Dad: I don’t even know what to say to you about this list.
Me: Am I in trouble?
Dad: I think we’re all in trouble now.
I thought it had been awful making Mom so upset like that, then having to leave her.
It was five hundred times more awful seeing Dad upset.
He didn’t believe me. Not about any of it. He thought I was exaggerating. And the sad painted all over his face—he thought I was imagining things like Mom does, and that I just didn’t understand what kind of disaster I was creating.
After Ms. Jones came over and gave him my list and the barrette, then left, Dad called the station where he worked. I sat on the kitchen floor hugging my knees and thinking about how I never wanted to talk to Peavine or Angel ever again, how Dad didn’t want to talk to me anymore, and how Mom didn’t want to talk to anybody.
How could Peavine have let Angel get her hands on that list? He knew how she was. He knew she wouldn’t keep it private. Why didn’t he get it back from her? He was my friend. My best friend. I should have been able to tell him anything and trust that he’d keep it safe from Angel.
The thought of not talking to him made my insides hurt from loneliness.
Peavine let Angel snatch my list, and when she gave it to their mom, he didn’t try to talk her out of worrying about it. He told our secrets. And now those secrets were right here, surrounding Dad and me like shadows with fangs, waiting to bite us to death.
Dad hung up the phone. He didn’t look at me when he wiped his cheeks with a hanky, or when he tucked the hanky back in his jeans pocket. For a few moments he stood staring at the sink, both hands on his orange T-shirt, the one from Tennessee’s national championship year.
I would have given anything for it to be fall, with a football game coming on. We could watch it together and yell at referees and eat popcorn, and maybe, somehow, all of this would go away, or at least get better.
Would he ever watch football with me again?
“They’ll be here in a while,” Dad said. “I’m going out to mow.”
“But it’s almost dark,” I whispered.
Dad walked out of the kitchen like he hadn’t heard me. I knew “they” meant other police officers from where he worked. As for the mowing, it was Saturday in Mississippi, and it was summertime. Everybody had to mow if they didn’t want to live in a jungle. He might could get a little done before it got pitch black. Besides, Dad liked to mow when he needed to relax or work something out in his head—like where he was going to lock his wife up forever after she got charged with murdering two kids, so she couldn’t hurt anybody else, or maybe where he’d send his daughter, too, since she wasn’t much better off, bless her heart.
I didn’t have any tears left, so I didn’t cry. Instead I thought about my mother rocking and rocking and rocking. I rocked too, back and forth, to see if it made me feel any better.
It didn’t.
I kept laying out the mystery pieces in my mind and rearranging them to see if they’d turn out differently.
They didn’t.
My eyes moved to the pantry. I could try stuffing myself silly, but I didn’t think that would help either. All those shelves full of food, sitting just in front of me, behind the closed door. No light got in there. It would be dark. Whatever lived in the dark and wanted to eat me, it could be in that pantry.
But that was stupid. I didn’t even get a little bit scared. If I opened that door, I’d just find the food. There wouldn’t be anything right in front of me that I couldn’t see.
Right?
My hands moved to my belly, which hadn’t gotten as big as a beach ball.
I looked at my hands and thought about my memories from the fire, how they hadn’t been there, and then they were. They had been inside my mind the whole time, but I hadn’t let myself see them. I wasn’t any better than Dad, refusing to see what I couldn’t handle.
Great.
Mom’s craziness and Dad’s stubbornness. I really got the best of both parents in my genetic structure, didn’t I?
What else was I refusing to see?
Something clattered in the basement.
Fear hit me like a cold wave, and my whole body froze solid. I listened to the sound of my breathing, and it sounded so, so loud in the quiet house.
Way out in the distance, a thousand miles away, the riding mower started, nothing but a distant growl. Shadows grew in the room as the day went away, and my heart went stutter-stutter-stutter and I took my really loud breaths and I listened. I listened so hard, my ears ached.
I looked from my stomach to the pantry to the basement door.
Was there something down there?
Right. Dinosaur mice. Of course there was nothing in the basement. I really did make stuff up. I was getting just like Mom, worrying about things that didn’t even exist.
The Abrams kids existed. They had real problems, and she tried to help. I thought about the creep at the school. Like Mom, I wasn’t wrong all the time. No. In fact, I was right a lot of the time. Maybe I didn’t have brain tumors or chest tumors or stalking walruses, but that guy at the school—he really had been a bad guy.
Downstairs in the basement, something went thump.
I shut my eyes.
“Not real,” I told myself out loud, like that would help. “Not real, not real, not real.”
Thump.
I breathed faster and faster. Mice? Dead squirrel ghosts? Serial killers? Walking tumors? Homicidal walruses? I smacked myself in the side of the head, and the sting made me open my eyes wide. And a little wider.
I thought about Dad, outside mowing. He wasn’t far. I could go get him, but he’d totally think I was being crazy. Calling 9-1-1 was out of the question unless a walrus exploded out the basement door and tried to stick its white straw tusks through my heart. If I called Captain Armstrong, Dad would have a fit.
Peavine . . .
No.
I swallowed down a lump in my throat, feeling more alone than I had ever felt in my whole entire life.
After a few more seconds I slid my phone out of my pocket, found Stephanie Bridges on my contact list, and called her.
“Hey,” I muttered when she answered.
“Footer?” She sounded shocked, but also happy, like she actually wanted to hear from me. “What’s going on?”
