Chapter One
Ben
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1993
12:06 A.M. (6 MINUTES AFTER MIDNIGHT)
The blood beneath Ben’s bare feet is too fresh to be sticky. It’s hard not to slip. And so, the little boy holds still—so very still. Stiller than he has ever held before. Or will ever hold again. So still that when one of his fingers twitches involuntarily it is as if his whole arm has swung like a pendulum too heavy for his body. It feels like it will twist. Snap. Break off altogether. Fall onto the floor and writhe around in the blood like a beetle on its back. Helpless and alone and desperate to be reattached—to turn back the clock. Undo what has been done.
But it’s only a twitch. Or maybe a tremble. And the arm does not fall onto the floor. Into the blood. It does not flop around. It does not squirm like some broken little thing. No, it hangs painfully at his side. Perfectly intact. And nothing changes—not one thing. The room remains quiet, and he remains quiet within it.
It’s more than just the blood—the fear of falling in it. The familiarity of the kitchen has scampered off. He no longer recognizes his surroundings. The soft, golden glow from the hallway has stretched out dimly across the kitchen, poisoning the darkness with shadows. It doesn’t make sense. The light should make him feel safer, not more scared. Maybe his big sister is right. Maybe everything is better in the dark. When it’s dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face. You can’t see monsters lurking. Ghosts haunting. You can’t see what’s dead and what’s not.
This kitchen—this kitchen, which no longer resembles his kitchen—is teeming with wrongness. The possibility of more wrongness. Monsters. Ghosts. The dead—
There is something dead here.
Someone dead here.
Did the ghost do it? No. Amy said it’s a nice ghost. Maybe it’s a nice ghost. He wants to ask its name so it will go away, but he can’t speak. His heart is drumming in his ears. Like a guitar string strumming. The consistency of it is making him dizzy—his head swirling and swirling. Ice cream twisting out of the spout and into a cone. His heart is pounding and his ears are hot and his hands are going numb at the fingertips. His eyes, wide as twin moons, are dry. He can’t blink. If he blinks, she might move, and he will have missed it.
Only—
Her face—
It’s not going to move.
Not unless this is a dream.
Could it be? No. Dreams don’t leave a wetness under your feet.
And dreams don’t—they can’t do this.
His wide, dry, swirling eyes pore across the face in front of him—those hard edges and gentle curves. The softness of her skin, because it still looks soft. Even now. The realness of it all seems big and bulky and almost cartoonish—like his brain can’t quite process what he’s seeing, and so it’s begun to take everything apart, reconstructing the scene in a way that is easier to digest, making everything appear plastic and waxy. Fake. Her eyes are half open, like a doll’s. M hates dolls. Says they look dead. She’s right. They do. Little glass marbles for eyes. Colorful and smiling, but dead—dead—dead—dead.
Bile rushes up his throat, full and thick and burning.
It rises with the intake of each breath, and falls back down again with every exhale.
He almost pukes, but doesn’t.
Almost screams, but can’t.
The Fear is coursing through his veins, pulsing through them. Pure and thick and hard. Making his insides heavy. Solid. Turning him to stone. That’s it, surely, he’s becoming stone. Just like in the story M told him about the woman who looked back when she shouldn’t have and turned to stone.
No—that wasn’t stone. That was salt. She turned to salt.
Maybe he is turning to salt.
Still petrified, Ben’s eyes roll in his skull—lowering until he can just barely make out the edge of the blade. It’s shiny. And red. So red. The color is practically burning a hole through time and space. His fingers tighten around the handle of the knife—his little fingers all lined together—and he swallows hard. Only his mouth is too dry, causing that swallow to feel like a groan. Or a choke. He is choking. And the bile is coming and he can’t breathe.
He doesn’t want to look back at the dead girl’s face, but he forces himself to do it. Or rather, his eyes force themselves to do it, without the consent of his brain. He doesn’t know why. He’s begging them to stop. His eyes are determined though—more than determined. Dry and wide and desperate to see—
Slippery blood and marble eyes and skin like wax.
Her body is slumped against the base of the counter, one palm facing up and open, the other limp against the floor. Blood spreads across the linoleum and fills in the creases around that big gold-and-silver ring on her index finger. He shifts his weight suddenly and—without meaning to—his toes slide against the slickness of the blood.
Red beneath him. Around him. Everywhere. His brain pulsing. He still can’t feel his hands—not since that twitch that might as well have been a bone snapping. A deep breath escapes through his nose, but he can’t seem to draw one back in. This is it. This is how he’s going to die. Because he still can’t breathe—won’t breathe. Can your body do that? Take all the air away? Kill you? Can your body murder itself like that? His body’s doing it. Right now. Turning him to salt. Because he’s seeing something he shouldn’t be seeing.
