My name is Lily Madwhip and I’m having a picnic.
“Pass the potato chips, please, Lily.”
That’s my brother Roger. He’s six years older than me. We both like potato chips. Who doesn’t? Even my pet turtle Raphael likes them. Raphael is sitting on the tablecloth next to me. He’s so cute. I give him a potato chip and pass the bag to Roger. Raphael chomps on the potato chip.
“Thank you, Lily.” Roger smiles at me.
“You’re welcome!” I tell him and smile back, popping a potato chip in my mouth. It tastes like sawdust.
My mom and dad smile at both of us, because they’re so happy we’re their kids. Roger plays in a band with his friends Skeeter and Dustin. Roger plays the drums. He’s very good at it. My dad taught him how. Someday I hope he’ll teach me too.
We’re having a wonderful picnic here by the lake. I can hear birds chirping in the trees. They sound so pretty. Out in the lake, my cousin Susie is swimming around. She loves to swim. She leaves a trail of red behind her in the water. Maybe after we eat Roger and I can play in the lake with Susie!
“I love you guys,” I tell my family. “And you, Raphael.” I pet my turtle. He turns and looks up at me and lets water pour out of his mouth. He’s so silly.
“And we love you too, Lily.” My mom pets my head. I like it when she pets my head. Back in third grade, this lady used to come by our classroom and we were always told to get out our pencils when she came by. We’d set our pencils out on our desks and the lady would come to each of us and use our pencil to comb through our hair. I always loved it when the lady would comb through my hair with my pencil. I told my mom about the nice lady who would visit our classroom and gently comb our hair and she told me it was the school nurse and she was checking for lice.
Roger nudges me. He’s got on his favorite shirt with no sleeves, and his hair is brushed all neat and tidy. He grins at me. “Look what I found.” He hands me my foil Charizard.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Susie calls from down in the lake. She waves at us, but she’s got no hand. We all laugh and wave back.
Dad stands up and brushes himself off. He’s wearing a nice black suit and tie. It must be pretty hot for this sunny Summer day. “Roger,” he says, “let’s play some music for the ladies.”
“Sounds good!” Roger says. He hops to his feet. His belly sloshes because everything inside is mashed potatoes. There’s a drum set out on the grass under a big willow tree, and Roger sits down and pulls out his drum sticks. He pours out the snare drum and gives it a tap.
My dad pulls out a harmonica and polishes it on his sleeve.
“Pardon me, may I join you?”
Mom and I turn to see a dapper-looking man in a white shirt with a painted on tie. He’s got on black pants and a black vest. He looks very happy, and he bows to us both.
My jaw drops. “Paschar, is that you?”
He winks at me. “It’s time to wake up, Lily.”
No no no no no.
Dad and Roger start playing a song, but it doesn’t sound like music. Dad blows into the harmonica and it makes a sound like a siren. Roger strikes the drums and it sounds like crashing and things breaking. It’s not a very good song, but it sound typical for what Roger used to play when Skeeter and Dutin were over.
Out in the lake, Susie is screaming and headbanging to the bad music. Her head kind of bends further back than normal, so she really whips her hair around. I imagine if she had hands, she’d be doing devil horns or something. That’s where you put your index and pinky fingers up and hold your middle and ring fingers down with your thumb. Roger used to love to do devil horns while rocking out.
“Oh dear,” Mom says, and stands up, walking over to the barbecue grill. “Something’s burning.”
Black smoke is coming off the grill and forming dark clouds in the sky. I can smell the hot dogs and hamburgers burning and it’s upsetting because I really wanted a hamburger, but not if they’re burned.
“Get them out of there!” I yell to Mom.
She turns and looks at me and her face is all waxy-looking and melting. I can still see her mouth and her teeth, but her eyes and her nose are sliding right off her face. “It’s too late, Lily,” she says, “everything’s burned.”
Paschar puts his hand on my shoulder. “I warned you.” he says sadly.
“But I’m not dead.” I tell him.
The sky is getting dark with the smoke from the grill. Out in the lake, susie sinks below the surface of the water and leaves nothing but a big red spot where she was. Dad and Roger stop playing the bad song. Dad watches as Mom melts by the barbecue grill, and then looks at me and shakes his head as he starts to melt too.
“This is all your fault.”
I open my eyes.
I’m lying on the floor of Meredith’s bedroom. Everything’s smokey but I can see some off-white stickers on the ceiling that look like stars and planets and comets. I bet they’re glow-in-the-dark. I wish the lights were out so I could see them glow.
It’s really hot in here. I glance around and realize the room is on fire. That’s not good. How long was I out for? The picnic didn’t seem… well, okay, the picnic seemed to last about an hour. The wallpaper has flames coming out of it and even the bed is burning. Nobody’s going to be sleeping on that now. There’s a crash from somewhere close by, and then the sound of someone struggling.
“Meredith?” I say. Oh my God, I can speak!
“Lily,” I hear her, but she sounds tired. It has definitely been a long day for both of us. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast. No wait, I had Frosted Flakes. That’s right.
