Chapter 4 Jill #2
J.J. feigned innocence. “Don’t get mad at me. I didn’t say it! But I know how you can get Aaron to like you back. All you have to do is pick a dandelion from Mrs. Smith’s lawn. I dared him to
do it, but he was too scared. If you did it, he’d think you were totally awesome.”
Jill glanced from where her feet were safely planted on the sand to the scraggly grass shooting up behind Mrs. Smith’s boathouse
and felt a frisson of fear.
Mrs. Smith’s property was off-limits. No Trespassing signs were nailed to dozens of trees bordering her property. Others hung
from the high iron fence surrounding her house or were taped to the inside of the boathouse windows.
Kids were always daring their friends to invade her property. They tried to shame, cajole, or bribe one another into ignoring
Mrs. Smith’s signs, but no one was dumb enough to try. A powerful sense of self-preservation held them back. The same kids
who’d break into the yacht club’s snack bar or sneak into the planetarium without paying refused to see if the boathouse door
was locked or pick blackberries from the thickets huddled against Mrs. Smith’s fence.
But last night, Jill had felt strangely invincible.
If I can make the team, I can make Aaron like me, too.
Now, as Una wound a hair tie around her second braid, Jill murmured, “I said I’d do it. I’d pick a dandelion.”
The kettle began to shriek, and Una moved it off the burner. She poured her tea and sat down across the table from Jill. A
small crease appeared between her brows. “What happened?”
This was why Jill loved Una. She didn’t scold her for ignoring Mrs. Smith’s signs. She didn’t call her foolish or stupid. She didn’t get angry. She just waited for Jill’s story to unfold.
“I saw a dandelion. A big one. Right behind the boathouse. I figured I’d only be on the grass for, like, thirty seconds, but
when I ran over to pick it, it was gone. There weren’t any flowers in the grass, even though I saw tons of them when I was on the beach.”
Seeing Jill’s confusion, Una made an encouraging noise.
“I was about to give up when I saw a bud. I knew it was a dandelion because of the leaves, so I ripped it off the stem and
ran back to the beach.”
Jill’s eyes were glassy. She was no longer sitting at the kitchen table. She was standing in the sand, her hand fisted around
a flower bud.
“When I showed it to J.J., he said it didn’t count because it wasn’t a dandelion. It was yellow, but it wasn’t a flower. He
knew it was a dandelion. He was just being an idiot.” The anger she’d felt yesterday came bubbling back to the surface. “I hate
him!”
Una shook her head. “No, you don’t. You’re mad at him, and you’ll be mad at him lots of times before you’re both grown. Now,
finish your story.”
Jill’s eyes flashed. “I wanted to throw that stupid flower at his stupid face, but he walked away.”
“Look gullible up in the dictionary, Jill the Pill!” J.J. had shouted over his shoulder. “Your picture’s there!”
Under the table, Jill’s fingernails carved half-moons into her palms. She held on to her fury because it was hot and energizing
and far better than the weird sensation the flower had given her. The moment she’d touched it, she’d felt fear slip under
her skin like a needle, injecting something oily and cold into her veins.
Jill lowered her voice. “The bud wasn’t normal.
It had a bump. Like a wart, but it felt hard—like there was a pebble inside.
When I peeled it open, this yellowy thing fell out into my hand.
” Jill squeezed her eyes closed and spoke so softly that her words were nothing more than a fragile whisper. “It was a tooth.”
Una went very still. “A tooth?”
Jill nodded.
“From an animal?”
Jill shook her head and pointed at the metal braces glued to her front teeth. “It had one of these on it.”
When Una gave her a searching look, Jill knew what she was thinking. Everyone knew how much Jill liked telling stories. She
had notebooks full of them. She whispered them to her friends at school assemblies and during sleepovers. She added details
to real-life events to make them more interesting. She was always getting in trouble for bending the truth, but she wasn’t
lying now. She prayed Una could see that.
The second hand on the kitchen wall clock ticked and ticked. If Jill didn’t leave soon, she’d miss her bus. But she couldn’t
go until she told Una everything.
Finally, Una said, “What did you do with it? The tooth?”
Jill let out a sigh. That was where things really got weird.
“It freaked me out, so I dropped it. I yelled at J.J. to come back because I wanted him to see it, but he wouldn’t stop. When
I looked back at the sand, I saw the tooth . . . sink. It happened so fast—like it got sucked up by a vacuum.” A tear slid
down Jill’s freckled cheek. Her story sounded so ridiculous that she couldn’t blame Una for not believing her. “I’m not lying.
I swear.”
Una came around to Jill’s side of the table and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “My amma would’ve said the tooth was a piece
of elf treasure. Did I ever tell you the story of the men who tried to build a road through a hill belonging to the elves?”
