Emma’s on the bed with Mutsie, her favorite stuffed animal. “What?”
I straighten up after letting my breath catch up with my body. “Mr. White? He offered me a job after Richard up and left me behind at the drugstore to go I-don’t-know-where.”
I fill her in on everything and, just like I figured, she got to the number one obvious question: “Can I work there, too?”
I’d like to think it was ’cause she wanted to be with me and not here alone in the Nest while I’m gone, but I betcha it’s the penny candy. I don’t mind. Me and Emma, we’re slaves to candy.
“I bet Mr. White’d let you come on and help,” I tell her. And I honestly believe it’s so. “He even said he needs all the help he can get. That back room’s messier than a flower bed in February.”
And that’s how we came to work at White’s Drugstore nearly every day of the week after school.
Chapter Four
“I don’t s’pose y’all ever seen the Box?” Miss Mary looks over at Emma and me from her spot behind the cash register. She’s folding her book back up and takes off her reading glasses. Miss Mary’s been real nice to us all week, but I guess that’s nothing new. She’s always patting our hair like we’re her pets or something. The other day she even put some of the bright pink barrettes from the dime basket next to the register in Emma’s hair, one on either side of her face so she could see without strings of hair blocking the way. Miss Mary doesn’t have kids herself so I guess we’ll do.
“What’s the Box?” Emma asks.
“Ooooeee, the Box is sumthin’ you got to see to believe,” Miss Mary says with a smile that spreads out across her wrinkled face. “It’s real scary. You have to be old enough even to ask about it.”
“Are we old enough?” I ask her, but Emma talks at the same time.
“Where is it?” she asks. Not one single breathing soul’s come into the store yet and it’s already four in the afternoon. I bet it’s on account of the heat that looks like it’s melting the tar right off the road.
“I thought ev’rybody knowed ’bout the Box.” Miss Mary pats her lap and Emma crawls up in it like I’ve never seen her do with anyone else. “It’s over at Ike’s place and the kids go in one by one—if they brave enough to go into the room it’s in.”
“Yeah? Yeah?” We both want her to keep talking about it. I rub my arms so the gooseflesh will settle down.
“How big is it?” Emma.
“A little bigger than a shoe box,” she says.
“What’s inside it?” Me.
“No one knows for sure.”
“I bet it’s boogers,” Emma says from Miss Mary’s lap. She’s leaning her back into Miss Mary’s front and her legs are dangling on either side of Miss Mary’s, which are pressed together to make a nice spot for Em.
Miss Mary shakes her head. “Whatever’s in the Box has them kids runnin’ scared for years,” she says. “I ain’t never heard of no one who be able to stay in the room long ’nough after the lid comes up to know for sure what all’s so creepy.”
“We’ve got to see the Box,” I say. Emma nods.
“I don’t know,” Miss Mary says, smiling her smile that makes her skin look even more crinkly. “I don’ know if y’all’re up to it.”
“Yes we are!” Emma pushes away from Miss Mary so she can swivel around to face her. “We most certainly are.”
“We?” Miss Mary says to her like she was only meaning me in the first place. She knows that just cements it in Emma’s mind that she’s going to be on board no matter what it is we’re doing.
“Miss Mary, if I go, my little sister is sure to follow.” Which is straight up true. “Everyone knows that.”
“I’m not scared of anything.” Emma’s nodding. Which, of course, is true. If only Miss Mary knew that I’m the scaredy-cat of the both of us. I mean, if I’m scared of spiders I can’t even think of what I’ll do when I’m in the room with the Box. But I’ve just got to see it. I’ve got to.
“Where’s Ike’s? Jinx!” We ask about Ike’s at the same exact time but I call jinx first so I’m the winner.
“Way over in Lowgap, by the Knob,” says Miss Mary. Lowgap is this little-bitty place on the edge of a forest near the Cumberland Knob, which is called that for a reason I don’t know. Momma says it’s on account of the shape of the mountain right above the town, but I just don’t see what she’s talking about—the mountain looks just like every other mountain in the world to me, not some ole knob. Lowgap’s a creepy place on account of all the trees shading it from the sun. When we were little and went there I thought the sun forgot to shine over the whole place, that’s how shady it is. On a day like today, though, it might kindly be the place to be. The sun in Toast is making up for no sun in Lowgap.
