Freddy said, “It’s afternoon.”
“Have a nice morning tomorrow,” said the woman. She turned and marched off down the path. One of her shoes made flapping noises at every step. It looked as if the sole had come loose. Freddy listened to the flapping, which was strangely dignified, receding into the trees.
She was pretty sure the woman had been a passing nutcase. But Freddy did keep the key, threading it onto her own ring next to the keys to her house. And the day her mum and dad sat Freddy and Mel down to tell them they were going to live separately, just for a little while, she made herself think about the key the whole time. Once her parents left their daughters alone, Freddy went to the grandfather clock in the living room—the one they had never been able to use because no one could unlock the casing—and tried the key in the lock. It didn’t fit. But Freddy didn’t cry. She could feel the tears just behind her eyes, threatening to push their way out. The key kept them at bay somehow.
She used the key many times over the next four years. Sometimes it stopped her crying, and sometimes she remembered it too late. As time went on, she forgot less often, and it finally became automatic, then unnecessary. Just touching it was enough to calm her down. She thought of the encounter in the park whenever she grasped the key, but it gradually grew to be just a slightly weird thing that had happened to her when she was ten. She wouldn’t have known the woman again if they had met in the street, especially if the woman had brushed her hair and found some new clothes, but Freddy didn’t think they ever had.
1
“The house on Grosvenor Street is sold again,” said Mel, and gooped yogurt onto her Cheerios, disgustingly.
There was only one house on Grosvenor Street. Freddy vaguely remembered their stepfather, Jordan, calling it a “bizarre accident of city planning” back when Jordan and Mum had still been eating meals with them. Grosvenor was a fairly short street that went through the middle of Roncesvalles Park; then the park ended on one side of it as it made a T intersection with Elm Drive. Freddy’s house was on Elm, though the side yard let out onto Grosvenor. Behind it, fronting on Grosvenor, was the one house. It had a couple of vacant lots on its other side, and then Grosvenor—and the park—ended in another T intersection. Freddy had always been fascinated by that house. In and of itself, it was … kind of odd … but the most noticeable thing about it was that no one ever lived in it for more than a year at a time. It would have been nice if there had been rumours of ghosts or evil disappearing basement rooms, but the reasons the owners had for moving were always more boring than that: the lawn was too big, or the roof leaked, or there was that one useless room that made the house truly unusual but took up way too much space, or it felt too creepy to be living in the only house on a street across from a park. The last owners, the Johannsens, had moved out eight months before and had been trying to offload the house on somebody else ever since. Every once in a while, Freddy would notice a real estate agent showing people around the place, but it hadn’t happened for some time now.
“Oh yeah? Who?” Freddy was mashing her spoon into her own bowl of cereal in an angry sort of way. The anger was just something she seemed to be feeling all the time these days. It simmered gently beneath everything she did.
“Dunno,” said Mel. “I forgot my magnifying glass, so I couldn’t read the fine print on the ‘Sold’ sign.”
Mel had discovered sarcasm at the age of six, though she’d never used it very well. She always sounded cheerful when she was saying something biting.
Freddy said, “There’d better not be little kids.”
“The Wongs weren’t that bad,” said Mel. “I liked Horace.”
Horace had been the oldest of five boys and the only one, as far as Freddy was concerned, with any self-restraint. “I’ve still got the scars from where the twins bit me,” she pointed out. Mel shrugged.
Someone went thud on the stairs. “Here come the elephants,” said Freddy, “again.” The anger surged, predictably.
When Roland entered a room, the room seemed to get smaller. It wasn’t that he was fat, exactly; Mel was wider than he was, for all she was a foot and a half shorter. He just seemed built on a different scale from other fourteen-year-old boys. Admittedly, fourteen was a funny age for boys. Freddy’s classmates ranged from kids barely taller than she was with unbroken voices to hulking giants who had already started shaving. Roland had taken the “hulking giant” option to extremes. He was more than six feet tall. As he shambled through the doorway, Freddy could see him going through his usual failed attempt to make himself smaller by slouching and drawing his arms close in to his sides. As usual, she found herself fighting the urge to push back the table and make space for him.
“Milk,” said Roland, who did not do mornings. His black hair was sticking almost straight up, and his eyes were closed to puffy slits.
Mel flapped a hand at the milk. It was useless for anybody to say anything. When Roland was in this state, he would have been able to manage advanced gymnastics more easily than lip-reading.
Freddy and Mel sat at the table and watched as Roland made a lunge for where he may have thought the milk was. His hand caught the edge of the Corn Flakes box and sent it spinning into the air. Freddy winced as it landed upside down on the linoleum. She didn’t think Roland noticed. He groped blindly over the table, his bare feet crunching in cereal.
“I hope he puts orange juice on his Cheerios,” said Mel, a hint of wistfulness in her voice. Roland had made this mistake once months ago, and ever since, Mel had been longing for a repeat.
Roland’s questing hand found the milk carton. He dragged it towards him, popped it open, and raised it to his mouth.
“Oh, hey,” said Mel, and Freddy added, “No!” She knew it was no good, but she could never seem to stop herself from speaking aloud to him, even when he wasn’t looking at her. She heard Mel’s chair scrape, and she turned to see Mel on her feet, signing as hugely as she could, Stop it. Mel had started learning to sign about two days after their mum had begun dating Jordan. As far as Freddy was concerned, it was pointless. Roland could read lips. Mel didn’t need to humour him with the stupid signing all the time.
Freddy turned quickly away from the signing. I didn’t understand that, she told herself, as she always did.
Roland lowered the carton and peered over it at Freddy and Mel. His eyes were open most of the way now, though they were still puffy. He glanced from accusing glare to accusing glare. “What?”
“Now we can’t drink our own milk,” said Freddy. “Thanks so much.”
“I was going to put it on my second helping,” said Mel, signing simultaneously.