Rooms (23 page)
Authors: Lauren Oliver
T
he kitchen has been emptied of its furniture. Even the Spider has been packed up and carted away, and the old fireplace stands cold, clean-swept, dark, like a mouth open in a scream. Bits of cottonseed have found their way in through the window.
There is nowhere to place her but on the countertop.
Bits of the blanket remain, shreds and tatters, most of it eaten away by insects. The box is mostly intact: dark wood, laminated, it has stood up well to time. My initials are still faintly visible, although much of the rest of the paint has flaked away. It was yellow, I remember, and decorated with painted lilacs. It had been a gift from my mother on my seventeenth birthday, for holding my Sunday hat, fitted with lace as fine as a spider’s web and smelling of the lavender salts she placed next to it.
I wrapped her up in a blanket. I thought she would be safe, there, in the small yellow box that smelled like flowers.
Her bones are thin as a baby bird’s, her skull no larger than a palm.
She was blue when she came out—blue, and so cold.
I thought she would be warm—in the blanket, in the ground, under the willow tree.
T
he bones were small, far too small. Trenton felt a swinging sense of unreality, as he did sometimes in dreams, just before waking. It must be some kind of a sick joke.
But then Danny said, “Shit. Shit,” and Trenton knew it was not a dream.
“Who—who could have done this?” Caroline said. And then, without waiting for an answer, “Trenton, I need a drink. Please.”
But Trenton couldn’t move. The baby’s head was as small as an apple. It looked like it would blow apart to dust if he tried to touch it.
“Whoever buried her, it was a long time ago,” Danny said quietly.
“Her?” Minna said. “You think it’s a girl?”
Danny lifted an edge of the blanket, now hanging in tatters, that had once enfolded the child. Pink.
“Oh my God,” Caroline said, and turned away, cupping a hand over her mouth. Trenton felt a flicker of irritation—she was making this about her—and he hung on to it, tried to coax it into anger or some other familiar emotion.
“Amy made me dig under the willow tree,” Minna said, looking around the room as though she expected to be accused of unearthing the body deliberately. “She insisted. You know how Amy gets.” She turned pleading eyes to Trenton.
“What do we do with it—with her?” Trenton corrected himself quickly. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t asked. The words sounded so awful—like she was trash that needed to be dealt with.
Danny shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” Then he straightened up. “We’ll take her downtown. There might be something in the archives, but I doubt it.” He reached out and lowered the lid of the box gently, and Trenton was glad.
“Jesus,” Caroline muttered.
Amy appeared at the door, her face mashed up against the screen. What is it, Mom?” She opened the door before anyone could stop her. “Why won’t you let me
see
?”
“Trenton, get her out of here,” Minna said sharply. To Danny she said, “We’ll follow you. In our car.”
“Come on, Amybear.” Trenton lifted Amy, grateful for the excuse to leave the room. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Her breath smelled like ginger ale, and he could feel her heart beating through her ribs. He imagined all the fine, fragile bones holding her together, the caverns of her lungs, the thin tissue fabric of her organs, so easily disintegrated, and felt suddenly like crying. “Want to help me pack up the cars?”
“We’re leaving?” Amy said.
“We’re leaving.” Trenton almost added,
And never coming back
. He knew it was true instinctively. They would never return to Coral River.
“What about Penelope?” Amy asked.
Trenton jogged her a little higher in his arms. Minna and Danny were speaking together in low voices, planning, figuring out who would drive Caroline to the station. “Who’s Penelope?” he asked.
“Penelope is the girl in the box,” Amy said, swinging her feet.
Minna went silent. Trenton froze. Caroline and Danny stared.
“What do you mean, Amy?” Minna whispered.
“The book!” Amy said, as if it was obvious. “In
The Raven Heliotrope
they put Penelope in the ground so she’ll come back to life.”
Minna was very white. “Oh my God.” She flinched. “Oh my God. She’s right.”
“They bury her under the willow tree,” Amy said happily, wiggling in Trenton’s arms. “It’s magic. And the tree learns to cry, and then Penelope can come back to life. Remember, Mommy?”
