding tube and put him in an incubator. That’s what took so long. I was just hanging around, making sure they got everything working right.” She revved the engine. “But he’s going to be fine. He’s going to make it, Norster.”
“That’s such good news,” Nora said, leaning back against the headrest. She was exhausted suddenly, too. “Good for you.”
Ozzie placed her hands on the wheel and sighed. “I haven’t felt this good in a long time. Seriously. In a long, fucking time.” She turned around in the seat, surveying the lot of them. “You all could ask me anything right now and I’d give it to you.”
“Well,” Monica coughed nervously. “Since you put it that way.” She fiddled with her ring. “We’re only about an hour or so from New York. And I know it’s . . .” She checked her watch. “God, is it really midnight already?” She bit her lip, glanced at Nora and then Grace.
“You want to find a hotel out here?” Grace tilted her head. “Call it a night?”
“No.” Monica was holding Nora’s gaze now. “I was thinking maybe we could take a little detour. Say, an hour or so south? I mean, if you all feel up to it. It’s crazy late, I know.”
It took a moment for the suggestion to register.
Nora caught on first. “You want to drive down to Willow Grove?”
Grace gasped. “We could see Turning Winds!”
“Oh, it’s just an empty, rotted-out building now,” Nora objected. “It’s not—”
“I know.” Monica cut her off. “But I really want to go back one last time and see it. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and it might be the last time I can do anything like this for a while.” She pressed her fingers against the middle of her chest. “And maybe . . . you know, it’ll help reconcile things. With all of us.”
“Damn!” Ozzie smacked her hands off the steering wheel. “Now this is what I call a road trip!”
Nora felt her body lean back into her seat with a will of its own. Despite the terror she felt, she also understood that she had known something like this might happen. Willow Grove was just under eighty miles from Manhattan, after all; it was not so unusual that one of them might have thought of it. But now the moment was here. And it was more than just a whim, bigger than a wistful suggestion made in passing. It was a chance, Monica had just said, to turn around.
To try to reconcile things.
Maybe once and for all.
Nora studied the white circles from the oncoming headlights across the highway—pinpoints of light followed by wide bands of darkness. Every so often, her clotted thoughts would disperse as she thought back to the conversation she’d had with Trudy and Marion: Go with your girls, Nora. Be brave. See what happens. They were small words, but the meaning behind them felt colossal. As if what might happen next rested upon whether or not she decided to keep abiding by it.
Ozzie was pressed up against the steering wheel as they pulled into Willow Grove ninety minutes later, peering at everything from behind the windshield, but there was a weariness about her too, as if she was starting to fray around the edges. Grace leaned against her own window, pressing her fingertips against the glass. “There’s Jitter Beans!” she said as the car drifted past the old coffeehouse. “Holy cow, I can’t believe it’s still there.”
“It’s all still here,” Nora said, feeling strangely defensive.
“Oh my God, it’s just like I remembered,” Monica whispered, her fingers pressed lightly against the window. “Like we never left. Except that everything looks a little bit . . .”
Nora held her breath, waiting.
“Smaller,” Monica finished.
“Nothing’s smaller,” Ozzie chuckled. “You’re just bigger.”
“Yeah,” Monica said softly. “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”
The car rolled down South Main Street, making a right on Stuyvesant exactly the way they used to on their walks back from school, iced coffees in one hand, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup cookie in the other, until it turned finally into Magnolia Avenue.
“Oh my God.” Monica exhaled as the old house came into view, and sat back hard in her seat. “There it is.”
Nora stared at it, taking in the familiar wretched structure, the four walls barely visible under the dim streetlights and thick carpet of vines. She felt an odd need to protect it from the rest of them, which made no sense at all. It belonged to each of them, this place, and then to the girls who had come after them. Or it had, once. And yet it had been just hers for the past fifteen years. She had been the only one of them to stay and keep it company, to make the occasional trek on dark summer nights and stand there across the street, listening for the ghosts inside.
“It looks so . . .” Monica was trying not to cry. “Old. So beat up.”
