Chapter 33
AMELIA
Seven years old
The walls in our house were thin, so when you put your ear against them, you could hear anything.
Sometimes I’d do it, just to see if I could hear what the grown-ups were really saying, but tonight it was just big thumps and giggles and the music Mom only played when she was on a good one.
There was a man with her again. Not Glenn this time, someone with a cough that sounded like a truck engine.
Lillian had locked herself in our room, so the rest of the house was all mine.
I opened the silverware drawer and took a butter knife, just in case I needed a weapon.
My hands were always cold in the winter, and the knife slid from my grip, clattering to the floor.
I winced, froze, and waited for Mom to scream at me from her bedroom throne.
Nothing.
Maybe the knife had landed in a parallel universe, maybe I had.
I crept to the edge of the hallway, holding the butter knife in front of me like a tiny sword.
The man’s voice was a low grumble, just words rolling together, until he said something that made Mom squeal, “You’re so bad,” and then the sound of skin on skin, slapping, made me drop the knife again.
This time I didn’t pick it up.
Instead, I went to the window and breathed on the glass, watching my breath silver over until I couldn’t see through it anymore. I drew a smiley face with my finger and wished it would freeze there, permanent, so no one could scrape it clean.
The next time I listened at the wall, I heard something even worse. Not yelling or crying, but the slow, rhythmic thumping of the bed against plaster, a sound you could almost mistake for the washing machine if the washing machine also made Mom giggle and say “oh fuck, oh fuck.”
The man with her grunted like a bear. The whole house felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for something to break.
I tiptoed down the hallway. At the end of the hall was the master bedroom, which Mom always kept locked unless she was “entertaining.”
Tonight the door was cracked an inch.
I crouched to look through the crack. I knew I shouldn’t, but I did.
Mom was on the bed, half-dressed in her inside-out t-shirt, sweaty hair pasted to her forehead.
The guy was behind her, big and hunched, hands wrapped around her hips so tight his knuckles went white. Mom’s eyes were open and staring at the wall, lips moving even though no sound came out.
For a second, I thought maybe she saw me, that our eyes were glued together like when you stare too long in a funhouse mirror and can’t look away from the warped version of yourself.
But her gaze was empty, like she’d already left and her body forgot to follow.
There was a sound I didn’t want to think about, and the man slammed forward so hard the bedframe squealed on the tile, and then everything in me went cold, and I ran for it.
I ducked into the bathroom. Sometimes the only safe place was the bathroom, with its yellowed nightlight and the ceiling spider that lived near the vent.
I sat on the toilet lid, hugging my knees, and tried to count the scuffs on the floor. If you got to a hundred before you heard a knock, you could skip a disaster; that was my rule, and it usually worked.
I was at forty-three when the man’s voice thundered through the house: “Hey, little spy! Get your ass out here.”
It wasn’t a question. It was the kind of voice that got used to being answered, and I hated it immediately.
I stayed put, and in a few seconds his shadow hulked in the frame and he was staring at me with eyes like stained glass: pretty on the outside, but if you looked too close they were just chunks of color glued together.
I thought maybe he was going to hit me, or drag me back to Mom’s room and make me apologize for something I didn’t understand, but instead he yanked me by the wrist, so fast I didn’t have time to untangle my knees.
He smelled like hot dogs and gasoline. His palm was enormous, dry and rough, like old leather.
He bent so close I could see the red veins in his eyes, the spiderweb cracks in his teeth.
“Didn’t your mother teach you any goddamn manners?
” he whispered, then yanked me into the hallway, feet dragging against the carpet.
“Kids like you oughta be kept outside ‘til they learn some respect.”
He opened the front door and shoved me out into the cold like I was just another stray cat begging for food.
The air bit at my ears and made my eyes water. It was so sudden I forgot to be scared, mostly just felt insulted, like the world was tripping me on purpose.
He slammed the door behind me, and then everything was quiet except for the sound of the TV through the wall and the far-off hum of cars on the road.
I was wearing only socks, cotton pants, and a rumpled t-shirt with a faded unicorn on it, and the first thing I learned about winter in Pathosbury was how it could make your bones feel like glass.
The porch was slippery with black ice, and I carefully walked down the steps, hugging my elbows, blinking hard against the wind that clawed tears out of my eyes. It was the kind of cold that licked your skin and kept licking, like a mean dog that just wanted to see what you’d do.
