Page 41 of Our Crooked Hearts
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The suburbs
Right now
I never knew the streetlights let off a pale buzz until I walked beneath them, alone, at half past three in the morning. Across the street between subdivisions, past the old playground, its rusted merry-go-round glinting septically in the moonlight. A breeze came up and set all the trees to sighing, like old women coming in from the heat.
Walk long enough through the snow-globe world of the middle of the night and even familiar things get corrupted. The houses where porchlights shone seemed like friendly liars, the unlit ones like lockboxes for secrets. I felt an obscure relief as I escaped the suburban grid, breaking onto the road that rolled past the elementary school and the park district and the strip mall with the all-night 7-Eleven, its clean corporate lights looming against a sky the color of grape candy.
The store’s insides were lit like a stage set, empty except for a clerk leaning over the counter. I swayed at the lot’s edge, feeling around in my pocket for change. I was about to step onto the pavement when a girl slid into view from the side, down the rowof closed storefronts. As she pushed through the 7-Eleven’s door I shivered, imagining the chill of its AC, its odor of mop water and soda syrup and liquid cheese. I stared after her, but I didn’t feel true surprise. It didn’t seem so unlikely that I should find her again in the dark.
She was the stranger Nate and I had followed to the water in the woods. I knew by her bunker-white skin, her certainty of step. Her face that, even in profile, made me think of an ancient flaking painting done on wood, its subjects blunt-featured and arresting. Also, she was still wearing my shirt.
I dropped to a crouch behind a Subaru. I had a line on the door, so I could see it when the girl came out holding a two-liter of Mountain Dew and a hot dog. A goddamned 7-Eleven hot dog! Even Hank wouldn’t eat one of those. Amina and I liked to joke that it was always thesamehot dog, spinning in its little tanning bed, begging people to eat it in an Oliver Twist voice.
Queasily I watched the girl uncap the pop bottle and start to drink, head dropping back and back, throat working like a python’s until it was drained. When she was done she ate the hot dog in three bites and dropped all her garbage on the ground, even though a trash can was right there. She cut left at the end of the lot, walking in the direction I’d come from.
“What in the actual fuck,” I whispered, and followed her.
Her pale hair fell to the middle of her back. She was wearing faded, badly fitting jeans and the light blue button-up I’d tossed to her by the creek. She should’ve shone in the dark like a white-furred dog, but right away I lost her. I made a lucky guess at a turning and saw her again.
I kept losing and finding her, block by block. The shadows she walked through seemed sticky, fond of her skin. I stayed well back but she never turned nor hesitated. We walked past the playground, across the arterial road that ran through the neighborhoods, into my own subdivision. The closer we got to home the farther back I hung.
She turned onto my street. I held my breath, thinkingwalk, walk, keep going, don’t turn,right up until she stopped at the end of our drive. Dead still, arms at her sides, looking at my house.
I tucked myself into the shadows alongside Billy’s place. “Pick up, Hank, you jackass,” I muttered, phone pressed to my ear, but my call went to voicemail. Then the girl came sharply unstuck, striding up the drive and around the side of the house.
“Hey!” Panic ripped the word right out of me. I sprinted across the street, through the weird violet air. The side of our house was a wilderness of raspberry canes, their fruit boiled jammy by the heat. I almost expected to find her trapped among them like a fairy-tale prince, but they were empty.
The backyard was empty, too. I kept going, tongue running sour, darting toward the fence on Barbie toes, then over it. Past the kitchen windows, the room behind them the indistinct color of lake water. I circled back to the driveway, but the girl was gone.
Or—I thought of the cookies I’d left on my plate, a neat bite taken from each—or maybe she’d let herself in.
I stepped into the front hall and listened. I didn’t think I was imagining the unfriendly texture to the quiet, the feeling of wrongness as palpable as a smell. I circled the first floor, then went upstairs. Hank was in bed, safe and snoring, one hand upunder his chin. My room was empty, the bathroom, too. I saved my parents’ room for last.
Nothing inside it looked out of place. But the air itself felt ruffled and staticky. I checked the closet and the bathroom, then dropped to my hands and knees to check beneath the bed. As I scanned the dust, my phone lit up with an unfamiliar number.
I shot upright. No one stood in the doorway. Across the room, the window was a box of empty sky. Still I imagined the strange girl could see me, that she was waiting for me to pick up the phone. I clattered swiftly down the stairs and back out to the driveway, answering after the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
A long silence with a rushing sound beneath it. Like traffic, or the ocean. Something about it made me grip the phone in sudden hope. “Mom?”
“Christ, no,” the voice said. “This is Sharon. You left a message for me.”
