Be Not Afraid (19 page)

“Nan.” I leaned over, resting my chin on her arm. “That’s too much for anyone. Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down for a while? I can make dinner.”

“No, no, angel. I’ve been sitting here for the past twenty minutes or so. I’m good and rested again.” She reached over and ran her hand through my hair. “I don’t like getting older, Marin. My energy just gets zapped. It stinks.”

I grinned, even as something pulled at me, deep inside. “Just the way it goes, I guess.”

“You got that right.” She moved the kerchief back and forth in front of her face. “So how was your date?”

“Nan!” I pulled back as if she had tossed a bug at me. “It wasn’t a
date
!”

“Boy, girl, car, lunch. Hours and hours and hours away from the house.” She raised her eyebrows. “Sure looked like a date to me.”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

“He’s someone from school?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Dominic? Was that his name?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wonderful name. You know, Saint Dominic had a phenomenal life. He was a—”

“He’s not a saint, Nan,” I cut her off. “He’s just a boy.”

I could feel her eyes on me for a moment, and then she reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind my ears. “Well, all right, then, Smarty-Pants, if it wasn’t a date, what was it?”

I hesitated. There was no way I could get into anything that even resembled the truth. And maybe a partial lie didn’t really count. At the very least it wasn’t as bad as a full-blown one. “It wasn’t anything,” I said. “He’s actually Cassie’s older brother.”

The kerchief halted. “Cassie
Jackson
?”

“Yeah.”

“Marin, I really don’t think—”

“He just wanted me to give him the rundown on her classes. You know, because we’re in the same grade. She’s going to be missing a lot of school because of being sick and he’s helping her out so she doesn’t fall behind.” I shrugged. “That’s it. No big deal.”

“Oh.” Nan eased back into the chair again. “Well, all right, then.”

God, I hated lying to her more than anyone else. She deserved better from me.
I
deserved better from me. “Is Dad home?”

“Not yet.” She hauled herself partway out of the chair and I stood, extending my arm so she could pull herself all the way up. “You want to help me with dinner?”

“Sure.” I waited for her to link her arm inside mine. She leaned her whole weight against me as we moved toward the kitchen, her feet shuffling a bit as she walked. “I’m starving. What’re we having?”

“What’d we have last night?” she asked.

“Um … pork chops.”

“We had leftovers, didn’t we?”

“Nan. We always have leftovers.”

“Good.” She nodded once. “Then that’s what we’re having tonight.”

Sleep was impossible. I tossed and turned in bed, kicking the covers off at one point and balling my pillows up under my head to adjust my position. Nothing worked. Every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was the scene in Cassie’s room—the weird shape her eyes had taken, the blackness in her skull, the disgusting growths on her neck. There was the horrible giggling and then the words she’d said in that odd, distorted voice:
You can’t do anything to me. Nothing.
If it was her grandmother’s spirit in there talking, where had such a comment come from? And what did it mean?

Deep down, I knew that Dominic’s crazy theory was probably right, that it was some sort of spirit inside Cassie. I couldn’t deny the fact that I had heard and felt something
that day in the locked room. It had been an otherworldly
thing,
seeping into the room like a fog and then breathing and scratching the walls. Whether it was their grandmother’s soul from the dead or a life force all its own, I would probably never know. And maybe it didn’t matter. But it was time to admit that whatever it was, it had knocked Cassie flat on her back. And then invaded her being. Now it seemed as though it were eating her alive, from the inside out. And there was nothing anyone could do about it, unless someone summoned a priest or Dominic’s insane exorcism worked.

I got out of bed and headed for the kitchen, but the dusky glow coming from the TV in the living room made me change course. Nan always stayed up late watching
I Love Lucy
reruns, or David Letterman, and sometimes I fell asleep on the couch next to her. I stopped, though, when I saw Dad in the easy chair, watching a war story on the History Channel, and tiptoed backward, trying to escape without being seen.

“Hey,” he said, turning to look at me. “I thought I heard something.” He patted the wide arm of his chair. “Come sit.”

Damn it. I bypassed his chair and sat down on the couch instead, leaning over my knees so I could study my bare toes.

He ignored the rebuff, watching me with steady eyes. “How was your day?”

“It was okay.”

“Mine was, too, thanks for asking.” He kicked up the foot portion of the chair and leaned back. “Although it was a digging day.”

Digging meant foundation work, which was Dad’s least favorite part of his job. It was interminable labor, he always said, and boring to boot. His favorite part was when the skeleton of the house was finally up and he could sit on the thick beams and hammer ten thousand nails into the wood. Dad had always been good with a hammer and nails, but these days, he took a sincere pleasure in hitting things over and over again.

“ ’Bout midmorning, Dave and I found these crazy fossil-like things on one side of the foundation that had the whole crew excited,” he said. “It was kind of fascinating.”

“Cool.” I fiddled with my big toenail, which needed to be clipped. “What kind of fossils?”

“They were embedded in these real thin pieces of rock. They looked like bird skeletons. Or maybe bats. I don’t know. But they were perfectly preserved. I mean, you could see the tips of their feathers. Right there in the rock.”

“You bring one home?”

He looked startled, as if he hadn’t thought of such a thing. “There were only three,” he said. “Dave took them to show a scientist guy he knows over at the college. He thinks they might actually be worth something.”

“Nice.” I stood up and glanced in his direction. The yellow globs along the bridge of his nose were so small they looked like sequins. “Well, night.”

“Nan says you were hanging out with the Jackson boy today.” Dad looked at the TV as he spoke.

My heart lurched. “Yeah, just to go over homework stuff. For his sister.”