“Lily, I burned her. I burned her right up! I didn’t mean to do it.”
She must be referring to Officer Flowers, the lady in black, the police woman who carries a totem of Dumah, the angel of death and silence. She has been popping up all over the place lately. First the mall, then school, now she showed up at Meredith’s house in the middle of Meredith and Felix making their grand escape. Wait, where is Felix?
“Where’s Felix?” I ask. It hurts to talk, and I start coughing. “So smokey in here. We need to get out before we burn up.”
“I don’t feel anything.”
Of course she doesn’t. Meredith’s fires don’t hurt her. Somebody just needs to teach her how to put them out. There’s going to be an assembly on fire safety if I recall. Heck, they could have Meredith help teach it.
I sit up. Meredith is curled up in a corner, hiding her face. She’s sobbing and holding herself and rocking back and forth. Between us there’s a person, curled up as well, only they’re kind of on fire and not moving. “Oh, Jesus.” I can’t tell who they are because they’re all black and like I said on fire, but it must be poor Officer Flowers. She smells like burnt hamburgers.
“We gotta get out of here, Meredith,” I choke on the smoke. “I’m in a lot of pain. And your house is on fire. Are those glow-in-the-dark stickers on your ceiling?”
“Just leave me.”
Somebody moves in the doorway to the hall. I turn to look. It’s Roger. He’s wearing his sleeveless shirt and his hair is combed like at his funeral. “Just leave her, assface,” he says. He walks off down the hall. Oh great, I’m hallucinating.
I grab Paschar and Nathaniel off the bed. Scooting past the bad-smelling, burned up body, I crawl over to Meredith and hold out Nathaniel. “Nathaniel says we all need to leave.”
She takes her melted Barbie and hugs him to her chest. Outside, I can hear fire engine sirens. I wait, looking at her. Come on Meredith, snap out of it. She looks back at me, tears in both her eyes. I still wonder if she can see me with that milky one.
“Now that Felix is gone, I can think more clearly.” I whisper. “He gets in your head. He makes you think things… and say things.”
“He makes you tell your secrets.” Meredith mutters. Something big falls over downstairs with a crash. It sounds like Roger banging on his drums, but those are back at the picnic. No, wait, that was a dream. His drums are in our garage.
I grab Meredith by the shoulders. “Meredith, I’m not afraid of sharks.”
She tilts her head like a dog when you tell it to fetch and don’t throw a stick. It’s the universal sign for “huh?” “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Don’t you remember? I told you I was afraid of sharks.”
“So what?”
“Felix made me say it. Don’t you get it? He told me to tell you what I’m scared of, and I said I was scared of sharks. Even in my head, I was thinking suddenly about how scary sharks are. But sharks are out in the ocean! I’m not scared of them. Or clowns. Well… okay, I’m unnerved by clowns. But I wasn’t scared of them until Felix made me confess.”
“So you lied?”
Oh god, the smell of the person on the floor mixed with the pain in my side is starting to make me sick. “Can we discuss this outside, please? I don’t want to die.”
Meredith nods silently. She looks at the dead person smoldering on the floor, then looks away and follows me as I head to the door. Just as we approach the hall, a big man in a yellow fireman’s jacket and yellow fireman’s pants and yellow helmet walks in. He stares at us, then past us at the burned body, then back at us. “Girls, stay low. I’ll get you out of here, just give me a second.”
“Are you real?” i ask him.
“Yes, I’m real,” he says.
“Okay then.”
He goes down the hall and comes back with a sopping wet blanket which he makes Meredith and I wrap around us. Less than a minute later, we’re breathing fresh air out on the front lawn, being given oxygen through some cool-looking rubber mask while each wearing a less wet blanket. The firemen manage to put out the fire without too much more of the house getting damaged, but there’s still the matter of the dead body inside.
Meredith and I get to ride in a ambulance to the hospital so they can take care of whatever’s going on that’s hurting so much in my side after the car crash. I wish it was a helicopter but there’s no room for one to land.
“Meredith,” I say to her while the ambulance bumps along, “I don’t think you’re ugly and you don’t scare me.” She looks at me doubtfully. “You’re one of my best friends.”
“One of them?” she asks.
“Like, third best.”
“Out of how many?”
“Look, the point is, you don’t scare me. And I don’t think you’re ugly.”
She blinks away some more tears. I hate having to talk about her appearance because I know how self conscious she is of her burns. I’ve got to just stop beating around the bush and get to the point.
“I think the weasel burned your parents.”
The EMT sitting in the back with us raises his eyebrow. I shake my head at him because it’s too much to explain.
“I think the weasel can get into people’s brains. He almost made me believe the things I was saying about you, but he made one mistake. He told me my big fear was that my parents don’t love me, and I know they do. I know they do. My parents love me. My dad just gave me a harmonica and is going to teach me how to play the drums.”
“Lily?” Meredith whispers.
“Yeah?”
She leans in close so the EMT can’t hear her. “It didn’t make me happy when my parents died. I know I said I liked it, but I didn’t. That wasn’t me. I wish they were still alive.”