“Carrie, we got to get to Lowgap.” Emma’s jumped down from Miss Mary, who’s smoothing out the place on her lap where a little girl used to be. “How’re we gonna do it?”
“Let me think on it a minute,” I say, annoyed-like since that’s what I am. I know we got to get to Lowgap, I just cain’t imagine how we can pull it off.
“We-ell,” Miss Mary says all long and dragged out, “I got a friend outside Lowgap at a place so small it ain’t on the map. They been at me for a visit for’s long as I can remember…I s’pose I could—”
“Please take us with you, Miss Mary!” We both jump on her at the same time. “Please! We won’t be any bother.” Emma tugs on her skirt and I grab her arm and yank it up and down for a reason I don’t know. “Please. Pretty please with sugar on top and whipped cream and a cherry and nuts even!” I throw that last part in since I bet for a grown-up the nuts are the big draw, from the way Momma hoards her Mr. Peanuts.
Miss Mary’s laughing, and when she does her belly folds into and back out of itself like it’s a whole other set of lips. Then Emma seals the deal. She climbs up onto Miss Mary’s lap and gives her a big ole hug.
“Don’t you be gittin’ me all messed up now while I in my work clothes,” Miss Mary says into the side of Emma’s hair in the middle of the hug. “Go on and git an’ let me think on it awhile.”
But we know it’s settled. We’re going to see the Box tomorrow after school lets out and we show up for work. Tomorrow’s Miss Mary’s day off so she says she’ll pick us up in back of the store after we ask Mr. White for time off “on the HH.” That’s Miss Mary’s code for “hush-hush.”
* * *
“Look out, here comes Scary Carrie!” Tommy Bucksmith yells out across the map of the country that’s painted on the tar in the middle of the recess yard. “How’s your boyfriend, Charley?” I’m trying to pretend I don’t hear him.
Charley Narley is a guy in town who everyone makes fun of. His body grew up but his brain forgot to. Momma says he lost his marbles. She says every town’s got a Charley Narley but I can’t imagine that. He’s big like a bear and all anyone knows is his first name’s Charley. Someone somewhere long ago started calling him Charley Narley ’cause of the rhyme, I suppose. He doesn’t comb or cut his hair and it’s all matted up underneath and most likely dirty to boot. When you go down the street he follows along like a puppy saying out loud what all you’re doing. It goes like this: You walk to Alamo Shoes and look in the window and from behind you, out loud, you hear, “Now she’s stopping at the window. She’s looking inside at the white shoes. No, it’s the pink shoes she’s looking at.” Then you keep going and you hear, “She’s going on down the street. She’s getting something out of her pocket. It’s a piece of gum! She’s unwrapping the gum. She’s putting it in her mouth. She’s chewing.” Like that. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, Charley Narley. What the boys will do is walk along and get Charley to follow and talk and then one will drop back behind Charley and imitate him talking about them. Like this: “Now Charley’s watching Tommy. He’s slowing down. He’s looking at Tom
my. He’s talking.” Charley gets all confused and wants to get behind whoever’s talking about him and gets more confused and then he starts yelling even louder and then the boys run and Charley gets in trouble with the sheriff. Once they packed sand into an old stocking like the kind the ladies wear at church and hid it in the bushes so that just the tip was peeking out. When Charley Narley came by and saw it they wriggled it to look like a snake and Charley screamed all high like a girl, thinking it was real or something. Just last week they threw stuff at him like he was a target (“ten points if the Coke can hits his right arm!”) and me and Emma went out to try to get Charley to go in the opposite direction. Mr. White came out after us and told the boys to scat but ever since then they call Charley Narley my boyfriend.
“Oh, hush up,” I say under my breath, thinking Darryl Becksdale’s a good distance away and can’t hear me.
