Instead, she dreamed of Eden Cardinal. She dreamed of Eden kissing the man with the woodsy clothes. She saw them together. She saw the white mountain lion.
She woke up and couldn’t stop mulling over Eden Cardinal.
Eden had come into the store one evening earlier that week when Mallory was watching the counter for her father while he drove Adam to swim practice.
“I have to get new cleats and I hate to,” Eden said. “I know I’ll outgrow them. I’m going to end up with feet the size of somebody in the NBA. They’re already a nine and a half.”
Mallory helped Eden find shoes that were thirty percent off. On an impulse, she said, “Drew Vaughan and I are going to the Star Wars marathon. Know anyone who’d like to go?”
Eden said she would love to go, adding that her sister, Raina, could drive her. A couple of her cousins and maybe her brother would come, too.
But why did she all of a sudden agree to go out with Mallory and Drew? Right now, when Mallory was in trouble? Was that paranoid thinking? After all, she’d never asked Eden to do anything with her. Still, it was weird for a high-school girl to agree to do something with a kid—even if Drew was someone Eden knew.
Maybe Eden would have agreed to go to the movies with Mally even before the talk they’d had that day after practice. Or maybe Eden sensed something about Mallory. Maybe she was some kind of freak like Mallory. That thought pestered Mally like a persistent mosquito. For what if Eden was some kind of freak, like Mallory? Say that was why she told Mally that “not much was strange” to her. If Eden was, maybe she knew why.
Maybe she could tell Mally what she saw. Or heard.
Was it pictures or voices for her? When and how often?
If Mally could just tell somebody other than Grandma Gwenny, who was so sweet but sort of closed off about all of it, she knew she would feel better. All she wanted was to be her normal, lazy, competitive self, the girl who loved sloppy clothes and World Cup and wanted to grow up and be Mia Hamm. Sports, in fact, were all Mally could tolerate anymore on TV.
She couldn’t even watch General Hospital. She couldn’t sit still long enough. Even her old movies now seemed like documentaries, since her own life had become as bizarre as sci-fi. General Hospital was skim milk. All people did was stand around for a whole hour, talking and talking and talking, about whether somebody’s baby was really his baby or his brother’s baby. It was so dumb she couldn’t comprehend how she once loved it so much.
Mally decided that she would never again spend a sunny Saturday afternoon watching ten YourTimed General Hospitals or Days of Our Lives in a row. She made a vow. If she was wrong about David, she would never think of Luke and Laura or Bo and Hope or Stefano DiMera ever again. Never. Or Lucky. Or Patch. Never.
She would become a nun.
If it would go away, this seeing thing, she would give up TV forever . . . until summer.
At dinner on Friday night, Mally couldn’t force herself to eat firsts, much less her usual seconds. Campbell zoomed in on this like a bird of prey in about four seconds.
“I cooked this pork roast,” she complained. “I stood here and cooked this. I cooked this asparagus on a day off when I could have read a novel and gone to Power Weights with Luanne and Bonnie. The least you can do is eat it.”
“I hate pork,” Mallory said.
“You do not hate pork. You ate half a pound of bacon last week,” Campbell said.
“I hate pork, also,” Adam said helpfully.
“Shut up,” Mallory snapped at him.
“Apologize!” Tim and Adam said simultaneously.
“Okay, fine. Sorry, you little copycat jerk,” Mallory said murderously.
“Mom!” Adam whined.
“I said sorry!” Mally repeated.
“Accept her lousy apology, Adam,” Merry told him. You could practically see the faint halo around Merry’s head. Mallory curled her lip at Merry, but sideways—out of her mother’s line of vision.
“I read it makes you stupid,” Adam pointed out.
“PORK ROAST?” Mallory cried.
“That’s why Jewish people don’t eat it,” Adam said.
“Jews don’t eat pork because in the Bible—” Mally began.
“You said ‘Jew!’” Adam shouted.
“What’s wrong with saying ‘Jew’? Dane Greenberg is a Jew,” Mallory said. “Your friend Shaina Werner is a Jew.”
