The Evolution of Alice (13 page)

“Yeah,” Sara said, “but there’s no point making stuff up just to feel better about it. Spirits and demons. People just make things up when they don’t get what’s going on.”

“I don’t think that’s true at all,” her mother said.

“And you know what else? Gideon’s grandpa, he used to tell me about Bigfoot, too,” Sara said. “This whole place needs to learn that there isn’t such thing as Santa Claus.”

“Sara, lots of people around here believe in Mistapew,” her mother said. “And we need something like that around here right now, even just the belief in it.”

Sara rolled her eyes. Her mother ignored this too.

“Be true to yourself. That’s all Mistapew means. Honesty, Sara. That’s a teaching,” her mother said.

“Yeah, a teaching, not an actual thing,” Sara said.

“You know, old Victor down the road took a video of the thing a couple of years ago,” her mother said.

“He took a video, Mother, of somebody in a Chewbacca suit,” Sara said. “You know, like how people put on red suits and white beards.”

Her mother took tiny bites of her dinner. It didn’t seem like she was putting much into her mouth, more just doing something to do something. She said, “Maybe you should’ve gone to some of that counselling at school. They’ve got good people over there, you know. They could help you.”

“No,” Sara said, “they couldn’t.”

“Well, you’re just impossible then, aren’t you? Impossible.”

“I just don’t want to talk about it. Can’t you see that I don’t want to talk about it?” Sara said.

“You have to talk about it to somebody,” her mother said.

But Sara was done talking to anybody, especially her mother. She thought none of it mattered anyway. Bad things lead to bad things, and they didn’t need the devil or some bad spirits to help. It was just simple momentum. Her mother reached across the table to touch Sara’s hand, but Sara instantly pulled her hand away and took to finishing her supper as quickly as she could. When she was done, she disappeared into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

Her mother finished eating her dinner in the same quiet that had covered both of them, thoughtfully chewing each forkful and looking at Sara’s empty chair as though she was still sitting in it. When she finished, in the silence, in the soft din of ticking clocks and the sound of clapping water against the back of the house, she whispered a prayer. Later, she would go to her daughter’s bedroom door and place her ear against the wood. She would listen for her daughter’s voice, for her daughter’s feet moving along the floor, for any sound that would set her mind at ease. Then, she would open the door a crack and walk down the hallway to her own bedroom. She would lie down in her bed and stare at the ceiling, resigned to believe in the prayers she had offered.

Deep into the night, Sara was woken up by gentle knocks against her bedroom window. Facing the wall, she rolled over 180 degrees to read the alarm clock, and groaned when she saw the time:
1:07 AM.
In the hazy state between sleep and wakefulness, she ignored the sound at first. She’d been dead asleep and wanted to remain that way. She hadn’t slept the night before, after Angela died, and now her body, and her mind, had given out on her. So she ignored the knocking, hoping it had been a dream. However, as soon she lay her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes, the sound came again: a light, almost apologetic, knock. With a frustrated sigh Sara kicked off her comforters, got out of bed, and went over to the window. She climbed up onto her dresser and peeked out to the front yard, where she saw Flora, her best friend, who sheepishly waved. She hadn’t seen Flora since Angela had killed herself. Sara slid open her bedroom window and stuck her head out into the cool midnight air.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Flora didn’t answer, although not for lack of trying. She opened and closed her mouth several times. A few times she stuttered the beginning of a word but stopped. Finally, she threw her arms out to her sides and let them fall back against her thighs with a light slap, like the floodwaters gently clapping against the sandbags out back.

“Are you okay?” Sara said.

This was followed by a short period of time where the two best friends simply stared at each other. This was an odd silence. Flora and Sara were never at a lack for words. They usually talked all through school (including all through class, which got them into trouble on a near daily basis), they texted all through the day, talked on the phone almost every evening, and in all of those interactions there was never any quiet. They talked about boys and school and movies and life and even about nothing—trivial things—but never
nothing.
Sara saw Flora, in the careful light of the overhead moon, as she had never seen her before. That light, like television static in the dark, glinted off Flora’s usually vibrant eyes. They looked tired and lost and desperate all at once. Finally, Sara motioned her friend forward. Flora took Sara’s outstretched hand, scaled up to the bedroom window with her help, and climbed inside.

