CHAPTER

Nine

CLAIRE

It’s nearly four in the morning—Claire and Julie spent hours reading through the letters and working up their theory. Claire stretches out on her bed, on top of her blankets, and stares up at the ceiling, working backward through the night’s events.

The most exciting moment had been when Julie knocked on her window. Claire thought she’d dreamed the noise at first, but she kept hearing that scratching along the screen. When she pulled apart the blinds she was afraid she would see a monster. Instead she’d seen Julie, and her fear had fizzled and transformed into delight.

But Julie’s gone now, and Claire rolls over to her side, closes her eyes, wonders what her dreams will be like.

Banging shatters through her thoughts.

“Claire! Get up!”

She lifts her pillow just enough to see the clock on the bedside table. A quarter after eight. She must have fallen right asleep. Usually she sleeps later than that, and Grammy never complains, as long as her cereal box and bowl are set out the night before, along with her morning pills.

Claire hopes Grammy didn’t catch her out last night with Julie.

“Is something wrong?” Claire sits up and rubs her eyes. Sunlight streams in through the blinds, bright and already hot. “Are you all right?”

Grammy slams open the door and comes into Claire’s bedroom. She’s wearing her blue housedress, her hair pinned up away from her face. She doesn’t look all right, but then, she rarely does. Her skin is pale, like always, and her steps are shaky.

“You don’t have plans today, do you?”

A chill ripples through Claire. She thinks about the afternoon on the beach with Audrey, that weird, haunting game. “I was thinking of calling Julie,” she says carefully. Really, last night she and Julie made plans to go the library, but she doesn’t want Grammy to know that.

Grammy’s face darkens. “That girl is a bad influence. I told you about the drinking, didn’t I?”

“And I told you, all we do is play video games and watch movies.”

Grammy snorts. “Video games. That right there is bad enough. Well, you’ll just have to cancel your plans. I think it’s time for some spring-cleaning.”

Claire resists the urge to point out that it’s summer.

“I haven’t had a chance to do a thorough cleaning since I got sick,” Grammy says. “And I know I won’t be able to manage on my own, not in my condition.”

Claire sighs and slumps back against the headboard. Cleaning. It’s better than being forced to spend the afternoon with Audrey.

Still, Claire has to wonder how dirty the house really is. She did clean the place when she first arrived, although that wasn’t a true deep cleaning. She wonders if this isn’t some ploy to get her away from Julie. Or if Grammy did see her last night, and this is some sort of passive-aggressive punishment.

“I’d like it done today,” Grammy says, and whisks out of the room.

Claire sighs, but she rolls out of bed, combs a few fingers through her hair, pulls on some ratty old shorts and a T-shirt. She wonders what would happen if she refused. If she snuck out her window and rode her bike down to Julie’s house, to the beach, to the Pirate’s Den. Anywhere but here.

She doesn’t, though. Instead she goes into the bathroom and brushes her teeth. Then she grabs her Walkman and her R.E.M. tape and strides into the living room, where Grammy has already settled down for a day of rest and watching TV. Claire misses watching TV—she’d give anything to catch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation or The Simpsons, but Grammy never leaves her chair or her game shows.

“Where do you want me to start?” Claire asks.

Grammy glances over at her. “The bedrooms would be nice,” she says. “Especially the closets. I’ve got so much crammed into them I forget what’s there. If you could just do some sorting—we can take things down to the church charity once you’re done.” She turns back to her game show.

Claire sighs. She doubts those bedrooms have been properly cleaned out since the seventies. This is definitely about keeping her away from Julie. At least when she cleans the house at home, it’s for her own benefit. Her mother doesn’t keep up with the housework, and when Claire can’t stand the sight of the kitchen counter piled high with food-covered pans, she’ll scrub at them and put them away. Same thing with the bathroom. Not that her mother ever thanks her for it.

Claire loops on her earphones, starts up her music, grabs a banana out of the kitchen, and trudges to the second bedroom, the one done up in shades of yellow. She’ll start there, move over to Grammy’s, save her own room for last.

This is going to take forever.

The yellow bedroom is fairly empty, at least compared to her own room, with just a twin bed, a chest of drawers, and a big metal standing fan. Claire pulls open the top drawer. The sharp scent of mothballs drifts up in the air. The drawer is full of ugly sixties schoolgirl clothes. Claire lifts up the top item, a navy skirt sized for a little girl. Probably belonged to her mom or aunt at some point.