“You say ‘Jew-ISH,’ ” Adam said.
“What does that mean, like a Jew? Are we Catholic-ish?” Mallory asked.
“He thinks it’s like a swear,” said Merry. “Adam, honey, it’s not considered bad to say someone is a Jew if you say it nicely. Mally, he’s ten years old!”
“Eleven in a month!” Adam crowed. Tim ran his hand over Adam’s blond buzz.
“I can’t believe you’re already going to be eleven. Tim, we should adopt a baby,” said Campbell. “You’re all growing up too fast. Mallory, you just eat your roast.”
“No.”
“Then leave the table.”
“Gladly,” Mallory said, knocking over her chair, then picking it up in a hurry when she caught her mother’s unmistakable one-second-from-grounding glance.
“Shabbat Shalom!” Adam called after her as she ran up to her room and fell onto her bed. A moment later, unable to shake the jitters, she got up and threw on her sweats to go for a jog, though she’d run three miles that morning.
But she was no more than eight or nine blocks from home when she saw David Jellico, slowly passing in his dad’s minivan. Just as Mally was about to dive into the bushes, he winked at her, and Mally forced herself to give him a big smile. Then she turned and ran for home, as if rabid pit bulls were chasing her. If she got kicked out of soccer, she’d do track, she thought, finally crawling up her front steps, with side-stabbing pain, afraid she was about to puke up her stomach full of nothing.
There was a note on the door.
The rest of the family had gone to the Belles Artes to see some movie with German subtitles. Merry was clearly trying out for Most Favorite Twin, or else Campbell had promised to go to the mall on the way.
The sink was also very clearly filled with dirty dishes Mally knew were intended for her.
She scrubbed the roasting pan and loaded the dishwasher.
Then she jumped into the shower, but barely had rinsed the shampoo out of her hair when she jumped out again. Grabbing her chenille robe, she sat down on the bed, convinced that someone was watching her.
Watching her?
There was only one tree close to their window, and its branches were as bare as bones on an X-ray. No one was sitting in the tree, or, when she looked down carefully, standing under it. The corners of Drew’s garage next door were clearly visible, no one behind them. Mally sat down again. Gently, the branches waved in a brisk little breeze. Mallory watched them sway and sway. David was making out with Deirdre Bradshaw. It was a heavy make-out session: He had his shirt off and she was kissing his shoulders. He reached up and ran his fingers through Deirdre’s blond hair and when he began massaging her back, Mallory saw David twist Deirdre’s long cashmere scarf in his hand. Deirdre started to push him away. David grabbed her hair.
“Deirdre!” Mallory screamed in the empty house and fell back, the world dissolving with a silent whir.
Mallory had no idea how long she lay on her bed. But when she sat up, her legs were on the floor. She was almost kneeling. It was so dark she had to Braille her way to the door and the lights. The thought of the entire first floor, a sea of shadows, the only light a dim glow in the kitchen from the streetlamp five houses down . . .
For the first time in her life, Mally was afraid in her own house.
She put on winter pajamas and thick socks and tiptoed down the stairs. Taking a deep breath, she darted to the front door and locked it and each of the downstairs windows. No one in Ridgeline locked their doors—only old people at Crest Haven or big shots in the mansions at Haven Hills Golf Course. Tim’s friend Eric
Krueger, a cop, said that unless you happened to have windows that were slits in the ceiling, security systems were only useful for alerting the police where to find your body. If they were coming in, Eric said, they were coming in. Burglars didn’t look for houses with people in them. That was the last thing they wanted. Mally peeked out the window over the sink. Next door, the Vaughans’ basement lights were out, so Drew wasn’t home with his friends. The only thing on was the little hall lamp Mrs. Vaughan always left burning when they went someplace. Damn it! But the light at the Johannsens’, across the street, was on. Mallory could see the aquarium blue of the TV behind their sheer curtains.
Go to sleep, Mallory told herself. Everyone’ll be home in an hour.
But what if they went to the nine o’clock?
What if they went for ice cream first?
They would never take Adam to the nine o’clock.
