CHAPTER EIGHT
Thoughts about Porter and Hunter and Heather swirl through my head, making it impossible to focus on anything. After the gossip session and late lunch with Maia, I’m so not in the mood for an early dinner with Roxy. But I’d feel the same even coming off a hunger strike.
Nothing will kill an appetite faster than the prospect of sitting across a table with the carny who wants you dead.
“Thanks for eating at five.” Roxy isn’t that grateful. Otherwise, she’d have dressed for dinner in something besides her too-tight orange T-shirt. “We get really busy at the carnival starting around seven.”
It’s quarter to five now. Mom is at the stove stirring store-bought tomato sauce while on another burner a pot of water starts to bubble. Uncle Landon’s making a salad, and I’m sitting on a tall stool beside Roxy. I expect hot demon breath to blast me whenever she talks.
“No problem.” Uncle Landon speaks for my mother. She’s a lot more subdued than she was this morning, like she might have increased the dosage of her medicine. “We’re real glad you’re letting Jade here start her shift late.”
Roxy offered before I could ask, adding some nonsense about looking forward to enjoying my company at dinner. She wouldn’t let Max start work late so he could be here, though.
“Jade deserves some slack.” Roxy’s smile is cold, her lips curling like a reptile’s. “She’s a smart girl.”
“Very smart.” Mom stirs in a circular motion, staring down into the pot. “She got a scholarship to UNC.”
My stomach clenches. Surely Mom hasn’t forgotten the scholarship was taken away when my GPA plummeted after my disappearance.
“Is that where you’re headed in the fall?” Roxy pivots toward me. Her hot breath smells like wintergreen gum.
“No.”
“Where are you going to college?” Roxy asks.
“I’m not.” It’s not hard to take Max’s advice to offer as little information as possible when she’s asking questions like that.
Mom looks up from her monotonous stirring. “When did you decide this, Jade?”
“Nothing’s been decided yet,” Uncle Landon says. “Jade has until thirty days before class starts to enroll at community college.”
He probably looked up the deadline this morning after I threw away that letter from my stepfather. I’d be miffed about that if I wasn’t grateful that he was taking the heat off me. The future is not something I want to think about.
“College is important,” Roxy announces. Like I need a lecture on higher education from her.
“Did you go to college?” I try for sweet, but the question has a sour edge.
“I got pregnant right out of high school and got married.”
She was married?
“So you got a kid?” Uncle Landon focuses on her other startling revelation.
A demon spawn, he means.
“I had a miscarriage,” Roxy says.
Mom has gone back to stirring the sauce. I’m not sure she even heard Roxy. Her expression is blank, like she checked out of the conversation. Uncle Landon looks uncomfortable. He breaks dry spaghetti noodles in half and adds them to the boiling water.
I don’t want to feel sympathy for Roxy but can’t help it. Somebody has to say something. I guess it has to be me. “I’m sorry.”
“My husband wasn’t,” Roxy says. “I lost the baby after he beat me up.”
The shock of her statement closes off my airways. Out of curiosity, I’d Googled the Punch and Judy puppet sideshow and discovered the violent Punch liked to beat up his wife. Why would Roxy, herself a victim of domestic violence, give her dog and cat their names?
“What a bastard.” Uncle Landon breaks the spaghetti more vigorously, although I think you’re supposed to boil them whole. One piece comes loose and lands on the counter. “You’re not still married to him, are you?”
“He’s dead going on three years.” Roxy pauses. “Happiest time of my life.”
So Roxy has layers. Firing questions at her so I can unpeel them wouldn’t be cool. Turns out I don’t have to. Uncle Landon gets Roxy to open up about herself while he and my mom finish making dinner.
Roxy grew up an only child in Kingstree, South Carolina, and lost her parents in a house fire the summer after she graduated high school. When a traveling carnival came to town, she applied for a job. She met her future husband when she was assigned to work the roller coaster with him.
“So you’ve been around coasters for a long time,” I say with as much nonchalance as I can muster. “Ever have one come apart like it did yesterday?”
Mom’s head comes up. “There was a coaster accident yesterday?”
I forgot I hadn’t told her what happened. She apparently hadn’t read the newspaper, either. “Nobody was hurt, Mom. It was during a test run.”
“Was the coaster empty?” Mom asks.
“I read something in the paper about that,” Uncle Landon says. “The story said employees were taking the test run.”
“Were you on the coaster when it crashed, Jade?” Mom asks.
“The coaster didn’t crash,” Roxy cuts in. “The last car detached.”
“The last car is where Jade likes to sit!” Mom drops the wooden stirring spoon and wrings her hands.
“I didn’t sit there yesterday,” I say. “Nobody did.”
“Your enemies didn’t know you wouldn’t sit there!” Mom cries.
“What enemies?” Roxy asks.
