Sugar Castle, chapter 7
The wind was whistling around the house, the kind of wind that stripped the leaves off the trees. Dawn the cat was crouched in the bushes by the fence. She had seen the girls leave on foot and come back in a car. When they went around the back and in the basement door, she followed them slipping inside. It was a game. Inside was a mysterious place. She never got to stay long, was shoved out by someone’s foot as she tried to get in, or carried out, often by Sophie holding her as if she were a baby. Her sister cats weren’t interested in the house. The barn was their true home. But Dawn kept going back. It wasn’t only that it was warm. Maybe there was something there for her to find, or to eat.
This time, no one noticed her. She watched as the girls talked in low voices and then went upstairs, and then she slept on the rug under the laundry table until later that night when the woman came down to empty the washer and put her out. As she ran across the yard, the shadows of the trees danced in the wind. She squeezed in through the not quite closed door and joined her sisters, who ignored her until they forgot they were doing that and welcomed her into their warm furry pile.
That night, Sophie pushed the door open and came into Gindy’s room after their mother had gone downstairs. Gindy put her book down with an exaggerated sigh.
“So we’re not telling mom?” Sophie said.
They had not actually decided this, but when the time came, when their mother had come down stairs and pinched their cold cheeks, asking if they’d had a nice walk, Gindy had said yes, and Sophie had started setting the table, even though dinner was an hour away. “She’d just be worried.”
“And nothing happened, right?” Sophie looked at Gindy, waiting for reassurance.
“Nothing, right. No thanks to you,” she couldn’t help adding. “Getting in his car like that.”
“Maybe he was just really taking us to see the puppies.”
Gindy frowned. She wanted Sophie to be reassured, to stop worrying, but she couldn’t bring herself to agree to this. “You know what could have happened, don’t you?” She said this although she hardly knew herself. It was the kind of thing that people were always saying, always warning against. Strangers, men in cars, people who asked you personal questions online or asked to see pictures. She knew and she didn’t know, like something you see in a movie but that has nothing to do with real life.
“I know all about it,” Sophie said. “I’m not a baby.”
“Well, fine if you do then,” Gindy said, relieved not to have to explain anything more.
Sophie climbed up on the bed. Gindy could smell toothpaste on her breath. She was carrying Colin’s stuffed dog, Lucky. “What did you talk about with that lady?”
“Her name is Gloria. She told me she draws comics.” Gindy put down her book. “She and her husband. It’s their job. She showed some of them to me while you were upstairs.”
“Like Spiderman?” Sophie thought of the Spiderman figure hanging on the dresser in that upstairs bedroom.
“They looked more like fairy tales. She said she’d give me some but I said no thanks because I was afraid mom would ask where we got it.”
Sophie yawned, and Gindy poked her. “You should go to bed before you fall asleep here.”
Sophie got up and tucked Lucky under her arm. At the door, she turned back. “You don’t think we’ll see him again, do you?”
“No, we won’t.” Gindy said. Sophie went out and Gindy listened to the soft sound of her footsteps in the hall, the little whoosh of her door and the click of its closing.
Her no had been definite, but she wasn’t all that sure. Did he really know their father, or had he just said that? He had known where he worked. But he’d never said where that was. He’d talked about departments and the coke. It was true that their father had drunk coke, but so did a lot of people. Maybe he hadn’t known him at all. For one thing, he didn’t say the one thing that someone who worked with him would say. That they were sorry. Everyone said that, even if they hardly knew him. So maybe that was all a lie, like the puppies.
Gindy lay back on her pillow. She usually read for an hour before she turned out the light, but she couldn’t keep her mind on her book. She got out her phone and texted Sandra X to see if she was awake, but she didn’t answer. The wind outside was whistling, and the branches of the trees were rubbing together with a moaning sound. If only it was a regular day tomorrow. If only they were going to get up early and go to school. If she could tell what had happened today to Sandra and Allie she could make it into a funny story, or at least a dramatic one.
She could mention the boy who came home just before they left and say that he was cute, which he was, but that wasn’t the point. It could be a story about an adventure and a boy. Gloria had introduced them in the yard as they were getting into her car. His name was Jay, which was funny: Owl and Jay. He had said hello and then ran into the house, with Gloria calling after him to watch that his brother didn’t kill himself.
It was strange to call her Gloria, but she had said that they should, and in fact hadn’t told them her last name. Gloria and Jay and Owl. Her husband’s name was Spencer. Gloria hadn’t insisted on coming in to speak to their mother, as any other parent Gindy knew would.
As she was falling asleep, Gindy remembered that they had left Sophie’s sculpture at Gloria’s house.
