Lily

42

There was absolutely no way we could stay with Aunt Clara; that much was clear after the things she had said on the drive the day before. Now she didn’t just want Violet to do séances, but she wanted her to trick people, too! I hated what she did to my sister, but I hated even more that I couldn’t do anything about it, except one thing: go.

I didn’t know where to go, though.

Late the night before, Violet and I had been napping in the back seat when Aunt Clara parked the car outside another tired motel: the Silver Star. Violet had started fantasizing as soon as she heard the name, imagining how the ceiling maybe was covered in stars, or perhaps they had seats on the roof so we could climb up and look at the stars, but I didn’t think so. I thought it would be just like the last one, and sadly, I was right. The only difference between the Pink Dragon and the Silver Star was the color of the bedspreads, which were blue, and instead of lavender, the air smelled like lemon candy.

Our first night there had been noisy, too, as Mr. Woods came and emptied out our suitcases on the floor again. Then he threw all my Agatha Christie novels at Aunt Clara’s head. She shrieked and ducked under the bedcovers while Violet and I ran into the bathroom and closed the door behind us. We sat in the bathtub behind the blue plastic curtain until the shrieking finally died down. I really wished that Mr. Woods’s aim was a little better, though, because Aunt Clara escaped the attack with only a couple of bruises on her face, and she deserved so much more.

In the morning, when I did Aunt Clara’s makeup, I painted her eyebrows crooked on purpose and was sloppy with the lipstick, too. She did look a little weird, but no one but me and Violet knew, and we sniggered about it all morning. It felt so good to laugh again.

It was hard to keep the good mood going, however, when Aunt Clara announced that she and Violet had an appointment. If she found a ghost, I knew that Violet would be just as sick as before by the time they came back, and if she didn’t, Aunt Clara would be mad. There was no point in arguing with Aunt Clara, though—it might even make her behavior worse—so I just stood by and did nothing when they left, even if all I wanted to do was scream. My stomach tied up in a hard knot when I saw them drive away, but then I saw Irpa outside, pecking at something on the concrete just below the windowsill, and felt a little better—especially when, after a second, the raven took flight and followed the car.

At least Violet wouldn’t be alone.

I was alone, though—but this time I knew what to do while I waited. I got out my notebook right away, sat down at the little table in our room, and started making a list of possible places we could go to, but it wasn’t very long. No matter what I thought of—my friend Marie’s house, or Koko’s empty apartment—it seemed impossible that Aunt Clara wouldn’t find us. I thought of hostels and shelters, too, and changing our names to live like nomads, but none of it seemed safe from her.

I just didn’t know what to do.

Finally, I rose from the chair and fell down on the bed, belly first, exhausted. It shouldn’t have been possible for me to fall asleep since I was so restless inside, but maybe spending most of the night in the bathtub had made me extra tired, because I did sleep, and while I slept, something new happened.

It started with a feeling as if the bed was shaking—but in the dream, so I didn’t wake up—and then suddenly, I was shaking, more and more, until I was shaken loose from my body and sped toward the ceiling, face down. I didn’t crash into the ceiling, though, but stopped there, just floating and looking down at the room. It was as sad and blue as always, and I looked a little sad, too, lying there on the bed with my braid curled around my ear. My white shirt and plaid skirt were crumpled and stained with tea and ketchup.

I wasn’t afraid at all—I suppose I knew it was a dream—but just as I had started wondering how I was going to get down again and slip back into my body, I noticed that something was happening with Aunt Clara’s nightstand. There was a faint white color there, throbbing gently around the frame, and a low humming sound in the air, like the one left behind when I played the violin. Once I had noticed, it was as if a string was being pulled inside me, and I rushed back down again, only to wake up dizzy on the bed, back in my own skin.

I just lay there for a while, getting my bearings. My mouth was dry and I had a headache. I got to my feet to go to the bathroom and look for an aspirin, and when I came back out again, carrying a plastic cup of water, my gaze fell on the nightstand. It was a completely normal square piece of wooden furniture that didn’t look like much at all, but there was a drawer in it where motels usually kept Bibles. I went to the nightstand on wobbly feet, and with a heart that trembled just a little, I pulled out the drawer.

There was a Bible there, but I didn’t see it at first. All I could see when I looked in the drawer was a stained old road map. With shivering hands, I brought it out and held it up to my eyes; then I unfolded it completely and put it on top of Aunt Clara’s bed. There was a route drawn in red marker snaking across the yellow and green, and when I squinted to look at the tiny letters, I could tell right away that it was our route, so it definitely had to be Aunt Clara’s map. I looked at it from every angle and traced the red line with my finger, but I didn’t really know what I was looking for—until I saw the small blue egg nestled between two ridges on the map, right in the middle of a green swath. I knew that shape—I had seen it before, on a map not unlike this one, in the car with Mama and Papa.

