As if on cue, Theo's mom appeared in the doorway of their lemon-colored house. To my astonishment, I saw that it was Ms. Vore, our art teacher.
"That's your mom?" I asked, even though I could already tell the answer. Vore had seemed too young to have kids, especially a teenage kid. Theo nodded sheepishly.
"I'll see you at Hawthorne, okay?" She jogged swiftly to the porch where her mother waited. Laundry fluttered on a line in their backyard, rustling in the breeze. More of what could only be Theo's fashions hung there, looking like the remains of a little girl's dress up box that had fallen into the hands of an insane seamstress.
I stood wondering what exactly had just happened, and if we were on good terms now or not. The fact that anyone would associate me with Lainey seemed impossible. People were too hard for me to figure out.
###
On Saturday, I stayed in bed long after I woke up, not wanting to move. I had two whole days away from Hawthorne to look forward to, no politics or drama for forty-eight hours.
When I finally climbed the stairs, I saw sheets of rain sliding down the windows and pooling on the back deck. It didn't let up all day, and I trudged around the house, not changing out of my pajamas or brushing my hair. I clicked back and forth between reality show marathons on TV, until I couldn't stand housewives or survival games in the rainforest anymore.
"I need to run up to Erasmus," Hugh informed me, already dressed in his coat. I was sitting on the couch, picking through a bag of popcorn that had only half-popped. "Want to tag along?"
"Sure," I said, abandoning my snack.
Hugh stowed a banker's box of expense reports in the backseat of the Mazda and we took off. I didn't get out of the car while he ran into Erasmus, chugging through the soaking rain.
Instead, I watched people pop in and out of shops on Main Street, dashing towards their cars as their shopping bags got soaked. Black spiders trailed over a cotton spiderweb in one store's display window across the street.
When Hugh got back into the car and started the engine, an idea whispered to me.
"Is that old orphanage still around? The one past Lee Street?"
"Hmm? Oh, the Dexter Orphanage?" Hugh frowned in thought. "I think so. They've been talking about tearing it down for years, but I don't think they ever did. The city can't straighten out who owns the property." He finally must have realized what a funny question it was, because he frowned at me. "Why?"
I shrugged. "Could we drive back there and check it out?"
Hugh's eyes narrowed. "Does this have anything to do with the books Corinne gave you?"
Aunt Corinne's birthday gift had been a stack of books about ghosts and psychic phenomenon. It was the kind of stuff I relished, and I read them every night before bed.
No one knew about my dream of Jenna, though I still remembered most of the details. Swirling purple sky, bare threatening trees. Losing my voice to the wind.
"A little. I just thought it would be interesting."
"You know, most kids your age are going to the movies or getting into trouble," he said.
"Aren't you glad I'm not most kids?" I asked innocently.
He turned off Main Street and drove around the enormous, newly renovated town library. The Thornhill Society had helped sponsor the renovation. A crane idled behind the building, then began ambling over the newly broken ground.
"I don't remember the exact road," Hugh said apologetically. "But it's somewhere around here. I know you go past the lake, that's all I remember."
The Mazda turned onto a dirt road, then another, flanked by tall trees with posted private property signs. Hugh and I bounced against our seat belts, while a warbling song filtered quietly out of the radio, almost drowned out by road noise.
"This is it. I remember now," he said, pointing at a dilapidated sign that read Sanitarium Rd. I exchanged a glance with my father. The area appeared long deserted, like nature was claiming it again. The road was empty, trees leaning over our car to form a leafy tunnel. Ivy and moss turned the tree trunks an eerie shade of lime green in the drizzle.
"Good place to dump a body," I said, and he snickered, the only person who shared my humor.
The Mazda bumbled along, tiny pebbles striking the undercarriage. By his constipated look, he feared that the car would have to undergo detailing after our excursion.
Deja vu struck me as I peered out of the passenger window. My side of the road was lined with thick, ancient trees, many of them bushy evergreens. A wall that blocked out the sky.
