“And then it stopped, Mal.”
“Why did it stop?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it.”
“Do you ever think about anything?” Mallory asked.
“Shut your fat mouth. Actually, I didn’t like it. It was fun when I was really little, but then . . . Mallory, I don’t really remember, but I think I got tired of knowing what my Christmas presents were. I wanted to believe in Santa Claus. It was a drag to know so much. It stopped when I told Mom about it. Right before I got lost in the woods.”
“So you put it out of your mind. Like the fire.”
“I guess. I quit trying.”
“So it used to be a thing you had to try to do,” Mallory said.
“Wasn’t it for you?”
“Yeah. Was hearing me ever anything you had to try to do?”
“No. That isn’t like seeing something outside us.”
“That’s just being us. But why did seeing other stuff go away for
me
? I never told Mom about it. I guess I didn’t like it, either. It wasn’t like me thinking your math test for you. . . .”
“Or you being unable to punctuate a simple sentence without me thinking it for you. . . .”
“It was that I didn’t feel like the other kids.”
“I felt . . .”
“Like . . . old.”
“Me too,” Merry said.
“Like an adult,” Mally continued. “I hated it. Even knowing I was getting an Easy-Bake Oven. Or that a card from Great-Grandpa was coming with a five-dollar bill in it. This is bigger, and I hate it more.”
“Look, Mallory, don’t go off. You’re not sure this is all that big. Kim saw David
save
cats’ lives lots of times. Stray cats that got hurt.”
“Cats have nine lives! They get better! Who knows why they got . . . messed up? What if precious David was the one who tortured them in the first place?” Mallory hissed.
“You are so nuts.”
“You are so dim.”
It was a variation of the same thing they had been saying to each other all their lives. Neither of them loved the other less for it.
“Okay, listen,” Merry finally told her twin. “I’m staying at Kim’s Saturday. If he leaves, I’ll . . . I’ll call you and you can come and follow him.”
“Okay. How?”
“Ride your bike,” Meredith advised her, with a sneer she was glad Mally couldn’t see.
“It’s March, Meredith! I said even I’m not such a fruitcake that I ride my bike in the dark on slippery roads! And even though you like to make me sound like I’m six years old, I hardly ever use my bike anymore except for exercise.”
“Bull. You ride it to school. You did last year.”
“Once!” Mallory snapped.
“No, it was at least five times.”
“Well, I’m not afraid to sweat. I don’t know how you can be a cheerleader, because you have to sweat, Meredith. Why don’t you have your sweat glands removed so you can be sure you’ll never smell?” Mallory asked.
“Get Drew to drive you,” Meredith suggested then.
“How can I do that?”
“Uh. Well, okay. Tell him you like David.” Mallory made gagging sounds.
“I’d rather have my tongue cut,” Mally said.
“You made
me
,” Meredith went on.
“You do like David. Plus, Drew and I are going to a movie. With some of my four hundred free passes that Aunt Kate gave me.”
“Like a date?” Meredith was dumbstruck.
“Like with Eden and her sister, Raina, and whoever else can fit into Drew’s car. We’re going to the
Star Wars
marathon.”
“Well, so bring your cell.”
“It starts at four o’clock. What am I going to do, jump up at nine o’clock if David leaves the house and convince Drew to run out of the theater and follow him?”
“If he leaves, I’ll text you ODD.”
“ODD?”
“Operation David Detective.”
“Oh, please. Can you
be
more fifth grade? Why not just ‘David left the house’?”
“Because Kim might see it, duh. ODD looks like a text word but it isn’t. Do you have a better idea?”
Well, Merry wasn’t that dumb.
Mallory didn’t have a better idea.
She
would
have to tell Drew she liked David Jellico. The very notion made her want to curl up and sleep until Tuesday. But spying on him had been her big hairy idea. Merry wasn’t responsible.
Mally sighed. “Okay,” she said.
Through the interminable passage of what was, for everyone else, an ordinary Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, Mallory gave herself over to the full-time hell of ceaseless anxiety. She went to bed at seven o’clock, the minute her homework was finished, expecting—almost hoping—David would do something crazy that would not force her to involve Drew at all.