“Even though they locked you in the basement?”
“They never did!” She covers her mouth to stifle a sob. “I don’t know why I said that! They didn’t do that to me, they loved me.”
“Maybe those are the weasel’s secrets,” I suggest, “maybe when he’s around us, he can make other people believe his secrets are theirs.”
“That would mean he did it, right? Do you think Felix killed my parents?”
“Yeah, I do. You know what else that means…”
“What?”
“The weasel is scared of clowns.”
At the hospital, I’m taken to get an X-ray while Meredith’s foster dad meets her and gets her checked out. Apparently her foster mom, Mrs. Lake, is alright and just suffered a minor concussion from Felix banging her head against a wall, the jerk. I’m glad she’s okay. Before we part, Meredith gives me a strong hug. I hug her back and whisper, “Watch out for weasels.” After all, Felix is still out there. I hope he ran away to hide in a weasel den and leave Meredith and me alone for good, but someone like that, they’re obsessed. I’m afraid he’ll be back, and we’ll have to deal with him again.
The x-ray shows two broken ribs. To me, it feels like my whole insides were run through a blender. They put some sticky bandages on me and tell me to just rest and don’t do any acrobatics. Also, avoid any more car crashes. That last part seems sadly harder to avoid than the first part. I’ve been in two serious ones in just three months after all.
On the other hand– you see, Paschar? You were telling me that things were going to end badly. I mean, I guess they did for Officer Flowers. I feel bad for her. I wish I knew what she was about. Dumah said she wasn’t there for me. I wonder who she was there for, because I don’t think she went there for herself. Of course, with all us people and our totems and our angels together in the same place, it seemed to be scrambling the wires or something. Officer Flowers came for one of us and ended up being the one who died. I sensed my death and yet here I am, still kicking. Well, okay, I better not kick anything right now. I breathe a sigh of relief and wait for my parents to come pick me up.
I’m sorry, Lily, Paschar says.
It’s okay, even you, my best best friend, can make a mistake from time to time.
My mom eventually comes into the room, red-faced. She’s been crying and at the sight of me lying there waiting, all bandaged up, she breaks into crying again. She doesn’t normally cry all that much, but maybe the whole thing with losing Roger in a car crash and then having to go to the hospital because I was in another one, it’s probably all been too much for her. We hug and I pet her head.
“It’s okay, I’m okay. I saved Meredith.”
“I know you did, sweety.” she says, kissing me on the forehead.
I suddenly remember that I don’t know what happened to my dad.
“Is Daddy okay?”
Mom looks at me and holds my hands. She squeezes them just a bit too hard, but I don’t cry or pull away, because I need to let her do it. She shakes her head so slowly. So very very slowly. She blinks away tears.
“That man that attacked you… he apparently tied up your father and put him in the trunk of the car.”
Oh God. He was in the trunk the whole time. The car that I made crash. If I hadn’t made Felix crash the car, maybe–
I start to cry with her, and hug her, even though it hurts to be hugged.
“He’s in intensive care. He suffered a lot of internal injuries, but he should be okay.”
“Can we go see him?”
“Sure. We can go back there and wait together, okay?”
She takes my hand and we head down to the ICU. I get this churning feeling in my gut as we walk past nurses stations and doctors offices. Maybe it’s the pain medication they gave me earlier for my ribs. As we walk, I look down at the shiny tiles. I wonder how much mopping has to get done to make this place always look so clean? Except there, where there’s a spot of blood. And there. In fact, actually there’s a lot of blood splatters. It’s becoming hard not to step in them. I’m surprised that Mom is just walking through it all carefree in her expensive shoes. Normally if she gets even a scuff mark on them, she goes ballistic. I guess there’s more important things than shoes at the moment. I mean, I know there is, but Mom doesn’t always think so.
The blood on the ground starts flowing under our feet, like it’s fresh. I look up and the hallway seems to be slowly flooding with bloody water. It’s going up over the toes of my shoes, but Mom doesn’t see it. She looks down at me with her sad eyes and tries to fake a smile. I want to tell her, I want to warn her about the blood that’s running over our feet. Down the hall ahead of us, I see my cousin Susie swim past. God, I’m hallucinating again. What is happening to me?
I close my eyes, and when I open them again, the blood is gone. The floor is clean and clear again. Moments later, we stop in front of a dimly lit room with a shaded window looking in. My dad is lying in a hospital bed with dozens of machines hooked up to him and I can just make out someone standing next to him, leaning over, probably checking one of the many tubes or wires connected to him. My dad’s face reminds me of Felix’s… not in the weasel sense, but when I last saw Felix and his face was all bruised and there was blood running down from his hair. I’m seeing so much blood today. I hope Felix is off somewhere bleeding right now.
“Can we ask the doctor how he’s doing?” I ask Mom.
“What doctor?”
I feel suddenly cold as the figure straightens up and turns around to look at me through the window. At least, I assume she’s looking at me. Her face and most of her body has been burned black by the fire.