“The ones the voices told me about.” Mom’s eyes bug out as she leans toward Roxy. “Did you see them tampering with the car?”
“Nobody tampered with the car,” Roxy says. “It was an accident.”
Yeah, right.
“Like Julian almost drowning was an accident?” I blurt out, totally disregarding Max’s advice not to be confrontational. “I heard somebody told Julian it was no longer dangerous to swim by the pier.”
“Who would do a thing like that?” Roxy asks.
“Oh, come on!” I whirl to where my brother sits in the living room playing his Gameboy. “Julian!”
He looks up.
“Who told you it was okay to swim by the pier?” I ask.
“Was it the enemies?” my mother asks.
Julian shrinks back against the sofa. “Nobody told me anything.”
“Because if it was the enemies,” Mom continues as if he hadn’t spoken, “I told you to stay away from them.”
“Dinner’s about ready,” Uncle Landon announces in a loud voice. “Jade, could you get your sister?”
I consider ignoring him, but I’m not accomplishing anything except agitating my mother and letting Roxy know I don’t trust her. Without a word, I get up and head toward the back of the house and my sister’s bedroom.
“Suri’s not in the house,” Roxy says. “When I got here, she was playing hopscotch in the driveway.”
The other day, our next-door neighbor Mrs. Smith noticed Suri and some of her friends playing with sidewalk chalk and showed them how to draw a new variation on the traditional hopscotch pattern.
“With her friends?” I ask.
“No,” Roxy answers. “Alone.”
My heart feels like it stopped pumping. “Who let Suri go outside alone?”
“She’s allowed as long as she stays in the yard,” Julian says helpfully.
I run for the front door and yank it open. The driveway where Suri has drawn an intricate hopscotch pattern with sidewalk chalk is empty. A chill settles over me. I sprint into the yard and spin left, then right. I don’t see her. “Suri!”
No answer.
I take off running, circling the house, calling her name over and over.
Still no answer.
How could I have let this happen again? Roxy tried to make off with Suri once before, at the boardwalk when she was purportedly taking her out for ice cream. That hadn’t worked, so she’s gone to plan B. And this time, Roxy has an accomplice. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
I’
m back in the same place where I started, having made a full rotation of the house. I dash back inside directly for where Roxy still sits at the kitchen counter. “Where’s Suri?”
Her eyes are flat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can’t be alone in this. Who has her?”
“I don’t—” Roxy begins.
“Who has her?” I scream in her face
“What’s happening?” Mom’s voice is shrill. “Do the enemies have Suri?”
“Nobody has Suri,” Uncle Landon says. “She’s outside playing.”
I swivel to face him. “She’s not. I looked all over. She’s gone!”
“Did you look in the tree house?” The question comes from Julian. “She hides in there sometimes.”
Almost before he finishes speaking, I race for the back door and yank it open, letting it bang shut behind me. The tree house is in the farthest corner of the yard. My stepfather built it for Suri and Julian late last summer after Suri read a book about a girl who could travel through time from a portal in her tree house.
How could I have forgotten the tree house was there?
I clamber up the dozen steps on the ladder, hardly daring to hope. And then there Suri is, huddled in one corner, hugging her knees.
“Is she in there?” It’s Uncle Landon’s voice. He must have followed me outside.
“She’s here,” I shout back without turning from my sister.
“You better get in the house with Suri pronto, Jade,” Uncle Landon says. “You’ve got some apologizing to do.”
I don’t think so. Yes, Suri’s safe. She’s also spooked. My heart still hammers so hard I can hardly think, but I’ve got to be careful not to make things worse. I suck in a deep breath and slowly exhale.
“What are you doing up here, Suri?” The deep breathing is working. I sound almost normal. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
She nods, staring up at me with huge, dark eyes. “I’m hiding.”
Of course she’s hiding. She must have come up here as soon as she spotted the Amazon who tried to abduct her lumbering up the front walk.
I sink down beside Suri and put my arm around her. “I know Roxy is scary, honey, but I won’t let her hurt you.”
“Roxy?” She chews on her bottom lip and shakes her head. “I’m not hiding from Roxy.”
“What?” Even if Suri and Roxy hadn’t had the previous encounter, the carnival boss is frightening enough to send little kids running. Like Frankenstein or Count Dracula. “Then who are you hiding from?”
“The enemies,” Suri whispers. “The ones Mommy told me about.”
There haven’t been many times in my life I’m speechless. This is one of them. Before I can figure out what to say, my phone rings. Out of habit, I check who’s calling. Max. Otherwise, I’d let the call go to voicemail.
“Sorry, honey, I’ve got to take this,” I tell Suri and answer the phone. “Hey. Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Max says. “I’m calling to remind you to be careful around Roxy. We don’t want her to know we suspect her.”
I lean my head back against the wall of the tree house and consider how to break the news. “It might be a little late for that.”