SKELETONS OF CHILDREN
The next day during lunch Jordan was sitting alone at a table next to Mark Huff’s.
“Stand back up, Calculator,” Jordan (forte)said. “You’re not eating here.”
“But you have no one else to eat with,” I (mezzo-forte) said.
“Just because everyone hates me lately doesn’t mean everyone’s going to hate me forever,” Jordan (forte)said. “If I start eating with you, though, that will be the end of me.”
I looked around from table to table. I didn’t know where else to sit. I stood back up.
“Also, I’m signing up for your treasure hunt,” Jordan (forte)said. “I’ll help you look for your grandpa’s treasure, but when we find it, I get a third of it.”
“I thought you were afraid even to be seen with me?” I (mezzo-forte) said.
“I’m doing it for Grandpa Dykhouse,” Jordan (forte)said. “He never wanted to be dead before. He used to have something to live for. His sailboat. But after he retired he had to sell his sailboat to pay for my Grandma Dykhouse’s hospital bills, and after my Grandma Dykhouse died he had to sell his house to pay for his own hospital bills, and then my parents got a room for him at the rest home, because neither of them wanted him living with us.”
Someone at Mark Huff’s table threw a wrapper at Jordan’s head.
“I hate you too,” he (fermata)shouted at them. Then to me he(mezzo-piano) muttered, “I’m going to buy my grandpa a boat.”
As per usual, I ate lunch in a bathroom stall.
From inside the stall, chewing my carrots, I could hear the quivery faint crooning (pianissimo)voices of kids in the choir room rehearsing, cycling from chorus to verse to bridge.
Sometimes I felt like I was the only one who noticed the music the world was playing—the only one who heard the song of the drainpipes, and the bedsprings, and the wheelbarrows, and the spilled marbles, and the flagpoles during windstorms, and the bleachers applauding, and the teakettles rumbling, and the lightbulbs humming, and the sticks cracking underfoot. I wished everyone understood—I somehow wanted to share it—there was music, not just noise, but music, there, every sound a note in some chord, even silence only another rest. I got lost in that music, sometimes, that everything was playing together. I could get totally overwhelmed with feelings—just listening to (pianissimo)echoes of the choir singing, and paper towel (piano)crinkling between someone’s fingers, and a leaking faucet (pianissimo)dripping water. Our town was my favorite song.
Leaving the bathroom, I spotted Little Isaac and Big Isaac hurrying along the hallway. I ducked into the bathroom and peeked from the doorway. The Isaacs bounced past. “Marcus, Marcus, Marcus!” they (forte)chanted, wrapping their arms around Mark Huff. Mark Huff (mezzo-piano)laughed, then started (piano)telling them a story. I waited until Mark Huff had led them away.
When I walked into math class, someone had drawn a pair of faces on the chalkboard. The first face had a straight line for a mouth, with crooked teeth hanging there. The second face had a squiggly line for a unibrow. Underneath the drawings, the chalkboard said,
2 EYEBROWS = 1 BRAIN
1 EYEBROW = 0 BRAINS
Everyone (forte)laughed, except the Geluso twins. Crooked Teeth (piano)muttered, “Nobody’s teeth are that crooked.” The Unibrow (forte)crumpled homework and threw it at Jordan. “What?” Jordan (forte)said, turning around, (piano)laughing. “I didn’t draw it.” That only made everyone (forte)laugh more. Then the math teacher carried in a stack of quizzes and erased the drawings and made everyone solve problems at the chalkboard.
Zeke was waiting for me after school, clutching a fistful of thief money. Today’s high-tops were metallic gold, with thick gold soles. While we walked to our locker, I told Zeke what Jordan had drawn on the chalkboard during math class.
“I truly hate that kid,” Zeke (mezzo-forte) said.
“Jordan?” I (mezzo-forte) said.
“What’s so difficult about using somebody’s actual name?” Zeke(crescendo) said.