The car rounded a bend in the road and the orphanage came into view behind its imposing iron fence. My breath escaped in one rush, leaving me lightheaded. It was like revisiting my dream in the daylight.
The car halted across from the gate. Both of us gazed up at the dark, impressive building, smack in the middle of nowhere.
"Now that is where you'll find the bodies," Hugh said, shifting into neutral. "Is it everything you dreamed of?"
I shivered involuntarily. "Yeah," I said quietly, "down to the last detail." He had no idea how close his question hit.
My hands were already scrambling to unbuckle my seat belt, and I slid out of the passenger side. The rain had tapered off to a barely-there sprinkle, and the sun was just behind the clouds, making them glow.
"I didn't know a sightseeing tour was on the agenda," Hugh called after me.
"I'll only be a minute," I assured him.
The road was deserted, no traffic in either direction. I traversed quickly across and up to the fence. A large sign had been attached to the bars with zip ties, reading Coming in October—Hell's Orphanage, Haunted House Attraction.
I vaguely remembered seeing ads for that in the paper years ago, but the sign looked brand new. Halloween infected our entire town come October, so it would be a full time job keeping track of it all.
The bars were cool to the touch as I ran my fingers across them. I had dreamed of the place so accurately, right down to the exact shade and width of the bars. Odd. One detail in my dream had been wrong, however. No funny copper symbol.
Although I expected the gate to be locked, it swung open with a lonely cry. I stood in place, debating my options. I peered back at Hugh, who from the looks of things was having an animated phone conversation with Claire, likely involving politics.
Technically, I would be trespassing if I went on the property. But the house looked abandoned for now, future haunted house or not. No signs warned against trespassers.
A cool breeze whooshed through the fence, blowing my hair around my shoulders. I took the hair elastic I always wore off of my wrist and whirled my hair into a messy ponytail. It was sometimes a pain having hair down to the middle of my back, but I'd grown it out for so long that I was stubborn about cutting it.
Beer cans, old cigarette packs, and dud scratch-off tickets littered the lawn. I made my way closer to the building. The grass had surrendered, leaving dry brown patches, the rain puddling in spots but not making much of a difference.
Then the carpet sucks it down, nourishing itself. I shook off the thought, another fragment from a random dream.
The orphanage loomed above me, loftier than it appeared on the street. Mottled gray stone walls framed four rows high of slender, elongated windows, open in silent screams. Broken glass hung in the frames like teeth.
It reminded me of the old factories around Detroit, rotting steel skeletons holding on while the skin of their walls disintegrated into dust and blew away. Rusty bars guarded the orphanage's top windows, where long ago they must have kept the orphans imprisoned. Goosebumps popped along my forearms.
A split staircase led up to the front door. The steps had begun to cave in, some missing entirely, leaving gaping black holes. I couldn't see underneath, but I imagined small animals nesting there, hiding in the dark.
"Ariel, come on, let's go!" Hugh called. I glanced over my shoulder and was surprised to see how far away he was, a tiny figure standing with his hands
on his hips.
The desperate urge to run far away from the orphanage rippled through me. No one was here, and it was certainly not a place Jenna would dare to set foot in. She didn't like scary things, which is why we always had a hard time finding a movie both of us could watch.
I raced back over the lawn, almost tripping on the detritus polluting the soggy ground, and reached the gate. I didn't dare look back.
CHAPTER 5
ON SUNDAY, CLAIRE barricaded herself in her home office, swamped with the proposal for her job. She worked for an insurance company, approving or denying people coverage while she wasn't in board meetings. Her signature was a rubber stamp.
The job was stressful, but Claire thrived under stress—it was the fuel that powered her engine. Without deadlines and last minute fixes, she would have felt unimportant.
The office door remained shut, meaning she didn't want disturbances. I wanted to use the computer, but I decided it was better it be occupied. Better to keep away from Jenna's dormant page and the urge to hit refresh again and again. It was a bad habit I'd acquired in August, when the days were long and the nights too short.
