when are they going to grow up?
looks like never. they seem . . . happy.
good for them.
don’t be a hater.
go to sleep luzer and dream of all your groupies cuz that’s closest ur gonna get to any real action.
Sooooo mean to your lil bro.
Love you.
Me too.
Finley put the phone down, staring at the ceiling. A big crack in the plaster looked like a wave, water stains like faraway birds. Rainer sighed in sleep, pulled her closer. She hadn’t been sleeping when Alfie texted, just lying there, at first looking at the maps in
the glow of her phone, then thinking about her visit with Betty Fitzpatrick, listening to the
squeak-clink
that was ever present now, but the volume on low. Abbey’s dreams, Eliza’s imaginary friend, Jackson’s predictions, Joshua’s trains. The little bird. A million little pieces floated in the ether above her, not coalescing, never taking any kind of shape.
Rainer stirred and pulled her closer.
“Go to sleep, Fin,” he said.
She felt herself drift off in the warmth of his embrace.
* * *
But then the air grew cold and Finley was out in the night, a light snow falling all around her. She was running, running, running—sick with exertion and fear. Her heart couldn’t work any harder, and bile rose in her throat, a burning acid. The trees were soldiers, towering above her, looking down in apathy. They’d seen so much, too much. They couldn’t help and wouldn’t even if they were able. Because the world turns, impassive, even as we all run wild, ripping the place and each other to pieces. We will destroy ourselves, and it will still turn at the same pace, and the seasons will come and go, not missing us at all.
Then Finley was kneeling on the ground, her chest aching. An anger welled in her, something so powerful and ancient that it barely fit in her tiny body. She looked down to see the bloody pulp of a woman’s ruined face. It was a hideous mash, the skull had taken on an unnatural shape, like a deflating balloon. And in her hand she felt the greasy heft of a flashlight that was covered with blood.
She heard what she thought was the high call of a hawk and then realized it was her own primal keening.
TWENTY
M
omma cried the whole way home; she always did. They walked the long miles back with her sobbing. She seemed to drag herself, moved so slowly. Even so, Penny was trailing behind, her bad foot aching, and she was so, so tired. If she lay down on the ground, she knew she’d fall asleep. And maybe the snow would cover her like a blanket and she would sleep and dream of home.
She’d always had dreams. Dreams so vivid and real that it was impossible to tell whether she was awake or asleep. Some dreams were fuzzy and strange, and she knew it wasn’t real. But some of them, like the dreams she had about Zoe, where it was bright as daylight and there was scent and sound, were as real as anything that happened during the day. And she would ask herself, Is this real? She didn’t know the answer.
Zoe was the little girl who used to sleep under her bed. Penny told her mommy about Zoe, even though she knew her mommy couldn’t see Zoe. She overheard her parents talking about her imaginary friend. Mommy was a little worried, and Daddy thought it was normal.
I like Zoe better than any of her other bratty little friends
, Daddy said, which made Mommy laugh a little. Penny liked her better, too.
Penny had never had a friend as fun and funny, as easy as Zoe, who always just wanted to do what Penny wanted to do and never argued. Play dates with her other friends often ended in tears or hurt feelings or the idea that there wouldn’t be another play date—and everyone usually acted as though it was her fault. But Zoe was always content to just be with Penny, and there was something nice about that.
One day, in one of Penny’s dreams, she and Zoe were playing in the playground in Washington Square Park where Penny always used to go with her daddy. And while they were on the swings, Zoe said that it was time for her to go home. Not home, not back to her family—it was time for her to
go on
.
“To the next place,” said Zoe.
“Where’s that?” Penny asked, even though she already knew, sort of.
“Before and after,” said Zoe. “The place we are before we’re here and the place we go after.”
“Are you scared?” asked Penny. Penny was scared just thinking about it. Where
had
she come from, and where
did
people go when they died? All the other questions had answers. Not that one. Not her parents. Not even on Google.
Nobody knows the answer to that
, her daddy said.
Some people think they know.
But they don’t.
It’s one of life’s grand mysteries.
So everybody dies and no one knows what happens then?
Penny had asked her father, disbelieving. It didn’t seem right that there wouldn’t be an answer to a question everybody had.
Her father took a moment to answer.
I guess that’s right. But you don’t have to worry about that for a long, long time. Let’s get some gelato.
“No,” said Zoe, in answer to her question. “I’m not scared.” She swung high and fast, the sky a dazzling blue and white above her, her red sneakers reaching for it. “Not anymore.”
When Penny woke up and looked under her bed for Zoe, her friend was gone. And Penny knew that Zoe wouldn’t be back. She wasn’t sad, even though she knew she’d miss Zoe. And she wasn’t scared anymore either.