She works steadily through the morning, tossing everything she finds into categorized piles—girls’ clothes, women’s clothes, jewelry, holiday decorations, photo albums, weird inspirational books with pictures of tall grass and sunlight on the covers. She finishes the yellow room around the same time R.E.M. plays their last song on the tape. Claire swaps them out for Melissa Etheridge, although she’s played that tape so much the songs are too gratingly familiar. She really needs some new music. Maybe she could ask Julie to make her a tape of the bands that she’s always playing in her car. Claire isn’t totally sure she likes that music, but it’s so wild and intense that it reminds her of a thunderstorm, and she’s always liked thunderstorms. The music reminds her of Julie too.

But, since Grammy has Claire cleaning out her junk rather than calling up Julie, Claire has to make do with Melissa.

Grammy’s room is decorated in green, and the way the light filters through the gauzy green curtains makes Claire feel like she’s underwater. There’s a sickly sweet gardenia scent that isn’t in the rest of the house. The music whines in her ear, and she turns it down, then shuts it off completely. The quiet hums. She loops her earphones around the back of her neck. It feels like trespassing, being in here.

“Here we go,” Claire mutters. She opens up the closet.

Grammy’s clothes hang in neat rows, her shoes lined up beneath them, the hat shelf above them full of boxes. Claire pulls one down. Dust explodes in a thick cloud, and Claire drops the box, coughing. The lid slides off.

Photographs.

Claire kneels and riffles through them. They’re old, all people Claire has never seen before. She flips one over and it’s dated 1935. She digs around a little deeper and pulls out a photograph of a woman in an elegant Victorian gown, her light hair piled up on her head in a series of impressive architectural whorls.

It’s the same woman as the one in the picture Julie brought over last night.

It’s Abigail.

The air suddenly seems taut. Claire flips the photograph over, but there’s no writing on it, no scrawled name. She turns it over again and studies the soft lines of Abigail’s face.

You look like her.

Claire flushes with a strange heat. She slips the photograph into her pocket, shoves the box back into the closet.

She goes into the narrow bathroom attached to Grammy’s room. It’s green too, green tile and green-and-white wallpaper, and the scent of gardenias is even stronger. Claire fills the toothbrush cup with water and takes a sip. She leans up against the wall, next to the window. Her heart is pounding and she can’t say why.

Outside, the wind picks up, rattling the window’s glass. Claire finishes her water and sets the cup back on the counter. She glances at herself in the mirror. The greenish light makes her look sick.

She turns toward the door, and as she does she catches sight of something in the trash can. A brilliant strip of color. She bends down and picks it up: It’s a label, the sort that goes on an aspirin bottle. Weird. Who would pull the label off an aspirin bottle?

Grammy, apparently.

Claire tosses the label back into the trash and pulls open the medicine cabinet. It’s mostly empty save for toothpaste and floss—and a bottle of aspirin. This one has its label on.

Claire takes a step back. Her heart’s pounding again, even though she knows it’s stupid. All she found was a label, it doesn’t mean anything.

But Claire can’t shake the feeling that it does.

She kneels down and opens the cabinet under the sink. A plunger lies on its side. A ball of crumpled paper towels lurks in the far corner. And, hiding behind the pipe, is a white, label-less bottle with a childproof cap.

Claire pulls it out and shakes it once, listening to the rattle of pills inside. She opens it up and dumps a few into her palm. Small, white, round. They look familiar.

Claire opens the medicine cabinet again and pulls out the aspirin bottle. Her heart thumps. It’s the same size and shape as the bottle under the sink. She opens the aspirin bottle, dumps out the pills.

They’re the exact same.

She lines the two bottles up on the cabinet, side by side. Why would Grammy keep a bottle of aspirin in her medicine cabinet, and another, without the label, underneath the sink?

Claire opens up the label-less bottle again and takes out one of the pills. She holds it up to the light. She’s certain she’s seen it before—

And then Claire’s stomach knots in on itself. The pill drops out of her fingers and bounces across the tile.

She knows where she’s seen that pill.

Her heart racing, Claire falls to her knees and scoops the pill up again. She closes it in her fist and strides out of the bedroom, taking the long way around to the kitchen, through the sitting room, so she won’t have to walk by Grammy watching TV. The house is dark and stuffy and she feels like the walls are closing in on her, but she keeps walking, taking deep gulping breaths, until she comes to the kitchen.