In band class, everyone had learned new terms. Crescendo means “play louder”—so if you were playing mezzo-forte, you would play forte, then fortissimo. Decrescendo means “play softer”—so if you were playing mezzo-piano, you would play piano, then pianissimo.
“If we’re trying to learn about your grandfather’s life, we should talk to everybody who knew him. But there’s a problem. Which is that basically everybody who would have known him now lives in the graveyard,” Zeke(mezzo-forte) said.
“You mean is dead,” I(mezzo-forte) said.
“So I scheduled a seance with Kayley Schreiber,” Zeke (forte)said.
“The homeschooler?” I (glissando)said.
The homeschooler was our age, but homeschooled, obviously. She knew about voodoo, wrote fortunes for kids on slips of paper. Writing fortunes would have been just weird, except that the fortunes she wrote were never wrong, which was weirdspooky. Sometimes the fortunes were warnings, like POP QUIZ TODAY or DON’T RIDE THE BUS WALK HOME, but sometimes the fortunes had only a black circle—like a giant decimal point or a filled whole note—which meant death was coming for you. In third grade, she gave the Gelusos the black spot, and that night a tree fell during a storm, crushing their doghouse and killing their dog. In fifth grade, she gave Peter Burke the black spot, and that night he choked to death on a fish bone while his babysitter was sleeping. It’s not the black spot that does the killing—the black spot only warns you of what’s already coming.
My brother was still young, but that was the sort of thing he might become after he died—some trees became paper, became sheet music or graphing paper or fortuneteller fortunes. He might become something useful, but he might become someone’s black spot.
“Tonight?” I (forte)said.
“They may be dead, but they can still answer our questions,” Zeke (forte)said.
We rounded the corner.
Our locker was open. Our locker was empty.
Someone had written FREAK and FREAK and FREAK inside the locker with black marker. On the floor of the locker, where Zeke’s gold backpack had been, someone had written NO MORE PIGGY BANK. My backpack was missing. All of my homework.
Zeke was so pale he looked ≈ dead.
“Did you give our combination to the Isaacs again?” Zeke (pianissimo)whispered.
“I swear I didn’t,” I (piano)said.
“But then how…?” Zeke (pianissimo)whispered.
We just stood there, gaping at the empty locker.
“You had so, so, so much money,” I (piano)said.
Zeke stared at the few crumpled dollars in his fist.
“I’ve been saving money to visit my dad,” Zeke (pianissimo)whispered.
Maybe Zeke’s dad works in the Upper Peninsula too, I thought, but Zeke (piano)said, “My dad is a soldier still. When I was younger, he fought in Iraq, and afterward got stationed in Arabia. He would leave for Arabia, then come home again, then leave for Arabia. That was our life. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then one time he didn’t come back. He got stationed at some base in Italy, and got a house there, and started a new family. Now that’s where he lives, even when he’s on leave. It was like he forgot who he was.” Zeke rubbed a finger over a FREAK. “My dad had three kids with his new wife, so I have three little brothers there now I’ve never even met.”
“And now you’ll never get to?” I (piano)said.
“I’ll still get to,” Zeke (piano)said. “The Isaacs don’t want my money. They want something I stole from them. They’ll try to trade my money for what I stole.”
A kid with a piccolo came galloping down the hallway, looking > hyper, (fortissimo)shouting, “Fire in the parking lot, fire in the parking lot!”
We ran to the parking lot with everyone who wasn’t on buses already—Emma Dirge, the Geluso twins, the kid with the piccolo. Mr. Tim was there already, (forte) hosing the garbage bin with a fire extinguisher. The Geluso twins(fermata) booed him for putting out the fire.
“Can’t imagine what’s in there to light,” Mr. Tim (mezzo-piano)muttered. “The bin was just emptied this afternoon.”
Mr. Tim used the handle of his broom to fish something out from the garbage bin—the charred remains of a gold backpack. Ashes tumbled out, caught in the wind. I spotted a couple of half-burned dollars in the whirlwind of ash, floating off into the parking lot.