What if they dropped Adam off at Aunt Kate and Uncle Kevin’s first?
She wanted to call Grandma, but remembered Grandma telling her that she and Merry were warriors, a pair of warriors. Massenger women were made of stern stuff.
And this was nonsense.
Back upstairs, Mally took two Tylenol PM’s and ate a handful of Nilla wafers with a cup of Drowsy tea. The combination would knock her out within minutes, she hoped.
When it didn’t, Mallory tried to add another element of boredom. She began her Algebra II homework. She hated all math, but it was satisfying to be able to do it. She’d have only two courses in math to take in high school to complete her requirement—while she was convinced that Meredith still did her multiplication on her fingers. But she finished all of the problems within twenty minutes.
Now what? Desperate, she dove under Merry’s bed, a sure trove of trash magazines with skinny singers on the covers. She read all about Lindsey’s feud with Natalie, and Ashley’s feud with Tammie. Another ten minutes by the clock. Finally, she lay awake, her teeny reading light with its five-square-inch pool of light like a candle at her bedside. She listened to every click and snap in the old house, to the mice skittering across the attic floor, the bats rustling above the mice. Tim was always going to do something about them, but Campbell liked bats. Over it all, she heard the soughing of the wind in the big Celebration maple tree. What was wrong with her? She thought she should pray to Saint Bridget, as her grandmother had suggested. But wasn’t Saint Therese better for protecting children? At thirteen, was she still a child? Saint Anne? Would Saint Anne look down and see a thirteen-year-old not-even-pregnant girl and think she had just tuned in to the wrong station?
Holy Saint Bridget, protect me, your daughter who sees and wants only to help, Mally prayed. I don’t even know why I’m afraid for myself, when I should only be afraid for Deirdre. I am afraid that whoever is after Deirdre might be after me, too. At least, he might be eventually. If you are there, protect me, so that I may serve. I want to be of service, but you can’t if you’re dead. Although you are dead and you’re of service. I didn’t mean it that way. Please don’t be offended. I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. Amen.
Mallory gave up praying.
She went over to full-time worrying.
The Scavos’ poor dog was one thing, but what she had seen tonight was truly . . . way around the bend. It was the beginning of a rape. A rape? Maybe a murder. She should call Eden, no matter what Eden thought of her. Eden was older. She got it instantly when Mally saw the woodsy guy who was her crush. Or she should tell Campbell everything, even if it meant that her mother took her to a therapist?
Someone’s life could be in danger.
A girl’s life.
But in danger only based on the whacked-out wide-awake dreams of a crazy person who probably had posttraumatic stress disorder.
How could God let this kind of picture be shown to a thirteen-year-old kid who couldn’t do anything about it? And how did she know for sure it hadn’t happened yet? I can’t figure this out, Mallory thought, on the very edge of tears, and f iguring out is what I do.
Why didn’t her parents come home? Mallory wished, again, she could fall asleep. She knew that the active ingredient in the Tylenol was Benadryl. Could you overdose on Benadryl? Should she take more?
She fought to think about something else.
What was wrong with her? She was no sissy, afraid of the dark.
This house had stood for eighty-seven years. Brynns had lived in this house for eighty-seven years. She thought of all her great-grandparents, one of whom, Walker Brynn, was still alive in Florida. She thought of her great-greats before him and tried to pull all of them around her like a puffy quilt.
It didn’t do the trick. She put out her hand for her phone to call Grandma Gwenny, but then, suddenly, the Tylenol PM kicked in.
Just as she fell asleep, Mally heard a sharp, loud pounding on the front door.
Three short, sharp knocks.
Oh, thank you, she thought. That was Meredith’s signal, but why didn’t her dad just come in? And she couldn’t hear Meredith’s thoughts, not even in the muddy way she could when Meredith was thinking about Will or splits or toe jumps. Though she would rather have pulled her own teeth than answer the door, Mally made herself wake up.
She crept downstairs and stood on her toes to look through the peephole. No one was out there. Merry, she cried with her mind. As she turned to go back upstairs, she noticed it was sleeting now—a dark, punishing, sideways spit of frozen rain, the kind late March always brought before giving it up to spring.
