Chapter Nine #2
As they began to yank down the next wad of vines, which were wrapped around the sides of the porch and clumped on top of the shrubbery, the front door of the inn flew open, and a girl a few years older than Calisa, possibly early twenties, raced outside.
Very pretty. Very angry. Her hair was dyed hues of brilliant green.
Her face was furious. She wore a flowery dress that flowed behind her as she ran down the steps, across the gravel driveway, and into the midst of the bushes and brambles.
Halting, she shrieked at the yard, the sky, and the forest, “Why do you scream?”
Calisa glanced at Jack. She hadn’t heard any—
The stranger spun in a circle. Her skirt flared around her, along with her bright green hair, and then she stopped and leveled a finger directly at Calisa. “You!”
“Me? Um, what? Hi. I wasn’t…”
Head down bull-like, she charged across the lawn toward Calisa and Jack.
The brambles bowed on either side of her as she marched through them.
Out of the corner of her eye, Calisa noticed that the statue was reaching out a hand as if to slow the girl.
She had just enough time to think, Weren’t her hands clasped?
before the green-haired girl, her fists clenched and her shoulders shaking, reached Calisa.
Dropping his clippers, Jack jumped in front of Calisa. In a pleasant the-customer-is-always-right voice, as if the strange girl weren’t rushing toward them as if she wanted to tackle them, he said, “Melidor, can I help you with something?”
“Yes!” Melidor tried to dodge him to reach Calisa, but he moved with her.
Holding a bunch of just-pulled weeds in front of her like they were a shield, Calisa retreated toward the corner of the porch. “Hi. Hey, hi. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“How can we help?” Jack asked.
Melidor spotted the clippers that Jack had dropped, and she let out another high-pitched shriek. Her cheeks flushed with an oddly greenish tinge. “You’re hurting them!”
“Who? What?” he asked, his voice still soothing.
Melidor was trembling as she stared at Calisa’s hands.
Calisa looked down at the mat of vines she was holding in front of her. She’d asked Jack if everyone at the inn was quirky, but this…“Are you talking about the plants?”
Jack jumped in quickly. “We’re just doing some gardening.
That’s all.” He looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but here.
Still, he kept his position between Melidor and Calisa.
Calisa stared at him, or, more accurately, at the back of his head.
That was…sweet. Incredibly sweet. She wondered if he thought Melidor was dangerous, if he thought Calisa was helpless, or if he was just the kind of guy who automatically thought he had to be everyone’s hero; then she wondered what Ethan would have done.
Probably try to charm his way out of it. Or turn it into one vast joke.
Melidor wasn’t joking. With a wail, she shook her head hard with her hands pressed against her green-tinged cheeks. “Cutting! Tearing! Ripping! Killing!”
She was talking about the plants.
Okay, this was…Whatever this was, Auntie Zee would not be happy one of her guests was upset.
She wondered where Auntie Zee was. Watching from a window?
Or off doing whatever innkeeper things she did when she wasn’t busy disapproving of Calisa?
“We’re saving the bushes,” Calisa said firmly.
“The vines are choking them. Look at them—they can’t get any sun under all the vines. They’ll die if they aren’t helped.”
Jack nodded. “That’s right.”
“Look around, Melidor,” Calisa urged. “You know this isn’t what it’s supposed to look like. The plants can’t breathe. They’re all growing on top of one another. We’re helping them.”
Slowly, Melidor lowered her hands. “Helping?”
“Yes, helping,” Jack said.
“Oh.” She blinked and then took a step backward.
Calisa didn’t move, waiting to see what Melidor would do next.
Heaving himself upward, Steve the lizard waddled toward them, past Melidor and Jack, and then plopped himself at Calisa’s feet. All of them stared at him for a second. He opened his mouth and hissed at Melidor.
And then he yawned.
“I’m so sorry,” Melidor said to him. “I was asleep in my room, dreaming…. No, it was a nightmare, not a dream, and I thought—oh my, oh yes. Of course! The poor bushes!”
