Bitterroot Crossing (27 page)

“Mrs. Flynn’s jacarandas are blooming late this year,” Mom commented as she turned the corner away from our house, our street, our life.

“Who notices things like that?” I asked. “How many people drive down the street and take notice that a tree is not blooming on time?” My tone was bitchy, but suddenly I was pissed that as she yanked me away from my life, she was concerned the trees weren’t purple yet.

Mom looked sideways at me. She was wearing her black sunglasses so I couldn’t see her brown eyes. We were practically clones from the nose down, so it was like looking at myself, only older and less irritated.

“Someday, Brazil, you’ll be able to see past this.” She made a small arc in front of herself with her arm.

I imitated her but with an abrupt circling of my arm. “What’s this?”

“One day, you’ll be able to see past the universe that is solely occupied by Brazil.”

“My universe is back there, Mom. You are dragging me away from everything that was Brazil.” Painful tears threatened to break loose from my eyes. “You’re the one being self-centered.” The words cracked out of my throat.

As was always the case, Mom remained completely calm after I hurled the words at her.“We’re all having a lousy day, Brazil. We’re all leaving our lives behind. Not just you.”

I plopped back hard against the seat and slumped down so that my eyes couldn’t see over the dashboard. With a clumsy hand, I swiped the one big tear that had escaped. I was always the one doing the yelling, and it made me sick to my stomach that she never cared enough to yell back.

“Mom, how long is it until Vulture’s Cove?” Tyler piped up from the back. The boys were practiced at ignoring my intense discussions with Mom.

Mom smiled as she glanced back at him in her rear view. “It’s Pelican Bay, Tyler, and it will take a couple of hours. What are the dogs doing back there? Maybe you should crack your windows so Darcy doesn’t throw up.”

The back windows slid down instantly.

“Mom, can we decorate the house real creepy for Halloween?” Raymond asked over the noise blowing in from outside. This move was a total adventure for the twins. Neither of them had a worry or sad thought in their heads.

“I think it will be perfect for a haunted house on Halloween,” Mom answered.

The twins high fived each other. I shoved my earphones into my ears and cranked the volume on my iPod.

Chapter 2

I’d sulked myself into a nap and woke to the sound and pain of my head smacking the window and the pungent smell of the ocean. We’d arrived. Not that I didn’t like the beach. Some of our best family vacations were under our giant, slightly warped beach umbrella. But visiting the beach for an afternoon was one thing. Living right next to it was a whole other deal. So long good hair days.

As we turned up the unpaved road that led to the house, the twins unbuckled their seatbelts and sat forward with interest. Tall trees lined the side of the house. A towering slate gray roof peered out above them. Mom drove the car along the gravel driveway to the front of the house.

Raymond hung out the window of the van. “Cool! It looks just like the house in that scary movie where the guy cuts off his victim’s feet and hangs them along the fence.”

Tyler leaned over the front seat. “Maybe the ghost is watching us right now.”

I scooted up from my slumped position and twisted around. “You’d both pee your pants if you saw a real ghost, so don’t act so thrilled.”

Raymond sat back hard on the seat. “No way.”

Mom’s face blanched as she turned off the engine. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve been here,” she said quietly. “It’s bigger and older than I remembered.”

Old was an understatement. I stared out the window. “Something tells me the termites are holding this place together with their teeth.”

Mom laughed. “You might be right.” We all hopped out of the van. Darcy and Lizzie ran to the small patch of grass below the porch to relieve themselves and begin their nasal inspection.

The top of the two-story house looked like three small cottages stuck together. Carved wooden dowels stuck up from the point on each roof making it look like something out of a gothic novel. I half expected some depressed looking guy named Heathcliff to come running out.

A deep, covered porch wrapped around the front and left side of the house. Only small patches of white paint remained on the porch railing. Two bay windows jutted from the front of the house, each divided into dozens of tiny panes crusted in salty looking dirt.

“I’ll just hook up a hose and spray those windows with water,” Mom said.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “Don’t spray too hard. You might take down a wall.”

Mom was not someone I could stay mad at for long. Besides, the way she gripped the steering wheel on the drive here coupled with the marble white color on her face right now, showed she was stressing about this move thing more than she’d let on.

Tyler and Raymond ran to the front steps. Mom and the dogs were close at their heels.

Mom called to me over her shoulder. “Leave the doors open on the van so the breeze can flow through it. That way the cats won’t overheat. We’ll lock them in the bathroom while the movers are here.” She turned back to the house. “Watch where you step, boys, that porch may have some weak spots.”

Suddenly, there was a hilarious image in my head-- the round, orange moving man falling through the front porch with our coffee table in his hands. I took a deep breath and willed myself toward the steps. My gaze lifted to one of the upstairs windows. Apparently, one of the twins had already flown up to the top story because through the dusty haze I saw someone staring down at me. I waved but the figure disappeared. My brothers moved like ping-pong balls, speedy and erratic.

I took one last glance back toward the outside world. It felt like I was leaving one dimension and entering a whole new one where the only familiar things were two bratty brothers, a newly divorced mom, and her herd of overfed pets.