“At least it wasn’t a kid,” Mr. Tim (forte)said.
Now Zeke was so pale he looked = dead.
“They burned my money,” Zeke (piano)whispered.
Mr. Tim fished out another backpack—a black one—mine. Bits of half-burned homework went floating off into the parking lot after the bits of half-burned dollars.
“Nothing to worry about,” Mr. Tim (forte)said. “Only a couple of backpacks.”
My mom’s car was parked at the curb, across from the buses. She was wearing her uniform, plus her name tag, plus a gray jacket with black buttons. She had a bit of something leafy stuck between her teeth. A stack of flyers had spilled across the dashboard, all with the same picture of Grandpa Rose.
“Don’t forget that there’s a showing today. Do you want to come along to the rest home for a while? We aren’t allowed at the house during the showing,” my mom (forte)said.
“I’m going to a friend’s house,” I (forte)said.
“What friend?” my mom (forte)said.
“I need a new backpack,” I (forte)said.
“What happened to yours?” my mom (forte)said.
Sometimes your mom will give you this look where you can tell she’s thinking about who you used to be. She wants you to be the you you were when you were younger, the smaller one with no secrets, but you can’t help getting older, you’re getting bigger every day. That was the look my mom gave me now.
“Nicholas, we can’t afford another backpack,” my mom (forte)said.
I had to get home before the showing started. I (forte)shouted goodbye and flew onto the bus and dropped into a seat just as Mr. Carl shifted the bus into gear.
When I got home, a black station wagon was parked in the driveway.
The showing was already happening.
The kids in my brain (forte)shouted, “Don’t peek in, don’t sneak in, you’ll get in trouble!” but as per usual I couldn’t help ignoring.
I tried my bedroom window, which was locked. I ran around the house. My brother was talking to a salamander with golden speckles. The dirt was drier, the grass was deader than before. It still hadn’t rained. I poured a bucket of water onto my brother’s roots. Then I peeked through the kitchen window.
In the kitchen, a woman in a polka-dot dress was burping a baby in polka-dot overalls. A man in a black sweater was laughing at someone’s joke, the laughter muted by the window. The agent my parents had hired was showing the family our stove, yoyoing the door of the oven.
I propped the bucket against the house.
I dropped through the bathroom window.
I crouched in the bathtub, where I had landed, and listened. Then I noticed the bathroom.
My towel had vanished. My toothbrush was missing from the sink. The shelf above the bathtub was empty—my mom had hidden our soaps, our razors, our shampoos. It looked like we had already moved out.
The door to the oven (forte)slammed in the kitchen. I could (mezzo-piano, piano, mezzo-forte)hear voices. My own house, and I had to sneak around like a thief. I slid from the bathtub onto the floor. I tested my high-tops. I took a breath.
I crept through the bathroom, my high-tops (pianissimo)squeaking against the tiles. I bolted through the kitchen, where the woman in the polka-dot dress was peering under the sink, my high-tops (pianissimo)scuffing against the wood. I crept through the hallway, my high-tops (pianissimo)padding against the carpet. I shoved a lock of hair out of my eyes and took a breath again and ducked into my bedroom.
A kid in a blazer was sitting on my bed. An elementary schooler, a third grader, maybe. I had never seen him before. His nose was crusted with snot.
“Who are you?” the kid (forte)said.
“Your worst nightmare,” I (mezzo-piano)said.
“Do you live here?” the kid (forte)said.
“Yes,” I (mezzo-piano)said.
“I like your room,” the kid (forte)said.
“You do not,” I (mezzo-piano)said.
“I do too. I like this whole house. It has neat windows,” the kid (forte)said.
“You hate this house,” I (mezzo-piano)said.
“My mom thinks it’s too small—”
“It is,” I (mezzo-piano)said.
“—but my dad thinks it’s perfect.”