“What’s that?” Uh-oh. He heard. “You sticking up for your true love?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“You think you’re so smart,” I say without even thinking first about what I’m going to say, “but you don’t know anything.”
“Yeah?” he says, trotting alongside me while I walk toward the doors to the inside of the school. “Ask me anything—I bet I know the answer to it. See? You can’t think of anything!” He starts fake laughing. I know it’s fake ’cause it’s louder than his real laugh, plus he’s looking around for an audience.
“Okay,” I say, just before I go inside where it’s just as hot but I don’t have to be in the sun that burns the part line in my hair, “you know about the Box?”
For a second I think he’s stumped ’cause he’s not saying anything, but then he says, “The Box isn’t real, moron.”
“It is, too,” I say.
“You’ve seen it?”
“Not yet,” I say, smiling for real, knowing I’ll be seeing it in five hours and twenty-two minutes.
“You lie,” he says, and then he backs away from me and goes over to his friends, who’re showing off how they can form a bridge with shuffling cards.
* * *
“Mr. White?” My hands are sweaty and it’s not on account of the heat.
“Yes, Caroline,” he says, putting down the pad of order forms. “What can I do for you?”
“Um…” I clear my throat. Maybe that’ll make some room for the words to come out. “I was wondering…”
“Yes?” he says.
“Um, if it’s okay with you, sir—” I clear my throat again “—could Emma and I please have this afternoon off of work? We worked superhard yesterday lining up all the bottles to the front of the shelves like you said and we got to the Ms already even though you said G was enough, so if you could spare us we’d sure appreciate—”
“That’ll be fine,” he says before I can even finish. He picks up his order-form pad again like the subject’s closed so I hate reopening it to ask him to keep it quiet, and somehow the thought of asking a grown-up to keep a secret embarrasses me but I know I have to do it.
“Um…” Ahem.
“Yes?” He looks back up at me all serious over the half-moon glasses holding on to the tip of his nose.
“I was wondering if you might be able to keep this just between us?”
What did I just say? Of course he’d be able to! He’s not a baby, for goodness’ sake. Stupid, stupid me.
I can tell he’s thinking on it and I’m burning red because I’m sure he’s insulted I’m treating him like a baby and then he says, “I think I can pull that off.” Phee-you.
“Thank you so much, sir,” I say, and I’m almost out the door when he calls out.
“Oh, Caroline…”
I turn around and catch him smiling just like his high school picture. “Yes, sir?”
“Y’all better be careful,” he says, “the Box is the scariest thing you’ll ever see.”
He knows! Could he have heard us yesterday? I stumble back-first out the door while my mind tries to wrap itself around this question, and then I see the noisy old rusty car Miss Mary borrows to drive herself to town pull up, the windows sealed up tight to keep in the little bit of cool air that trickles out of the one unbroken vent, and I hurry to grab the front seat before Emma can call it and I forget all about Mr. White and how he came to find out about the Box.
“Emma, I’m older, I get it!” We’ve both grabbed the front door handle and are trying to push each other out of the way. It’s one thing to ride in the back in Momma’s car—I do that ’cause Emma’s so picked on by her. But this is a horse of a different color. Emma gets plenty of attention from Miss Mary so I think I should get it. Plus, I was the one we decided had to do the Mr. White asking.
“Em-ma!” I jimmy my shoulder in between her head and the car door, but she’s strong from beating up so many people after school so she isn’t about to let go of the handle without a fight. Now Miss Mary has herself halfway standing, halfway sitting out her side of the car, calling out to us, “You better git in ’fore I change my mind and that’s that.”
We cain’t get into the car fast enough. The cool air gives me gooseflesh at first but then I settle into it.
“So? Y’all ready for the Box?” Miss Mary says as she pulls the car out of the parking lot and onto the main road that leads out of Toast.
“Is it alive or dead?” Emma asks.
