“Hello! Who’s in there?”
All she could hear was the wind and the rattle of icy snow on naked branches. She eased one boot forward, stretching over the slick of ice to step inside. The floor creaked and she held her breath, trying to make herself as light as possible. There were piles of apple crates in the corners, stacks of orchard ladders against the wall, barrels and buckets and all kinds of junk, but no person that Sorrow could see. Long ago the old cider press had smashed through the rotten floorboards to the muddy cellar below, leaving a gaping hole in the floor.
Sorrow leaned forward to peer into the cellar. It was so dark it could have been a bottomless pit. There was no ladder; if somebody fell through the floor, they wouldn’t have any way to get out.
“Are you down there?” Her voice, now, little more than a whisper. “Hello?”
“I didn’t even know you could talk.”
Sorrow spun around, her heart jumping.
Cassie Abrams stood in the doorway. She cocked her head to one side, considering Sorrow with an unimpressed expression. “I thought you were mute like your grandma.”
Cassie’s blond hair curled in pigtails beneath her red knit hat, and her round cheeks were pink with cold. Her coat was red too, a deep crimson velvet with shiny silver buttons marching down the front, and her puffy snow boots were bright pink.
“Or can you only talk to empty rooms, not people?” Cassie said.
“I can talk,” Sorrow said, bewildered. She blushed when Cassie laughed.
“I bet my friend Madison I could make you talk,” Cassie said. “Now she has to kiss Jemma’s brother Hunter on the playground tomorrow. Maybe she won’t believe me but I’m going to make her anyway. You can talk like a normal person, can’t you? Say something else.”
Sorrow didn’t know Madison or Jemma or Hunter. She barely even knew Cassie. She and Patience weren’t allowed to talk to the Abramses or make friends with their daughters. Mom said that making friends with an Abrams would only lead to heartache.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Cassie kicked a clump of icy snow; it slid past Sorrow’s boots and dropped into the cellar. “Nothing. I was bored.”
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I thought this building would be cooler on the inside, but it’s just a bunch of junk. My playhouse is way better.” Cassie pointed across the snow-covered field toward her house. “It’s in the barn. I get to have the whole hayloft just for myself, and it’s not gross and dirty like this.”
Sorrow bristled, even though Cassie was right. “If you think it’s gross, maybe you should leave.”
“Maybe I don’t want to,” Cassie said.
“You have to. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Says who?”
“Says my mom, and your mom, and your dad,” Sorrow said. “The sheriff said we have to stay on our side of the fence so everybody stops bothering him.” Those had been his exact words, in fact, and Mom hadn’t been at all pleased to hear it.
Cassie snorted. “I don’t care what the dumb old sheriff says. Let’s do something fun. Can we climb that big tree on the hill? I’ve always wanted to climb it.”
Sorrow stared. It was a trick. It had to be a trick. No Abrams would invite her to play for no reason.
Even so, a part of her wanted to say yes. This lonely gray day would be more interesting if she could stomp through the orchard and climb the black oak with Cassie, breaking the rules their parents had set.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t risk Mom finding out, not when she was having a bad day. Patience had already pushed Mom too far by asking about school. Getting caught playing with Cassie Abrams would be so much worse.
“I don’t want to play with you,” Sorrow said. “I want you to leave.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“You have to,” Sorrow said, her worry turning into a desperate kind of fear. “You have to. You have to go before somebody sees you.”
Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll just tell them you made me come over here. I’ll tell them it’s all your fault.”
Something hot and angry was building in Sorrow’s chest, a bright painful ember pushing out into the cold. “That’s not true.”
“So? They’ll believe me more than you. Everybody knows you’re just as crazy as your mom.”
Sorrow lunged forward and shoved Cassie backward through the door. “Shut up!” she shouted. “You shut up about my mom!”
Cassie stumbled in the deep snow and fell. She struggled to her feet, and her cheeks were even pinker now. There was snow stuck all over her mittens and red coat. “I knew you were crazy. Your whole family is crazy.”
“Shut up!” Sorrow stepped toward Cassie again, but her boot slipped on the ice just inside the door. She grabbed for the doorframe to catch herself.
Cassie slammed into her before she was steady on her feet, and Sorrow’s feet skidded out from under her. She fell, hard, right onto her back. The jolt knocked the breath out of her, made her vision blur, and everything went dark with a thunderous thump. There was another thump—the walls shook—and a noisy clatter.
Cassie had shut the door.
“Hey!” Sorrow yelled. “Hey, what are you doing!”
She climbed to her feet and tumbled against the door, but it didn’t budge. Cassie had barred it from the outside.
“Let me out!” Sorrow hit the door hard enough to make the whole wall shake. “What are you doing? Let me out!”
“No,” Cassie said. Her voice was muffled through the door. “No way. No way. You’re crazy. You’ll kill me or something. Your whole family is insane.”
Her footsteps crunched through the snow.
“Cassie! Wait! Come back! Please come back!”
The footsteps paused.
“Please come back,” Sorrow said, more quietly. “Let me out. Please?”
Cassie started moving again, but now she was running. Her footsteps faded, and faded, and there was silence.
Sorrow turned in a slow circle, trying to breathe normally. All she could see was the faint gray light around the edges of the door. Everything else was darkness. Tears stung her eyes and scalded her cheeks. She scrubbed at her face; her mittens were cold and rough and dirty. She was trapped. She didn’t know what to do. Her breath was shallow, her heart racing so fast she felt it in her ears. She couldn’t get enough air. She couldn’t see. She was between the door and the hole in the floor, but she couldn’t see it, and what if she was closer to the hole than she thought? If she moved the wrong way she would tumble into the cellar and break her arms or legs or even her neck.
“Help!” Sorrow shouted, her voice choked with tears. “Help me! Can anybody hear me?”
She could scream all day and all night and nobody would hear. She was too far from the house. It might be dinnertime, or even bedtime, before Patience or Mom or Grandma noticed she wasn’t in the house. They might not find her until morning, and by then she would be frozen solid.
“Cassie!” She slammed her hands into the door, rattling it against the bar. “Cassie, please, let me out!”