I could’ve gone next door to the Larchmonts, but Mrs. Larchmont called Mom too much, always with her voice syrupy and fake, reporting on our “well-being” and asking if we wanted to come over for hot chocolate and “goodies.”
Lillian hated her. I hated her, too, but mostly because I knew Mom did, and I didn’t want Mom to think I was a traitor. Loyalty was important in our family, even if it only pointed one way.
So I just walked. The snow was hard and crusted on top, and every step made a crunch like biting into stale cereal. My feet went numb pretty quickly, but it didn’t bother me. Numb was better than hurting.
The whole world looked like it had been dipped in blue-grey ink. The sun was hidden behind the clouds of winter, and everything was cloaked with white.
I liked that. It was easier to imagine yourself as a shadow if everything else was a shadow, too.
I walked. I walked until my toes burned and then didn’t, until my lips cracked, until I was so far from the house I could pretend it didn’t exist anymore.
There was a dead squirrel frozen in the gutter, tail fluffed up, paws in the air like it was waving hello and goodbye at the same time. I thought about laying down next to it, just for a second, just to see if I could become part of the ground, part of the hard quiet.
I could have just circled the block, but some part of me liked the feeling of getting lost, maybe even hoped for it a little.
I imagined myself falling through a trapdoor in the sidewalk and coming out somewhere warm and bright. A place where pancakes came in stacks and no one yelled about who finished the milk.
I walked until the houses slouched closer together and the roofs lost their snow to the warmth of the bodies hidden inside.
I wasn’t sure where I meant to go, just that it had to be somewhere past the limits of my own street, somewhere I wouldn’t have to turn around and see the glow of our living room TV pulsing against the curtains like a lighthouse for the damned.
My feet stopped tingling and started hurting, then stopped hurting at all, which was worse. I noticed how the world went pale and dreamy at the edges, how my arms looked thinner than ever, sticking out of my sleeves.
I thought maybe if I held my breath long enough, I could breathe the cold all the way through me, turn clear as glass, and nobody would ever find me.
The wind picked up, rattling the trees, and with each gust, I lost a little more of myself.
My legs were moving on their own, no plan, just the memory of forward.
I drifted down a side street I almost recognized, past a mailbox shaped like a barn, past a house with Christmas lights still up.
I followed the shriek of the wind until it drowned everything else, until even the memory of my own voice felt like someone else’s, far off.
That was when I saw him: Caiden, standing alone at the edge of his driveway, his breath curling in the air. He had a shovel and was hacking at a pile of icy slush that blocked the storm drain. His cheeks were blotched red from the wind, and his hair looked even more hacked.
He was wearing gloves. My hands were purple and raw, and I watched him spread salt onto the sidewalk with careful shakes, as if the powder was something valuable.
When he noticed me, he stopped, shovel angled like a sword. He squinted, face pinched up.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was sharp, like he’d been caught singing to himself.
I didn’t know what to say. My lips were so cold they could barely move. “Walking,” I said, or tried to, but it sounded more like wuking. My teeth started to chatter as soon as I tried to make words.
He looked at my feet, which was embarrassing, because the socks were completely soaked, crusted with ice.
A weird look crossed his face, almost like he was mad at me, but also like he was mad at the world for making me look so dumb and sad.
“Don’t you have shoes?” he asked.
I shook my head, because lying wouldn’t make any sense, and I was too cold to make something up.
He set down the shovel, hard, and stomped back up his driveway. I stayed where I was, hugging myself so hard my hands disappeared up my sleeves.
My breath hurt coming out. I wondered if he’d come back or if he’d just left me to freeze, and I decided I didn’t blame him either way.
The front door of his house banged open again, and he jogged out, not even wearing a coat, just flannel pajamas and a t-shirt with a dinosaur on it, and carrying something balled up under his arm.
“Here,” he said, shoving the bundle at my chest like he was returning the world’s worst library book. “Put these on.”
I looked down. It was a pair of his old snow boots (blue, with pterodactyl stickers stuck along the side) and a giant winter coat that smelled like dryer sheets and boy.
He didn’t even wait for me to say thanks or make fun of me. Just watched, arms crossed, as I wriggled my frozen feet into the boots.