It was such an abrupt shift that Calisa didn’t know what to do or say.
Melidor darted toward a bush that was smothered in vines. Muttering, she began unwinding the vines from its branches. “We have to help them!”
Calisa bit back a hundred questions about why, how, who, what. She looked down at the winged lizard. Steve rolled onto his back, tucking his wings under him and exposing a pale white belly. She bent down and scratched his stomach. He purred like a pleased cat. “Thanks,” she told him.
Shooting glances at Melidor, Calisa returned to (cautiously) clearing the vines from the porch.
If she hadn’t just seen her rampage across the yard, Calisa wouldn’t have thought Melidor was the dangerous type.
She looked sweet and innocent. Her cheeks were as plump as a toddler’s, and her eyes were round and very, very green.
Her hair was dyed multiple shades of green, emerald to lime, and her dress swirled around her, a flowy fabric stamped with images of flowers and leaves.
As if she felt Calisa staring, Melidor confided, “The dreams have been getting worse. I know they’ve been sending them to hurry me along.”
“I’m sorry,” Calisa said.
“I can’t run forever. At some point I need to face my responsibilities.”
Calisa wanted to ask who she was running from and why. Instead she said, “A stay at a bed-and-breakfast isn’t forever. It doesn’t mean you’re running away permanently. I think it’s okay to take a break and regroup, if you need to, before facing…whatever you need to face.”
Pausing her work, Melidor stared at her thoughtfully. She had unnerving eyes, as wide as a Disney princess’s, with bright green irises that seemed far too large, crowding out the whites. Colored contact lenses? Calisa wondered.
“Yes,” Melidor said. Then she repeated: “Yes, yes, yes!”
Gripping one end of a vine, Melidor whooped, then pivoted and ran toward the forest. The vine trailed after her, unraveling from the bushes with improbable ease, like it was a thread pulled from a sweater.
She didn’t stop when she reached the pine trees.
Cawing wildly, she plunged into the forest until she disappeared, the vine flying after her like a kite string.
Both Calisa and Jack stared after her.
Utterly uninterested, Steve flopped on top of Calisa’s foot and began to snore.
“Ahh…should we…go after her?” Calisa asked. She didn’t want to run blindly into the forest, but was Melidor okay? Did she need someone to chase after her? “You know, ask her what’s going on?” She glanced at the house, wondering if Auntie Zee was by a window, watching all of this.
He sighed. “We don’t ask questions, remember?”
“Why don’t we ask questions?” Calisa gingerly nudged the heavy lizard off her squashed toes. If Auntie Zee was watching, wouldn’t she be concerned? She cared about the guests’ well-being, didn’t she? “I feel like we should ask questions.”
“And risk losing the few guests we have?” Gently, sympathetically, Jack said, “Look, if you aren’t comfortable here, you don’t have to stay.
You can go home to Brooklyn and your moms and your friends and your life and not have to worry about weeds and dust and out-of-place lizards and a perpetually grumpy innkeeper and quirky guests.
I’ll understand. Everyone will. It’s okay. ”
Calisa rocked backward. She felt as if the oxygen had been knocked out of her lungs. Jack wanted her to leave? No, that’s not what he’d said. He’d said, nicely, that if she couldn’t take the heat, she should get out of the kitchen. A sudden thought popped into her head:
He’s scared.
Of what?
She took a breath.
She wasn’t certain why she knew he was scared—it didn’t make any sense; what did he have to be scared of?—but she was certain of it all the way to her bones.
Steve wrapped his tail around her ankle, and she bent down to pet his jowls.
Jack returned to clipping brambles. The clippers snapped shut like the jaws of an angry dog, over and over again. Still petting the winged lizard, Calisa faced the tangle of front yard, with the statue in the center and the pine forest behind it.
I could leave.
She stared at the statue. It was facing her, and its blank eyes seemed to be looking directly at her. I can’t leave. Not until I know what’s going on here.