I’m at the top of the stairs right now. I heard Mommy fall down and Eden call out something, but I didn’t make myself go there because I kind of didn’t want to see what was happening ’cause I know it’s all about the big sad thing. So I came here instead.
Shadow is coming up the stairs even though he knows he’s not ’llowed. He stops and makes his head go sideways, and I know he sees me. I don’t put on a happy face like I usually do when I see him, because I’m not happy. I’m scared that I’m going to be stuck here with all the crying and sad people. I want Mommy and Daddy and Eden to be happy again. Even Auntie Ruth, too, but I’m not sure she was happy even before the bad thing happened to me. But she still smiled at me and patted my knee and played Candy Land, but not on the floor, at the kitchen table ’cause she said her knees told her she couldn’t play on the floor. I didn’t know knees could talk. Mine never did. But it was still fun to play with her, even if it wasn’t on the floor.
I clap my hands for Shadow to come to me, but he doesn’t hear the sound of the clap because I can’t make a sound anymore. I hear the clap inside my brain, but not outside my brain. I wish there was some way I could make a sound that I could hear outside my brain, ’cause maybe then I could make Mommy and Daddy and Eden and Auntie Ruth hear me, and I could tell them not to be sad anymore.
TWENTY
EDEN
My mom’s eyes are all round, not as shiny as they have been, but open really wide, and I think that might be worse than the shininess. She cries out and falls to the floor, and then I cry out, too, because I don’t want her to hurt herself.
I run over to her to make sure she’s okay, but she bats my arm away, hard enough that it smarts. She shakes her head back and forth and starts to laugh, but not a happy laugh. It’s, like, a really mad, scary laugh that makes my stomach feel sick. I want to put my hands over my ears to block it out, but I don’t want to make her feel bad.
“Mom, Mommy, are you okay?” I ask her, making sure not to touch her so she won’t bat at me again. She’s still laughing, but all quiet now, her shoulders hunching over.
“The dry cleaners,” she says with a gravelly voice that doesn’t sound like my mom at all. I don’t know what the dry cleaners have to do with her falling down and her crazy laughing. I’m about to ask her when Dad comes running into the room. He sees me and Mom on the floor, and the crease in his forehead gets even bigger.
“What the hell?”
A part of me wants to tell him he has to put a dollar in the curse jar, but I’m smart enough to know that now is not the time for that.
“She fell down,” I tell him. “And she hit my arm,” I add, which isn’t exactly true, but I just want to see if he’s listening to me. He doesn’t answer, so I guess not. I’m not surprised, but I kind of hoped he’d say something, you know, like a normal person would say when their kid told them her mom just hit her. Like, he’d say, “I’m so sorry, Eden. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.” And I’d real fast say, “Oh, no, Dad, she didn’t mean it at all, it was an accident, like it wasn’t even really hitting, she just batted my arm away,” and he’d be all relieved. But nope. He doesn’t say anything, just rushes over to us and puts his arm around my mom and scoops her up and over to the bed, totally ignoring me.
“Rachel, Rachel,” he says. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“You took it to the dry cleaners. You had it fucking cleaned, you bastard.”
I am definitely not going to tell her she has to put money in the curse jar, even though the f-word is worth like five dollars, and she never says the f-word—I only heard her say it one time when she burned her hand really bad on the stove. But I’m not going to say anything to her when her eyes are like that, and I know, for sure, I like them better when they’re shiny.
“Rachel, calm down,” my dad says, and he’s gripping her wrist really tight and his voice isn’t mean but totally intense. But Mom just kind of snarls at him, like the cat across the street does to Shadow when he’s out front.
“Let go of me, Sam! What did you think, that I wouldn’t remember? That you could just have it cleaned and I’d fucking forget?”
“Rachel!” My dad’s voice booms through the room, and I sit down hard on my butt and I feel that choking thing in my throat. Dad looks at me, kind of not at me but in my direction, and when he speaks to me, his voice is all calm, but like he’s working really hard to keep it calm. “Eden, please go to your room and shut the door, and I’ll be in to see you in a minute.”
I gulp and nod and jump to my feet and race out the door toward my room. Shadow is at the top of the stairs, his nose pointed at my mom and dad’s room, like he’s going to go in there to make sure everyone’s okay. And I can’t let him do that, because my mom and dad are already mad enough and he’s not allowed upstairs and I don’t want them to yell at Shadow, because he’s a good boy.
I grab his collar and yank him down the hall and into my room. He weighs a ton, but he comes easily, like he’s really glad to see me and glad I’m bringing him with me. My dad might be mad when he finds Shadow in my room, but I’m just going to tell him I was scared and having Shadow with me made me feel better. I think that might make Dad feel kind of guilty, so he won’t yell at me or Shadow. But you know what? I don’t even care if he gets mad at me. In fact, I hope he gets mad at me, because then he’ll have to talk to me.
I shut the door behind me and pull Shadow over into the corner of the room where my beanbag chair sits. I fall heavily upon it, and Shadow nuzzles into me and licks my face. I wrap my arms around him and hold him tight and pretend I can’t hear the muffled, angry words of my parents from down the hall.
Shadow trembles, and I rub the fur on his back and tell him what a good boy he is. I think about what Aunt Ruth said, right after the accident, about how Mom and Dad should “just put that mutt down.” Thinking about her saying that makes me shudder, because I know what it means. Mary Pickle’s parents had to put down their dog because it bit a little kid. Aunt Ruth said that to my parents because she thinks what happened to Jonah is Shadow’s fault. But I know better.
Feeling guilty, I press myself against Shadow. He’s making whiny noises in his throat, and he keeps pointing his nose toward the wall. At first I think he’s looking in the direction of Mom and Dad’s room, you know, because he’s worried about them, but then I realize that he’s looking at my bed. And the way he’s frozen, with the hair on his neck kind of standing up, makes me feel goose bumps on my arm. But I don’t feel scared, just, like, weird.