In his room, Colin lay with his ear pressed to the wall while Gindy and Sophie were talking. He couldn’t hear everything but enough to make him curious, if he hadn’t been already. Who was Gloria? Who did they not want to see again? Nothing happened, Sophie had said, but Sophie had asked to borrow Lucky, which meant that she was upset. So something had happened. Tomorrow, he’d get Sophie to tell him, he thought.
His legs were twitching and he did the stretch they’d showed him in physical therapy. Point the heel, pull in the toes. His knees didn’t want to be straight and he pulled them up to his chest. He had done all his homework for the whole week. Tomorrow he’d have remote classes for two hours and then he’d be done. He wanted to work on his map, which was a secret for now, a surprise for his grandmother if they ever got to see her again. And he’d go back to the mausoleum with Jory. He was so close to getting through. What would be on the other side?
Maybe he could dream the answer as he sometimes did. Sometimes things happened in his dreams that then came true in real life. He had never told anyone about this or at least not for a long time. Once when he was a baby kindergartner he had told his friend Jason and Jason hadn’t believed him. He hadn’t said that Colin was lying because Jason was too nice for that. He’d said that his mom had told him that dreams were just a lot of stuff cluttering up your head and that you shouldn’t pay attention to them. That had been when Jason was having nightmares every other night, so of course he didn’t want to believe in them, it only made sense.
They had had this conversation under the slide in the playground. Colin couldn’t go on the slide unless an adult boosted him up, which he didn’t like. He didn’t like to ask for help if he didn’t have to. He didn’t like people he didn’t know well touching him. When Jason found that out, he’d stopped going on the slide, too which is more than Sophie had done. Gindy would say this was because Sophie only thought about herself, but really it was that Sophie never thought about Colin as someone who couldn’t do things. Which he appreciated.
His eyes were doing that slow blinking that happened when he was going to fall asleep. He didn’t want to. He wanted to think about things some more, about Gindy and Sophie and where they’d gone. About Jory and how to get past the mausoleum. About his new book. He should facetime Jason tomorrow maybe.
He imagined himself and Jason walking through the spooky forest with Jory, ready to take on the ghouls. Up ahead he could see someone standing by the ancient crypt. They were holding something he couldn’t make out. It was dark and he couldn’t see much, but he thought it might be his father. He dropped his sticks so he could walk better and he was going very fast, running almost, so that Jason fell behind. His feet were skimming along the ground and there was a humming sound in the air, like a million bees, and then he was asleep.
Sophie was still awake when her mother went to bed. It used to be that she fell asleep as soon as she lay down, but now sometimes her brain wouldn’t stop. She had said this once to her mother but it made her sad so Sophie didn’t bring it up again. She knew her mother thought it was because of their father and all that, but Sophie didn’t think so. She felt, when she lay awake, like she used to when they were playing the game with their grandmother, as if there were a hundred things to do or think about. She had to choose what to do or which way to go or what to look for, and whatever it was that she picked would change everything that came after that. It was sort of a good feeling except that sometimes it got to be too much and it made her feel dizzy. Not actually dizzy but like it would be if you felt dizzy inside. Or like there was something in her head wanting to get out.
Trying to fall asleep seemed like a waste of time when you felt like this, but it was night and there was nothing to do. If she got up her mother would hear or see her light under the door or something, and then they’d have to have a talk and maybe her mother would be sad again, which she didn’t want.
There had been some talk of going to see a therapist between her mother and her aunt. Gindy had overheard them. Sophie had been interested. What did they do? Was it a kind of mind magic? Was there a pill? Gindy said it was just talking. You talked about your trauma. One of the Sandras had gone to a therapist for a while when she was throwing up in the bathroom all the time. Sophie was pretty sure that she didn’t want to talk about her trauma. She said that to Gindy, who said that Sophie didn’t even know what trauma was.
But Sophie did. She wasn’t stupid. Just like she knew about what the man wanted. Kind of. She knew the words for it anyway. She wasn’t as sure as Gindy was that they’d never see him again. He had to live around here somewhere. He’d been driving toward town when he saw them. They could see him anywhere – in Kroger’s or Walmart or at the gas station. Gindy could be sort of dopy. Sometimes Sophie felt like she was the big sister.
She could understand why Gindy hadn’t wanted to tell the woman about it – it was their private business. And also with her mother – they had, all three of them, a silent pact not to do anything or say anything that would make her sad or upset her. But they could run into that guy any time, and as far as Sophie was concerned, they needed to have a plan.
Once she had decided this, she felt as if she could sleep, and once she felt that way, sleep started creeping up on her. She fell into it just past midnight, when the moon came out from behind the line of pine trees behind the house and shone down on Dawn the cat, who was stalking something under the tree house. Her eyes gleamed green in the night.