Chapter 11
“I don’t see any decay-” James said in a serious tone while leaning over Sophie. He moved his coat sleeve up and peered into the depths of her mouth. Sophie opened her mouth wider while looking out of the window of the tree house. She noticed a lot of cars in the parking lot of the gas station.
“What about the candy?” She asked, mouth still ajar.
“What?” James leaned back so she could close her mouth
“Should I eat so much candy?”
“Just make sure you brush after, it can’t be that bad for you.”
“James! You’re not really pretending.”
They were soon both sitting on the milk crates facing one another in the tree house. After James’ black eye healed up, Sophie started walking home with him from school. On the third time they were walking home, James told her about the tree house.
“It’s old, but it’s still solid, it’ll last. As long as I look in the windows to make sure the guy who lives there isn’t watching, it should be fine,”
“I don’t know,” said Sophie, “why can’t we just ask him? Do you think He’d mind?”
“Well, whenever I do something bad, I get punished for it- but if I ask to do something I’m not supposed to do, and I do it anyway- it gets worse.”
“Why don’t you just not go in the tree house if he says you can’t after you ask him?”
James often felt as if he was being watched but not seeing who was watching him. Sometimes it scared him, and he would pull the thick covers on his bed over him completely. But still, eyes fell on him. There were other times when James was walking around town or in some woods nearby and he felt like everything around him was peering inside of him, like he was a show. When he was in the tree house, James believed he could truly be himself. He was not scared during those times. “It wouldn’t be as fun! Trust me, the tree house is great. No one can see you and it has a great view of the neighborhood!”
When they first arrived at the tree house, James showed Sophie the playing cards, the milk crates, and the view. She noticed a notebook in a Ziploc bag in the corner that James did not mention during his tour.
“What’s that?” She reached over. James reached out to stop her hand but stopped before he touched her.
“Just some stuff I drew, you don’t want to look at it.”
“You drew it in art class?”
“Not exactly,” he turned from her and pretended to look out the window when he was really just looking at the grain in the wood around the window. “I got some of the ideas in art class.” There was silence.
“Then, what is it? Can I see?”
“I guess,” James told the window. He did not look away, but could hear Sophie carefully opening the bag and slowly separating the pages.
“Did you really draw these?” She asked. James nodded without looking away from the window. “This is really good- do you know these are good?” She kept flipping through the pages. “Are these those guys digging up Main Street? I remember that, it was when the pipe burst and water ran all the way down to the- Woah! You drew all the churches in the town. How did you do those lights?” James still wasn’t looking at her
“I don’t really like to show those to people.” Sophie closed the book and sealed it apologetically in the Ziploc bag.
“Let’s play dentist again,” she suggested.
“Can’t we just look out the windows, this is too cold to be a dentist’s office.”
“We can pretend we’re at the North Pole.”
James relented, but he got bored and was not even trying. Whenever anyone complimented him on his drawings, his reality seemed blurred. He was troubled just knowing someone looked at them. Sophie was upset that he was not paying attention. He could not pretend that day. When they stopped playing dentist, Sophie asked,
“Do you want to go over to my house?”
“Really, would your parents be okay with that?”
“Yeah, I told them about you, they say you sound nice,” Sophie said while looking down and allowing her hair to fall in her face.
“I guess so, do you have snacks? I’m getting hungry.” Sophie nodded.
They started walking through the woods again. James heard a steady repeating scrape and crunch. He reached out his arm and stopped Sophie before they walked out of the woods.
“Listen,” Sophie stopped humming the quiet song she was thinking of and looked around.
“I don’t hear it.” There was another scrape and another crunch. Sophie’s eyes brightened and she looked at the windows.
“I think it is the guy who lives here, it sounds like he is shoveling the driveway,” James began turning back into the woods.
“What are we going to do?” Sophie whispered.
“We’ll just go out the other way. It’s shorter to your house, anyway.” After walking through the woods they started laughing. James looked at Sophie and moved closer, he picked a twig out of her hair.
“Looks like you’ve got a hitchhiker, there, ma’am.” They started laughing and Sophie began running towards her house while James chased her. He started waving his arms and yelled, “What are you kids doing in my tree house? You think you can just go up there and play boring
dentist games without asking?”
“Hey! They aren’t boring! Dentists are interesting.”
“Yeah. Okay Soph. So are math games. And church.”
“No, it is interesting,” they were walking again at this point “it’s no more boring than sitting and looking out windows,” she sighed and crunched forward. ”Here we are!”
Sophie’s house was painted red like a barn, but without the white support beams. It sat low to the ground and was only one level with a basement. In the spring the yard grew sunflowers in the flowerbeds by the mailbox and the windows, and dandelions in the patch-less green yard. Right now, the curved cement and gravel walk was the only part of her yard that was not covered in snow. A dark brown carcass of a sunflower peeked out of the snow, frozen mid-rot.