“I remember, sweetie.” Minna tried to smile and couldn’t. Her eyes met Trenton’s again. She looked old—older than she should have. He felt a message pass between them, strong and wordless.
I love you, too.
The words were there, suddenly, in his mind.
Amy was still babbling. “And then the army of Nihilis comes to raid the palace and drive out the Innocents.”
“All right, Amy,” Trenton said. He tried to sound cheerful. “You can tell me about
The Raven Heliotrope
while we get everything ready to go. Sound good?”
“But the Innocents escape through the tunnels and they burn the palace down so that the Nihilis die. It’s sad because they love the palace, but they have to burn it or else. The fire is so big it goes all the way to the sky.” Amy stretched her hands toward the ceiling, gesturing.
“Wow.” Something stirred in Trenton—a memory, an idea. Fire. “That’s pretty big.” Trenton pushed open the screen door with the toe of his sneaker. Outside, the sun was blazing, and the sky was white as ash.
I
didn’t mean for her to die. Believe this, if you believe anything.
I thought I could erase her. I thought I could will her back into nonexistence.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
That year, too, there was cottonseed. I remember how it trembled in the screens, like small alien creatures, sent to bear witness; how I wished that it were real snow and would bury me when I slept. Maybe I should have died. Maybe that’s what I deserved.
But I didn’t.
Ed was on his way home from the war.
I couldn’t return to my family. I had no close friends besides Thomas.
And Thomas, too, I meant to erase.
I’d heard rumors in Boston, when I still lived at home, about girls who’d gotten into trouble. There were doctors who’d do operations, I knew, but operations cost money; there were other ways. Pills and poison. A coat hanger, even.
I thought she would just vanish. One day I would be pregnant. And the next day: a chance to start over. I would be a better wife to Ed. I would learn to love him again. I would pray to God every day for forgiveness.
At least that part of the bargain, I kept.
But she held on. Little Penelope, my poor little Penelope, who didn’t know how to do anything but live. I swallowed bleach and took pills to make myself throw up. I prayed for her to wither, like a flower on a stalk. I even tried to fall down the stairs. But at the last second I couldn’t let go of the banister.
She came at last, Queen Penelope, riding a carpet of blood: blue and cold, like someone left too long in the ice. Wise Penelope. She refused to take even one breath of this new world, where mothers were monsters; and men were at war; and nothing and no one could be believed.
T
hey were done in Coral River. Minna had arranged for Holly, a local woman who’d cleaned for her dad, to come later and deal with the dishes and trash from the memorial service. The luggage was loaded. Adrienne had gone, escorted to a motel in town by Danny’s partner. Richard Walker was buried, as he had requested, on the land he had loved.
Trenton wanted to walk through the house one last time.
He went through every room, touching walls and curtains and the remaining pieces of furniture, hoping to feel some further connection to his father, to his past, to Eva, even. But they were just rooms, many of them empty and thus unfamiliar, like the rooms of a stranger’s house. It didn’t much matter. The past would come along with you, whether you asked for it or not.
In the kitchen, he paused at the window. The squad car was idling in the driveway. Trenton’s mom was just visible in the passenger seat. Minna was chasing Amy around the BMW, trying to distract her—or maybe trying to distract herself, to forget what they had just seen. Trenton could see birds wheeling in the sky, and the soft waterfall silhouette of the weeping willow. Even now, Trenton thought, his dad’s ashes were there: intermingling with the earth, someday to be swept up by the wind, spiraling up to the afternoon sky and the clouds like new milk. He thought of the girl, the tiny little child in the box, and felt an ache in his chest. So much better to be released into air and sky.
That’s what everyone wanted, in the end: to be a part of something bigger.
Then, in the bare silence, Trenton heard a voice so soft that afterward it seemed like a memory of a memory:
Release,
it seemed to say.
Release
.
He stood very still. He held his breath.
Fire.
The voice was a flickering impression in his mind, a sense of shadow and heat.
Please. Fire.
Trenton felt a finger of cold go down his back, as though someone had reached out and stroked him. He thought of the lightbulb that had exploded above his head, and the sudden push, the force of wind, that had tipped all the candles in the attic.