“It is old,” Nora said. “It’s been twelve years since they closed it for good. Three years after we left.”
“And then what?” Ozzie was massaging her temples. “God, it looks condemned. Is it condemned? It should be if it isn’t.”
Nora was embarrassed that she didn’t know the answer to Ozzie’s question, but the truth was that she had never taken the time or the effort to inquire further about the property. She didn’t want to know the details about why it had closed, or who might buy it one day in the future, or if it might even be razed eventually. There was nothing more to know, nothing anyone else could tell them. Everything they needed to know about the house was right there in front of them, behind those tattered walls.
“Do you think we can go inside?” Grace had a glint in her eye.
“Oh no.” Nora’s heart began to pound. “I mean, look at it. It’s all boarded up.”
“Let’s try,” Monica whispered. “I’d love to see the inside again. Our rooms upstairs? Let’s go in. Just one more time.”
“We can’t,” Nora stalled, her fingers already starting to tremble. It was one thing to park across the street and look at their old haunt, maybe even creep around the backyard a little bit, but it was a whole other deal to go inside, where, despite the years, all the old ghosts still lingered. “The place is a wreck. We’d probably fall through a floor or something. Besides, we couldn’t get in there if we tried. I’m sure it’s all locked up.”
“I’ll bet money that one of us could probably get us into that house right now,” Grace said, avoiding Nora’s eyes.
“How much money?” Ozzie turned around in her seat.
“Yeah.” Grace laughed. “That’s what I thought.”
It was Ozzie’s idea to go around back. There was no need to attract any attention should someone drive by and catch sight of them at this hour, and God only knew what might happen if the police were called. Besides, the back door, which was rotting off its hinges, would be much easier to kick in.
“Kick in?” Nora was horrified. “There’s no reason to destroy anything here, Ozzie. We’re not trying to rob the place.”
“Hey, what’s this?” Monica strode over to the cellar door and began tugging at the handle.
An old, familiar dread began to take hold as Nora caught sight of the door. The wooden planks were cracked and splintered along the edges now, the curling wisteria vines wrapping themselves like an embrace around the rusty handle. They could probably get in that way, but there was no way she could go down there. Not now, not with them. Not ever again. Her eyes roved frantically over the rest of the building, searching for another entrance. The chimney was definitely out. Too dirty, ridiculously high, and except for Grace maybe, too narrow for any of them to squeeze through anymore. There was nothing else, except for the windows—which Ozzie would have to break—and the door, which she seemed all too eager to kick down.“Whatcha got, some door?” Ozzie moved toward it now too, standing by as Monica continued to pull. “Maybe to the basement? I don’t think I ever came down to the basement when we were here. Did any of you?”
“I did,” said Grace. “Elaine was always sending me down for cardboard boxes whenever somebody was getting ready to leave. Remember that Goth girl who came during our senior year? Tamara something? It was right around Christmas.”
“The one who never took the dog collar off her neck?” Ozzie raised an eyebrow. “Even when she went in the shower?”
“Yeah. She had something like five thousand heavy metal CDs. It took at least ten boxes to get them all packed up.” Grace shook her head. “God, what a nightmare. I wonder whatever happened to her?”
“Let’s hope she got rid of the dog collar,” Ozzie said. “Or found herself a pet.”
Nora didn’t move as the door creaked open a few more inches and then gave way as Monica strained a final time. The vines made a light ripping sound as the door swung wide, and Nora blocked the cry coming out of her mouth with the side of her fist.
“Nice job, Mons!” Ozzie patted her on the back.
As if on cue, all four of them leaned over the gaping hole and peered into it. At least ten cement steps led down into a low-ceilinged room and then vanished in a sea of darkness.
“Oh God, it’s pitch-black!” Monica wailed. “We don’t have a flashlight or anything, do we? How’re we going to find our way around?”
“We’ll hold on to each other’s shirts and feel around until we find the door that leads to the inside.” Ozzie sounded matter-of-fact. “It can’t be that hard. It doesn’t even look that big.”