And then the same sharp knocks came again, but this time on the back door.
What would happen next? A gigantic blast? Was this going to be some horrible instant replay of New Year’s Eve that would actually kill her this time?
Had she locked the back door?
No.
No one used it. As Campbell said, they preferred to wear out her only thing of value, an Oriental carpet runner in the front foyer. Mallory grabbed the kitchen phone, dropped to the floor, and dialed 911.
“Please,” she whispered to the woman who answered. “I’m home alone and someone is knocking on all the doors and scaring me.”
“Are the doors locked?” the dispatcher asked. “Is this Mally Brynn? Or Merry?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I mean, I know I’m Mallory, but I don’t know about the back door.”
“Mally, it’s Rita Andersen, Caitlin’s mom. We’re sending a car to check things out right now, but you go lock that door. Okay?”
“I’m too afraid.”
“You have to, honey. I’ll stay on the phone with you.” Mallory crawled to the door and straightened up enough to flip the deadbolt. Did the knob quiver as she flipped the lock? Did it turn? Was that the pressure of another person’s hand she felt on the other side when she tried the door to make sure it was locked?
“Please, Mrs. Andersen,” Mally whispered. “Make them come quick.”
“Where are your folks, Mallory?”
“At the Belles Artes.”
“You give me your mother’s pager number now. . . .” But as Mallory began to repeat the numbers, there came a huge bang on the front door, as if someone had used a mallet instead of a fist—three short, sharp blows, each louder than the next. “Mally, I heard that. Stay on the line. Thirteen, what’s your ten-twenty? Possible two-eleven . . . sole occupant at one-one-three Pilgrim Street is a thirteen-year-old girl. You’re okay, Mallory. They’re a block away.”
There was a full minute of silence. Then Mallory screamed as the knocking began again, fierce and sharp.
“Mallory? Mallory?” a man’s voice shouted. “Look out the window. This is Denley Hames. It’s Officer Hames, the school officer. Open the door, Mally.”
Mallory threw open the door and leaped into Denley Hames’s arms. “Someone was hitting the door! Someone was trying to break the door down!”
“Well, let’s step inside, honey. This is Susan Moss. Do you know Officer Moss? She’s the drug-and-alcohol teacher at the middle
school now, for the fifth graders. May we come in, Mallory?”
“That could be a dent,” Officer Moss said, pointing to a black mark on the pale blue door.
“It is,” Mallory said. “But my brother made it when he rode his bike up the steps.”
“What did it sound like?”
“At first, like knocking, then like someone was using a hammer to smash the door in.”
“Let’s take a look at the back,” said Officer Hames. He unlocked the back door carefully, without stepping outside. “Lots and lots of footprints out here . . . if there was a roof over these stairs, we might be able to keep some of them from washing away. I’m still going to call for a photographer and a tech.”
“What in the hell is going on?” Tim Brynn cried, bursting in the front door. “Mally, are you okay?”
“Daddy,” Mallory cried, hugging Tim’s waist. “Someone was trying to break in. Or scare me.”
“Are you sure?”
Mallory was so shocked she let her arms drop. “Am I sure?”
“Every time we’re away, something weird happens.”
“Dad, do you think I’m lying?”
“No. But you’ve been having these spells. . . .” Tim said.
“Do you think I’m trying to get attention?”
“Of course not, Mallory! I just thought you might have been dreaming.”
“Did you pass out, Mally?” Campbell asked.
I can never tell them, Mallory thought. They would lock me up in my room forever. Or worse.
“Mr. Brynn, someone was out there. There’s mud on that back porch,” said Officer Moss.
“There’s mud all over those steps and half of the mud from Ridgeline on our kitchen floor,” said Tim. “I have three kids who never heard of taking off their boots.”
“Dad!” Merry scolded him. “You can see how scared she is.”
“You heard me, didn’t you?” Mally asked her sister. “It was . . . siow, Merry. Siow the worst.”