34

Ten Years Old

Salem skips up the sidewalk of the blue-and-white bungalow. The air smells like the inside of a freezer. The corpses of flowers and weeds alike, brown and jaggy from an early frost, hang over the sidewalk. A year ago, Vida had given her lawn over to what she called “an English garden.”

Salem had lost a friendship bracelet in there that she had yet to find.

She walks up the three stone steps, one of them bearing her left hand print. She’d disliked the cold, messy feel of the cement when her dad had pressed her kindergarten fingers into it five years earlier.

At the top of the stairs, she curls her grip around the familiar C-shaped handle, depressing the tongue with her thumb. The door is unlocked. She steps inside.

She shouldn’t be home. It’s the middle of the school day. But it’s picture day, a day she dreads because she looks like a frog with her poofy hair, green eyes, and big lips, and she doesn’t want that in the yearbook. Again. So she told the nurse she was sick and that she was going home. The nurse, one year from retirement, either hadn’t heard or didn’t care.

One bus ride later, and she’s standing inside her home. Her mom calls her housekeeping style “tousled.” Her disorganization is a side effect of her peculiar genius, Salem’s dad tells her. He should be in his shop, working, and Vida should be teaching at Hill College. Salem is going to sneak an Orange Crush out of the refrigerator and bring it to her room before she goes to his shop so she has something to drink up there because her dad is for sure sending her straight to bed when he sees her home this early.

She is almost around the hallway corner and in the kitchen when she hears them arguing. Her mom and dad. Home in the middle of the day. Her throat tightens. She wishes she really was sick.

“She’s too young,” Daniel is saying. “Let her be a child yet.”

Her mom answers. “She’s perfect, Danny, and you know it. The girl’s a genius.”

“Yes, but she’s our girl.”

Is Daniel crying? Salem has never seen either of her parents cry. The thought terrifies her. She peeks around the corner.

“She sets us free,” Vida says, “and we’re free forever. All of us. You, me, Gracie, Isabel. So many more. It’s not just about one person; you taught me that.”

Vida’s hair is in a bun. She’s wearing hoop earrings. Daniel has on a faded t-shirt. They stand in front of the refrigerator, the grocery list secured with a Salem-crafted button magnet visible between them. Vida reaches for Daniel, who is indeed crying, his lashes dripping with tears like jewels. Salem gasps. They both swivel, spotting her.

What happens next is vague, a ghost memory of letting her watch movies and eat popcorn even though both her parents, normally strict about school, know she is playing hooky.

Yet they spoil her that day.