Grammy’s pillbox sits where it always does, on the shelf in the kitchen window.

Claire stares at it for a few moments. The TV chatters in the distance. It sounds like some kind of talk show. The pill slips against her sweaty palm. A round of applause erupts in the living room, and Claire darts forward, grabs the pillbox.

Opens it.

In each compartment lie three identical pills. Small, white, round. Claire remembers her first day here, Grammy saying she’d already gotten her pills together, that Claire only has to make sure she remembers to take them.

Trembling, Claire opens up her clenched fist. What she finds isn’t a surprise, not really.

The pill from the stripped-off aspirin bottle is the same as the pills Grammy has been taking three times a day since Claire arrived.

Claire rides her bike to Julie’s house, the hot wind blustering across her face. She can hardly breathe, hardly think. Grammy’s been taking aspirin all this time. Her super-important three-times-a-day pills, the ones she could never afford to miss—they’re aspirin.

Claire blows through the stop sign at the end of the street, whipping the bike hard to make her turn. Her feet pedal furiously, but really it’s the confusion and anger that propel her forward. She knows she can’t stop to think. She just has to ride until she sees the tall pine trees marking the entrance to Julie’s driveway. It’s all she can do.

As soon as Claire saw the pillboxes, she dropped the aspirin down the sink and walked out of Grammy’s house. She can’t think about that. She’ll be punished somehow. Grounded. Forced to hang out with Audrey, which is worse.

Indianola flashes by. The air smells of salt water and fish, but even that’s a better smell than the gardenias in Grammy’s bathroom.

It takes Claire less time to get to Julie’s house than she expects, but by the time she arrives she’s drenched in sweat and panting hard. It’s only as she’s winding her way up the long driveway that she realizes Julie might be working.

She leans her bike up against a palm tree and takes a moment to catch her breath. She doesn’t want to think about how she must look, red-faced and exhausted and dressed in cleaning clothes.

She hopes Julie won’t mind.

Claire takes one last deep breath and goes up to the front door and rings the bell. No one answers. Claire closes her eyes. Maybe she should go back. This was a stupid idea. What if Grammy calls the cops?

The door opens.

It’s a tiny woman with long honey-colored hair, teased up high around the crown of her head.

“Can I help you?” she says, in a voice that suggests she wants to do nothing of the kind.

“Is Julie home?” Claire is hot not just with exertion but with embarrassment.

The woman accepts this, though, and she opens the door a little wider and steps back. “She’s up in her fun room. Are you that new friend of hers? Chloe?”

“Claire.”

“Ah, yes.” The woman looks like she doesn’t care. “I’m her mother. Come on in, then. You know the room I’m talking about, right? The one where she plays her games?”

“In the attic, right?”

“Mmm.” Julie’s mother shuts the door, and Claire basks for a moment in the frigid AC pouring down the hallway. “Did you run here?”

“I rode my bike.”

“You look like you’re about to die.” Julie’s mom holds up one manicured hand. “Let me get you a drink of water. Wait here.”

Claire doesn’t protest. Her mouth is parched. When Julie’s mom comes back, Claire gulps the water down and shoves the glass back at her. “Thanks!” she says, and then she heads toward the stairs before she changes her mind and decides to go back home.

The attic ladder is down. Claire can hear the Mortal Kombat music. She climbs halfway up before shouting Julie’s name. The music goes silent. Julie’s face appears in the hatchway

“Claire?” she says. “What are you doing here? I thought you had to clean!”

Claire clambers up the rest of the ladder. “I couldn’t stay in that house with her,” she says. “Grammy’s been lying to me.”

“What do you mean?” Julie helps Claire up the last few rungs of the ladder, not seeming to mind the sweat. Claire collapses down on the floor in front of the couch. Julie’s character in the game is frozen mid-leap, halfway between the ground and the sky.

“She has these pills,” Claire says, her voice shaking. “My first day here, she told me I needed to make sure she takes them every day. She acted like it was a matter of life and death, her taking these pills. And today, she had me cleaning her room, I think she was trying to—” Claire stops, not wanting to tell Julie that Grammy probably hates her. “I mean, she just likes giving me busy work, you know? And I found the pills she’s been taking. They’re aspirin. She’s been making a big deal about aspirin.” Claire covers her face with her hands and curls her knees up against her chest, trying to draw away from the outside world. For a moment she has a flickering thought that her mother set this whole thing up to get rid of her for the summer, the way she ships Claire’s brother off to sports camp ever year. She wonders if Grammy’s in on it, willing to play along so Claire’s mother can have her freedom. Except Grammy does look sick, always so pale and shaking. But she’s only taking aspirin.