He thought of how terrible it would be to be trapped forever in a body like a box; to have only the long hours for company, only rooms and walls and divisions, keeping you from the open air.
And he knew what he would do—what he had to do.
Trenton leaned over the sink and closed the window, making sure it was latched tight. He felt surprisingly calm. He felt almost as if there were a force moving through him, controlling his body, as if he were experiencing a kind of possession. It couldn’t look deliberate; he had to be careful.
A burner leaking gas. A spark from a faulty wire, an exploding bulb, an overturned candle. An accident.
He moved to the stove. The burner let out a hiss of escaping gas, like a satisfied sigh.
“Trenton.” He jumped when he heard his name. Minna was leaning into the kitchen, one hand on the doorknob. “Are you ready? We really have to get going.”
“I’m ready.” He was filled with the sudden, desperate urge to stop, to turn off the gas, to go through the house again, memorizing every corner, every curtain, every patch of sunlight. But he forced himself to cross the room toward her.
Minna stopped him before he could get out the door.
“Hey.” Minna frowned. “Do you smell gas?”
Trenton didn’t blink. “Nope,” he said.
They stood there for a second. And it came to him; they could still, after everything, speak without words.
“Let’s go home,” she said, putting an arm around his shoulder.
Trenton made sure the door was closed tightly. At the last second, fitting the key in the lock, he thought he heard a voice—fainter than a whisper, barely louder than a thought.
Thank you.
But it might have been the wind singing through the grass, the leaves rubbing palm to palm, the far-off hum of the crickets.
He couldn’t bring himself to look back at the house. And what was the point, really, of looking back?
He wanted to be far away by the time the fire trucks came.
T
he fire begins in the basement.
Does it hurt?
Yes and no. This is, after all, what I wanted.
And I’m beyond hurting now.
The fire grows quickly. Trenton, good Trenton, gave me the chance I needed. A single spark was all it took: a memory of a high yellow sun, of a first kiss, of spinning around in a circle with my sisters, believing that we would always be happy.
The smoke is thick as a dream. In the smoke, they return to me: Maggie and Thomas; Ed; little Penelope and her small, cold hands. Out of the darkness, they come: chanting silently, eyes like holes.
They’ve returned to take me.
And I return now to the great open jaw of the sky.
From the kitchen, to the pantry, to the dining room and the hall; up the stairs, a choking smoke, darkness, soot, and stifling heat.
From the attic to the roof, from the roof to the basement.
Smoke becomes wind becomes sky. Somewhere, the crickets sing of joy.
Read an excerpt from Lauren Oliver’s next young adult novel,
Vanishing Girls
BEFORE
MARCH 27
Nick
“Want to play?”
These are the three words I’ve heard most often in my life.
Want to play?
As four-year-old Dara bursts through the screen door, arms extended, flying into the green of our front yard without waiting for me to answer.
Want to play?
As six-year-old Dara slips into my bed in the middle of the night, her eyes wide and touched with moonlight, her damp hair smelling like strawberry shampoo.
Want to play?
Eight-year-old Dara chiming the bell on her bike; ten-year-old Dara fanning cards across the damp pool deck; twelve-year-old Dara spinning an empty soda bottle by the neck.
Sixteen-year-old Dara doesn’t wait for me to answer, either. “Scoot over,” she says, bumping her best friend Ariana’s thigh with her knee. “My sister wants to play.”
“There’s no room,” Ariana says, squealing when Dara leans into her. “Sorry, Nick.” They’re crammed with a half-dozen other people into an unused stall in Ariana’s parents’ barn, which smells like sawdust and, faintly, manure. There’s a bottle of vodka, half-empty, on the hard-packed ground, as well as a few six-packs of beer and a small pile of miscellaneous items of clothing: a scarf, two mismatched mittens, a puffy jacket, and Dara’s tight pink sweatshirt with
Queen B*tch
emblazoned across the back in rhinestones. It all looks like some bizarre ritual sacrifice laid out to the gods of strip poker.
“Don’t worry,” I say quickly. “I don’t need to play. I just came to say hi, anyway.”