His teeth, having been clenched all the while, keep that unsung scream locked somewhere low in his chest. It bangs against his ribs, trying to break free. But it doesn’t.
His body won’t let it. Because his body is trying to kill him.
Salt, salt, salt.
Vision blurry, his eyes slowly focus on her face, because even with all this blood and all this stillness, he is waiting. Watching. Expecting everything to change. Convincing himself that it just might.
And maybe, if he waits long enough, the dead will come back to life.
If he’s patient.
If his body doesn’t kill him.
If the ghost doesn’t get him.
If he doesn’t turn to salt first.
Chapter Two
Amy
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1993
5:15 P.M. (6 HOURS AND 45 MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT)
Amy walks into the kitchen and sees Eleanor Mazinski fixing herself a cocktail she won’t have time to finish. She does this before every date; she says it’s to calm her nerves. Not that Amy would describe Eleanor as a naturally nervous person. She’s the opposite. Bold. Fearless. Fun. The type of mother everyone wants and no one ever gets—the jackpot of moms. Linda Hamilton in Judgment Day, as opposed to Linda Hamilton in The Terminator. Not that Eleanor could be directly compared to Sarah Connor exactly. She’s nothing like her in fact, but Amy can recognize that Eleanor is a cool mom and Chase Hills is a small, quiet town desperately lacking in cool moms. Pretty typical for New Jersey suburbia, as far as Amy can tell.
Eleanor’s coolness can probably be attributed to the fact that she is much younger than the other moms Amy knows. She’s only twenty-eight. More like a big sister than a mom. Amy loves her own mother—she does—but she knows that hers is your typical mom mom. The normal kind. Her mother and Eleanor have very little in common, except perhaps for the way they love. Both women love their kids. Amy can see that plainly.
Still, there’s something otherworldly about Eleanor Mazinski and her red hair and green eyes and perfect cheekbones. The way she dances around the counter, popping two cherries into her martini and sipping carefully so as not to disturb her lipstick. Her dress looks about ten years old, but it works, the bright green fabric flattering at all the right curves—curves as flawless as that swirling red hair and those emerald eyes and her marble-carved cheeks. There’s a certain liveliness about the dress that suits her, accentuating her inner Eleanor-ness.
“Amy!” The smile painted so decadently across her face is broad and fresh and vibrant.
She’s practically giddy at the sight of the seventeen-year-old, who waves back without a word.
In Eleanor’s presence Amy feels like a moldy, lumpy pear. And plain too—her dark brown hair dull and shapeless. She pulls her backpack up on her shoulder, adjusting the strap. Her black T-shirt is a little overwashed and starting to look gray, though it’s mostly covered by her grandfather’s old, oversize navy-blue jacket with the large lapels. The one he used to wear in the forties or fifties. “Loving this,” Eleanor declares, taking note of the teenager’s black tights and burgundy plaid skirt. Amy knows her thighs are thick—her waistline too—and was nervous about the skirt, but Eleanor’s praise fortifies her. At least someone understands. Amy’s become a mystery to all her friends. They can’t figure out when exactly she stopped buying polos and started dressing like a “Soundgarden groupie,” which was the exact phrasing Whitney used. She doubts Whitney—who aspires to marry a future senator and move to Connecticut—even knows what a Soundgarden groupie looks like. But Amy does know and Whitney isn’t wrong.
That’s the thing about girls you’ve known since preschool—they act surprised when you’re no longer a chipper little copy of your former self. They say Amy is turning on them. Joining the counterculture. Really, she’s just trying to fade out—disappear. That’s why she’s been wearing her grandfather’s coat everywhere. To hide who she is underneath. She uses it as decoy skin. So that she won’t have to explain herself. Defend herself. She’s not entirely sure what kind of person she wants to be yet, so why should she give everyone the opportunity to go ahead and make assumptions?
“Hi,” Amy replies at last, because she has to say something and Ms. Mazinski doesn’t like to be called Ms. Mazinski. Amy isn’t quite comfortable saying “Eleanor” out loud though. To circumvent this trap, she avoids names and titles entirely, which is something she’s been doing with her friends’ parents for years. The older she gets the harder it is to pinpoint where exactly she stands: no longer a child but not quite grown. Saying “Mr.” and “Mrs.” makes her feel infantile, but first names—first
names suggest equality, intimacy.
“I used the key you gave me,” she continues. “I hope you don’t mind . . .”