It was where Mama’s lake house was.

Suddenly, it felt as if my whole body was electric. I studied the map more closely and trailed routes of my own with my finger. I could see train tracks snaking from where we were that ran almost all the way to the lake house. It was a long journey, but not overly so, and nothing compared to the one Aunt Clara had mapped out for us. I sat down on the edge of the bed and drew a different—simpler—map in my notebook and scribbled down all the names I had to remember, before folding the road map and putting it back in the drawer.

Finally, I knew what we had to do.

I was anxious and tense for the rest of the day, but Aunt Clara barely noticed. She kept talking about how the séance had been a success, and how Violet had barely even fainted. Violet herself lay on the bed just as pale and feverish as she was before I healed her, so clearly there had been a ghost this time.

“I only spat a little dirt on the carpet,” she said. “I didn’t vomit at all.”

Aunt Clara was so happy that she even let us stay behind when she went to buy food, instead of making us go to another diner. Before she came back again—loaded with hamburgers and a salad for her—I quickly told Violet my plan.

“You just have to be ready,” I said. “We have to make the fever go down as much as we can before then, since there won’t be any time to pick the tadpoles off.”

“She will be looking for us.” Violet looked nervous as she lay under the covers, pale-faced and bushy-haired. Even her freckles looked faint.

“Yes, but we have to try.” I choked on the last word as I sat beside her on the edge of the bed. “Think about Papa and how brave he was. And think about Mama, who would have hated what Aunt Clara does to you—”

“All right, Lily.” Her hand came to cover mine on top of the sheet. “Papa always said that you have to try…”

“…and if you succeed, there will be cake,” I finished, but ever since Aunt Clara had told us all that stuff about Papa in the car, it didn’t sound as hopeful as before. “Do you think you can do it?”

Violet nodded and tightened her lips. “It can’t be any worse than this,” she said, and sounded almost like Grandma Fiona in that moment—old and aching.

It was definitely time to go.

The jittery feeling continued while we ate, and while Violet helped Aunt Clara eat, and while I helped her remove the crooked makeup. When Aunt Clara turned on the TV, I couldn’t even look at the screen because it made me nauseous.

“You are awfully quiet tonight, Lily,” she remarked, flaming turquoise all over.

“I have a headache,” I replied, and wasn’t exactly lying.

When it was finally night, I crawled in next to Violet in the bed and pretended to fall asleep, but instead, I was listening. We had to go between the time Aunt Clara went to bed and the time Mr. Woods turned up, since she might wake up a little when he came, if only to pull down her sleeping mask. I had been hoping to pilfer a few more sleeping pills to make Aunt Clara sleep extra deep again, but she had kept the pill bottle in her purse all night and never left the room after she came back from buying the food. When she went to the toilet, she brought her purse with her. For a moment, I had worried that maybe she knew I had taken some before, but then it wasn’t unusual for her to bring the purse along, since it was where she kept her “necessities,” so probably it was just bad luck.

I heard Aunt Clara open the little box of earplugs and let out my breath. If she hadn’t used those, everything would’ve been more difficult—and it was hard enough as it was. When Aunt Clara put out the light, I opened my eyes and saw Violet’s eyes glinting as they looked right back at me. Neither of us made a sound, almost not even to breathe.

Aunt Clara began snoring after half an hour, but we waited even longer before we quietly rose from the bed. I had already packed our suitcases and hidden brown-checkered pants and T-shirts for us both under the mattress. We changed as silently as we could, and then Violet decided to stuff her favorite nightgown down into her suitcase. She was as quiet as a mouse but slow as molasses, and I had to hold myself back so as not to show her how impatient I was. My own pajamas lay discarded on the floor, and I wouldn’t risk everything just to bring them with me—but then I knew how Violet was about her nightgown.

When her suitcase was closed again, I tiptoed closer to Aunt Clara’s bed and found her purse on the floor by her bed. As I bent down to grab it, I looked directly into her face, and I didn’t even breathe again until I held it in my hand, even though her flames were blue-tinged white, telling me she had at least taken her usual sleeping pill.

I snapped open the magnetic button on the purse and very carefully snuck my hand in there to rummage around until I found her blue leather wallet. My plan had been to open it right away and only take what we needed, but just about then my courage wobbled, and so I ended up bringing the whole thing with me as I tiptoed back to Violet and the suitcases.