They got down from the dresser and stood in the middle of Sara’s bedroom, two feet apart, Sara looking at Flora and Flora looking to the floor. Sara wasn’t sure what to say or do, so eventually she took Flora’s hand and guided her to her bed, and they both lay down together, face to face, curled up together, their bodies clumsily forming the shape of a heart if viewed from overhead. Sara had Flora’s hands in her left hand, and with her right hand stroked Flora’s raven black hair away from her face. Still, Flora said nothing, but rather looked into the pillow as though there were something to see there, something which begged for attention.

“What can I do?” Sara whispered, at which Flora shook her head lightly, and, even though each strand of hair was pushed away from her face, Sara continued to run her fingers through Flora’s hair. Then, in the dim light that occupied the bedroom, Sara could see a tear fall from Flora’s eye, followed by another, then more, and as more tears came, dampening the pillow, her body began to shake. She pulled her knees into her chest and hugged them tightly with both arms until she was curled up into a ball. Sara found herself shushing Flora as she would a child, as she used to do with Grace when her cousin was just a baby, when her crying was uncontrollable, with hiccup breaths and a heaving chest.

“It’s okay, I’m here,” Sara said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“But it isn’t,” she said through tiny huffs of breath.

“Let me get you a Kleenex,” Sara said and tried to get up from the bed, but Flora reached over and held her down. Sara relaxed back beside her friend and gathered her deep into her arms so her head was pressed between Sara’s neck and shoulder.

“There’s a curse here, there is, there is,” Flora whispered into the nape of Sara’s neck.

Sara thought this wasn’t the time to tell her that there was no such thing as curses. She simply shook her head and squeezed Flora tighter. But she became angry at the whole idea of there being a curse. Not because Flora thought it, but because she could be made to believe such a ridiculous thing by others. There was a curse. There was the devil. There were bad spirits. People were trying to find reason in the unreasonable. Girls were killing themselves and it needed to make sense somehow. Now there was Flora, buried deep in Sara’s arms, so close against her body that the two were almost one person, suffering together, talking about curses, which more than likely made Flora all the more distraught.

“I want to die,” Flora said. “I just want to die. I can’t take it any more. Everybody’s leaving me.”

“They’re not leaving you, they’re just leaving,” Sara said.

“I do want to die,” Flora whispered as she began to play with a tiny strand of her own hair. Strange, Sara thought. If she kills herself, her hair will keep growing, like it doesn’t agree with her decision.

“No, you can’t,” Sara said.

With each word she held Flora even harder, pushed her friend deeper and deeper into her embrace as though to hide her from the darkness.

“You can’t leave,” Sara said. “You can’t leave me.”

Everything Flora was going through, Sara was going through, had gone through, yesterday and today, and each time a friend of theirs died. Sara didn’t think she would ever take her own life, but how much loss could one person endure? She couldn’t stand to think of it. She pulled Flora closer, closer. She clasped her hands behind Flora’s back. She couldn’t leave now, not if she tried. She would hold Flora there forever if she had to. She would never let go. But eventually, against her will, Sara’s mind began to drift into the darkness she was trying so desperately to keep Flora from. She blinked out a tear, another, then her eyes remained shut as she fell asleep.

With Flora still in her arms, Sara awoke to the sound of footsteps methodically making their way across her bedroom. She didn’t open her eyes at first. She was sure it was her mother coming to check on her and didn’t want to deal with the questions. What is Flora doing here? And, if Sara answered that honestly, she would have to talk about spirits and demons again, and she wanted no part of that. So she decided to pretend to sleep until the footsteps retreated, back outside her bedroom door. The footsteps stopped at the side of her bed. Sara did her best impression of sleeping. She kept her eyes closed for at least a minute but in the end felt it far too disconcerting to picture her mother standing over her and Flora, watching them. So, she opened her eyes.