I dug through my closet for my knife. The kid stared at me like he was afraiduncertain. I belted my knife to my leg.
“Here’s what they won’t tell your parents,” I (piano)hissed. “We have ghosts in our attic, and monsters in our woods, and the skeletons of children bricked into our walls.”
The kid stared at me like he was more scared than before even.
But as I dropped through the window, the kid (forte)shouted, “I think ghosts are neat too!”
That night at the ghosthouse, Grandpa Rose and Grandpa Dykhouse sat at the top of the staircase, chewing handfuls of raspberries. Grandpa Rose was (piano)talking, something about someone getting shot over gambling debts. Grandpa Dykhouse was scribbling notes about the memory with the stub of a pencil, his glasses hooked to his sweater. The lantern flickered between them, each of the steps darker and darker toward where the staircase turned into floor. New supplies lay dumped in piles there at the bottom—reams of paper, a plastic bag from the pharmacy, scattered library books, some bent cans of peaches.
I was perched on the fireplace, fiddling with the broken music box. Zeke was sprawled across the floor, his head propped on a wolfdog. Jordan was peeing from the porch.
“Shouldn’t we start on PAWPAW ISLAND?” Jordan (forte)shouted.
“Theoretically,” Zeke (forte)shouted. “But I can’t find anything about a PAWPAW ISLAND. I looked at my map of the lakes, at the index of the islands, but there wasn’t a PAWPAW. The index went from Parry Island to Pelee Island with nothing between.”
“So now what?” Jordan (forte)shouted.
“We may have to search the islands one by one,” Zeke (forte)shouted.
“Do you know how many islands there are in Michigan?” Jordan (forte)shouted.
“34,981,” I (mezzo-piano)said.
“He meant approximately, but, yes,” Zeke (mezzo-piano)muttered.
“Prime number,” I (mezzo-piano)said.
“Like, a lot of islands,” Jordan (forte)shouted.
Jordan stepped over a wolfdog back into the ghosthouse.
“We’ll all be grandfathers before we’ve searched every one,” Jordan (forte)said.
Jordan (mezzo-forte)sawed open a can of peas. Zeke frowned at a water stain on the ceiling, running his fingers over his stubby bristles of buzzed hair. I wound the music box, the music box making the same sound it always made, (piano)click (piano)click (piano)click (piano)click (piano)click, trying to play its music with whatever parts it had left. Grandpa Rose was (piano) telling a story about someone with a lisp double-crossing someone with a toupee, while Grandpa Dykhouse scribbled notes.
“I’ve been trying to solve the other clue, about the trunk, X18471913,” I (forte)said. “X is the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet, so the clue could mean 2418471913, like a phone number—241-847-1913—but when I tried calling it, it didn’t ring, just made a beeping sound instead.”
“What’s the language where letters mean numbers?” Zeke (forte)said. “Like I means one, V means five, X means ten. Maybe the X means ten, so the clue means 1018471913.”
“I tried that number too,” I (forte)said. “Or another theory is the X represents a multiplication sign, which would mean we’re supposed to multiply something by 18,471,913.” I wound the music box again. “Or another theory is the X represents a decimal point, which would make the number .18471913, which is approximately equal to a ratio of 2,309/12,500, which you can’t simplify any further because 2,309 is a prime number.”
Jordan threw the empty can at me.
“You’re so smart that you’re dumb,” Jordan (forte)said.
“Here’s what you’re missing,” Jordan (forte)said. “Are you ready, Calculator?” He jabbed me with a finger. “The X doesn’t mean anything! The numbers are the clue! The X marks the spot!” He held his arms out, like someone after a performance awaiting a shower of bouquets.
Zeke shook his head.
“You’re so dumb that you’re dumb,” Zeke (piano)muttered.
I looked around from person to person. I was eleven, and Zeke was thirteen, and Jordan was thirteen, and Grandpa Rose was eighty-nine, and Grandpa Dykhouse was seventy-three. All of us were primes. All of us had Big Events coming. If we were going to find the heirlooms, this was the year.