I let Violet step outside the door before me, maneuvering Mama’s old suitcase, and then I followed right behind her, closing the door almost as carefully as I had opened it. Then, finally, I breathed.

As soon as we got to the side of the road and started walking toward town, everything felt better. The cool night air had never felt so nice, and just knowing that every step we took was a step away from her made the walk through the night feel a little less long. I wasn’t even scared at all, because the things we were running from—Aunt Clara and the ghosts—were so bad that I felt safer outside than at the Silver Star.

We mostly walked in a ditch that ran next to the road, so that gave us some cover, even though the ground was uneven down there, and we often had to pause because of Violet. She was still weak, and still hot with fever, even though I had given her another pill before we left. As soon as we were safely away from Aunt Clara, I would pick all the tadpoles away and find some bananas or something to make her well with.

I just hoped it wouldn’t get worse in the meantime.

The trip to the train station took us about two hours, and by then we were both exhausted. I definitely regretted bringing all the books. We hunkered down in a circle of bushes that grew next to the station and didn’t leave it at all other than to check the timetable in the window. Thankfully, the night wasn’t overly cold, and I had brought the blue blanket from Crescent Hill and draped it across our shoulders as we sat down on our suitcases, sharing the last of the vending machine crackers. I almost had to force Violet to chew and swallow because she was so weak and said she didn’t want any. I knew that she had to eat, though. We had already walked for hours, and probably had to walk even more to find the lake house. I finally opened Aunt Clara’s wallet, too, suddenly terrified that there would be nothing in there, but there was. There was a lot of money in there—our money, I reminded myself when I started feeling bad about taking everything.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” Violet asked in a faint and tired voice, probably having thought the same thing.

“Of course she will.” I tried to make my own voice sound happy and bright. “Aunt Clara is as hard as a diamond. Nothing at all can hurt her.”

“But what will she do when she finds out we are gone?”

“Look for us, I suppose.”

“She won’t find us, though, will she?”

“No, she won’t,” I said, although I didn’t know that.

As the night dragged on, Violet’s eyes became glassier, and when she pushed her suitcase closer and leaned against me to try to sleep, her limbs felt heavy and hot. She really was not well, and I felt panicked every time I looked at her; my heart started racing in my chest and cold sweat broke out on my forehead. Her breathing had become more labored, too; I could feel the struggle that went on in her chest when I held her tight. I remembered what she had said about what would happen to her if I didn’t take the tadpoles away, and the thought made me feel ice-cold with fear.

“Violet,” I said, nudging her awake. She looked up at me with bleary eyes but didn’t say a thing. “We can’t wait.” My voice was filled with dread. “We have to get rid of the tadpoles now.”

“All right,” she mumbled, and begrudgingly got to her feet. “But what if Aunt Clara comes and we don’t see her because we are too busy with taking them away—or if we have to run?”

“I don’t care,” I almost sobbed as I shook out the blanket and put it down on the grassy ground between the bushes. I brought out my flashlight from the suitcase, too, even though I had said I would keep it off to preserve the battery. “Lie down, Violet,” I said a little softer. “You can’t be this sick on the train.” I did my best to sound reasonable and not let her see how scared I was. “It will only draw attention to us.”

“Sure.” She gave a halfhearted shrug before taking her place on the blanket and pulling up her shirt to reveal a squirming layer of fat and ugly blue tadpoles. They had clearly been gorging themselves on poor Violet while we fled. “Is it bad?” Her voice sounded thin.

“Yes.” I let out my breath.

“Worse than before?”

“They are…bigger,” I admitted.

“They are probably very hungry.” Violet sighed.

“Well, so am I,” I replied, feeling more angry and less scared by the second. If the icky tadpoles thought they could just eat my sister, they had another think coming!

Using the flashlight to see, I started picking them off her, one by one, and stuffed them into my mouth. As usual, they didn’t taste like anything, but I could feel them on my tongue like heavy, wriggling garden slugs. I swallowed them down whole, without even thinking about it. All that was important was getting them off Violet. We didn’t have any fruit or anything to make her entirely well again, but every tadpole I managed to eat was one less strain on her body.

It took forever, but I managed to eat about half of them before dawn came with a flood of brilliant golden light, telling me that our train would arrive soon. I let Violet sit up on the blanket; she was pale and looked dazed, but she didn’t seem quite as feverish as before. While she fixed her clothes, I ate another salty cracker to rinse the tadpoles out of my mouth, even though they hadn’t left any taste, just the knowledge that they had been there. As soon as we were on the train, I would buy some nice hot tea.

I just hoped that what I had managed to do would be enough to keep Violet well until we got to the lake house.