I was not a violent child, but I can’t deny the joy I got from punching James Wycliffe right in his big, fat mouth.
James was a seventh grader, same as myself, and I’d always thought it an unspoken middle-school rule to never pick on anyone below sixth-grade. A twelve-year-old bullying an elementary-schooler wasn’t just unfair, it was pathetic. So when I overheard him telling seven-year-old Max that he smelled bad, I did what any responsible older sister would do and drove my fist square into his face. To his credit, he didn’t fall over or cry—he just stood there in surprise, bringing one hand up to his bleeding mouth to assess the damage. It was only after his fingers grazed the deep, vertical slit on his bottom lip that he started to scream.
“Y-you are tho dead, Anderthon!” He threatened, but it was hard to take him seriously with his brand new lisp. “You hear me? You and your dirty, thmelly little brother!”
He spent another few minutes yelling at me before running away, both hands cupping his mouth as he left. I found myself regretting the punch. I mean, sure, it had felt great, but it was the Friday before spring break, and I loathed to think what my mother would do if she found out. The thought of being grounded over vacation made my stomach churn, but I opted to check in on Max before getting too caught up in my own problems. Besides, my mother had been sick with a fever for several days, so maybe she’d be too tired to punish me harshly.
“You okay?” I asked Max, and he nodded the way all second graders do—hunching his shoulders and bobbing his head so dramatically that his chin almost touched his chest. Despite the nod, I knew he was upset. He and I had heard it all by that point—”dirty”, “stinky”, “gross”, even “diseased”—but the frequency of the insults did little to lessen their sting. In an attempt to cheer him up, I treated Max to a trip to the arcade. I had amassed a small fortune in quarters, and as it turned out, an afternoon of games and junk food was exactly what we needed to forget about our troubles. We stayed out as long as we could, but eventually our 10 o’ clock curfew crept up on us and I was forced to pull Max away from TMNT: Turtles in Time and walk us home.
Time had gotten away from me—it was after 9:50 PM when we left, and our house was a twenty-minute walk from the arcade. Had I been alone, I might have been able to sprint home in time, but I had Max with me, and he was already tired from our evening out. Instead of trying to run, I made peace with the fact that we’d be breaking curfew and walked home with him, listening to Max go on and on about how much he loved Raphael and his sai (Max had good taste for a seven-year-old). Halfway through our walk, he got so tired that I had to give him a piggy-back ride, slowing us down even further. We made it to our street just before 10:30. You could spot our house from a block away—it was the only one without any lights on. For the past few days, Mom had complained of severe light sensitivity, and thus instructed us to keep the house dark so as to ward off her headaches.
The front door had been blocked for years, so I walked around the house to the back door. As I approached, I felt Max press his forehead into my shoulder, tucking himself against my back like he was trying to hide.
“What’s wrong?”
Max didn’t answer for a minute, then said, “I don’t wanna go in there.”
“Why not?”
Another pause.
“Scared.”
I sighed, unhooking my arms from around Max’s knees and setting him down on the back porch. “Don’t be a baby.” I dug my key out of my back pocket and unlocked the door. I stepped inside, holding the door open for Max. When he didn’t follow, I held my hand out for him.
“It’s just a house. Our own house, with our own mom inside. Nothing to be scared of. I promise.”
With an uncertain smile, Max took my hand and followed me inside.
The door clicked shut behind us. Trash crunched under our feet as we walked into the kitchen, and then into what used to be a dining room. Those days, it functioned more like a massive, walk-in closet—stuffed floor-to-ceiling with stacks of clothes and piles of jewelry. To my dismay, the room also featured four mannequins that Mom had brought home from a garage sale. Sometimes, when Max really pissed me off, I told him that the mannequins were going to come alive in the middle of the night and eat him. I gave his hand a little squeeze as we ventured deeper into the room towards the stairs, my eyes straining to pick out each humanoid shape in the dim lighting. I counted them as we passed. One. Two. Three. Four.
Five?
I flinched backwards on instinct, my heart leaping into my throat before the familiar voice of my mother filled the room.