“Don’t be startin’ on me with all them questions. This ain’t no game show.” I can see the top half of Miss Mary’s face in the cracked rearview mirror looking back at the both of us, the lines around her eyes crinkled from smiling. I once heard one frown line on an old person’s face is caused by one hundred thousand frowns all added up. If the same’s true for smiles, then Miss Mary’s been a happy person all her life ’cause she has a ton of lines around the corners of each of her eyes.
“Just say,” Emma says. “Is it alive or dead?”
“I just do not know,” Miss Mary says. She’s at the blinking yellow light that keeps you from getting hit by an eighteen-wheeler racing fast as can be through Toast and on to bigger and better places. Not one today, though, so Miss Mary pulls out slow and onto the highway toward Lowgap.
“I bet it’s a head cut off of someone’s body,” Emma says.
“I bet it’s a pig’s tongue,” I say. “You know, Daddy used to eat tongue—did you know that?”
“I bet it’s blood,” Emma says, not paying any attention to this tidbit of Daddy information I parcel out to her. Too bad for her.
“That’s not all that scary,” I tell her. “I mean, who hasn’t seen blood before? No one’d hightail it out of the room over a box full of blood.”
“I’m telling you, it’s boogers,” Emma says, crossing her arms and sitting up straighter so she can see the road we’re driving on. I don’t know why she’d care about that, though, since there ain’t a thing on it to see.
“What if Ike won’t let us see the Box?” This is what I’ve been most worried about. “What if he says we’re not old enough?”
“He let you through,” Miss Mary says.
“How big is it again?” Emma asks.
“She already told you.” I roll my eyes just like Momma says not to. “It’s about the size of a shoe box. Jeez.”
Miss Mary says, “Y’all start that bickering an’ this drive gits longer an’ longer so quit it.”
This, of course, makes no sense a-tall since bickering cain’t make the distance between two places any farther. But I’m not about to point this out to Miss Mary. We’re so lucky her friend lives near Lowgap.
Soon we’re slowing down in the middle of the main road in Lowgap. “The City on the Rise!” it says on a signpost right before the stores start lining up. It doesn’t feel like it’s on the rise, though, since not many of the places are open. Some have wind
ows so dusty they look like they’ve been locked up for a thousand years. Miss Mary pulls up to the curb outside a glass window with a sign: Dot’s Kountry Kafaye.
“Reckon you as hungry as I am,” she says, fishing in her purse on the seat next to her. She finds her lipstick and shimmies up to the rearview mirror so she can reapply. She doesn’t have those tiny smoker’s cracks outlining her mouth, like Momma does, so the lipstick stays where it’s supposed to. On Sundays Momma’s lips look like they’re bleeding. Miss Mary pops the cap back on and throws the lipstick back into her bag and turns to face us.
“We better get some food in your stomach ’fore it gets too tied up in knots over this ole Box.”
I was hungry up until now, but once Miss Mary says the word Box I lose my appetite all over again. I couldn’t eat dinner last night, even though Momma made biscuits and gravy—my favorite.
Dot’s Kountry Kafaye looks just like Mickey’s Country Kitchen in Toast. There’s a counter where you can watch them make your food or there are booths if you want to be surprised. I like the counter and lucky for me that’s where we go. The seats at Dot’s swivel all the way around! At Mickey’s they only make a half a circle.
Miss Mary says we can order one thing and split it on account of the fact that she’s paying and we aren’t so we decide on a hot dog.
“All the way?” the waitress asks.
“Yes, please,” I say. The bell on the top of the glass door jingles as Miss Mary turns to back out through it.
“Y’all going over to Ike’s after this?” the waitress asks me and Emma after she clips our order slip onto a metal tree that sits on an island between the kitchen and the restaurant.
“Yes, ma’am,” we say at the same time.
“I expected you would.” She nods, all serious like Mr. White was. “Good luck,” she says, and the way she says it I know I won’t be doing any more than picking at my share of the hot dog.
“I’ll tell you what,” the waitress says, trying to sound cheerful, “I’ll bring you a Coke with a side of peanuts, on the house since y’all ain’t never seen the Box ’fore.”