Grandpa Rose was (pianissimo)describing a memory about a tunnel collapsing and marooning someone underground.
“We don’t even know what the heirlooms are worth,” Zeke (mezzo-piano)said. “A gun, a clock, a hammer, how valuable can they be?”
“I don’t know,” I (mezzo-forte)said. “But they better be worth at least as much as a house.”
“And a boat,” Jordan (forte)said. “A house and a boat.”
Zeke didn’t even bother saying anything about a flight to Italy.
“We’re late for the seance,” Zeke (forte)grunted, rousing the wolfdogs.
“See you, King Gunga, we’re off for some treasure hunting,” Jordan (forte)called.
“You’re coming?” Zeke (forte)gaped.
“Calculator didn’t tell you? I’m hunting for the treasure now too. A third of that treasure’s mine,” Jordan (forte)cackled, wriggling into a sweatshirt.
As the others headed for the porch, (forte)bickering, Grandpa Rose waved me over to the staircase.
Climbing the steps, I suddenly thought of another theory.
“Hey, Grandpa Rose, you can’t read music, can you?” I (forte)said.
“Kid, I’m hardly smart enough to read a magazine,” Grandpa Rose (forte)said.
The X clue could have meant a sequence of ghost notes—on sheet music, ghost notes look just like normal notes, except ghost notes have X’s where normal notes would have heads. During performances, ghost notes get played almost totally silently—so that the notes are still there, but barely there at all—like notes hovering somewhere between the realms of living sounds and dead silence.
But how could ghost notes lead to a hidden trunk? What were you supposed to play them on? Where were you supposed to play them?
Anyway, if Grandpa Rose couldn’t even read music, that must not have been the answer.
Just then, I noticed how anxious Grandpa Rose looked. He had his jacket buttoned to his chin. His fingers were streaked with raspberry. He wouldn’t even look at me.
“Kid, I have to tell you something embarrassing, and somewhat disgraceful,” Grandpa Rose (forte)said. He fiddled with a button. He quit fiddling. “The truth is that, lately, I’ve been having trouble remembering your Grandma Rose’s face.” He hesitated, and hung his head. “Okay, truthfully, I haven’t been able to picture her face for some time now. Not at all. Believe me, that’s been the worst part about the last few years. Worse than anything.” He knit his hands together, like someone begging for some money. “Tomorrow, will you bring me a photo of her face?”
“We don’t have any,” I (forte)said.
“You don’t have any?” Grandpa Rose (forte)said, hunching forward, frowning.
“My mom says Grandma Rose never let any photos of herself be taken. I was three months old when she died. I can’t remember her face either,” I (forte)said.
Grandpa Rose stared off toward the fireplace, still frowning.
“So, you don’t even know what you’re missing,” Grandpa Rose (piano)murmured.
In the gold light of the lantern, the tattoos on his cheeks looked almost black. He blinked. He turned back toward me, and smiled, rapping his knuckles against my chest.
“You’re lucky,” Grandpa Rose (forte)said.
I flew down the staircase, shot through the doorway out onto the porch.
“Finally finally finally, let’s go!” Jordan (forte)said.
Grandpa Dykhouse peeked out through the doorway, the lenses of his glasses smudged with spiraled fingerprints.
“Have you kids ever heard of holmgangs?” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said.
We stopped on the steps.
“Wait,” Jordan (forte)said, squinting at Grandpa Dykhouse. “I know that look. You’re in librarian mode, aren’t you? You’re going to make us listen to some boring fact!”
“Do you want help looking for the heirlooms or not?” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said.
“Okay, but this had better be mind-blowing, and don’t add any extra details,” Jordan (forte)said.
“I can guarantee that you’ll like it, because it’s about fighting,” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said.
“Alright!” Jordan (forte)said, folding his arms together and nodding.