“Not at all, not at all.” Eleanor takes another sip before leaving the martini on the counter. The yellow laminate complements the linoleum flooring, which is designed in such a way as to give the appearance of tiles. Each “tile” is patterned in brown and harvest yellow with little floral accents. All the appliances are yellow, too, albeit in a paler shade. The fridge. The stove. It’s like the kitchen you’d see in a 1970s sitcom or the house Amy’s grandparents used to live in. This whole setup isn’t Eleanor’s style, that’s for sure. But she bought the place as it was, most of the furniture included, and hasn’t made any changes. She says she’s too busy to bother, but Amy’s pretty sure she would have redecorated already if she could afford to do it. Eleanor does not strike her as the sort of person to let the past creep up on her like this.
Fortunately, the house was in pretty good condition when Eleanor bought it, functional at least if not exactly stylish. The contrast between the house and Eleanor herself is completely striking, causing the latter to look even more glamorous and fashionable in comparison. A pearl in its oyster shell.
With a smile, Eleanor comes and takes Amy’s hands in her own. “You are my angel, you know that, right? I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Eleanor’s hands are warm and soft, perfumed from some sort of lotion that smells like airy lavender. Amy has been babysitting around the neighborhood for two years now, since she was fifteen. Eleanor Mazinski is the first one of her customers to ever give her a key. Or call her an angel. Or make Amy sad that they aren’t somehow friends. She flashes a self-conscious smile. “Where are your other angels?”
The laugh that escapes Eleanor is shrewd but warm. “More like devils tonight. They’ve been arguing nonstop since I got home. I think M got into a fight at school, but she won’t say a word about it. Stubborn creature. God forbid that girl ever decides to go on a hunger strike—Oh! Before I forget, B’s got that book fair brochure thing.” Eleanor points to it on the kitchen table in the corner. “He’ll want to fill out the order form in the back, and he can, but don’t let him put it in his backpack. We’re going to see which ones the library has first . . . if we even have time this weekend. There’s so much I haven’t done yet. I swear, Friday nights are just murder. Why do men always want to go out on Friday nights? Are they that lonely? Have they not heard of Saturday?”
Amy shrugs. With all the babysitting, she and her boyfriend usually have to settle for Sunday dates. No one ever needs a sitter on Sunday night. There’s still school the next day, so she and Miles can’t stay out too late, but they make do. “Who are you seeing?” Amy asks, a little shy, because she knows Eleanor is older and wiser and generally more interesting than herself. She arches her shoulders back, tilting her head. Trying to play the part of the girlfriend. The confidante. And Eleanor lets her. Maybe Eleanor wishes
they were friends too.
“Pedro in HR set me up with his wife’s cousin.” Eleanor sighs, scrunching her face and returning to her martini. She takes a long sip, her lipstick leaving a skeletal red print on the glass, and shakes her head. “To be honest, I don’t exactly have high hopes. He’s an accountant, and accountants, as you know, are notoriously disappointing dancers.”
Amy does not in fact know, but she nods like she does. Eleanor doesn’t talk to her like she’s a teenager. She talks to her like they’ve known each other forever. Like they’re equals. Amy really likes this, especially in comparison to some of the other parents she sits for. There are also no leering dads at Eleanor’s either. Amy caught a dad doing that one time—at a house she doesn’t sit for anymore—and ever since then she’s found herself wondering if some of them are eying her even when she knows they’re not. Last month, Mr. Taylor asked what colleges she’d applied to, and Amy, convinced he was trying to look down her shirt, hastily buttoned her jacket and fumbled trying to remember the name of a school. Any school. Only she couldn’t. Rutgers had gone and popped out of her head. Sarah Lawrence too. Even UCLA—not that she would have mentioned it. Her parents don’t know she’s applied or that she wants to study film, become a cinematographer in the vein of Daniel Pearl or Nicholas Musuraca. Or maybe even a producer like Debra Hill. They could probably get on board with the filmmaking part, but she doubts they’d be okay with her packing up and moving to the other side of the country. She isn’t even sure she’d be comfortable with it. If she gets in. She probably won’t get in. Why did she even apply?
After three or four minutes of painfully awkward silence with Mr. Taylor, Amy mumbled something about not having decided yet and darted out the door so fast she might as well have been on fire. Her and her no-good brain—feeding its own damn fear of being afraid. As a kid, her parents brought her to a specialist. When that specialist diagnosed her with generalized anxiety and panic disorder, her father decided that Amy should stop seeing her. As if running from the diagnosis would somehow undo the very existence of it.
Did it work? Of course not.
And through the years, the panic attacks have only been getting worse.
Ever since the disaster with Mr. Taylor—who was probably just trying to be nice, but who can even know for certain?—Amy has taken to wearing baggy sweatshirts to all the houses now. No makeup. Except for when she goes to Eleanor’s. This morning, Whitney laughed and said that the Mazinski house is Amy’s hottest date spot. ...
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