Due to the nonstop rain, by noon it was as dim as evening. The persistent drumming seemed to insulate the house. In the living room, swirling forest green wallpaper decorated the walls, which only accentuated the lack of light. But gloomy had become less comforting than it used to be. I made a tour of the first floor, flicking on all the lamps.
"I have an adventure for us," Hugh said, coming out of the kitchen carrying a box of garbage bags.
"Are we burying our enemies?" I asked.
"Ha, you are just so funny." He chucked the box at me and I caught it with both hands like a football. "We're finally going to conquer the storage room."
"You mean you're finally cracking under Claire's pressure?" I asked cynically. Claire had been relentlessly hounding Hugh for months, ever since our May yard sale, to clean out the room full of junk in the basement. She wanted to turn the little nook into her own personal exercise haven.
"That's exactly what I mean," Hugh said. He grabbed a stack of broken down moving boxes he'd brought in from the shed. "Let's do this thing."
With me in the lead, we headed downstairs, our footsteps clomping heavily. In the dusty storage room, we both managed to squeeze in, although there was barely room to stand.
"So what's the plan? Or do we not have one?" I asked, surveying the towering boxes of junk.
"The plan is to get as much of this garbage out of here as possible," Hugh said firmly. "I have a truck coming from the thrift shop around five."
"And Claire's okay with that?"
"She said as long as she doesn't have to look at any of it, it can go. How else can we make any room in here?"
When my grandparents died in a car crash two years ago, their belongings came to us. There was no other option but to cram it all in the storage room. Claire had a hard time parting with something as small as a glass Mason jar, and there was a great deal to part with, each item with its own attached memories. My grandparents had been fairly wealthy, and Grandma Eleanor had collected antiques on the verge of hoarding.
Hugh started folding together one of the boxes and set it on top of a battered end table. Then he paused, hands on his hips, surveying what to do next.
"Where do we start?" I asked, still stalled with indecision.
"Wherever you want," he said, "Just start, and keep going. Considering how you and I operate, if we quit in the middle, we'll never get finished. And I'm not calling those stoners back to cancel the truck."
I began to paw through the first box in front of me. We quickly became more involved in the work, digging through more boxes and bags, and taking out the garbage and donations to the main room.
It was still musty in the windowless room, even with the door open and a fan blowing down the hall. Puffs of dust whirled up like spirits whenever a box was shifted, and I got used to sneezing. I found an ancient tub of my baby clothes, complete with a baggie of nibbled, yellowing pacifiers.
I held up the baggie. "Let me guess, keep?"
"Don't waste time on foolish questions," Hugh said.
I rolled my eyes and tucked the tub in a corner. A rack of old clothing was crushed against the back wall. On a rusty wire hanger hung a baby blue tuxedo I assumed had belonged to my grandfather. Complete with pleated pants and a ruffled white undershirt.
Keeping the ug-xedo company were a couple of sweaters with shoulder pads and color vomit that moths had feasted on. I had no idea how any adult could criticize clothes nowadays when this kind of look was ever in vogue.
"Everything on that rack can go," Hugh said."In case you haven't figured it out."
"But this is so classy," I pointed out, holding up one of the shimmery polyester suit sleeves to my own arm. "You could wear it to parties. Everyone would wonder, 'who is that handsome man?'"
"Your mom and I partied ourselves out a long time ago. The music today is just too loud."
I snorted back a laugh. My dad was a complete dork, but being an incomplete dork myself, I loved him. He helped me wheel the time machine out into the hall. I let go and pulled a sticky cobweb off my palm. We looked over the little mountain of junk, satisfied with our progress.
"Do you think all of this will fit in their truck?" I asked, assessing the damage. If Claire had seen the pile she would have fainted cold.
"We'll make it fit," he said determinedly, running a hand through his dusty hair.
In the corner was a dusty box of loose photographs, mostly of Claire and Corinne as kids. They're fraternal twins, but in the earliest pictures, they were dressed in matching outfits, complete down to the hair ribbons. As though their mother wanted them to be the same person.