Nora didn’t say anything. She had been in the basement only twice in her life, but she knew that it was the exact same size as the living room above it, and that the door on the inside led to the kitchen. She wondered if the old lawn furniture was still propped up against the east wall, if the folding chairs with their yellow and blue linen seats were tucked under the white wicker table. Did the shelves built into the opposite wall still hold the same sloppy array of discarded baskets, the haphazard collection of empty canning jars and tin cans? The jars had been arranged by size, the largest on one end, gallon size, its glass belly protruding far above the rest. It was flanked on the opposite side by the smallest one, no bigger than a salt shaker.
“Come on, Mons.” Ozzie grinned. “You lead.”
Monica’s eyes widened as she took a step back. “Uh-uh. I did my part. Now I get to hide behind all the rest of you as we make our way in.” She shivered. “God only knows what kind of vermin is down in there. Maybe we’ll find a nest of skunks. Or opossums.” She brought her hands to her face. “Oh, God. What if there really is a nest of skunks down there? Or opossums?”
“Listen, chiquita,” Ozzie said. “You’re the one who brought us here in the first place.”
“I know.” Monica wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. “I know. Just give me a minute to put on my big-girl panties, okay?” She inhaled sharply through her nose and then released it again. “Okay. Let’s go.”
The four of them descended into the darkness: Ozzie first, then Nora, Monica, and finally Grace. Nora’s fingers were hooked around Ozzie’s belt loop; behind her, Monica clutched the edge of Nora’s pants so tightly that she could feel the button on the front digging into her stomach. Ozzie’s hand moved back and forth as she swept cobwebs out of the way, and every few seconds, she let forth another stream of expletives. They moved farther into the space, and a familiar scent filled Nora’s nostrils. Dirt and grape jelly. Tears sprang to her eyes. How, after all these years, could the same smell still be there? How? She squeezed her eyes and held her breath. She could do this. She could. Another few moments and it would be over.
Ozzie came to an abrupt standstill, as if she had just walked into a wall.
“What?” Monica shrieked once, a high-pitched sound that made the hair on the back of Nora’s neck stand up.
“It’s nothing.” Ozzie’s voice was thick with impatience. “I just can’t see anything. I don’t know if I’m leading us down a set of stairs to break all our necks or into a nest of rattlesnakes.”
“Rattlesnakes?” Monica clutched so hard at the back of Nora’s pants that she lost her balance.
“Relax,” Ozzie said. “There’s no rattlesnakes, all right? Jesus Christ. All I’m saying is that not knowing what’s ahead of me is extremely disconcerting. It’s like being blind or something. Hold on. I think I might have a lighter in my backpack.”
Nora let go of Ozzie’s shirt as she squatted down and began rummaging through her knapsack. The darkness itself didn’t bother her; it felt familiar, in fact, like an old worn-out shirt she had lost once and then found again. It had been just as dark that night, and she’d been glad for it. Relieved, even. Now, though, the darkness did not afford the same kind of security. It felt strange, otherworldly, as if she were on a different planet.
She reached her arm out and felt around. Her fingers brushed against a cobweb and she pulled them back, wiping the vague stickiness of it against her pants. She took another few steps to the right and reached out again. This time, her hand came into contact with a wall. She let it slide down the length of it—until it bumped into an object.
“Nora?” Monica’s grip was so tight that it was getting hard for Nora to breathe. “What are you doing?”
“Let go, okay?” Nora extricated Monica’s fingers gently from her pants. “Just for a second. Hold on to Grace.” She reached out again and slid her hand toward the object. It was some kind of rough material, slick with dust and dirt, rolled up tightly into a narrow column. She could feel hard, slender rods beneath it and a larger, thicker stick at the bottom. The picnic table umbrella. She almost smiled, thinking of it. Green, with little tassels that bobbed and swayed in the wind. They used to prop it up sometimes in the grass when it got warm and crawl under it, eating tuna fish sandwiches on white bread and potato chips, the sun slanting across their bare legs, warming their painted toes. The table couldn’t be much farther away, and the chairs were probably here too. Which meant they were facing the east wall. Twenty more feet or so to the right, and they would be standing in front of the steps that led up to the kitchen door. She turned, the information poised on her lips, when Ozzie let out a whoop.