Grandpa Dykhouse leaned against the doorway, moonlight gleaming on his head.
“A holmgang was a duel,” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said. “A duel that you had on an island. If you didn’t like someone, or if you got into a quarrel, you would meet on an island with your pistols and your seconds. Then you would duel until somebody was dead.”
“What’s a second?” Zeke (forte)said.
“A second was a friend you would bring along, to make sure the fight was fair,” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said.
“Could the seconds fight each other?” Zeke (forte)said.
“Sometimes the seconds had to,” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said. “The Scandinavian settlers who built this town, they would have holmgangs all of the time. Somebody would fall in love with somebody’s wife, and then—holmgang—they would row to an island and shoot each other. A roof would collapse and kill somebody’s kids, and then—holmgang—whoever’s kids had been killed would challenge the roofer, and they would row to an island and shoot each other.”
Zeke (piano)murmured something about the Isaacs. I didn’t know then that this murmur was noteworthy, but it’s noteworthy, 100%.
“Anyway, I keep thinking. Those skeletons are everywhere on the islands. Maybe that’s where Monte hid the key. Maybe BONES FROM BOW means the bones of a dueler?” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said.
“Let’s ask!” Jordan (forte)said, but Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said, “I’ve tried already. Monte won’t say anything, except, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Get out of my house!’ ”
“Sorry,” I (mezzo-piano)said.
“It’s not your fault,” Grandpa Dykhouse (piano)said.
Grandpa Dykhouse stepped into the ghosthouse, shivering, and waving goodnight.
“It’s not even Monte’s,” Grandpa Dykhouse (pianissimo)said.
We slipped through a meadow of (forte)chirring mosquitoes and (forte)trilling crickets, tightroped a tree across a creek of (fortissimo)droning frogs, crossed an unpaved sandy road to a dead-end neighborhood of one-story cottages. The wolfdogs kept bumping into each other, sniffing at the road.
“Why did you draw those pictures of the Gelusos today?” I (forte)said.
“I didn’t,” Jordan (forte)said.
“The Gelusos thought you did,” I (forte)said.
“Anything mean anybody does at that school, everybody assumes it was me. ‘The Ballad Of Dirge And Keen,’ I never wrote that either,” Jordan (forte)said.
Zeke (piano)laughed, like someone disappointed by a magician’s trick.
“Laugh if you want. But I’m not lying. Half of the things I’m blamed for I never did,” Jordan (piano)muttered.
Zeke ducked through a curtain of hanging ivy, unlatched the gate of a stone cottage. The gate (piano)tocked shut behind us. The wolfdogs (piano)huffed, then flopped onto the road, resting their snouts on their paws, staring at the gate, looking moody about getting left behind. Zeke led us along a path of stones.
“This will be my first and hopefully last ever seance,” Jordan (forte)said.
No one said anything.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Boylover?” Jordan (forte)said.
“Really, after you’ve experienced something personally, you can’t help but believe in it,” Zeke (forte)said.
“You’re saying you’ve seen a ghost?” Jordan (forte)said.
“Well, maybe not ghosts exactly, but related phenomena, definitely,” Zeke (forte)said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Jordan (forte)said.
“Okay. Here. So, an example is, my dad is missing a hand,” Zeke (forte)said.
“You’re lying. Like, how, from war?” Jordan (forte)said.
“A spider bit him,” Zeke (forte)said.
“A spider bit him. Then, what? The hand just fell off? You can’t lose a hand to a spider, that’s completely impossible,” Jordan (forte)said.
“Not for this kind,” Zeke (forte)said.
“What kind?” Jordan (forte)said.
“A violin spider. It bit his hand, and the skin on his hand turned necrotic, and so the doctors had to cut off the hand. Some people call the spiders fiddlebacks,” Zeke (forte)said.
“Necrotic?” Jordan (forte)said.