Instead, she dreamed of Eden Cardinal. She dreamed of Eden kissing the man with the woodsy clothes. She saw them together. She saw the white mountain lion.
She woke up and couldn’t stop mulling over Eden Cardinal.
Eden had come into the store one evening earlier that week when Mallory was watching the counter for her father while he drove Adam to swim practice.
“I have to get new cleats and I hate to,” Eden said. “I know I’ll outgrow them. I’m going to end up with feet the size of somebody in the NBA. They’re already a nine and a half.”
Mallory helped Eden find shoes that were thirty percent off. On an impulse, she said, “Drew Vaughan and I are going to the
Star Wars
marathon. Know anyone who’d like to go?”
Eden said she would love to go, adding that her sister, Raina, could drive her. A couple of her cousins and maybe her brother would come, too.
But why did she all of a sudden agree to go out with Mallory and Drew? Right now, when Mallory was in trouble? Was that paranoid thinking? After all, she’d never asked Eden to do anything with her. Still, it was weird for a high-school girl to agree to do something with a kid—even if Drew was someone Eden knew.
Maybe Eden would have agreed to go to the movies with Mally even before the talk they’d had that day after practice. Or maybe Eden sensed something about Mallory. Maybe she was some kind of freak like Mallory. That thought pestered Mally like a persistent mosquito. For what if Eden
was
some kind of freak, like Mallory? Say that was why she told Mally that “not much was strange” to her. If Eden was, maybe she knew why.
Maybe she could tell Mally what she saw. Or heard.
Was it pictures or voices for her? When and how often?
If Mally could just tell somebody other than Grandma Gwenny, who was so sweet but sort of closed off about all of it, she knew she would feel better. All she wanted was to be her normal, lazy, competitive self, the girl who loved sloppy clothes and World Cup and wanted to grow up and be Mia Hamm. Sports, in fact, were all Mally could tolerate anymore on TV.
She couldn’t even watch
General Hospital
. She couldn’t sit still long enough. Even her old movies now seemed like documentaries, since her own life had become as bizarre as sci-fi.
General Hospital
was skim milk. All people did was stand around for a whole hour, talking and talking and talking, about whether somebody’s baby was really his baby or his brother’s baby. It was so dumb she couldn’t comprehend how she once loved it so much.
Mally decided that she would never again spend a sunny Saturday afternoon watching ten YourTimed
General Hospital
s or
Days of Our Lives
in a row. She made a vow. If she was wrong about David, she would never think of Luke and Laura or Bo and Hope or Stefano DiMera ever again. Never. Or Lucky. Or Patch. Never.
She would become a nun.
If it would go away, this seeing thing, she would give up TV forever . . . until summer.
At dinner on Friday night, Mally couldn’t force herself to eat firsts, much less her usual seconds. Campbell zoomed in on this like a bird of prey in about four seconds.
“I cooked this pork roast,” she complained. “I stood here and cooked this. I cooked this asparagus on a day off when I could have read a novel and gone to Power Weights with Luanne and Bonnie. The least you can do is eat it.”
“I hate pork,” Mallory said.
“You do not hate pork. You ate half a pound of bacon last week,” Campbell said.
“I hate pork, also,” Adam said helpfully.
“Shut up,” Mallory snapped at him.
“Apologize!” Tim and Adam said simultaneously.
“Okay, fine. Sorry, you little copycat jerk,” Mallory said murderously.
“Mom!” Adam whined.
“I said sorry!” Mally repeated.
“Accept her lousy apology, Adam,” Merry told him. You could practically see the faint halo around Merry’s head. Mallory curled her lip at Merry, but sideways—out of her mother’s line of vision.
“I read it makes you stupid,” Adam pointed out.
“PORK ROAST?” Mallory cried.
“That’s why Jewish people don’t eat it,” Adam said.
“Jews don’t eat pork because in the Bible—” Mally began.
“You said ‘Jew!’” Adam shouted.
“What’s wrong with saying ‘Jew’? Dane Greenberg is a Jew,” Mallory said. “Your friend Shaina Werner is a Jew.”
“You say ‘Jew-ISH,’ ” Adam said.
“What does that mean,
like
a Jew? Are we Catholic-ish?” Mallory asked.