“Found it!” Nora froze as Ozzie’s thumb rolled over the lighter. She was doing okay down here in the dark, she realized. She wasn’t ready to see any of it, to have any of the things she was remembering come rushing back—even under the light of a tiny flame.
Ozzie worked the lighter once more, and then again. “Come on.” Another attempt failed. “Are you kidding me? Seriously? This thing decides to run out of juice now? Now?”
“Forget it, Oz.” Nora stepped forward. “I think I know where we are. Put your stuff back in your knapsack and follow me.”
Ozzie threw the lighter back into her backpack. “How do you know where we are? We’re in total fucking darkness. I can’t even see you, and you’re standing three inches away from me.”
“Come on.” Nora dodged the question. “This way. Let’s just get out of here. It’ll be much lighter upstairs.”
“Upstairs where?” Grace’s voice quavered a little in the back. “Do you know where the steps are?”
“I think so.” Nora moved forward, placing one foot in front of the other. They were so close. She could feel it. Still, there was nothing to see, nothing in front of her except an entire world drenched in black. She stopped as the front of her foot bumped something hard and reached out. “Here!” she said, still feeling along with her fingers. “They’re right here. Come on. This way!” She reached out to the left, nodding as her hand came in contact with the wooden railing. Inch by inch, she led the rest of them upward. Her hand was slick with grime, and she could feel her fingers trembling, the edges of them like ice. She felt the door before she saw it, looming in front of her like some unseen presence, and she reached out carefully, patting around. Her hand closed around the knob all at once and she twisted it and pushed. Behind her, a collective sigh of relief sounded. The door swung open, the hinges moaning from the sudden exertion, and a faint scrabbling sound drifted from the right side of the room. Nora winced at the sudden onslaught of moonlight, filtering through the shattered glass windows. It looked electric somehow, as if it had been plugged in somewhere in the heavens, illuminating everything within.
She stepped through the doorway, swiping a clot of cobwebs blocking her way, and wrinkled her nose as the cloying odor of dust and old urine filled her nostrils. The floor was barely visible beneath the layer of dirt, but she could just make out the lemon-and-white tiles they’d walked over so many times, littered now with tiny paw prints and piles of droppings. She shuddered. It was impossible to guess just how many rodents had taken up permanent residence in here since the property had been abandoned, but it was probably in the hundreds. She didn’t want to think about it.
“All clear?” Ozzie paused, resting a hand on Nora’s shoulder, and glanced around. “Jesus, look at that moon. Wait, is this the kitchen?”
“Yeah.” Nora raked at a cobweb stuck in her hair. “And I’m pretty sure the entire mice population just bolted when they heard us.” She pointed to several pea-sized piles around their feet. “Looks like they’ve been having a regular party up here.”
“Did you say mice?” Monica’s face paled as she peered through the door.
“Yes, Mons, she said the m word.” Ozzie grinned and held out her hand. “An abandoned building is a mouse and rat’s dream house. There’s probably five thousand of them living inside this shack right now.”
Monica whimpered, recoiling at Ozzie’s outstretched hand.
“Do you honestly think saying things like that is going to encourage her to go any farther?” Grace linked an arm through Monica’s and pulled her into the kitchen. “Seriously, Oz.”
Monica still held back. “You don’t actually see any mice, do you?”
“Not at the moment.” Ozzie put an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, babe. You can do this. We’re all here with you.” She strode around the room with ease, undeterred by the filth. “God, remember all the time we used to spend in here?”
“You mean when we had to.” Grace rolled her eyes. “I hated the kitchen.”