“Cecelia Anderson, do you have any idea what time it is?” Her voice had that calm, quiet rage about it, which I always found infinitely scarier than her shouting voice. Never had I wished so badly to be able to turn on a light. Max’s hand tightened around my own.
“Uh … 10:30 …”
“And what time is your curfew?”
“… 10 o’clock …”
I was surprised that my mother had managed to get out of bed, given how sick she had seemed before Max and I left for school in the morning. As I stood there, sheepishly awaiting my sentencing, I studied her face for lingering signs of illness, but it felt as though my eyes weren’t properly adjusting to the dark. No matter how much I squinted, she looked as featureless as the mannequins. My hand was starting to hurt from where Max’s small fingers dug into my flesh.
“We’ll discuss this in the morning,” she finally said, turning towards the stairs. “But rest assured that both of you are grounded until I know you’ve learned your lesson.”
When she disappeared around the corner, I yanked my hand out of Max’s grasp, dropping my voice to an irritated whisper.
“That’s what I get for taking you along,” I spat, rubbing my sore hand as I ascended the stairs and made my way towards my bedroom. I couldn’t believe that I’d evaded punishment for punching James and yet I’d still gotten grounded anyway. Once I got to the landing, I made my way down the hall and into my bedroom. Strangely, although my mother was nowhere in sight, I had not heard her open or close any doors.
My bedroom was the emptiest in the house, and I fought hard to keep it that way. While I’m sure most kids would have still considered it to be cluttered, I was proud of how neat I’d been able to keep it. Stepping into my bedroom from the cramped second-story corridor was like taking a breath of fresh air. Exhaustion finally settling in, I kicked off my shoes and collapsed into bed, succumbing quickly to a dreamless sleep.
The next morning, I awoke to what I thought was a bird pecking at my window. I rubbed my tired eyes and stared at the pane, but saw no bird perched on the sill. After a moment of silence, a soda can appeared in view, smacking into the glass and bouncing off. Confused, I rose from my bed, threw open my window, and was surprised to see James Wycliffe of all people standing on my lawn. I watched as he ran to where the can landed, picking it up and preparing for another throw before he saw my face in the window.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What?” He yelled back up to me.
“What are you doing!?”
“Getting your attention,” he gave the soda can an underhand toss, sending it in an arc towards its brethren where they laid piled behind one of our hedges. “Come down here!”
“Why?”
“So we can fight,” he said. I began to laugh, certain that he was joking, but the serious expression on his face gave me pause.
“You’re gonna fight me? Why?”
“Because you sucker-punched me, obviously. Now come outside so we can settle this.”
“You can’t fight me—I’m a girl!”
He folded his arms across his chest, looking up at me incredulously. “Who cares? You started it when you hit me yesterday, and I deserve a fair fight.”
I was oddly flattered by his insistence on settling things with our fists. Girl or not, I was about his size, and I could scrap pretty well. If he wanted a chance to defend his honor, I could respect that. Unfortunately though, I couldn’t humor his request until I was off of house-arrest.
“I can’t come outside right now. I’m grounded.”
“Really? But I didn’t tell on you.”
“It’s for something else.”
“Huh.” James fidgeted, looking around the lawn like he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. “When are you un-grounded?”
“Dunno yet. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Okay. Well, I’ll be back tomorrow then, I guess.” He gave me a small smile, his tone more reminiscent of a kid planning a play-date than someone resolving to a fist-fight. James walked to the edge of my lawn, where he had discarded his bicycle, and as he hopped on and gleefully peddled away, I decided that he was a very strange boy. I closed the window and made my way towards the first floor to see if Mom was around. Though her car was still in the driveway, I saw no sign of her.
As I wound my way between piles of trash, looking for my mother to no avail, I realized why it had seemed so dark in the house the previous night: not only had all of the lights been turned off, but many of the windows had been covered up with painter’s tape.
“Mom? You home?” I shouted into the quiet. Somehow, the air downstairs felt heavier than normal. The darkness was claustrophobia-inducing. The sooner I could find my mom and plead my way out of being grounded, the better.
After a while, I deduced that she had gone out, and so I temporarily gave up my search with the intention of fixing myself breakfast. I found Max sitting atop the kitchen counter, drinking orange juice straight from the carton. He lowered his eyes like a guilty dog as I walked in, though whether it was the drinking or the events of last night that incited his shame, I wasn’t certain.