“Dead. Necrotic. It means the skin on the hand was dead, even though the hand was still alive,” Zeke (forte)said.
Jordan pretended to puke, disgusteddelighted.
“Anyway, have you heard of phantom limbs?” Zeke (forte)said. “If your hand gets cut off, afterward sometimes you’ll feel the missing hand. You’ll feel it tingling, or cramping, or hurting, like it’s still there. You’ll feel something pinching it. And my dad always said the worst part is that you can’t fix it. Because it’s not actually there. Nothing’s actually pinching it. So you can’t fix it, you have to keep feeling it, until the pinching stops on its own.”
Jordan stopped dead on the path.
“I really hate to agree with you, but now that you say it, this creepy thing happens to me sometimes,” Jordan (forte)said. “In kindergarten, I used to have this sort of mullet. You know, where your hair is short in front and long in back? But, the creepy thing is, even now that my hair is normal, sometimes I still feel something bobbing around back there!”
Zeke buried his face in his hands.
“It’s phantom limbs, not phantom haircuts,” Zeke (forte)said.
“I swear, sometimes I get this ghost mullet!” Jordan (forte)said.
Jordan was still (forte)rambling about mullets. Zeke (fortissimo)knocked on the door. I was peeking through an unlit window.
A shape appeared there, behind the lace curtain, drifting toward the door.
Zeke tugged my sweatshirt.
“You’ve never met Kayley Schreiber before?” Zeke (piano)whispered.
“Never even seen her,” I (piano)whispered.
“Did you know she speaks binary?” Zeke (piano)whispered.
Binary is a language computers speak. Instead of letters, it’s zeros and ones. Like 01100010011100100110111101110100011010000110010101110010. That’s what you would say if you wanted to say “brother.” I didn’t know much about the homeschooler except that she lived with her grandmother and fed birds from her hands.
“No, why?” I (piano)whispered.
Kayley Schreiber had bushy eyebrows, blotchy cheeks, and a freakishly large mouth. She was eating celery and wearing a shirt the size of a dress. I calculated the odds that she would have had any friends at a school like ours, which were about 0%.
“My earring’s missing,” Kayley (mezzo-forte)said, pinching her earlobe, frowning.
A skull earring, the shape of a keyhole, hung from her other earlobe.
“What can be lost can be found,” her grandmother (piano)murmured, her voice all singsong, as she sprinkled herbs into a pot of (mezzo-piano)bubbling stew.
Kayley led us along a wallpapered hallway, through a wooden door, and into a backyard of (pianissimo)chirping bats. A treehouse had been built in the branches of a huge cedar tree. Planks of wood had been hammered into the trunk. We scaled the tree from step to step, like the lines of a staff, the planks rough under my fingers.
“Do you hate homeschool?” Jordan (forte)said.
“Today I read a book about the history of dressmaking. Then I collected different birds’ nests to study their architecture. I love homeschool,” Kayley (forte)said.
“Is your accent fake?” Jordan (forte)said.
“We used to live in the Keys, where voodoo is hugely popular,” Kayley (forte)said.
“Were you born weird?” Jordan (forte)said.
“You can’t help your obsessions,” Kayley (forte)said.
Jordan started to ask another question. Zeke hit Jordan. Jordan hit Zeke. We sat cross-legged. I memorized the treehouse. Dead leaves strewn across the floor. Voodoo signs chalked across the ceiling. A spiral shell on a weathered table. Bouquets of dried wildflowers. A deck of warped tarot cards. Hanging from a nail, drawn in charcoal on brown paper, a map of the smugglers’ tunnels out at the dunes.
“Money?” Kayley (fermata)said.
Zeke stared at his last few crumpled dollars. He chewed a lip. He handed over the money. Then he crossed his fingers, like a gambler banking on the jackpot.
“Before I summon the spirit, I’ll read your palms,” Kayley (forte)said.
She held Jordan’s hands, studying the lines.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Jordan (forte)said.
