The Mostly True Story of Jack
A Preview of
Iron Hearted Violet
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For Ella,
who read these pages and
pronounced them “not so bad”;
and for Cordelia,
who has strong opinions about mothers:
good, bad, and otherwise;
and for Leo,
who wished that I had written a
book with a dragon in it
(perhaps next time, love);
this book is lovingly and gratefully dedicated.
There is
no utter truth or
utter falsehood in this
world. There is only
mostly
.
Which part of the
mostly
you choose to accept,
well, that much is
up to you.
—
Tales from Nowhere (or Everywhere)
by Clive Fitzpatrick
They Notice
F
RANKIE WAS THE FIRST TO KNOW
. F
RANKIE WAS THE FIRST
to know most things—but since he hadn’t spoken since he was eight years old, it didn’t matter
what
he knew. He couldn’t tell anyone. Not so they could hear anyway. He sat at the dinner table, picking at his potatoes and pot roast, when a sound blew in from the wide expanse of the prairie.
A single high note, like a bell.
The rest of his family ate, wiped their faces, and excused themselves from the table. They didn’t notice the sound.
Frankie laid his left hand over the knot of scars that curled over half his face. No one knew who or what had given him those scars, or what happened to him when he was taken away at the age of eight and returned, marked and silent, two months later. Frankie would not,
could not
, tell. After all these years, the scars were still puffed and angry and very, very red. The kids in town called him Slasher Face or Freak Show. His mother said his face looked like a field of roses. What his mother did
not
know was that the scars had memories. They
knew
things.
It’s coming
, the scars said.
It’s back
, they whispered.
No
, Frankie thought, shaking his head.
Not
it. He. He’s coming.
We knew he’d come back.
That night, Frankie’s twin sister, Wendy, woke to a dream of bells. She sat up in bed, wide-eyed and panting. The night was silent except for the early notes of crickets warming up for their summer-long choruses in the backyard.
But she smelled something. Something sweet and strange that she had not smelled since both she and her brother were eight years old—the year that Frankie disappeared and came back again.
“What is that smell?” she asked her mother at breakfast.
“Bacon,” her mother said, handing her a plate.
“No, not that smell. The other one. The sweet smell.”
“Bacon is sweet,” her mother said in a tired voice as she poured her coffee into a chipped blue mug and drank it, black and steaming, in two quick gulps. She winced. “Eat your bacon,” she said. “On your last day of school, I’d like you to be on time for once. Maybe we can trick your teachers into raising their expectations for you for
next
year.”
Fat chance
, Wendy wanted to say, but didn’t.
Her mother lifted a heavy bag of dog food and brought it to the backyard, much to the slobbering joy of their three very large, very loud, and very stupid dogs.
“And anyway,” Wendy said with her mouth full. “Bacon isn’t sweet.” But her mother had already walked out of the room and didn’t hear her.
Frankie padded down the stairs, already dressed, washed, combed, and set to go.
Typical
, Wendy thought, gulping down her orange juice. He sat down next to her and took her hand.
“Frankie,” she began, though she knew he wouldn’t answer her. “Do you smell that—?” Frankie lifted her hand to his face, laying her fingers on his ruined cheek. “Frankie, seriously, I don’t want to touch your scars, I—” She gasped. The scars burned and buzzed under her fingers.
Frankie looked at his sister, his eyes calm and unblinking. He kept her palm on the side of his face.
“Oh,” she said, her stomach sinking. She turned toward
the window that faced west and felt her knees start to shake.
“Oh no.”
Outside of town, Wendy’s best friend, Anders, felt something that he couldn’t immediately explain. He had been standing for most of the early morning with four of his older brothers, leaning against the sunny side of the gray barn while his dad and his oldest brother, Lars, loaded up the tractor and the truck. The Nilsson boys had given notes to their teachers that they were needed in the fields and would not be present in the last week of school. Farming, thankfully, has never operated on a school schedule, and the boys were relieved of their books and put to work.
But not Anders.
Since he was only thirteen, he was one year too young.
Next year, his father said.
“Be good, little bro,” his brothers taunted from the truck. “Study hard,” they snickered as they drove off. Anders watched them as they drove down the well-grooved track, the wheels spitting a plume of dust behind. For a moment, their brilliant blond heads glinted through a brown cloud of dirt, but then there was only the cloud, and Anders was alone.
What his brothers and father did not know was that Anders had absolutely no intention of going to school. When the truck disappeared, he turned toward the broad stretch of field and the wooded bluff beyond and removed his shoes.
The ground was cool, still, and damp, though the day was already warm and would likely get hot. He began to walk, though he did not know where he would go. His feet, he knew, would lead him somewhere interesting. They always did.
But on the sixth step, he felt something different. A humming sensation in the grass. On the seventh step it was stronger. By the time he had gone thirty paces, the ground pricked at his toes as though with electric shocks.
He’d felt it before. A long time ago.
“So,” he said out loud. The bees hummed, the ground hummed, even his bones and skin hummed and hummed. “So it’s coming back. Now. Right?” He waited, as though someone might bother to answer: the growing corn, the tangled wood, the clear wide sky. Nothing did. Anyway, he was pretty sure the answer was yes.
Removing the green seed cap from his shock of blond hair, he rubbed the ragged border between his neck and scalp. The wind blew across the patchworked fields, ringing across the broad, flat farms to the edge of the sky. The breeze smelled of turned earth and dry seed and fertilizer.
It smelled like something else too. Something sweet and sick all at once, like rat poison dipped in candy. He ran back and grabbed his shoes.
School, then
, he decided. It was only one more day.
Besides. He had to talk to Wendy.
Someone Else Notices
C
LAYTON
A
VERY, A TALL, BEEFY BOY OF THIRTEEN, LIVED IN
the nicest house in town. Everyone knew it. It sat on a small rise in the center of town, with the gracious college campus on its left, and the long, narrow park leading up to the town hall on its right. It had stained-glass windows, a wide oak door, and gold-painted trim that lined the rim of the roof. The house, the town hall, the college, and every other building in town that mattered had all been built a long time ago by Clayton’s great-great-grandfather. Since then, each subsequent Mr. Avery had been rich, powerful,
and absolutely in charge. Being the son of Mr. Avery, the most important man in town, meant a great deal to Clayton. And he liked to make sure people knew it.
There was a room in the Avery house called the Retiring Room. No one except his father was ever allowed inside: not Clayton, not his mother, not visiting relatives. No one.
And yet, sometimes, when Clayton walked through the hallway, he thought he could hear a voice on the other side of the old oak door. A quiet, whispery sort of voice, as light as dandelion seed. And sometimes, even more quietly, his father whispered back.
Clayton spent most of this morning and the first half of the afternoon screwing up his courage to approach the door. He had never disturbed his father before.
He knocked.
Mr. Avery came to the door and opened it wide. He took a deep breath from his nose, and the sagging skin around his thin mouth and sharp chin pulled inward, as though he were trying to suck his face right into his nostrils.
“What is it.” He did not ask this. He
said
it. Mr. Avery never asked questions. Clayton knew it was part of being
in charge
.
“Dad, there’s something wrong with my ear.” Clayton’s ear was bright red from the grind and scrape of his knuckles.