Claire feels a touch on her shoulder. She drops her hands away and Julie’s sitting right beside her.

“It’s probably nothing,” Julie says gently. “I mean, maybe her doctor told her to take aspirin for her heart or something.”

Claire hugs her knees in closer. “But that’s not life or death, you know? And why did she put them in a pillbox? Why’d she keep it a secret?”

“Who knows why Mrs. Sudek does what she does? No offense,” Julie adds quickly.

Claire doesn’t say anything. She knows Julie’s trying to make her feel better, and as much as she wants it to work, it doesn’t.

“Did you ask her about it?” Julie says softly.

Claire shakes her head.

“I don’t blame you. She’s scary.” Julie grins, trying to make it into a joke. Claire doesn’t feel like laughing. “But I bet it’s nothing, I really do. Just an old woman being particular.”

“Maybe.” Claire still isn’t convinced. In a way, she knows Julie is right, that she could ask Grammy about it—Grammy’s her grandmother, her flesh and blood, it ought to not be a big deal. But it is. Claire tries to imagine herself sitting down with Grammy, showing her the aspirin bottle and the pillbox, and she can’t do it. Her mind goes blank at the thought. “I mean, she’s just so clearly sick. She can barely get around the house some days. But it just—it feels wrong.”

As soon as she speaks, Claire regrets it. Julie frowns at her. “What feels wrong?”

“Everything. Grammy’s pills. Her illness.” Claire stands up. Her head swoons, but she wants to walk around. She thinks it’ll regulate her thoughts. “I can’t put it into words.”

Julie frowns from her place over by the couch. Claire traces a slow circle around the perimeter of the attic. With each step the discovery in Grammy’s kitchen recedes further away from her. They’re just pills.

But forgetting about it feels wrong too.

Claire passes in front of the full-length mirror and catches a glimpse of her reflection. She’s still sweaty and pink-cheeked from the bike ride through the heat, and she reaches up to smooth down her hair.

A ghost floats beside her.

No, not a ghost—the gray dress. Abigail’s dress. It snags on Claire’s thoughts, dragging her away from her reflection and her whole reason for being here.

A gray dress. Silk. You found it in Julie’s attic.

She shakes her head. Her reflection moves with her, but then, just for a second, her reflection’s eyes flit off to the side, toward the dress.

Claire takes a step back. So does her reflection.

“Claire?” Julie appears behind her in the mirror, still frowning. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I just had a weird—” Claire rubs her forehead and turns around, away from the mirror. “This is going to sound crazy, but can I borrow the dress?”

Julie goes quiet for a moment. Then: “Abigail’s dress?”

“Yeah. Just—I won’t do anything to it, I just—” She doesn’t want to tell Julie that she’s thinking about wearing it to the Stargazer’s Masquerade. Julie’ll laugh at her, because there’s no way that dress is going to fit.

“Uh, sure.” Julie shrugs, then reaches over and lifts the dress off the mirror. “Just bring it back when you’re done, okay?”

Claire nods. Her head’s clearing a little.

“Look, I think we ought to do something to distract you from this whole thing with your grandma.” Julie drapes the dress, hanger and all, across the top of the couch. Claire watches her, not wanting to take her eyes off the dress. “We can watch a movie; I checked some out the other day. We had so much fun watching Hiruki and Alien, remember? And that reminds me, they’re bringing Aliens back for a one-night showing in a week, which we are definitely going to.”

Claire’s cheeks warm at that. It’s the first emotion she’s felt all afternoon that really seems to belong to her.

“I don’t feel like watching a movie,” she hears herself say. “Maybe some other time. Really, I just—” She puts her hand in her pocket. Abigail’s photograph is still there, crumpled a little from the ride over. Warmth floods up her fingers, and her thoughts firm. “No. Wait. Do you want to go to the library? Like we talked about last night?”

Julie’s staring at her with her head tilted, her eyes squinting a little. For a moment Claire think she’s going to ask again if she’s feeling okay. She isn’t sure how she’ll answer.

“Yeah,” Julie says. “Yeah, we can do that.”