Dara makes a face. “You just got here.”
Ariana smacks her cards facedown on the ground. “Three of a kind, kings.” She cracks a beer open, and foam bubbles up around her knuckles. “Matt, take off your shirt.”
Matt is a skinny kid with a slightly-too-big nose and the filmy expression of someone who is already on his way to being very drunk. Since he’s already in his T-shirt—black, with a mysterious graphic of a one-eyed beaver on the front—I can only assume the puffy jacket belongs to him. “I’m cold,” he whines.
“It’s either your shirt or your pants. You choose.”
Matt sighs and begins wriggling out of his T-shirt, showing off a thin back, constellated with acne.
“Where’s Parker?” I ask, trying to sound casual, then hating myself for having to try. But ever since Dara started . . .
whatever
she’s doing with him, it has become impossible to talk about my former best friend without feeling like a Christmas tree ornament has landed in the back of my throat.
Dara freezes in the act of redistributing the cards. But only for a second. She tosses a final card in Ariana’s direction and sweeps up a hand. “No idea.”
“I texted him,” I say. “He told me he was coming.”
“Yeah, well, maybe he
left
.” Dara’s dark eyes flick to mine, and the message is clear.
Let it go.
So. They must be fighting again. Or maybe they’re not fighting, and that’s the problem. Maybe he refuses to play along.
“Dara’s got a
new
boyfriend,” Ariana says in a singsong, and Dara elbows her. “Well, you do, don’t you? A
secret
boyfriend.”
“Shut up,” Dara says sharply. I can’t tell whether she’s really mad or only pretending to be.
Ari fake-pouts. “Do I know him? Just tell me if I
know
him.”
“No way,” Dara says. “No hints.” She tosses down her cards and stands up, dusting off the back of her jeans. She’s wearing fur-trimmed wedge boots and a metallic shirt I’ve never seen before, which looks like it has been poured over her body and then left to harden. Her hair—recently dyed black, and blown out perfectly straight—looks like oil poured over her shoulders. As usual, I feel like the Scarecrow next to Dorothy. I’m wearing a bulky jacket Mom bought me four years ago for a ski trip to Vermont, and my hair, the unremarkable brown of mouse poop, is pulled back in its trademark ponytail.
“I’m getting a drink,” Dara says, even though she’s been having beer. “Anyone want?”
“Bring back some mixers,” Ariana says.
Dara gives no indication that she’s heard. She grabs me by the wrist and pulls me out of the horse stall and into the barn, where Ariana—or her mom?—has set up a few folding tables covered with bowls of chips and pretzels, guacamole, packaged cookies. There’s a cigarette butt stubbed out in a container of guacamole, and cans of beer floating around in an enormous punch bowl full of half-melted ice, like ships trying to navigate the Arctic.
It seems as if most of Dara’s grade has come out tonight, and about half of mine—even if seniors don’t usually deign to crash a junior party,
second semester
seniors never miss any opportunity to celebrate. Christmas lights are strung between the horse stalls, only three of which contain actual horses: Misty, Luciana, and Mr. Ed. I wonder if any of the horses are bothered by the thudding bass from the music, or by the fact that every five seconds a drunk junior is shoving his hand across the gate, trying to get the horse to nibble Cheetos from his hand.
The other stalls, the ones that aren’t piled with old saddles and muck rakes and rusted farm equipment that has somehow landed and then expired here—even though the only thing Ariana’s mom farms is money from her three ex-husbands—are filled with kids playing drinking games or grinding on each other, or, in the case of Jake Harris and Aubrey O’Brien, full-on making out. The tack room, I’ve been informed, has been unofficially claimed by the stoners.
The big sliding barn doors are open to the night, and frigid air blows in from outside. Down the hill, someone is trying to get a bonfire started in the riding rink, but there’s a light rain tonight, and the wood won’t catch.
At least Aaron isn’t here. I’m not sure I could have handled seeing him tonight—not after what happened last weekend. It would have been better if he’d been mad—if he’d freaked out and yelled, or started rumors around school that I have chlamydia or something. Then I could hate him. Then it would make
sense
.