“Oh, I loved the kitchen.” Monica sounded mournful. “It was the one place in the whole house that made me feel like I was in a real home. This kitchen could’ve been anywhere, you know? In any family’s house.” She glanced at the dilapidated cupboards along the wall, some of which were missing entire doors, and the countertop, which had rotted from the inside out, cleaved neatly down the middle. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “There’s nothing down here to see, and it’s depressing the hell out of me. Besides, I really just want to look at my old bedroom again.”
The group of them traipsed behind her, clouds of dust rising with each step. The old staircase groaned beneath their weight, and Nora held her breath, wondering if the whole thing might give way. But then they were on the second floor, another dimly lit corridor cluttered with dust and droppings. Nora paused, taking in the old familiar wallpaper on the walls, a pale green background dotted with pink cabbage roses and gold scrolls. A few times, after Ozzie and Grace and Monica had left that summer, and before Nora herself left a few weeks after that, she found herself sitting in the hallway, unable to go back inside her room, which still smelled like Grace, and counting the roses on the wallpaper. It was a way to pass the time, to keep her mind occupied with something—anything—other than their absence. One night, she had gotten to 642 of them before Elaine had come up and told her she had to go to bed.
“Come on, Mons!” Ozzie barreled through another horde of cobwebs. “Our old bedroom’s right down here!”
“Wait!” Monica yelped, trotting a little to catch up with her. “Oh God, don’t leave me! It’s dark!”
Nora looked over at Grace as Monica and Ozzie disappeared down the hall. Grace met her eyes and then motioned with her head in the opposite direction. “You want to go see ours?”
Nora hesitated, touching her neck with the tips of her fingers.
“Just for a minute?”
There had been other girls, of course, who had occupied the room after their departure, but the bones of the little space were exactly the same as Nora remembered: the sloped alcove under which she had arranged her bed, the window against the far wall where Grace had placed hers, the strange little closet next to it shaped like a lopsided rectangle. The same cracks still snaked across the top of the ceiling, including the one that looked like a web of lightning, and the one above the window that used to remind Nora of a skeletal hand. Grace walked over to the far wall, where her bed had been, and smoothed her hand over the dusty surface. “I remember wishing I could fade into this wall when I first got here,” she said softly. “That I could merge with it somehow and then disappear.”
Nora thought back to those first few days, the silence of them, as Grace lay in her bed, staring at nothing, while she’d struggled to read Proust. She’d felt similarly, having overheard Sally, her last foster mother, a tall blond woman with bad teeth, telling Elaine that she was some kind of “weird mute.” She remembered thinking that day, as Elaine had shown her to her room and introduced her to Grace, that none of it really mattered anymore. She could be taken from place to place, introduced to twenty more people, and shown to one room after another, but it was all right. She’d found a way to hide from all of them, had figured out how to become—and stay—invisible in any sort of surrounding. Until the day came, of course, when the opposite of that had presented itself, upending everything she thought she understood about the world. And herself.
A scream sounded suddenly from the opposite end of the hall, causing both of them to jump.
“Was that Monica?” Grace was wide-eyed as they rushed out of their room and felt their way down the corridor.
“Why?” Monica’s voice was tremulous with rage. “Why would you ever do such a thing?” She was on one side of their old room, which faced the far side of the building. The moon peeked out from the upper right-hand corner of the window, casting a watery column of light across the floor. Ozzie had the fingertips of both hands pressed against her mouth, and a large red blotch had begun to form on the side of her neck.
“What’s wrong?” Nora asked. “Who screamed?”
Neither woman looked at her. “Answer my question.” Monica stared deliberately at Ozzie. Her mouth was tight.
“I don’t know.” Ozzie sounded hoarse. “It was stupid.”
Nora glanced around the room, trying to figure out what they were talking about. The floor was dirtier than she could have ever imagined, with piles of dust and so many animal droppings that it was impossible to distinguish the hardwood beneath. A single board next to Ozzie’s feet had been dislodged and Nora thought she could see papers inside the shallow hole of it.
“No one’s hurt, are they?” Grace held back a little, watching from the doorway.
