I’m hot, sweating. I lean my head against the seat and close my eyes briefly, or maybe longer than that because the next time I open them, there’s a little girl on the front stoop. She’s surrounded by paper, scribbles all over them, but at some point she abandoned drawing for the well-worn book in her hands. She looks so much like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting that I don’t believe she’s really real. She’s small. Ten, maybe. She’s wearing pink denim shorts, a striped shirt and her brown hair is tied in pigtails so lopsided, I can only guess she’s done them herself. The book is a paperback and she’s clutching it like it’s a lifeline. She’s getting close to the end. She has Band-Aids on each of her knees.
The unexpectedness of her is more than I can bear. I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting her. I don’t want to feel it, but I can’t keep myself from feeling it.
I pull the sleeves of my red hoodie down. It’s too warm to wear, but it’s all I had to cover the bandage. My arm has been hurting since Langford, little dots of red creeping through the gauze, but I don’t want to think about it. I check my face in the mirror. It’s turned colors I can only liken to bruised fruit. Purples and browns and hints of yellow. I hate looking at it because it reminds me of Silas Baker, out there, still.
But maybe after Keith, I could go back.
Get it right this time.
I step out of the car, my body protesting every part of this simple act.
The girl looks up as I approach. The closer I get to her, the more I see that she’s frail, a little feral. Her milk-white skin is dotted with freckles. Her face is sharp with a long nose, small brown eyes. I stare at her and she stares back. She closes the book—a copy of The Baby-Sitters Club. I offer her a small smile, and she eyes me warily in return. I don’t blame her. I look scary, ghoulish.
“H-hi th-there.”
“You talk funny,” she says immediately, and she sounds smaller than I was expecting. Her voice is thinner, even, than Mattie’s.
“I st—I stutter.”
“What happened to your face?”
“I’m c-clumsy as hell.”
I bend down until I’m roughly her height and point to the BSC book in her hand. On its torn-edged cover, Stacey runs toward the other members of the club with her arms outstretched. I remember that one and it’s strange to remember it. I forget that at times, I was a kid, that I did kid things. That I read about the girls I dreamed of being. That I did things like play in the dirt and made mud cakes. Drew pictures myself. Caught fireflies in the summertime.
“St-Stacey was my favorite, but I always w-w-wanted to dress like C-Claudia.”
“I hate Stacey.”
Tough crowd. “Who’s your f-favorite?”
“Mallory,” she says after a long minute. “And Jessi. I’m almost as old as them. I like reading about girls being … my age.”
She lowers her gaze and I can feel how old she thinks she is because I felt it then myself, years on me no one else could see, craving those moments where adults treated me like I was as young as I was. I wonder if Keith has her tag, all ready to take that part of her with him when he goes. I want so badly to have arrived in time but if he’s already here, that means I’m too late.
The girl brightens suddenly, says, “Someone sold their entire BSC collection to the bookstore downtown. I’m tryin’ to get them all before someone else does, but I don’t have the money.”
I pick up one of the drawings. They’re better than they have any right to be at her age, I think. Moody landscapes and sad little girls who all look just a little bit too much like her. It’s painful when pain like that is so obvious. I bet her mother hangs these on the fridge, proud, looking at them without ever really seeing. All the pictures are signed by NELL.
I see you, Nell.
“N-Nell,” I say. “That’s y-you.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” she says.
“I’m n-not a st—not a stranger. I know your mom’s b-boyfriend.”
“You know Christopher?”
How she sounds, when she asks me this, makes me want to burn the world down. The sudden, fearful light in her eyes tells me all I need to know. I watch her hands tremor, watch her tighten her grip on the book to stop it, to hide it.
She’s ten years old and she’s already fighting her own cries for help.
I wish I could tell her that soon she won’t have to worry about it. That I know what’s happening, it’s going to be okay. She’s never heard those words before, I’m sure of it, like I never heard them, and I know she has to be starved for them, just like I was.
“H-he around?”
I move toward the house and she says, “No!” I turn to her. “He’s sleepin’. This is quiet time. I’m not supposed to wake him up for anything or he’ll be mad.”
“Th-that’s why you’re out h-here?”
“I can get through a whole book nearly, by the time he wakes up.”
This, she says with pride.
“That’s a-a-amazing.” She beams. “W-where’s your m-mom, Nell?”
“She works at Falcon’s.”
“W-what’s that?”
“A bar.”
Of course. I straighten. My knees crack.
“When’s she h-home?”
“After I’m in bed.”
It’s almost too perfect. I could let myself into his house and find him, stretched on a couch or a bed, prone and sleeping. I could stand over him, his switchblade in my hands, poised over his beating heart and plunge it down, ending him. I imagine his eyes flying open just so I’m the last thing he sees before he dies. Painting an entire room red, leaving. And when they ask Nell if she saw anything, she’ll say no, I was outside, I’m not supposed to be inside during quiet time …
The thought, the heady thrill of it, guides me to the door and then my hand is on its handle, making the turn, when she panics. Nell runs to me, putting her small hands around my wrist. Hands as small as Mattie’s were at that age. She’s not Mattie, I think to myself, but my heart wants to take me to that place where she could be. She’s not Mattie, she’s not Mattie, she’s not Mattie, she is not Mattie … but her hands are small … and warm …
“You can’t go inside,” she says desperately.
And alive.
“C-come with me,” I tell her. She stares at me, dumbstruck. But what if she did? What if I just take her, what if I could take her away from what’s beyond this door?
“N-Nell, c-come with me.” She lets go of my hand and moves away from me. I reach for her, and she steps back again and I reach for her again, because I can’t stop myself, because we know what’s inside. I can feel my stutter’s hold strengthen as the desperation inside me grows. “I-I think you should come w-with me. It’s n-n—it’s not—”
Safe.
So come with me.
Please.
“My mom will be home soon,” she says, shaking her head, forgetting that she just told me her mom is at work, that she doesn’t come home until late. “My mom—” I move in a way she must not like because she opens her mouth wide and screams, “Mom!”
It rips me out of the fantasy, forces me back into my body. My sore, bruised and tired body. My tired heart. I take a fumbling step away and she’s scared out of her mind.
“I’m s—I’m sorry.” I dig into my pocket, my wallet, and hold out a twenty to her. “W-wait. Here. T-take th-this.”
She closes her mouth and eyes me suspiciously, while I glance up and down the street. If anyone heard the little girl screaming, they’re not coming. I swallow and wave the bill in her face. Take the money, Nell. She has to understand money. I did, at her age.
“You c-could get a lot of BSC b-books w-with this.”
She steps forward, hesitantly, doesn’t want to get too close to this monster girl with the mottled face. She rips the twenty out of my hands and then she runs down the street. She doesn’t look back. I blink away the threat of tears and make a promise at her retreating figure.
I’ll finish this.
I face the house.
I let myself inside.
It’s quiet but for the low hum of electricity and the clock ticking on the wall. I stand in a small hallway, which leads to a door at the back of the house. To the left, a kitchen and to the right, the stairs leading to the second floor. I close the door behind me quietly and then I lean against it, forcing myself to take deep, even breaths in and out. There’s a glass of milk and a half-eaten sandwich on the kitchen table. Dishes drying on a rack. There’s a room beyond the kitchen and that’s where I move to next, surprised at the silence of my own body, how made it was for this moment. It’s a living room, and this is where the clock is, the television, the couch I imagined Keith on, one leg hanging off it, mouth wide open as he sleeps.
But he’s not there.