“A hundred years ago people didn’t believe in germs, but germs killed people anyway,” Kayley (forte)said.
She held Zeke’s hands, studying the lines.
“Sorry, I didn’t know he was coming,” Zeke (mezzo-forte)muttered.
“Heard that, Boylover,” Jordan (forte)said.
“I should charge extra,” Kayley (mezzo-forte)muttered.
“Heard that too,” Jordan (forte)said.
She held my hands. The charcoal map of the smugglers’ tunnels (piano)flickered with the wind.
“Do you speak binary?” I (mezzo-piano)whispered.
She nodded, tracing the lines in my palms with the tip of her finger. I wanted her to hold my hands forever. I had never met anyone else who spoke a language made of numbers.
Kayley (mezzo-forte)clapped, like SHALL WE BEGIN? She shoved aside the table, pinched a stump of chalk between her fingers. With the hem of her shirt she erased a symbol from the floor.
“A treehouse is the best place for voodoo, when you’re a beginner, because of its size,” Kayley (forte)said. She rested her fists on her hips, nodding thoughtfully, like she couldn’t help agreeing with herself. “In a normal building, with multiple rooms and layered walls, it’s tough to pinpoint the heart of the structure. But a treehouse is one room! The heart of the structure is the center of the floor.”
She bent over the floorboards, tucking her hair behind her ears, and drew intersecting ovals with swooping lines of chalk.
“Different seances summon different elements. A matter of voice and form. The medium’s question,” Kayley (forte)said. She flared her nostrils, and pursed her lips, concentrating. “This symbol I’m drawing summons just the voice of the spirit. The symbols that would summon the form of the spirit are way more complex.”
She drew a spiral shell within the ovals.
“You can’t just summon a spirit anywhere anytime. A spirit haunts a certain building. Namely, wherever that spirit died,” Kayley (forte)said. She paused, glancing up at us. Her eyebrows rose suddenly, vanishing under her bangs. “This treehouse is haunted by the spirit of its maker, who fell while building it. But through that spirit we can talk to the others in the underworld. I’ll summon its voice into the depths of the shell.”
She tossed the chalk. She cradled the shell. She sat cross-legged on the symbol, holding an ear to the shell, shutting her eyes. The shell was pale pink, her fingernails a darker purple.
“You may now ask the question,” Kayley (piano)murmured.
Zeke nudged me.
“We need to know anything anyone there knows about my grandfather, who was born here in town, and whose name is Monte Rose,” I (forte)said.
She gripped the shell. Her eyes darted under her eyelids. Bats arced past the windows. The wind (piano)shook the tree. The floorboards (decrescendo)creaked. The charcoal map of the smugglers’ tunnels (pianissimo)flapped on its nail.
The noise died.
“Monte Rose?” Kayley (mezzo-forte) said.
“Yes?” I (forte)said.
She (piano)set the shell on the table. She looked uneasypuzzled. She frowned.
“I’m sorry,” Kayley (mezzo-forte) said.
“The dead won’t help you,” Kayley (mezzo-forte) said.
“What did they say?” I (forte)said.
She erased the symbol from the floor.
“That he gave them no rest,” Kayley (piano)said.
Zeke hopped from the tree, landing with a (piano)whump.
“What does that mean?” Zeke (mezzo-piano)muttered.
Jordan hopped from the tree, landing with a (piano)whomp.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Calculator?” Jordan (mezzo-piano)said.
“Maybe not in the ghosts of the dead,” I (mezzo-piano)whispered.
“What then?” Jordan (mezzo-piano)said.
I thought of my brother the tree.
“I don’t think it’s things that used to be that haunt us, but things that could have been,” I (mezzo-piano)whispered.
As I hopped from the planks, I saw a glint of metal in the grass. A skull earring. The metal hook a question mark with a skull for a dot. I could have set it on the door, but I didn’t. I pocketed the earring, and ducked the ivy, and bolted after the others into the trees.