Chapter 1 #2
Rissa always knew what to say. Olive usually could hold her own too. I’d probably think of a good comeback tonight in bed as I tried to fall asleep.
Raising my chin higher, I stomped across the crunchy ice-covered ground harder than necessary, taking my anger out on the snow. The guys in this town sucked. They weren’t worth it.
Ever since Calvin and Miriam’s joint birthday party in sixth grade, they’d decided to shun me.
I’d told Ethan’s friend Caleb how people used to believe the platypus was fake—because it looked like a bunch of other animals all pieced together—and he’d nodded along seriously before going off to whisper to the others about “that weird Donovan girl.”
I wasn’t obsessive like Caleb had told everyone. I just loved researching and strange facts. Now, though, years later, I still hadn’t shaken that label.
“Hey,” I said wearily to Taisha as I walked through the front door of the library. She worked part-time here, like me. “I came to see if I could pick up some hours.”
She smacked her gum as her gaze drifted from the computer to my face. “You can try, but Pearl just told me to go home in fifteen, so. . .”
Gritting my teeth, I nodded. I still asked Pearl, just in case, but unfortunately, Taisha had told the truth.
With nowhere else to go, I headed home.
By the time I got to my street, my whole face was numb from the cold. It made my cheek hurt less where the snowball had hit, so that was a plus, I supposed.
Walking up the shoveled path to our little white house with dark green trim, I took the two concrete steps to the front door, hoping Mom wasn’t inside.
The living room was empty. I tucked my coat and boots into the closet and considered dropping onto the worn couch to watch some TV, but I wasn’t in the mood to sort through garbage on our seven channels.
I peeked through the doorframe that led to the kitchen. Though the light was on, no one was there either.
The bolt on the back door by the sink was unlocked, but that didn’t mean much. Nobody in Selmo bothered to lock their doors.
I crossed the yellowed tile, running a hand over the backs of the kitchen chairs on my right, noting the dishes still in the sink on my left. Nothing had changed from this morning, which most likely meant Mom was out.
Stepping around the table, I passed the ancient pale blue fridge. Mom called it retro because she romanticized everything. In the little two-foot hallway, I turned away from the bathroom and Mom and Dad’s bedroom, entering the other bedroom that my sisters and I shared.
Still no sign of Mom.
I let out a sigh of relief. She’d want to know why I wasn’t at the movies, and the last thing I wanted right now was to have another pep talk.
Barely a week ago, right before Christmas break, one of the cheerleaders had dubbed me Most Likely to Die Alone with a Herd of Cats.
Upsetting, clearly, and not just for the obvious humiliating reasons. It was also so morbid. And so off base. If I had to pick, dogs always trumped cats, obviously.
Mom had made me bake chocolate chip cookies with her that day after school. Just when I’d thought she’d let me off the hook, she’d sat me down with a warm cookie and a glass of milk, like I was still a shy five-year-old, embarrassed by kids on the playground.
“Their opinions don’t matter, Brynn,” she’d said, eyeing me. “They only have power over you if you give it to them.”
“I know,” I’d said, hoping she’d let it go.
She didn’t get it.
She’d always been a free spirit. Growing up with her as a mom, I used to love that she encouraged us to be weird. “Being different makes you special, my darling girls,” she’d say.
But I’d learned the hard way that being weird didn’t make me special. It just made me an outcast.
Now, with those thoughts weighing me down, I stepped into the bathroom and turned on the light. After a quick glance in the mirror to inspect the light bruise forming on my cheek, I turned on the shower until my view turned foggy, then stepped under the hot stream of water and let the tears fall.
Twenty minutes later, I snuggled up in bed under my cozy purple comforter and grabbed a book off the stack on the nightstand.
I settled in with a happy sigh, ready to forget the park and the stupid boys .
. . all of Selmo, really. If only I could live in this book instead.
A good Pride and Prejudice retelling always trumped reality.
When I heard Mom come through the front door, I briefly considered calling out to let her know I was home.
No. Knowing her, she might do something crazy, like march down to the park and give the boys a piece of her mind, and that’d just make it worse.
I’d much rather think about fictional problems right now.
The shower turned on a second time, and I got lost in the story. I barely heard the water shut off or Mom briefly using the hair dryer. I was so immersed in the story that I startled when the back doorknob jiggled in the otherwise silent house.
It was loud enough for me to hear even with my door closed.
The back door squeaked as it opened.
