“She’s been in your closet for over a year,” he said, and then my Mom said she wasn’t ready. And I’d made a face at myself in the mirror because how can you not be ready for something after a whole year?
I never knew why sometimes I’d find Mom standing in the doorway of the closet, staring into the dark inside with her face tilted up and eyes closed like she was praying to the shoes. She looked like she wanted to step right in and disappear. She’d catch me watching her from the hallway, and say, “Go play, Kat,” in a whispery voice that made me want to do anything but play.
I hadn’t slept at all last night, waiting to sneak into the closet and see what Dad was talking about. But now with the closet full of wild things, I wasn’t so sure.
From where I was standing down below, the boots sat under a cover of dust, just the round toes poking out from the lip of the shelf, like two ugly mushrooms growing there in the dark.
Mom had gone upstairs to visit with Grandma, and from the alarm clock next to the bed, she’d been gone three minutes. I figured I had another fifteen before she came looking for me. Twenty if Grandma started telling stories about the ladies at her old-age place and what she called their ninny pattering. They’d go on forever about that.
The two open windows on the far side of the room were full of light when I’d dragged the chair over and climbed on the wooden seat. But now, in the shadow of the open closet, a dead smell came out at me, and those two mushrooms got bigger each second. Reaching down for me, it seemed. A breeze came through, and the belt hanging on a hook next to me twisted, like a snake hanging off a limb, sending me hurrying back to the doorway.
This was stupid, wasting time like this. Mom had left me with strict instructions to get dressed.
I heard footsteps upstairs and froze. The chairs scraping against the floor above me sounding like they were sitting down for breakfast in the bedroom with me.
I didn’t know why Grandma visited so much from her other house in Florida. It had a pool and shuffleboard outside her front door. Upstairs there was hardly any room. Just a bedroom with an old bed covered in a white blanket with all these little round pom-poms hanging off the edges of it, and a kitchen that reminded me of the one on Dad’s boat.
In the living room, there was the most uncomfortable couch there ever was, with awful clear plastic covering it. It made me sweat just thinking about sitting on that couch on a hot day, the way the skin on the back of my legs would peel off the plastic inch by inch, just like a caterpillar’s legs pulling off the tree down back, long strips of skin clinging to the bark until they finally popped off.
I took a deep breath, two giant steps, and climbed back on the chair. I stood on my tiptoes to reach the box and shut my eyes tight when the back of my wrist touched the mushroom boot, expecting it to be slimy and wet, but it was fuzzy and warm. There was a blanket covering the box, and I unwrapped it, and put the blanket back on the shelf, fluffing it to make it look like there was something inside of it. The box was light, and I was careful not to drop it when I jumped off the chair. I put the room back the way it was just in case Mom came down—the chair back in its place between the windows and the closet door shut tight.
In the bathroom, I locked the door and set the box with my sister in it on the bathroom counter. Now that I had her here, I wasn’t sure what to do with her.
Nobody ever said anything to me about why she wasn’t buried in a graveyard, like the one in the next town over where Grandpa was buried. Grandma just sat me and Jess down once, a few days after Maddie died, on the awful couch upstairs, and used some big word that meant that Maddie would go to heaven and her body would go back to dust. She said we could sprinkle this dust in Maddie’s favorite place.
I told Grandma that was weird because Maddie’s favorite place was our cat, Orange Kitty’s, water bowl. She loved to crawl over and slap at the water until it went all over the kitchen floor. Mom finally got fed up and put the water bowl on the counter, but that was only until Orange Kitty’s fur got in Dad’s coffee.
Grandma had taken off her glasses after I told her all of this and squeezed the little dents on the side of her nose. Jess had swiped at me with her hand and told me to hush up and just listen. But Grandma didn’t say anything more. She just asked if we had any other questions, and even though I did, I didn’t want Jess any madder at me than she already was. So I just shrugged, and then Grandma took us to the kitchen for ice cream.
We never talked about Maddie’s dust again. Not because I didn’t ask. Even Jess, who used to tell me everything, clammed up tight every time I brought it up. And Dad wasn’t much of a talker to start with. Whenever I asked him to explain anything, he’d just tell me to ask Mom; she could explain these things better than him.
But that wasn’t true either, because Mom just got tears in her eyes, and very quiet, and then Jess would yank me aside and whisper at me to stop it. You’re upsetting her, is what she’d hiss at me.
The last time I’d asked Mom where Maddie was, she pulled me tight against her, my face pressed into her side, and said she was right there, and always would be, her finger pointing to somewhere around the area of my chest. I’d looked down at my shirt when she said this, as much as I could with her holding me as tight as she was.
“Here?” I asked her, to double-check, because the only thing I saw was a chocolate ice cream stain, and that didn’t look anything like Maddie.
But she just said, “Of course. Can’t you feel her, Kat? Because I can. I feel her.”
And then she started to cry with my face still smashed against her.
I looked at the box sitting on the counter in front of me. I turned it around and upside down before I saw the small sticker on the bottom. It said: Unlock: Turn box upside down, listen for sound of metal peg dropping (shake if necessary). Keeping the box upside down, slide bottom panel toward side with sticker.
I turned it over and over. No sound. I shook it. Nothing. I turned it and shook it at the same time. Still nothing. I was running out of time before Mom came looking for me, and I still had to get the box back in the closet.