“I—” What? I’m sure there’s a monster in my basement? I can’t handle being this scared? I’m a total baby?
From way down in the basement came a very definite thump. Dad’s mower sounded farther away than ever. I felt like a concrete statue, set right into the floor.
“Talk to me, Footer,” Steph said.
“I miss my mom,” I said. And I started to cry.
Steph took a breath, very slowly, in and then out, while I stared at the basement door and waited for it to open.
“I know you do.” Steph sounded sympathetic and not fake.
“I’m scared she’ll never come home,” I told Steph, staring at that door. “I’m scared my dad thinks I’m crazy. I’m scared he’ll never listen to me about anything ever again, but there really is something in the basement.”
This time she breathed fast and sharp, like me. “Where is he?”
“Way in the back, out mowing.”
“Go get him.”
“No.”
“Footer—”
“No!”
I babbled out why—about the list I sent Peavine and how he let Angel steal it, and how the police were coming soon, and how Mom would probably go to prison forever for accidentally killing Cissy and Doc Abrams, and how Dad looked at me before he went outside, and how I was hearing the noises.
I worried Steph would blow me off like Dad did, but she said, “You’re kidding.” Then, “No, you’re not kidding, because nobody could make all that up.” And then, “Go to your room and lock your door. I’m on my way.”
I hung up from her, and then, just in case I was about to die, I called Captain Armstrong and thanked him for helping me understand about flashbacks and for talking to me when I got scared waiting for Peavine’s mom, and I apologized to him one more time for the whole MBI shoe thing and how I was stupid for a while and almost treated him like people who don’t understand about war problems do. He sounded confused, but finally he said, “You’re welcome, kid. Any time.”
I jumped as I hung up the phone and put it back in my pocket.
It’s just Mom’s mice, I tried to tell myself. They’re hungry, and—
And I froze solid again, this time because I suddenly saw a picture that had been in my mind the whole time, hidden away, like the memories of the night of the fire. The items on my list rearranged themselves and changed, and the mystery—
No way.
But . . .
My eyes slid away from the basement door and went to the pantry. I touched my belly, which wasn’t as fat as it should have been, since I’d been packing away all that food. Then I looked at the phone on the charger on the counter and thought about how Cissy and Doc’s mom had called my mother.
My hands pressed into my stomach.
Couldn’t be. I was 1,000 percent insane.
But . . .
But nothing. Either I had gone crazy or I hadn’t. It was time to find out.
I got up, feeling a whole lot less afraid than I should have, but my hands still shook as I took two frozen meals out of the freezer. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, my favorite. The delicious smell of gravy and meat (not fish sticks—hallelujah) seemed to fill the whole house as I cooked the meals one at a time, without letting myself think too hard about what I was doing.
What’s the truth, Footer? Do you even know anymore?
No. I didn’t know. Mom wouldn’t tell me, and Dad couldn’t tell me. So I’d just have to tell myself.
I finished cooking the meals, used some salt and pepper on the potatoes, and added a little butter. Then I dug around in the fridge until I found two containers of applesauce. I loaded the applesauce, some napkins, two drink boxes, and silverware into a grocery bag, picked up the meals, and carried them to the basement door.
When I opened it, a clink echoed through the house, like one of Dad’s weights was being set on the floor.
I kept listening.
I thought I made out the soft whump of the door of the little bedroom shutting.
I carried the meatloaf meals down the steps, slow so I didn’t spill anything. When I got to the little bedroom, I had to set them on the floor to turn the door handle.
The door pushed open easily.
When I looked into the room, that’s when I started to get nervous.
It seemed spotless and completely empty. No sounds. No unusual smells. No movement. I picked up the meatloaf meals and went inside, glancing at the bathroom and each of the room’s corners. The single closet door was shut, but when I spoke, I directed my words at the bed—under it, to be exact, because under the bed made more sense than anything.
“I know you’re in here.”
No response came from the bed.
“I figured you were tired of peanut butter and lunch junk, so I made you some real dinner. Well, mostly real. It’s not fish sticks, at least.”
Heart beating fast now, I stood there holding the meals and watching the bed and waiting. Nothing happened.
You’re crazy, my brain told me. Completely bonkers. Deranged, insane, certifiable. Out to lunch, screwy, nuts. Looney, flaky, cuckoo. The insults went on forever. I probably could have stood there a few hours thinking up new ones, but I didn’t think we had that kind of time before Steph showed up.
“You might as well come out and talk to me,” I told the bed. Half-baked, one bushel shy of a full crop, not playing with a full deck. “I found the letters from Carl Abrams, and I think I remember most of what happened.”
Mental. A fruitcake. A freak.
Out of my tree. Off my gourd. Completely unhinged.
I sighed. “Look, my DCFS worker is on the way, and the police will be here soon to talk to Dad about everything, and they’ll probably search the house and find you. You want to go with them full or starving?”
Goofy. Psycho. Touched in the head.
The bedspread moved a fraction, right at the bottom. I saw a little hand, just a flash of fingers, then it was gone. I jumped hard enough that I almost dropped the meatloaf trays, but managed to keep hold of them even though hot gravy sloshed on both of my thumbs.
Somebody let out a loud breath.
Then the bedspread moved a lot, and I saw the top of a head with black hair. Then I saw the rest of a head and some shoulders. . . .
And finally a whole girl crawled out, dragging her long legs until she could crouch on the floor.