Jill didn’t care if she missed her bus. If Una could explain what she’d seen, Jill could forget all about the gross tooth.
She could stop feeling scared every time she remembered how it had looked sitting in her palm. “No.”
Una returned to her seat and cradled her teacup in her hands. “Elves are invisible, but just because you can’t see a thing
doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The men who wanted to build a road learned this the hard way. They used every machine they could
get their hands on, but the machines failed. The engines jammed. Rocks cracked the shovel blades. The men tried dynamite next,
but every time they lit the fuses, a strange burst of wind or sudden rainstorm would snuff them out. Finally, the men brought
in the strongest horses in the country to pull down the trees. The horses refused to budge. The men threatened them with whips,
but the horses wouldn’t move. One night, they ran away and were never seen again. In the end, the road was built somewhere
else, and the elves were left in peace.”
“So, your grandma would’ve said the tooth belonged to the elves?”
Una nodded. “All they want is to stay hidden—to be left alone. If you don’t disturb them, they won’t harm you. If you make
them angry, they’ll seek revenge. But since you gave the tooth back, they won’t be angry.”
Relieved, Jill got to her feet and pulled her book bag onto one shoulder.
“What would your amma say about Mrs. Smith?”
Turning in her chair, Una glanced out the window facing Mrs. Smith’s yard.
“Amma believed in witches, trolls, ghosts, demons, wind spirits, and all kinds of monsters. She wore charms around her neck and wrists. She carved runes over the door and into the leather of her saddle. She believed people needed protection from the wild things. She would’ve told you to stay away from Mrs. Smith’s yard.
” Una made a shooing motion at Jill. “Now, hurry, or you’ll miss your bus. J.J. left ten minutes ago!”
Jill did as she was told.
She hadn’t heard J.J. leave, but because his room was in the basement, he used a different door.
Will he hold the bus for me?
He probably wouldn’t, but Jill’s friends would. It was the last week of school, and her entire grade would be watching a movie
after lunch. Jill didn’t want to miss it, so she ran as fast as she could up the driveway, her book bag bouncing on her back
like a loose turtle shell.
As she left her house behind, she felt a feathery tingle on the nape of her neck, like someone was watching her.
And even though Jill had never seen the woman, she knew it was Mrs. Smith.
Everything about Mrs. Smith’s property was wrong.
The thorns on her pricker bushes were too big. The berries on her winter creeper oozed a bloodred sap. No matter the season,
poison ivy and poison sumac clung to every inch of the fence. Deep purple mushrooms with gills that moved as if they were
drawing breath sprouted all over her yard.
Then there was her soot-gray house.
It sat on the hill like a howling wolf. Its top half was narrow and pointed, while the bottom half looked like the haunches
of a large beast. No windows faced the street on the ground floor, and the windows that gazed out over the harbor were tall
and skinny. Sunlight never winked off the glass or the metal railing of the widow’s walk. Shadows spilled out from under the
eaves and the front porch and pooled around the bushes and trees.
Jill and J.J. didn’t agree on much, but they both believed the house was meant to be some kind of fortress.
The iron fence surrounding the property had spear-tip finials, and the electric gate across the driveway sent a clear message that visitors were not welcome.
There were no potted ferns or rocking chairs on the porch.
No dining table with an umbrella and chairs on the patio.
No wind chimes or gazing balls in the overgrown garden.
The only splash of color came from the pair of round windows in the attic turret. Made of stained glass, their central figure
was a purple octopus suspended in blue water. Because the purple was so dark that it was nearly black, and the blue was a
deep indigo, it was difficult to see the octopus. It hid on sunny days but came alive during lightning storms.
These windows were the eyes of the house. One watched the cars on the road. The other watched the boats in the harbor. They
watched people walk on the beach or fish off the dock. They watched Jill and her family as they went about their lives. They
saw everything. Jill was sure of it.
The windows, the spiky fence, the creepy plants—they were all an extension of Mrs. Smith. Jill was sure of that, too.
The sensation on the back of her neck spread. It felt like a thousand earwigs were crawling over her body.
She ran faster.
As she put distance between herself and Mrs. Smith, Jill tried to focus on Una’s gentle face and soft voice. She wanted to
reclaim that feeling of relief. Of safety. But she couldn’t.
She was almost thirteen—too old to be soothed by tales of wise grandmothers or trickster elves.
She knew there must be more teeth like the one she’d found. Braces were glued to the teeth and connected by wires. The wires
on the tooth Jill found had been snapped.
Where are the rest of the teeth?
As soon as the thought formed, she wished she could retract it. She never wanted to know the answer to that question.