“He thinks it’s like a swear,” said Merry. “Adam, honey, it’s not considered bad to say someone is a Jew if you say it nicely. Mally, he’s ten years old!”
“Eleven in a month!” Adam crowed. Tim ran his hand over Adam’s blond buzz.
“I can’t believe you’re already going to be eleven. Tim, we should adopt a baby,” said Campbell. “You’re all growing up too fast. Mallory, you just eat your roast.”
“No.”
“Then leave the table.”
“Gladly,” Mallory said, knocking over her chair, then picking it up in a hurry when she caught her mother’s unmistakable one-second-from-grounding glance.
“
Shabbat Shalom!
” Adam called after her as she ran up to her room and fell onto her bed. A moment later, unable to shake the jitters, she got up and threw on her sweats to go for a jog, though she’d run three miles that morning.
But she was no more than eight or nine blocks from home when she saw David Jellico, slowly passing in his dad’s minivan. Just as Mally was about to dive into the bushes, he winked at her, and Mally forced herself to give him a big smile. Then she turned and ran for home, as if rabid pit bulls were chasing her. If she got kicked out of soccer, she’d do track, she thought, finally crawling up her front steps, with side-stabbing pain, afraid she was about to puke up her stomach full of nothing.
There was a note on the door.
The rest of the family had gone to the Belles Artes to see some movie with German subtitles. Merry was clearly trying out for Most Favorite Twin, or else Campbell had promised to go to the mall on the way.
The sink was also very clearly filled with dirty dishes Mally knew were intended for her.
She scrubbed the roasting pan and loaded the dishwasher.
Then she jumped into the shower, but barely had rinsed the shampoo out of her hair when she jumped out again. Grabbing her chenille robe, she sat down on the bed, convinced that someone was watching her.
Watching her?
There was only one tree close to their window, and its branches were as bare as bones on an X-ray. No one was sitting in the tree, or, when she looked down carefully, standing under it. The corners of Drew’s garage next door were clearly visible, no one behind them. Mally sat down again. Gently, the branches waved in a brisk little breeze. Mallory watched them sway and sway.
David was making out with Deirdre Bradshaw. It was a heavy make-out session: He had his shirt off and she was kissing his shoulders. He reached up and ran his fingers through Deirdre’s blond hair and when he began massaging her back, Mallory saw David twist Deirdre’s long cashmere scarf in his hand. Deirdre started to push him away. David grabbed her hair.
“Deirdre!” Mallory screamed in the empty house and fell back, the world dissolving with a silent whir.
Mallory had no idea how long she lay on her bed. But when she sat up, her legs were on the floor. She was almost kneeling. It was so dark she had to Braille her way to the door and the lights. The thought of the entire first floor, a sea of shadows, the only light a dim glow in the kitchen from the streetlamp five houses down . . .
For the first time in her life, Mally was afraid in her own house.
She put on winter pajamas and thick socks and tiptoed down the stairs. Taking a deep breath, she darted to the front door and locked it and each of the downstairs windows. No one in Ridgeline locked their doors—only old people at Crest Haven or big shots in the mansions at Haven Hills Golf Course. Tim’s friend Eric Krueger, a cop, said that unless you happened to have windows that were slits in the ceiling, security systems were only useful for alerting the police where to find your body. If they were coming in, Eric said, they were coming in. Burglars didn’t look for houses with people in them. That was the
last
thing they wanted. Mally peeked out the window over the sink. Next door, the Vaughans’ basement lights were out, so Drew wasn’t home with his friends. The only thing on was the little hall lamp Mrs. Vaughan always left burning when they went someplace. Damn it! But the light at the Johannsens’, across the street, was on. Mallory could see the aquarium blue of the TV behind their sheer curtains.
Go to sleep
, Mallory told herself.
Everyone’ll be home in an hour
.
But what if they went to the nine o’clock?
What if they went for ice cream first?
They would never take Adam to the nine o’clock.
What if they dropped Adam off at Aunt Kate and Uncle Kevin’s first?
She wanted to call Grandma, but remembered Grandma telling her that she and Merry were warriors, a pair of warriors. Massenger women were made of stern stuff.