* * *
The air had grown colder, and Penny’s ankle had stopped aching in a way. It was more like a strange tingling, growing numb. She dropped back a bit, and Momma didn’t seem to notice, so Penny dropped back a little farther. She looked around for Bobo, but he was gone. She hadn’t seen him since the graveyard. Maybe he had gone back
to the house. He didn’t like the graveyard; she knew that. He didn’t like it when Momma went to see Real Penny. The moon was hidden by clouds and the woods around her were just shadows, those black doorways that could be the way home, or the way to something even worse. She could hear the frantic and chaotic whispering of voices.
She dropped back a little more and watched as Momma turned the bend, lost in her own grief, certain that Penny was right behind her. It took a second for Penny to realize that she was alone. Momma was far ahead, and Bobo was nowhere to be seen. The voice was quiet. It had told her that she couldn’t leave until she convinced Momma to let Real Penny go. It was the same voice that told her to show herself, and then the clean man got shot. Her mommy told her that she didn’t have to listen to anyone except her family and her teachers, and the parents of her friends. The voice wasn’t any of those.
Maybe it was one of those other voices—like those of people who told you to keep secrets from your mommy, or who told you they had candy or lost a puppy and could you help, or who wanted you to try something that was very bad for you but would make you feel good at first. Maybe the voice was one of those. How were you supposed to know the difference?
If there’s a little noise inside you that tells you something is wrong or bad or that your mommy wouldn’t like it, listen. That’s called your instinct. Always follow your instincts.
There were too many voices. It was so much easier when your mommy or daddy just told you what to do.
Those tall, dark doorways, they called to her. What could the shadows hold that was worse than being chained in a room, alone, afraid, hurt? Were any monsters that lived in the woods worse than Poppa? The people she saw in the graveyard, they never hurt her. Zoe had not been afraid when it was her time to leave. And Real Penny wanted so badly to cross over that she begged her Momma to let go.
Penny moved slowly at first away from the footpath, waiting for Momma to come back. Then she moved a little faster, her heart a bird in the fragile cage of her chest. She had nothing—no water or
food or even shoes. She didn’t have a coat.
The most important step in survival happens long before you leave the comfort of your home
, her daddy had told her.
It’s all in the preparations you make for your journey
.
Then she was in the trees. Then she was running, even though she was in pain. Something about the excitement of being away made everything hurt less, even the cold.
She had only made it a little way before she heard Momma screaming, her voice cutting through the night like the cry of a bird. Penny ran faster, rocks cutting at the bottoms of her feet and branches whipping at her face. But Penny didn’t stop.
She remembered, her
body
remembered, that she was the fastest girl in her PE class. That all the other kids, even the boys, dropped behind her when she ran, huffing and puffing. She dug deep the way her coach had told her, even though she was weaker than she had ever been, not wearing the bright orange sneakers that her brother said looked like flames when she ran.
All around her the trees were monsters, reaching high up into the sky. The ground was damp, full of debris—rocks and sticks cutting at the soles of her feet.
Penny! Penny!
Momma was calling a frantic, desperate wail. The ground was a downward slope beneath her, and she let gravity pull her, making her faster, even as she knocked into trees, sliver branches slicing at her face. Twice she almost tripped and fell to the ground.
Breathe!
Her coach would yell,
let your breath carry you
.
Penny liked him. He talked to her like an athlete, someone who knew her body could do amazing things, if only she could just tap into the strength inside. If only she believed that she was made of wind and air and sky, that she could fly, that she was lighter, brighter, faster than everyone else unlucky enough to be made from bone and muscle and thick heavy blood inside their veins.
The whispers were all around her, laughing, crying, jeering, cheering, a million voices, all saying something different. Penny ran even though it seemed like Momma was getting closer. She could hear the old woman rushing through the branches, hear her screaming.
Penny! Penny!
It was so desperate, so very sad.
But the girl kept running because that wasn’t her name. It never had been. And now that she was free, she allowed the sound of her own name back into her head. Her name wasn’t Penny.
And so she ran. And she would have run faster, gone downhill because that was the way to go, according to what her daddy had told her.
But then, ahead, she saw a bouncing light, small and round moving through the trees. What was it? Who was it? It was moving toward her, getting bigger. Momma was screeching and running behind her and the whispering in the trees was so loud and discordant, it filled her head.
She turned away from the light and slowed down, looking for a place to hide. She found the carved out hollow of a tree and tucked herself inside, deep into the wet, smelly wood. She was shivering—fear, exertion, cold. Footsteps, shuffling steps through the leaves. The beam of a flashlight glanced the tree in front of her; she squeezed herself far back into the hollow. Something with a lot of legs skittered across her bare foot, and she stifled a startled scream.