James could see her father in the kitchen window drinking something warm from a mug and looking at a television that was set in the corner of the kitchen. They walked up to the door; The doorknob looked like it was antique copper and had etchings of lilies around its curve.
“Dad! James is here!”
“Hi, Sweetie! Just in the kitchen.” Sophie’s dad said. Sophie and James went into the kitchen, “How was school, you aren’t too cold, are you?”
“It was daunting, I’m not too cold. It looks colder than it is out there.”
“Daunting!” Sophie’s father repeated, “That’s a new one.” He turned to James “How is school going for you?”
“Good, but I’m looking forward to Christmas break.”
“Oh yeah? Is this the first Christmas without your, uh-”
“My dad. Yeah.” James looked down at his hands. The whole town knew since it happened, and all of his neighbors had begun to realize the shards his mother was in. James hoped Sophie’s dad would not ask about his mom.
“I’m sorry. It’s just another family this government is throwing-” Sophie’s dad stopped himself, “If you need anything, you let me know.” He placed his hand awkwardly on James’ shoulder. James Nodded. “Sophie, do you want to give James a tour of the house, wouldn’t that be fun?”
Sophie turned to James and smiled, “Yeah, James, I’ll show you the creepy basement!” They passed the living room and started going down the stairs when James heard Sophie’s dad cursing and grumbling about something.
The floor in the basement was smoothed-over cement painted grey. The walls were decorated with wood paneling. The entire basement was one big room, with different areas sanctioned off by couches and other furniture. There was a spot with the television, the windows that were behind the couch were covered with thick black curtains. The corner that held the computer had a window at the very top of the wall, and there was dust and cobwebs in the window. Th
ere was a section that had an indent into the basement, and that was the bathroom.
James walked toward the bathroom door, and tapped on it. The door was not solid wood, but hollow inside and plastic sounding. Looking down, he saw the glint of a penny, and he picked it up.
“Neat!”
“What is it?” asked Sophie, from across the room
“I found a penny,”
“It’s mine, because it’s my basement- and you found it here,”
“Well, finders keepers, but I would have given it to you anyway, if you wanted it,”
“Thank you,” Sophie said when James handed it to her.
“What’s that?” James was looking at the corner of the basement, opposite of where the two came in, where steps led up. They were cement rather than carpeted, and there was no light coming from them. The darkness of the opposite stairs seemed to suck a small amount of light from the room.
“Oh, that! Those stairs are the back entrance to the house.”
“Can we go up?”
Sophie sat down on the couch and looked at her hands before answering, “last time I went up there, I got yelled at- we can go outside and I’ll show you where it comes in.” A tumbling cough was muffled through the first story of the house. It was Sophie’s mother.
It was warmer on the stairs than in the basement. Both of them shuffled back into their winter coats and closed the door with a flurry of snow behind them.
They walked along the side of the house and Sophie talked about the neighbors;
“Those neighbors are really nice. They let me play with their dog sometimes,”
“What kind of dog is it?”
“A Golden Retriever,”
“Are they really golden?”
“Well, I think they are good at getting dead ducks when people are hunting, they watch out better than the hunter do to where they fall near the lakes. And it’s called golden because it has golden brown fur-“
”Is it like your hair?“
”Yeah, mine is a little bit lighter.” Sophie looked up from where she was crunching down the snow while walking and pointed as they turned along the side of the house and started walking parallel with the back, “There it is!”
She was pointing at an old, thick red door. It had chipped paint and when James put his palm against the wood, the paint seemed like it was just an afterthought and not really connected with the door at all. When James touched the handle, it was so cold that he could feel a shock at the base of his spine.
“Touch it, Soph! It’s so cold!” James said as he jumped back. Laughing, she said,
“I don’t think so, you don’t look like you had that much fun with it.”
“Maybe some other time. . .” James started laughing and then stopped-
“Wait, what time is it?”
“I don’t know- I think around four o’clock.” James’ eyes got a lot wider.
“Really?” he looked away, “I have to be home soon for an early dinner, there’s that PTA meeting soon.”
“Yeah, yeah, my dad is going to that, too!”
“See you there!” James turned to go home before he remembered something.
“Where’s your mom, Soph?” James asked.
“She’s upstairs, I think she’s sleeping, it’s really not good to bug her.”
“Oh, okay.” James noticed that there was coldness within her house, a level of sanitization. It did not seem like anyone really lived there. The furnace itself was overcome by a beating cold coming from the house itself. It was not a physical cold. Although outside the house was significantly colder than inside, he was more comfortable with the kind of cold he felt on his skin rather than the cold that felt like something icy and sharp was growing out of his stomach.