I flipped through the stack of images, watching the girls age and morph into their current personalities. Claire looked fashionable for the time, with a perm and acid wash jeans, while Corinne's hair always fell flat and dull, held in place with straight barrettes. I could totally imagine them fighting tooth and nail over a bathroom mirror.
A musty old file lay at the bottom of the box, with "Eleanor's Medical Records" scrawled across the front. I picked it up, fascinated.
"Take a look at this," I said, more to myself than Hugh, as I lifted the manila cover. Hugh snatched the folder out of my hands, before I caught more than a glance at the yellowed papers inside.
"Claire would want this," he said, distracted.
"Okay. But can I just look through it a little before you take it to her?" I pleaded. "She was family, I'm sure there's nothing—"
"You wouldn't be interested in grimy old papers," he said. He had already tucked the file beneath his arm.
"Are you kidding? Have we met before? I would definitely be interested in grimy old papers."
"That would be a little disrespectful, don't you think, kiddo?" He leaned back against the bare wall. "You can guess the kinds of medical tests old people have to undergo. Unless you're interested in diabetes or colonoscopies, I think you can pass it up."
He put the file in the half-full box of items to go upstairs. The subject was closed.
My mind raced with reasons why he had been so swift to snatch that file. I wondered if maybe I was being rude, but I didn't see the harm in looking at my grandmother's old papers. The harder I tried to put it out of my mind, the more it was all I could think about.
When we finished, it was a quarter to five. The room was almost totally clear, save for tubs stacked in the corner, an old TV and DVD player we'd rigged up for Claire to watch exercise shows, and the treadmill.
After the van had taken away our donations (which did fit, after all, with room to spare) I helped Hugh prepare a quick dinner of cold sandwiches. After I finished the dishes, I retreated to the homework I had been avoiding all weekend, forcing myself to sit at my desk. A legitimate thunderstorm started crashing outside, rumbles of thunder vibrating beneath my socks.
> I was preparing for—and therefore stressing out about—my first math test. I had been doing okay in my grades so far, but Mr. Vanderlip was blowing through subsections so fast I had to race to keep up.
I never understood why time outside of school always went by a million times faster than that spent in school. The hours disappeared as I finished my homework, and before I knew it I had to get ready for bed.
I shut off the light and lay in the dark, my hands crossed over my chest. When I shut my eyes, all I saw were black letters reading Eleanor's Medical Records.
###
When I dreamed that night of Jenna, she was strolling instead of fleeing. The forest surrounded us again, but this time it didn't reach out to stop me. I walked behind her, but there was no more desperation. She kept a few paces in front of me as we trampled the underbrush. A thick, unnerving blanket of fog crept around the tree trunks, and vines snaked from branch to branch in the trees like a net ready to drop.
I woke up, the dream departing in the dark.
###
In gym, I discovered that I couldn't go too many days without being the target of mockery.
"Nice shorts. Did you steal them from a charity box?" Madison asked me innocently. She was obviously showing off for Lainey, who stood beside her texting on a hot pink phone that probably cost more than my parents made in six months.
I looked down at the black mesh shorts I often wore. They weren't that bad. "Uh, no. This is just what I have."
"Well, if you don't care about looking scrubby, that's up to you. I was just trying to help," Madison declared.
Madison herself was prancing around in pink shorts with Juicy printed across the butt in rhinestones. They were so tight they could have been spray-painted on. Logic told me the issue was clothes, and it shouldn't be important. But the other half of my brain wondered if I should beg Claire to take me to the mall for athletic wear.
The bleachers were halfway extended, due to an upcoming assembly. Theo Weaver sat on the bottom row by herself. Her ankle bandage was gone. I immediately navigated to the space next to her. She felt like a safe harbor, distant from my nosy classmates.
"Hi," she said with some surprise, watching me cautiously as I sat next to her. Her emerald glitter looked pale in comparison to the unusually bright green of her irises. "Didn't expect you to talk to me in school."