“Where’s Mom?”
Max shrugged his shoulders, keeping his eyes on the floor. Walking past him, I tugged open the fridge and was met with abysmally empty shelves. I slammed the door closed with a groan. Seeing my disappointment, Max tentatively held the orange juice out to me. I took it from his hands, mimicking him by taking a big swig right out of the carton. He seemed to relax a bit upon seeing this, and it made me feel guilty for snapping at him the night before.
“Let’s hang out,” I said, and he immediately agreed. One of the few perks of living in a hoarding house was that Max and I were never want for entertainment. We had an entire room dedicated to the storage of books, toys, and games—a “playroom”, as mom called it. We spent all of that Saturday afternoon setting up Hot Wheels tracks and hosting a Beyblade tournament for just the two of us. Despite the nasty, hacking cough that Max had developed partway through the day, we both enjoyed ourselves greatly. I had so much fun that I almost forgot about how hungry I was. Almost.
Eventually, evening rolled around. I watched the glow of the tape-covered window panes grow dimmer and dimmer as the sun set, wondering where in the world my mother could have gone. My patience had waned along with the light. If she didn’t return home within the next hour, I would march myself to the grocery store, curfew be damned.
“Where did Mom go this morning, anyway?” I asked Max, who gave me an odd look.
“She left?”
“Yeah,” I said, confused by his confusion. “She’s been gone all day.”
“No she hasn’t. I just saw her.”
“What are you talking about? When?”
“Just a couple minutes ago. When you were looking for your Enzo, she walked right past us.” He lifted his arm, pointing towards the doorway.
“Don’t lie to me, Max. You’re freaking me out.”
“I’m not lying! She was just there!”
I looked at the open door and the dark hallway beyond it. Had our mother really been at home with us the entire time? That didn’t feel right at all. I was so certain that I would have heard her, would have felt some indication that Max and I weren’t alone in the house. And yet, my brother couldn’t lie to save his life, and he looked and sounded utterly convinced that he’d seen someone walk right past us. A chill ran down my spine as I considered a different possibility.
“Are you sure it was Mom who walked past?”
“I mean … who else would it be?”
We both fell silent. I couldn’t hear anything, which I took as a good sign. I was certain that I’d be paralyzed with fear if I heard someone moving around outside. Still, I wanted to close the door. I wanted to turn on the light in the playroom, and I felt as though I should close the door first so as to not accidentally cause Mom a headache. At least, that’s what I told myself. I wasn’t ready to admit just how fearful I was.
There was barely any light left in the room as I stood from my seat on the dirty carpet and walked towards the door. My brother said nothing, but the simple fact of his presence brought me some comfort as I came to a stop in front of the doorway. With one hand on the doorknob, I felt brave enough to peek around the frame, looking for whatever Max had seen. I looked right first: nothing there but the end of the hallway and the withering potted plants that Mom liked to store there. Then, I looked to my left.
In my house, it was easy to lose things in plain sight. I’d lost hours searching for objects that were right before my eyes; objects that my brain smoothed over in favor of a great, messy whole. For a moment, when I looked to my left, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. The familiar sights jumped out at me—the tree-shaped coat rack, the mahogany bookshelf, the antique chest. My gaze moved from point to point as though playing connect-the-dots, and on any other night, at any other time, I might have missed the anomaly all together. But, as fate would have it, the lingering dusk pulled my focus to the floor, where a small bracelet lay glittering. Jewelry could be found in every stray crevice of my house. There was nothing remarkable about the bracelet, but it had broken my focus, had stopped my brain from smoothing out the blemishes. There was nothing remarkable about the bracelet, but it allowed me to finally comprehend what was next to it:
Feet. A pair of pale, human feet. And above them, the dirty, tattered hems of a pair of trousers. Above: a torso, a neck that seemed too long for its body, a toothy grin. A pair of wide eyes, locked onto mine.
I slammed the door shut, barely stilling the tremor in my hand enough to turn the lock. The sun had set, I was alone with my seven-year-old brother, and my mother was nowhere to be found.
And there was someone in my house.