The Garden of Darkness

“We’ll have to read fast,” Jem said. “It’s due tomorrow.”


“That’s a joke, right?” said Sarai.

“Right,” said Jem. “No librarian.” He flipped through the pages. “There’s an awful lot of stuff we don’t need here. Where to get automatic weapons, for example. We’d probably shoot ourselves. What provisions to stock up on in anticipation of an emergency. It’s a little late for that.”

“Anything useful?” Mirri asked.

“Maybe. There’s a section on gutting and preparing deer and wild fowl, as well as a section on finding edible mushrooms.”

“Finding mushrooms sounds fun,” said Mirri.

“The man on the cover does not look like a mushroom specialist,” said Clare.

“You have no trust,” said Jem.

Later Clare took the book from Jem, and she flipped through it. On the last page was a list of medications to stock up on, and someone had scrawled, right across the list, ‘As many SYLVERs as you can get.’





AFTER LUNCH, MIRRI announced that she was going out. “I left a Pretty Pony where I was playing this morning.”

“Take Bear,” said Clare. But Bear would not leave her, and the image of Mirri using a little leash to try and drag along a determined dog more than double her size made Clare smile.

“I’ll be okay,” said Mirri.

Mirri came back half an hour later. Clare noticed that she did not have a Pretty Pony with her.





CLARE KEPT AN eye on Mirri the following day, but Mirri didn’t attempt to slip away. Sarai and Clare went to work in the garden.

“Jem’s in charge,” said Sarai as they harvested tomatoes.

“Of course he’s in charge.”

“Even though he’s younger than you are.”

“Age has nothing to do with it.” Clare really meant it. While she had wallowed in grief and self-pity at the cabin, Jem had saved and kept civilized two scared little girls.

As she picked tomatoes, she thought about how it had been before. The midnight runs to Pizza One with the cheerleading squad, where they would discuss the new cheer formation, or whether they should dress alike for a whole week, or if Hannah Preston had cheated on her boyfriend.

None of that mattered anymore.

And it occurred to her that maybe that was true for all of them. Each of them had a past that was moving, inexorably, to the vanishing point.

Later that morning, Clare, Bear padding behind her, found Mirri in the bedroom stuffing a blanket into a bag.

“What are you doing?” she asked mildly.

“Nothing.”

“You’re stuffing a blanket into a bag.”

“So what?”

“I don’t mean to sound like your mother; I was just curious.”

“I know you’re not my mother,” said Mirri, and she dropped both bag and blanket and walked away.

Clare was sure the blanket wouldn’t be there when she next went into the bedroom.

Back in the kitchen, Clare found Jem staring into a big cardboard box.

“Cheese Whiz,” he said.

Clare peered in and counted. “Fifteen cans of Cheese Whiz.”

“I don’t remember finding this,” said Jem.

“I did,” said Clare. “Two houses ago.”

“Cheese Whiz is disgusting.”

“You’re wrong. Cheese Whiz is good. We used to squirt it right into our mouths before a football game.”

“That’s just gross.”

“Instant energy. Anyway, I bet you had a routine before a chess match.”

“True. But it didn’t involve ingesting cheese products.”

Bear nudged at Clare for attention. “Sorry, Bear,” she said, and scratched his ear.

“Is that dog of yours ever going to like me?” asked Jem.

“He’s not a wag-tail kind of dog. But he hasn’t taken your throat out yet. I think that’s a good sign.”

Sarai and Mirri burst into the kitchen.

“We were in the barn,” said Sarai, “and we found bikes.”

“There’re a bunch of them,” said Mirri.

“We’re busy,” said Jem.

“Don’t be so grown up,” Mirri said.

“There was a hand pump,” said Sarai. “For the tires. We got one of the bikes ready. Mirri rode all around the barn. Until she fell off.”

“I hit a bump. I didn’t just fall off.”

Jem sighed. “How are you on a bike, Clare? Can Cheese Whiz wait?”

Clare smiled. “I could live on a bike. And there’s a dairy farm we could check out that’s a short ride over.”

“Then let’s go,” Jem said.

The bikes were behind an ancient horse cart. Sarai picked a green one; Mirri’s was red. Jem oiled the chain of the blue bike he found and gave it to Clare with a smile before taking the last one, which was a battered silver.

Jem led the way down the path from the farm; Clare took up the rear; Bear loped along beside her. She looked behind and saw that the Cured-in-the-blue-dress had come out to the very edge of the meadow and was watching them. Her dress billowed like a sail.