But since the breakup he’s been unfailingly, epically polite, like he’s the greeter at a Gap. Like he’s
really
hoping I’ll buy something but doesn’t want to seem pushy.
“I still think we’re good together,” he’d said out of the blue, even as he was giving me back my sweatshirt (cleaned, of course, and folded) and a variety of miscellaneous crap I’d left in his car: pens and a phone charger and a weird snow globe I’d seen for sale at CVS. School had served pasta marinara for lunch, and there was a tiny bit of Day-Glo sauce at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“Maybe,” I’d said. And I really hoped, more than anything in the world, that I would.
Dara grabs a bottle of Southern Comfort and splashes three inches into a plastic cup, topping it off with Coca-Cola. I bite the inside of my lip, as if I can chew back the words I really want to say: This must be at
least
her third drink; she’s already in the doghouse with Mom and Dad; she’s supposed to be staying out of trouble. She landed us both in
therapy
, for God’s sake.
Instead I say, “So. A new boyfriend, huh?” I try to keep my voice light.
One corner of Dara’s mouth crooks into a smile. “You know Ariana. She exaggerates.” She mixes another drink and presses it into my hand, jamming our plastic cups together. “Cheers,” she says, and takes a big swig, emptying half her drink.
The drink smells suspiciously like cough syrup. I set it down next to a platter of cold pigs in blankets, which look like shriveled thumbs wrapped up in gauze. “So there’s no mystery man?”
Dara lifts a shoulder. “What can I say?” She’s wearing gold eye shadow tonight, and a dusting of it coats her cheeks; she looks like someone who has accidentally trespassed through fairyland. “I’m irresistible.”
“What about Parker?” I say. “More trouble in paradise?”
Instantly, I regret the question. Dara’s smile vanishes. “Why?” she says, her eyes dull now, hard. “Want to say ‘I told you so’ again?”
“Forget it.” I turn away, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Good night, Dara.”
“Wait.” She grabs my wrist. Just like that, the moment of tension is gone, and she smiles again. “Stay, okay?
Stay
, Ninpin,” she repeats, when I hesitate.
When Dara gets like this, turns sweet and pleading, like her old self, like the sister who used to climb onto my chest and beg me, wide-eyed, to wake up, wake up, she’s almost impossible to resist. Almost. “I have to get up at seven,” I say, even as she’s leading me outside, into the fizz and pop of the rain. “I promised Mom I’d help straighten up before Aunt Jackie gets here.”
For the first month or so after Dad announced he was leaving, Mom acted like absolutely nothing was different. But recently, she’s been
forgetting
: to turn on the dishwasher, to set her alarm, to iron her work blouses, to vacuum. It’s like every time he removes another item from the house—his favorite chair, the chess set he inherited from his father, the golf clubs he never uses—it takes a portion of her brain with it.
“Why?” Dara rolls her eyes. “She’ll just bring cleansing crystals with her to do the work. Please,” she adds. She has to raise her voice to be heard over the music; someone has just turned up the volume. “You
never
come out.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “It’s just that you’re
always
out.” The words sound harsher than I’d intended. But Dara only laughs.
“Let’s not fight tonight, okay?” she says, and leans in to give me a kiss on the cheek. Her lips are candy-sticky. “Let’s be happy.”
A group of guys—sophomores, I’m guessing—huddled together in the half-dark of the barn start hooting and clapping. “All right!” one of them shouts, raising a beer. “Lesbian action!”
“Shut up, dick!” Dara says. But she’s laughing. “She’s my
sister
.”
“That’s definitely my cue,” I say.
But Dara isn’t listening. Her face is flushed, her eyes bright with alcohol. “She’s my sister,” she announces again, to no one and also to everyone, since Dara is the kind of person other people watch, want, follow. “
And
my best friend.”
More hooting; a scattering of applause. Another guy yells, “Get it on!”
Dara throws an arm around my shoulder, leans up to whisper in my ear, her breath sweet-smelling, sharp with booze. “Best friends for life,” she says, and I’m no longer sure whether she’s hugging me or hanging on me. “Right, Nick? Nothing—
nothing
—can change that.”