Sleep brought haziness to everything: her thoughts, her sight. The first thing she saw was black, even though she knew she was facing the window. She should’ve seen moonlight coming in from outside. Her curtains weren’t drawn, and her mother wasn’t big enough to blot everything out. She began to search the room without moving her head, shifting her eyes this way and that way. There was light against the wall by her head, against the wall near her feet. There was light, just not in front of her. It was as though a big black cloud had seeped in through the window and settled in her room, right beside her bed. She rubbed her eyes. Things became clearer. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. The shadow sharpened. It reached almost to the ceiling. It was fuzzy, too. And the fuzziness wasn’t due to her waking eyes. No, Sara realized that the shadow, the figure, was covered in hair. That’s when her other senses began to drift in: the smell of wet dog, the sound of heavy, deep breathing, the sensation of that breath coating her body like a blanket. She begged for it to be a nightmare, as awake as she felt. She pinched herself aggressively on her hip. Nothing made the thing disappear; it seemed only to grow larger and louder.

She knew it then, what stood before her. She knew it as the beast bent down and removed her arms from around Flora’s body. Its touch sent a cool shiver that started at Sara’s arm and spread throughout her entire body, like a morphine drip. “Mistapew,” she said breathlessly as it placed its arms underneath Flora’s body and effortlessly lifted her up. It turned around and walked out of the bedroom. Sara got up and followed it through the house. Both the hallway and the kitchen were eerily silent, devoid of the usual sounds of clocks ticking and faucets dripping and the house settling, the conversations of the night. It was as though she and Flora and the great beast were frozen in time, or removed from it. The only sounds were their footsteps, but even those were whispered to her ears. She was led to the back door, where they stopped.

“Where are you taking her?” Sara said.

It looked back at her, a quick glance, then turned to the door, opened it, and stepped outside. Sara started to as well but stopped when the cold waters tickled her foot. She didn’t remember the waters being so high, or so cold. She had only a nightgown on. The beast continued walking with Flora, farther away from Sara. A small wake gathered behind them that looked like a pathway in the moon’s light. Against her better judgement, she took a deep breath and stepped outside, submerging her feet into the water. Her body tensed, and goose bumps rushed across her skin. She clutched her arms at her sides in a vain attempt to retain some body heat. She could feel mud push its way between her toes with each step, and the ground felt like a wet sponge beneath her feet.

“Flora!” she called out, but there was no response. Flora was asleep, limp in the beast’s arms as it brought her deeper and deeper out.

“Where are you taking her, please?” Sara said. “I thought you were supposed to be honest!”

She followed for as long as she could, until the water reached up over her chest, pooled around her neck, and touched her chin. And, even then, she was prepared to swim if it came to that, ready to follow Flora and the beast for as long as she could. But the thing stopped about 10 feet away, with the water only up to its waist, in an area of calm, a place that stretched endlessly toward the horizon. And the water was black all around because the stars were shy that night, except for the reflection of the moon overhead, which touched the water near where they stood, the soft but generous white glow rippling like a flag in a delicate breeze. There, in the stillness, Sara watched as the creature turned Flora’s face toward its own. It breathed gently across her cheeks, which caused her eyes to flutter, then open.

“Flora, are you okay?” Sara said.

Flora didn’t answer, but as she stared at the great beast she didn’t scream, didn’t start, didn’t try to get away. She simply lay there nestled in the creature’s arms, the rising of its chest rocking her back and forth as a cradle would a baby. She looked as calm as the water that surrounded them. This brought peace to Sara as well, and she called to her friend no longer.

She saw Flora try to close her eyes, to fall back asleep, but the beast placed its hand against her cheek and shook its head. “No sleep,” it said in a deep voice that rumbled through the air and across the water, causing tiny tremors. Flora nodded. It turned her over and lowered her close to the water.

“Look,” it said.

She did.

“Do you see?” it said.

“I’m beautiful,” Flora whispered.

Then the beast submerged its hand under the reflection of the moon, and the white light pooled into its massive palm. When it brought its hand up, it brought the light also, so the water beneath Flora was now black, her reflection gone along with the moon’s.