In response, Monica thrust her hand out so that Grace and Nora could see what she was holding. They both gasped.
“The picture of your mother!” Grace whispered. “Oh, that’s incredible, Mons! You were just saying how you lost it! How you—”
“I never lost it.” Monica looked at Ozzie again with the same accusing stare. “Ozzie took it.” She glanced down at the floorboard opening. “And then hid it down there. All these years.”
“Took it?” Grace looked confused. “What do you mean, took it? Why?”
“I don’t know,” Monica said. “Why did you take it, Ozzie?”
“You had two of them.” Ozzie spoke quickly, as if her words might overtake Monica’s anger. “And she was beautiful and so perfect . . . I don’t know . . . I thought I needed one, okay? Especially during those last few months. I was starting to freak out, thinking of all of us leaving and . . .” She stared at the floor, as if trying to reconnect the dots, and then looked up again. “I remember you saying she was like a stranger to you, that you couldn’t remember anything, and I just . . . I guess I thought you wouldn’t mind that much. I needed something extra to hold on to, okay? Something to look at, maybe to pretend that I had a mother out there who gave a shit. Even if it was all just in my head.”
“So how’d it end up in the floor?” Monica’s voice was hard as steel. “If she meant so much to you, why’d you . . .”
“I slept for weeks with it under my pillow,” Ozzie interrupted. “But I was afraid you’d find it, so every morning, when you got up to go to the bathroom, I’d jump up and put it back in the floor. And then everything started to get really crazy, you know, with graduation and moving and everything else. I forgot I put it down there. I just totally forgot until we walked in here today and I saw the floorboard.”
Nora could see the color returning to Monica’s face as she absorbed Ozzie’s explanation. “Those pictures were all I’ve ever had of her. You took that from me.”
“Yes.” Ozzie closed her eyes as a tear rolled down her face. “I did. I’m so sorry.”
“I would have shared her with you,” Monica said, her voice splintering. “Especially when things got hard. All you had to do was ask.”
“I was too embarrassed,” Ozzie snatched at her eyes. “I didn’t want anyone to know I was even thinking of my mother, let alone someone else’s.”
Nora could feel her insides clenching as Ozzie’s words from the very first Invisibles meeting came back to her: We’ll choose to remain invisible. To everyone except each other. But they hadn’t, had they? For as thick as the walls they’d built around themselves to keep the rest of the world out, there had been cracks. Despite all their best efforts, doubt and shame had seeped through, nibbling at the edges of their fortress, letting the cold in. I didn’t want anyone to know. It could have been their rallying cry, she thought later, their group motto. Each and every one of them.
Monica walked across the room and enfolded Ozzie in her arms. Ozzie sagged against her, her whole body absorbing the acceptance of her apology. Nora stared, trying to understand. How was it that, in the span of a single heartbeat, Monica was able to embrace someone who’d just betrayed her? Why couldn’t she be more like that herself? What was it that kept her from letting go finally, and forgiving?
“Can I see the picture?” Grace asked as Monica and Ozzie let go.
Nora moved in too, looking at the picture over Grace’s shoulder. It was a head shot, taken when Monica’s mother was in high school perhaps, or a few years later. She wore a black cardigan, buttoned up to her collarbone, and pearl earrings that were only slightly smaller than her earlobes. Her eyes were the same as Monica’s, round and widely spaced, and they shared the same curve in their chins. A tangle of red curls had been pulled back neatly with a silk scarf, and the ends of it hung over her right shoulder.
“She’s so beautiful,” Grace breathed. “Absolutely gorgeous. Just like you, Mons.”
Monica traced the outline of her mother’s face with the tip of her finger. “It’s funny,” she said. “I don’t remember anything about her. Not one single thing. But I miss her more than any other person in the world.”
The moment was shattered by the sound of a bang downstairs. Monica screamed. There was another bang, and a third, followed by a loud male voice. “Police!”
Monica gripped Ozzie’s arm as Nora and Grace held their breaths.
“Fuck,” Ozzie said. “Now what?”