I frowned. Were Rissa and Olive already back from the movies? I must’ve been reading longer than I’d thought. Searching for my phone to check the time, I sighed when I remembered I’d left it in my coat pocket so I wouldn’t have to look at the cracked screen.
I turned the page, unwilling to put my book down to check. I was at the best part, where the girl caught herself wanting to be around the guy she supposedly couldn’t stand, making excuses to see him.
Mom’s voice rose suddenly—not enough for me to make out what she was saying, but her tone had me swinging my feet over the side of the bed to stand.
What on earth?
A sharp male voice made me pause with my hand on the doorknob.
That wasn’t Dad.
Another even deeper voice muttered something. It made my hackles rise. I wished suddenly that I hadn’t left my phone by the door, though who knew if I’d even be able to dial 911 on that screen.
I opened my door as silently as possible.
From my angle, all I could see was the fridge.
I scooted forward to peek around the wall.
I didn’t know what I expected to find, but the two costumed people in the kitchen weren’t it.
The closest one stood taller than the back door he was closing and equally as wide. Thick muscles corded as he crossed his arms, which were dark blue. Actually, all of him was blue, except where black paint streaked his face and the tips of his pointed ears.
Beside him was a little kid, maybe seven or eight. He had pointy ears too. He wore a fuzzy green cap and a vest that matched. They looked straight out of a play in those costumes. Weird.
Though I knew everyone from school, the library, the theater, the gas station, Mom’s work, the grocery store, and the neighborhood, they weren’t familiar.
Even if I crossed paths with someone I didn’t know in Selmo, I usually still recognized their face.
So, what were two strangers doing in our house?
“You signed the contract,” the deep voice said.
I did a double take—that voice was coming from the kid.
Squinting, I studied him closer. Did he have a bit of a beard? And was his hat made of actual moss?
Maybe the snowball earlier had given me a concussion.
I scrubbed at my eyes and looked again, but it didn’t change.
“I thought I’d have a little more time,” Mom said, which confused me further. She was acting like she knew them.
The short one held up a piece of paper. “You committed to your time here being temporary. That isn’t negotiable.”
Mom reached down to take it, but she didn’t bother to read it.
“Unfulfilled contracts have consequences.” Again, the deep voice was disconcerting coming from someone with rosy round cheeks like the toddler I sometimes babysat down the street. “I don’t think you need me to list them out for you.”
From where I peeked around the corner, I couldn’t see Mom’s expression, but her back stiffened. After a pause, she pleaded in a whisper, “Please, my girls . . . I need to tell them something. I haven’t had a chance to prepare them. I can’t just disappear.”
The small mossy one sighed. “We’ll take care of it.”
Big Blue Muscles took a huge stride forward, taking Mom by the elbow.
Though he wasn’t strong-arming her, she obediently walked to the door without a struggle.
What?
I didn’t think before jumping out after them. “You’re not taking her anywhere! I called the police. They’re on their way—”
I squeaked and cut off abruptly as their eyes turned on me, pinning me in place.
Moss-Boy-Man didn’t have any whites around his eyes—they were deep black. He blinked once, then snapped at my mother, “The mortals aren’t allowed to know. It was part of the deal.”
“She was supposed to be at the movies.” Mom made excuses for me, as if somehow I was in the wrong in the situation, adding in a stronger voice, “She didn’t sign anything.” She struggled for the first time against the brute who held her arm. “You can’t touch her.”
“Oh, I won’t touch her.” The mossy one’s smile twisted. Up close, he no longer looked anything like a human child to me. “But the contract will. When you agreed no one could know, it was binding.”
A fuzzy feeling made my head buzz.
Mom hissed, sounding frustrated but not surprised.
For the first time, she spoke to me, eyes bright with unshed tears, “I’m sorry, Brynn.”
That was it.
No explanation.
They muscled her out the door in her slippers and her soft bathrobe over her clothes as a poor substitute for a coat, though she still managed to look elegant.
The room in front of me grew blurry, but not from tears so much as a spinning sensation.
Had Mom actually been home, or had I imagined everything?
Confusion gripped me.
I fought against it out of pure stubbornness.
I knew what I’d seen.
Getting my feet to move felt like pulling them out of drying concrete, which didn’t make sense—was it my body physically reacting to my panic or something else? Either way, I dragged myself toward the back door, one struggling step at a time.
Opening it, I stepped barefoot onto the cold cement steps, which helped break through some of the fog in my head.
The trees murmured softly in the breeze, and birds warbled cheerful songs, but there wasn’t a single figure to be seen in any direction.
They were gone.