Four
Back at the town square, Ms. Edith collected their worksheets and, with a skeptical look at the empty cups of cocoa, declared Pip and Eleanor the winners, being the only ones with completely correct answers. As they walked back toward school, Eleanor kept glancing side to side, expecting to see that huge black dog again, and hoping desperately that she wouldn’t—or that someone else would, and prove that she wasn’t seeing things that didn’t exist.
It wasn’t the first time that Eleanor had seen something no one else could. No one else had seen the man at the bus stop back home, either. Or the others that she’d learned not to talk about. That she had, eventually, stopped seeing.
They reached the classroom just as the period ended, and the students dispersed to their next classes. Pip hesitated at the door. “Eleanor,” she said, and let the word hang. Then she shook her head. “Never mind. It was nice to meet you. We can hang out again tomorrow, if you want.”
“I’d like that,” Eleanor said. She was surprised to find the smile she gave Pip was entirely genuine.
“I have to get to gym class,” Pip said. “Be careful, okay?”
“What do you mean?” Eleanor asked, startled, but Pip only shrugged and dashed away, leaving Eleanor staring after her.
ELEANOR DIDN’T SEE Otto on the bus home, and she rode alone in the back, pulling her feet up on the seat. She’d had exactly one goal today: get through it with everyone thinking she was normal. And could she really say she’d failed? She hadn’t done anything weird. Weird things had happened around her, but that didn’t count, did it?
Except that she was the only one that had noticed. Which meant it was happening again. Just like it had before, when she was little. Just like it had right before her mother set the fire that burned down their house and nearly killed Eleanor.
She felt wobbly, almost dizzy, her thoughts fuzzy the way you got when you didn’t have enough water and stayed outside all day in the sun. She’d expected that coming to Eden Eld meant leaving this kind of thing behind her.
Eleanor still wasn’t sure what this kind of thing was, except that it made her smell smoke again, and feel ash clinging to her skin. It made her start coughing, until the bus driver glanced up at the rearview mirror to look at her.
She’d been lucky to get out. When she’d seen the stairway all up in flames, she’d covered her mouth and dropped to the floor and crawled to the bathroom, which overlooked the garage. She’d climbed onto the garage roof and scrambled down the gutter, and then she’d run back to the front door to try to get in, because her mom was still in there.
She still had a shiny burn scar like a crescent on her right palm, where she’d touched the doorknob. The fire had been so hot it heated the knob all the way through. She couldn’t get in. She couldn’t help.
But it turned out her mother wasn’t still in there. They’d searched all over after the fire was out, and there was no body. But the police were sure, completely sure, that a person had set the fire—right at the bottom of the stairs. They told her that her mother had set the fire, and then she’d just . . . left.
Whenever Eleanor thought about it, she felt like she was touching the doorknob again—feeling that bite of pain, with so much more waiting on the other side. It filled her with so much rage and so much sorrow that all she could do was keep the door closed and try to feel nothing at all.
The police had looked for her, of course, and asked Eleanor all sorts of questions. About the strange things her mother said, about what they called her erratic behavior. They had called in a psychologist to talk to her, and he explained it like she was six. That her mother was sick in her brain, and she’d said, You mean she’s mentally ill, and the man had blinked three times behind his big glasses and said, slowly, Well. Yes.
And then she’d done the one thing her mother had told her not to do all her life.
She went to Eden Eld, to live with Aunt Jenny.
The bus pulled up in front of Ashford House. She walked down the steps, coughing into her elbow one more time. The branches of the tree in front of the house shook, and something scraped along the wood. Eleanor walked quickly to the front door, not breaking her stride until it was shut firmly behind her.
When she was little, before she realized that the things she saw, that her mother saw, weren’t real, her mother would put her arms around her in bed and whisper to her.
There are things in the world that shouldn’t be, she would say. Things out of place. Little pieces of other worlds that slipped in, like a piece of gravel in your shoe. Some of them are kind, but most of them are dangerous. Be careful, Elle, and stay away from Eden Eld.
She’d always wanted to protect Eleanor. So Eleanor couldn’t understand why she would have set the fire. Everyone seemed so sure—but they were sure that the things her mother was afraid of weren’t real, and Eleanor knew better. Her mother was ill—her fear crawled inside her and grew and grew until she couldn’t breathe or think straight. She was ill, and the things she saw were real.
Eleanor had thought the fact that she stopped seeing them meant that she was safe, and that her mother’s growing panic was only a symptom of her illness. But now they were back. Eleanor knew it didn’t mean her mother hadn’t been sick.
But it did mean that she’d been right.
And maybe it meant there was more to the fire than everyone thought.
BEN DIDN’T MAKE it home for dinner, and she and Jenny ate in front of the TV, Jenny with her plate balanced on her huge belly. They watched a show about a group of good-guy thieves, and at the end of the episode all the bad guys were ruined and all the good guys were happy, and Eleanor lost herself in a world where all wrongs could be righted in forty-three minutes (plus commercial breaks). By the time they were done, Jenny was yawning, and she headed off to bed with a “night, Elle,” leaving Eleanor on her own.
It had started raining outside, drumming pleasantly against the roof and the windows. She’d always liked the sound of rain, as long as she didn’t have to get wet. She pulled her sweater tight around her as she made her way to her room and pushed open the door.
She was surprised to see something waiting on her bed. A book. She didn’t remember leaving a book there. The one she’d been reading was on the bedside table, in fact.
She crossed the room, frowning. And then she stopped dead, her thoughts turning into a wild tangle that made no sense at all.
It was her mother’s book. Thirteen Tales of the Gray.
It must be another copy. Jenny had left it here, or—but no. It was the same book. The exact same book, the same wear on the spine, the same streak of pink, glittery paint from a close encounter with one of Eleanor’s early craft projects. It should have burned, but the only evidence of the fire was a few smudgy spots of ash.
She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled it toward her. The rain had stopped. The house was silent. “You can’t be here,” she said. The book, unconvinced, remained stubbornly real.
In the hall, the clock chimed the hour.