Jenny’s standing by my bed.
She says she can’t sleep. “Get up, sleepyhead.”
“Get lost, doodyhead.”
She keeps standing there. She won’t leave. She wants to play.
Play what?
Hide-and-seek.
I’m up already from the itching under my stupid cast and Mom won’t be making breakfast for hours—it’s still dark. Okay, I tell her.
We go down to the basement.
Tiptoeing. Jenny says we shouldn’t wake Mom and Dad.
She says, “You’re the hider”—we usually flip for it, but I guess she wants to be the seeker and hiding’s more fun anyway.
Fine.
Jenny turns around and closes her eyes and starts counting.
I sneak into the closet. Into the back where I’m completely hidden by these old clothes.
I hear her count “eighteen . . . nineteen . . . twenty . . . ready or not, here I come.”
It’s creepy in the closet because it’s completely dark and smells of mothballs, and I’m thinking I should’ve hidden somewhere else, like behind the boiler maybe.
At first Jenny doesn’t know where I am—it sounds like she’s looking everywhere but the closet, and I’ll be stuck in here forever.
When I hear her outside the door—finally—I try holding my breath.
“Ben,” she whispers, “are you IN there, Ben?”
She just keeps standing there and asking if I’m IN there, and finally she finds out YEAH, I am—I can’t hold my breath anymore. I have to let it out.
“Got you,” she says.
“Your turn.” I start climbing out from the back. I hear this sound—like this metal clicking.
The door won’t open.
I try it again. It STILL won’t.
“Stop playing around, Jenny,” I tell her.
There’s this old latch on the closet because the people who lived in the house before us kept TREASURE there—that’s what Dad said.
We were never supposed to touch it.
“Very funny, Jenny. I’m dying laughing.”
She’s locked it.
“Open the door, doody-face.”
“No.”
“I said OPEN the door.”
“Got you.”
“Want me to wake Mom and Dad? You’re gonna get punished for a whole YEAR.”
“Go ahead.”
“HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPP!”
When Mom yells at us to come up from the basement and we don’t hear her she always says, “Are you guys DEAF?”
No. You just can’t hear anything from all the way down here.
Jenny has started talking to her imaginary friend.
That’s what Mom calls it.
“Shhhhh . . .”
Mom said she started doing it when her REAL friends stopped playing with her. She just made one up.
“He’s in there . . . ,” she whispers. Giggles.
“Open the door, Jenny! NOT kidding . . .”
“Locked in . . .”
“JENNY!”
“Uh-huh,” she whispers. “Be right up.”
She’s singing something.
“Let’s gather round the campfire, and sing our campfire song, and if you don’t think that we can sing it faster, then you’re wrong . . .”
The CAMPFIRE SONG.
The one we sing up at the lake every time we build a fire. You have to sing it faster and faster until you can’t understand the words anymore. That’s the idea. Keep singing it till the fire’s really going and everyone’s giggling and you can’t understand a word anybody’s singing.
“Let’sgatherroundthecampfireandsingourcampfiresong . . .”
“STOP SINGING, MORON.”
“andifyoudon’tthinkthatwecansingitfasterthenyou’rewrong . . .”
I’m sweating. Banging on the door.
“gatherroundthecampfire . . .”
“What’s THAT? What are you DOING?”
There’s this other sound.
“gatherroundtheCAMPFIRE . . .”
“What are you DOING, A-HOLE?”
I hear it AGAIN.
I know what it is.
The sound.
The last time I heard it was when Dad stacked all the branches into this big pile and put little balls of newspaper in there and then pulled them out of his pocket.
The box of matches.
Taking one out and striking it against the side of the box.
“theCAMPFIREtheCAMPFIREtheCAMPFIRE . . .”
“Are you NUTS, JENNY?”
“theCAMPFIRE . . .”
“PUT the matches down! You HEAR ME, retard!”
The box of matches from the kitchen. The ones Mom uses to light the stove. She must’ve swiped them.
“roundthecampfire . . .”
“Please open the door, Jenny . . . PLEASE . . . I’m asking nicely . . .”
Something flicks through the bottom of the closet door.
A lit match. It burns the edge of my big toe before going out.
“singourcampfiresong . . .”
“ARE YOU CRAZY??”
Another match slides under the door.
“JENNY, STOP! PLEASE LET ME OUT . . . NOW!”
“ifyoudon’tthinkthatwecansingitfasterthenyou’rewrong.”
The match has caught a piece of a sweater or coat or something. It’s smoking.
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE. I’M GOING TO MURDER YOU. I SWEAR . . .”
Another match.
“YOU’VE STARTED A FIRE! OPEN THE DOOR!”
I hear her walking away.
Walking away and leaving me here.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING? COME BACK HERE!”
Up the stairs. Slowly. One at a time. Like when Mom calls her in from the backyard and she drags her feet—does it for real, moving one foot, then the other in slo-mo, like a windup toy.
I hear the door at the top of the stairs shut.
“PLEASE! JENNY . . . JENNY, PLEASE . . . I WON’T TELL MOM . . . COME BACK! PLEASE!”
I’m coughing. Because of the smoke.
I stick my head down by the crack under the door. I need air.
I gulp it in as fast as I can. I take a deep breath and go back to banging on the door.
Then more air.
I keep doing that. Up and down. Banging and breathing.
Hitting the door with my good arm. The one that isn’t broken. The one that doesn’t have a cast on it.
A HEAVY cast.
As heavy as a BATTERING RAM.
When I hit the door with that arm, the pain shoots straight up into my head. Like a hundred times worse than when I first broke it.
I can’t do it. I can’t.
My arm—it’s killing me.
No. Something else is killing me. For real. The FIRE. When I try to suck in more air under the door, there ISN’T any. I can’t breathe.
You have to do it . . .
You HAVE to.
I start crying even before I hit the door with my cast again.
I hear myself shrieking from the pain. Like somebody else is doing it. It feels like I cracked my arm all over again.
You have to . . .
I hit the door again.
And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Screaming each time. Not just from the pain. I’m seeing Jenny’s face there. In front of me. Like I’m smashing it in. “I’m going to murder you,” I’m screaming at her. “I AM.”
There’s this sudden splintering sound.
I’ve made a tiny hole in the door. Just enough to put my mouth there and suck in some air.
I hit it again. Over and over and over and over. Smashing my cast into Jenny’s face. Again and again and again . . .
My arm goes numb after a while.
I keep doing it.
I smash THROUGH. Right through the door. A hole big enough to WALK through now.
But I can still see Jenny’s stupid face in front of me and I want to KEEP SMASHING it, just keep SMASHING it, and. . . .
Watch your back.
I’m thinking if I tell Mom and Dad, if I tell them Jenny LOCKED me in the closet and tried to light it on FIRE, they’d say stop MAKING things up, Ben.
Watch your back.
Be nice to your sister, Ben.
Nothing will ever happen to her. NOTHING.
She’ll just keep TRYING.
Like on the stairs.
And in the backyard when she pushed me into a tomato stake and I had to get like THIRTY stitches.
And I know it wasn’t a WAVE that knocked me under that day at the beach. I know it.
It felt like someone holding me down, not letting me up as HARD as I tried. ’Cause that’s what someone was DOING.
The someone behind me on the STAIRS.
And on EAGLE CLIFF.
Watch your back.
When I walk up the basement stairs I can’t feel my feet. Like I’m floating. Like when I’m playing Zombie Apocalypse and it’s down to one shot. When it’s me or them.
I’m in front of Jenny’s door.
I shove it open.