“New Penny.” Just a whisper. “I’ll help you get away from here. Where are you?”
Bobo. She stayed hidden. He couldn’t be trusted, not really.
“I can hear your teeth chattering.”
She clamped a hand over her mouth and realized that they had been chattering like a cartoon cold person’s teeth. She never thought that really happened. Her whole body was quaking, an involuntary palsy of cold and fear. She held her breath, waiting, willing her body to be quiet, to not betray her with whimpers and sharply exhaled breaths. Then Bobo’s face appeared in the opening of the tree, he shined his light onto her, and she covered her eyes against the beam.
“Come on,” he said. “I know the way.”
He put the flashlight on the ground and shifted off his jacket and held it out to her. It was denim with a fluffy lining, probably still warm from his body. And she was so cold. She reached for it, and as she did, he grabbed her arm, yanking her out onto the ground.
“Momma!” he yelled, his face lit with malicious glee. “Momma, she’s here!”
“
Shut up
, Bobo,” she said. She ran at him and started hitting hard, beating her fists at his chest and trying to cover his stupid mouth. But he just smiled, leaning back, and swatted her blows away as if he were swiping at gnats. Her little fists didn’t hurt him.
“Momma!” he bayed again, the word filling the night.
She tried to run, but he grabbed her and threw her to the ground hard and then climbed on top of her, his weight on her chest so heavy that she could hardly breathe.
“Why are you helping her?” Penny hissed. “She doesn’t
love
you.”
Bobo’s face was blank. “Yes, she does.”
But she heard all the notes of uncertainty and despair. She knew things about Bobo, things he didn’t tell, things she wasn’t even sure he knew about himself. That’s what it was like for her. She could look at a person and see what that person wanted her to see. But she could also see what squirmed beneath the surface, raw and pink. Like when her mommy sounded angry and was using her stern voice, but she was really just tired. Or when Sophia at school acted like she knew better than anyone, but was really just afraid that no one liked her and had to prove she was smart so that no one would make fun of her. Or how her brother pretended not to like sports but was really just ashamed of being a little clumsy, so he stuck with the things he
knew
he was good at, even though he secretly wanted to play soccer. All the layers were exposed to her, always had been.
“No,” she said. Cruelty was the only weapon she had now; she had no choice but to wield it. “She
doesn’t
. If she
did
, she wouldn’t spend all her time in the graveyard trying to talk to your dead sister.”
“Shut your
stupid face
,” he said, his eyebrows wiggling with sadness. “I’ll let them put you with the other Pennys, the
bad
Pennys.”
She saw a hole, then, a deep pit with no bottom. It was in a cave, with a high rocky ceiling. There was an old light burning. Where was it? It was a dream and a memory, but neither of those things. Then it was gone, and she was back in the woods with Bobo. A space opened inside her. A cold, deep abyss of fear emptied her
out until she was one with the night and the cold. She went quiet, all her power, all her speed, all her strength leaving her. That was why, she knew with a clarity she didn’t quite understand. That
hole
was why they had all been brought here. Not for Momma. Not for Real Penny. The girls that had come before her, they would never go home, and neither would she. They would all disappear into the maw where the voice lived, and they would be there forever.
But this is your home. It always has been.
“Don’t,” she whispered. And Bobo looked down at her, seeing her, she thought, for the first time. Not New Penny. “Please. I don’t belong here.”
“Where?
Where
?” Momma yelled. “I can’t see you.”
He waved the flashlight in the air, and she heard Momma moving toward them, clumsy, stumbling through the trees and debris.
“She’s here!” he yelled. “She tried to get away, but I caught her.”
A lash of anger and some of her power came back. She couldn’t beg him. He wasn’t going to help her. He was like a beaten dog, slinking after his master. Never to be trusted.
“Penny was the smart one, the beautiful one,” she said. “She rode horses and did well in school. When she died, Momma died, too. There was no love for you. She never loved you because you’re ugly and stupid. Who could
ever
love you?”
Bobo didn’t say anything. He just looked so sad that she almost took it back.
“Let me go,” she said. “Bobo isn’t even your name, is it? It’s what Penny called you. What’s your real name?”
“Arthur,” said Bobo softly. She picked up on the note of pride, used it.
“That’s a nice name,” she said, thinking quickly. “It’s a king’s name. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Do you know that story?”
He shook his head. Of course, he didn’t. But he was listening. “Arthur was a king and he lived in a huge castle with a beautiful wife. And everyone loved him.”