1.
Christopher ran downhill most of the way to town and made it in half an hour, before full dark. Out of the woods, his thoughts had rebounded with a child’s selfish flexibility to home, its comforts, and even what punishment he’d endure at the hands of his loving, indulgent mother. He started plotting excuses, then just explanations, anything that wouldn’t get him into more trouble than he was already in: Mrs. Mitchell kept me after school—she wouldn’t even let me out of the closet until four o’clock today. That was pretty good, blaming her, but what if his mother got mad and went to the school again? I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I stayed to watch the basketball team practice. I’m sorry. His mother would buy that one, but maybe that was too safe a route; he’d almost certainly get another night’s grounding, and maybe more. It was like gambling, finding the right lie: risking just enough to minimize the extra punishment but not so much that he brought down on himself all of his mother’s wrath.
He decided that the best bet would be a combination of things: Mrs. Mitchell kept me a few minutes after to have me finish some work, and I walked home extra slow because I was so messed up after being in that closet all day. You wouldn’t believe this room they put me in, Mom. It was like prison. It was prison, but it was worse than prison. I’m kind of claustrophobic. I couldn’t breathe. I kept thinking I might get sick. He nodded to himself, pleased, thinking that he could get his mother going on one of her rants about the local education system—how archaic it was to put a child in a storage closet! He was smiling a little coming into downtown, and he decided he’d made good enough time to walk the rest of the way, catch his breath. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and enjoyed the stroll, the way the trees on the square were still clinging to some red and gold, how you could see some straw littering the ground from the previous weekend’s Tobacco Festival. He passed Leanna’s dad’s law office and rolled his eyes, because her dad was such a joke—“Atticus Finch for the ambulance-chasing set,” his father had said a couple of times, and Christopher wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but he got the gist. “Hello there, young man,” Johnny Burke would call out in his deep drawl when Christopher came over to Leanna’s to hang out, eyeglasses pushed up on his head so that his gray hair stuck straight up, slurring a little over the drink in his hand. Or, if he were really sloshed, he’d say, “If it’s not our enemy from the North, come to steal our daughters,” and Christopher had learned to just bob his head sheepishly and grin in an aw-shucks, You got me, Mr. Burke kind of way. “Is your dad for real?” he always asked Leanna when they escaped to the basement rec room, and she always groaned dramatically. “God, Chris. Don’t encourage him.”
What a strange town this was, a strange place to end up.
He dragged his feet at the final approach to his house. The adrenaline from his run spent, he now felt heavy with dread, a dread that had nothing to do with the scolding he anticipated receiving from his mother. It was just sadness, a sadness like nothing he’d known yet in his life—abstract, physical. Like he was only getting most but not all of what he needed in a breath. Had he really been in the woods with Emily Houchens just moments ago?
He sat on the steps of the house’s side entrance and crossed his arms against the cold. Both of the cars were gone. His dad would still be at work, but his mom? God, she was probably out patrolling the streets already, working herself into a tizzy. He thought that he ought to go inside to shed his coat and stow his backpack, make it look like he’d been there longer than he had, but he felt tired and numb; he couldn’t rouse in himself the momentum to stand up and unlock the door.
Forty-five minutes later, he blinked against the approach of headlights. He was relieved, he realized. He hadn’t wanted to be in the house alone. And if his mother would just give him a hug and stay close to him tonight—yes, he wanted his mother, what of it?—he thought that he could endure whatever she wanted to dish out.
The car stopped shy of the garage, and his mother emerged. “What are you doing outside? Did you forget your key?” She was wearing nice clothes, dress trousers and a suede jacket, and she had on the red lipstick she only wore for garden club meetings and dinner parties. There was something brisk and distracted about her manner that made Christopher hesitate.
“Um, yeah,” he said finally.
“Honey, I’m so sorry. You must not have even gotten my note. How long have you been sitting here? Why didn’t you walk to the library or something?”
Cheered that the exact right words were coming to him, he said, “I was afraid I’d get in trouble if I wasn’t here when you got home.”
“Oh, honey,” she repeated. She put her hands on his cheeks. “You’re freezing cold. Let’s get you inside.” She dug around in her purse for her keys. “I didn’t know I’d be gone so long.”
“Where were you?” He followed her into the kitchen. She flipped the lights and stowed her bag on the island, then scowled at a dirty coffee cup.
“I swear,” she muttered. “Your father knows good and well how the dishwasher works.” She turned to put the mug in the washer, then grabbed a towel to wipe the granite. “There was a meeting at First Baptist about Veronica Eastman—trying to organize some kind of volunteer search effort.”
“Mrs. Mitchell’s sister?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “The one and only.” She tied an apron around her waist and went to the refrigerator. “Cocoa?”
“It was a mess, really,” she said, putting the milk and cream out on the counter. “Completely unorganized. More symbolic than practical. I think people felt like something had to happen once it made the Bowling Green news, so they’re going through the motions.”
“Didn’t you tell Dad she was wild?”
Her face reddened. “Well, you must have been eavesdropping. That’s just something I heard. I don’t know if there’s any truth to it.” She unhooked a saucepan from the rack and pointed a finger at him. “Not that it even matters, young man. Her personal life has no bearing on what’s happened to her.”
He shrugged and looked at his hands. “Was Mrs. Mitchell there?”
“Yes, she was. I said hello to her. I thought it might do you some good for her to know I made the effort.”
Christopher scooted onto a bar stool. “Yeah, well, she hates me. So you shouldn’t have even bothered.”
“She’s still young yet. She doesn’t seem young to you, I’m sure, but I don’t think she’s even in her thirties. She’s going to take everything personally. It wouldn’t hurt for you to show her some respect.”
He shrugged and grunted a little.
“At any rate, she’s going through a hard time right now, so you’d be wise to pick your battles.” She went to the pantry and came out with a foil-wrapped square of chocolate. He liked watching her carve the bar into shards with her big knife, then whisk the shards into the cream. She shook some sugar out of the bowl, not measuring, then a few drops of vanilla.
When the cocoa was finished, she poured some into a mug, dropped mini marshmallows on top, and scooted it across the counter at him. “Forgive me for getting home so late, sweetheart.” She leaned across the island to kiss his forehead, then wrinkled her nose. “God, Chris. You smell awful. What on earth have you been doing?”
He lifted his arm and sniffed his sleeve, where Emily had grabbed him. There it was, that stench: she had marked him with it.
“I ran home from school,” he said.
“Through a pigsty?”
He shook his head.
“Well, you need to hop in the shower after you finish that. And put those clothes in the washing machine right away.”
“OK, OK,” he said, embarrassed.
“I’ve got to go change before I make dinner. Do as I say with those clothes.”
“God, Mom. I get it.”
She left, perfume making a delicate trail behind her. Christopher tried sipping his cocoa, but now that Emily’s smell was in his nose he couldn’t enjoy it. The liquid was thick and overly sweet, his tongue fixing on some distant sour note in the milk, a precursor to rancidness.