CHAPTER TWELVE
From: The Dark <[email protected]>
To: Cemetery Girl <[email protected]>
Date: Wednesday, October 2 8:16:00 AM
Subject: Ghoulish
We met by exchanging letters in a cemetery. I don’t think either of us is in a position to call the other ghoulish.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said your father did, about how he was going to get rid of your mother’s equipment. When my sister died, my mother didn’t want to get rid of anything. She refused to touch anything Kerry had touched. Before she walked out of the house, Kerry had eaten a grilled cheese sandwich, and she’d left a plate by the sink with all the crusts sitting there. She loved grilled cheese and made one just about every day—which meant she left a stupid plate sitting there every day. My mom used to lay into her about it.
“The dishwasher is right there, Kerry! You’re not going to have someone cleaning up after you for the rest of your life, you know!”
After she died, Mom couldn’t touch the plate. It sat there for weeks, until mold grew on the crusts. It drew ants. It was disgusting. Once I tried to clean it up. I thought it would help, I guess—so she wouldn’t have to do it.
She screamed at me and told me to never touch anything of Kerry’s, ever again. She was so upset I almost couldn’t understand her.
I ran. I hid.
It’s embarrassing to type that out. I almost deleted it. But that’s the point of all the cloak-and-dagger, isn’t it?
I’ve never really been scared of my mother, but that day I was. I wasn’t really afraid of her hurting me, though that was part of it. She’s not a big woman, but that day she seemed huge.
I was scared of her grief. It seemed so much bigger than mine, and I worried it would overtake me. My father was in jail, my sister was dead, and my mother was trapped in her own private pain.
I was responsible for all of it.
I was scared she would do something irreparable.
I was scared I would lose her.
I didn’t stay hidden for long. She came looking for me, and I didn’t really have anywhere to go. I was thirteen. She found me in my closet. Her eyes were red, but she wasn’t crying, and her voice was soft, so soft. When I came out of the closet, she put her hands on my cheeks and apologized. She kept stroking my hair, telling me that we only had each other now, and we had to help take care of each other. Then she said I could start by helping her with something in the kitchen.
The dish with the crusts was gone, and the counter smelled of bleach. Mom wanted me to box up all the dishes. She said she couldn’t touch them anymore. I remember placing each dish in a box, so carefully, because I didn’t want to do anything to set her off again.
I shouldn’t have bothered. We took them all to the dump.
She made me throw them into the Dumpster while she stood there smoking a cigarette. I’d never seen my mother smoke, but there she was, staring down at the box of shattered dishes, a cigarette shaking between her fingers.
I’d never seen anyone do something like that. I thought she was losing her mind. A part of me wanted to run again, but a bigger part of me was scared to leave her alone.
After two drags, she stomped on the cigarette and said, “Let’s go buy some dishes. You can pick them out.”
I don’t know what the point of this story is, except maybe to say that sometimes you get to a point where it hurts too much, and you’ll do anything to get rid of the pain.
Even if it means doing something that hurts someone else.
I feel like I need a cigarette.
No. That’s not true. I hate smoking. It’s disgusting.
But still. I need something.
I love the feel of his words. I’m supposed to be on my way to meet Rowan for lunch, but my steps are slow. The hallway is packed with people desperate for something other than class time, and they jostle me along. My thoughts aren’t focused on any destination; they’re trapped in time with a thirteen-year-old boy watching his mother lose her marbles.
“Juliet! What perfect timing.”
Mr. Gerardi stands in front of me, leaning against the door to his classroom.
I don’t know what I’m doing here. I haven’t been down the arts hallway since she died. Tagboard-framed black-and-white photographs line the wall across the hall from him. One is magnificent, a shot of a man on a park bench, his skin weathered, a hat pulled low over his eyes. Despair pours out of the picture. Two are decent, but nothing special. The rest are crap.
A bowl of fruit, seriously?
I look back at Mr. Gerardi. “I was on my way to lunch. I didn’t mean to come down this way.”
He gives me a funny look. “Are you sure?”
The arts wing is an addition to the original school, so it’s not really “on the way” to anywhere. The location made it easy to avoid anything related to photography after she died. It made it doubly easy to avoid Mr. Gerardi’s attempts to get me to re-enroll in honors photography.
“You know, there’s still time to change your schedule,” he says. “But not much.”
See?
I shake my head quickly. “No. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Brandon doesn’t have much competition anymore.”
Brandon Cho. He’s probably the one who took the photograph of the guy on the park bench. We used to have a friendly rivalry for who could get more space in the school paper and the yearbook. Rowan always said that we would have made a cute couple, what with the cameras and all, but he’s a little too pleased with himself to be right for me.
I almost roll my eyes. “I’m pretty sure Brandon is getting by just fine.” Then I realize what he said when I walked up. “What’s perfect timing?”
“I need a favor, and you’re the perfect person to do it.”
Mr. Gerardi is the school’s only photography teacher, and when he needs a favor, it usually involves taking a picture of something.
“No,” I say.
He frowns. “You didn’t even let me say what I needed.”