“Sweet!” Tyler yelled as he and Raymond raced from room to room.

Sweet was definitely not the word I would have used.

Stained yellow wallpaper that appeared at one time to be white with blue paisley designs greeted us in the narrow entryway. As I walked round the corner into a big empty room, I found myself tangled up in a massive cobweb. Like everything else it was thick with dust.

“Yuck! We won’t have to do too much to get this place ready for Halloween.” I flailed my hands and arms in a wild attempt to rid myself of the sticky strands.

“Yeah, Mom, can we leave the cobwebs at least until then?” Tyler asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tyler. We’ll use fake cotton spider webs like every good haunted house,” Mom said.

The main room had a window seat in front of the bay window. Directly across from it was a fireplace with a carved wooden mantle. I knelt on the window seat and rubbed some of the grime from the window as I squinted outside. A row of uneven posts provided a skeletal border between long weedy grass and white sand. Ivory froth topped the small waves, and their seemed to be, what I considered, a dangerous amount of birds flying over the beach. I didn’t mind birds but in bulk form they were intimidating.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I was wondering if anyone was going to contact me again or if they had already written me off as someone they used to know.

It was a text message from Christy. “How bad is it?”

Christy always reveled in other people’s misery so I didn’t feel like indulging her.

“I’ll live.” I wrote back.

“The kitchen is big but extremely dirty,” Mom called from the doorway. The whole house vibrated as the moving van maneuvered along the gravel path that bordered the house. “I guess our stuff is here.” She gave us a look that seemed to say--oh shit, this is really happening. “Zilly, go out to the car and carry in the cat boxes. Put them upstairs in the bathroom.”

“Which bathroom?” I asked as I headed to the front door.

“There’s only one bathroom. It’s at the top of the stairs.”

I froze in my tracks. Perhaps I had misheard her, after all, the sound of the truck engine was mingling with the roar of the ocean. “That’s hysterical,” I giggled. “I could have sworn I heard you say there is only one bathroom.”

“Sorry, Brazil. I know you were used to having your own bathroom at home. But there is only one bathroom in this house, so we’ll be sharing it.” Tyler and Raymond were busily wrapping their arms in cobwebs like they were making cotton candy and their hands were the paper cones.

“Mom, you can’t be serious. Are you sure there isn’t an outhouse in the yard for these guys? Or maybe they could use the ocean,” I suggested. “Their pee never actually reaches the toilet bowl anyway.”

“It will be fine, Brazil. Besides it’s a very spacious bathroom, complete with a claw foot tub.”

“Oh my freakin’ god,” I groaned as I shambled out to the car. I typed Christy a text message, “kill me now”. That one would probably make her day, which was fine. At least somebody would be having a good one.

The sketchy looking staircase was narrow and steep. I stared up at the landing, a cat box in each hand. Lex, the feline paperweight, and my injured toe made the climb a difficult feat.

There was a small window at the top of the stairs where faint sunlight seeped in; otherwise it was dark and gloomy. I put down the cat boxes and rose up on my good toes to peer out the window. The only thing I could see in the filthy pane was my own reflection. That’s when I noticed the figure standing behind me. I spun around but no one was there. “Tyler!”

“What?” Tyler’s voice streamed up the stairwell. He was holding a moving box.

“Where’s Raymond?” I asked frantically.

“Outside at the moving truck.”

Wonderful, we’d moved into a dusty, possessed house complete with demons. Either that or I was going completely nuts.

I pushed the bathroom door open with my elbow. A big, ugly white tub with animal feet sat in the center of the room like a museum display. This must have been the claw foot tub my mom thought was so special. I personally saw it as a step down from the sunken, blue tile Jacuzzi tub she’d had at home.

Besides the tub, everything else in the house seemed to be made of wood. But it no longer had that nice freshly cut tree smell. It smelled more like wood that had been soaked for a hundred years in dill pickle juice.

There were three bedrooms upstairs. I’d been assigned one at the end of the hallway because it had the most closet space and I had the most clothes. The loose knob nearly fell off in my hand as I turned it. The walls were painted dark pink. Actually, I liked that. And I had a window seat too. That was another bonus. It didn’t make up for the single bathroom, but it helped. There was a great view of the bay from my window, which in time, I might come to appreciate.

Although most of the furniture in the house had been auctioned off in an estate sale, I appeared to be the lucky, new owner of an ancient bookcase. There were four small drawers beneath three warped empty shelves. The hinges and handles on the drawers looked like they came from a medieval castle. Mom had a great appreciation for old stuff. We would definitely be sliding the lopsided relic down to her room.

****

 “Zilly! Pizza’s here,” Tyler yelled up the stairwell. I was starved and my toe was throbbing. After eight hours of carrying boxes, climbing steep stairs, and trying to figure out where all our stuff went, I felt like shit. Christy sent me hourly messages to let me know what was happening in the old neighborhood as if I had been gone for months, and the moving man called me Bolivia twice and Peru once. I told him he must have been some kind of geographical genius, but my sarcasm went right over his head.