“I don’t want you to see him again.” He flicked his eyes away from the screen and fastened them on me. “Understood?”

“Why?” A rush of anger washed through me. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m not saying you did. I just don’t want you to see him again. Cassie’s parents can worry about her homework. It’s not your place.”

“I
know
it’s not my place. I was just trying to help.”

His eyes narrowed and then eased again, as if considering this. “Help someone else,” he said, looking at the TV again. “Okay?”

I strode from the room without answering and slammed the door to my room before flopping onto my bed. If I could stand one more day with him in this house, it would be a miracle. He was such a rigid
jerk,
throwing his authority around like I was a piece of property, as if he
owned
me. The ironic thing was that he probably thought he’d just gone and gotten all personal with me because of the stupid conversation about bird fossils. Which was a joke. He never came right out and asked me anything of any real significance when it came to my life. God forbid we had a conversation about anything important. Anything that
mattered.

Right after we moved to Connecticut, Nan had asked Dad and me to accompany her to a therapist she talked to every so often, just to “get things out in the open, to make sure we were all on the same page.” The therapist had been a nice-enough lady, with short blond hair, a long green dress that showed a little bit of cleavage, and brown sandals. But the thing I remembered about her the most was the enormous piece of amber hanging from a silver chain around her neck. It had a bug inside it, a mosquito maybe, or some kind of beetle, and it was perfectly preserved, its papery wings and minuscule legs suspended there inside a honey womb. She’d watched Dad and me as Nan recited the whole story of Mom’s death, and how Dad and I had just moved down here from Maine, and how we were all going to live together now even though we’d never done such a thing before. She’d leaned forward when Nan finished, resting her elbows on her knees, and waited until Dad and I looked up at her.

“Don’t be afraid to tell each other when it hurts,” she said. “That’s all you have to do. You can whisper it or shout it. Just let each other know when it hurts.”

It had sounded like okay advice, except that I knew neither of us would ever do such a thing. We weren’t built that way, hadn’t ever come right out and said words like that before, even when things hadn’t hurt. Dad had nodded and grunted, but I studied the small insect nestled inside the chunk of amber around her neck and wondered what it would feel like to be smothered in warm sap, to be
buried alive in something sticky and suffocating like that. Or maybe I already knew. Maybe this was how it felt.

I sat up in bed all at once, yanked from my thoughts.

A buried heart.

Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

I knew exactly what a buried heart was.

Better yet, I knew just where to find one.

I held my breath as I pulled on my jeans and a clean T-shirt; there was no telling what might happen if Dad heard me and came snooping around my room, checking to see if I was asleep yet. Nan was dead to the world; I could hear her snoring through the walls, but it would take Dad a little longer to lose consciousness. No matter. It was better to be safe than sorry. I glanced at the clock—12:42 a.m. Eighteen more minutes until his History Channel show ended, which meant that he’d probably either doze off in the chair or head back into his bedroom. I waited, my fingers gripping the windowsill, as the numbers on the clock ticked by. 12:58. My whole body was tensed; a pocket of sweat pooled inside my bra. 12:59. The sound of sweeping music drifted down the hallway, which meant the credits were rolling, and I winced, holding my breath again as Dad’s footsteps
made their way past my door and into his room. But it was not until I heard the click of his ceiling fan—something he switched on every night to help his allergies—that I opened the window and slipped out.

I’d taken lots of bike rides at dusk and a handful or two at night. But I’d never ridden this late, and never with such a mission in mind. I would have felt gleeful if the situation had been in any way positive, thrilled if the hour had been anything other than one in the morning. Now I realized that I was dumbfounded, startled, and terrified all at the same time. How had I thought of the buried heart so suddenly? And what made me lunge to go get it myself instead of calling Dominic and telling him about it? Was I making a mistake? Did it matter?

I pedaled harder, as if to overtake the darkness, and sped toward town.

Even at this hour, Elmer Sudds was still open; I pedaled toward the yellow light spilling out from under the front door like a punctured egg yolk, and then moved past it, my shoulders hunched up around my ears. It sounded like a circus inside: blaring music, people laughing in high-pitched screams, the scrape of heavy furniture against the wooden floor. Too much going on in there, I noted, for anyone to notice me out here. I maneuvered my bike down the alley behind the bar and skidded to a halt as a figure stepped out of the shadows.

“What the …?” Someone jumped back, startled.

“Dominic?”

“Marin?” His face relaxed, his fists unclenching. “Jesus, I thought you were some drunk coming back here to take a leak.” He paused, squinting at me under the dim streetlight overhead. “Wow, I didn’t even recognize you at first without your glasses.”

I brought my fingers to my face, felt my neck flush hot. “Yeah. I don’t have to wear them at night.”

He nodded. Took a step toward me.

“What are you doing out here?” Even I could hear the accusation in my voice.

He stopped walking. “You won’t believe it.”

“What? The buried heart?”

He clapped his hands together once, as if catching a fly. “You thought of it too? That … that’s why you’re here?”

I swung my leg off the bike, dropped the kickstand. “Yeah. It just came to me. Like, totally out of the blue.”

“Me too!” He sounded excited, motioning me forward with his hand. “I was just starting to dig when you got here.”

I followed him over to the space by the fence, kneeling down next to the little mound of dirt. The smell of garbage and stale beer lingered in the air, and for a moment I wished we’d thought of a better place to bury the little bird, that we hadn’t stuck him in an abandoned lot behind some cheap bar. Especially now. I brushed my fingers over the top of the pile. Dominic hadn’t gotten very far; there were only a few indications of the dirt being poked at. I wondered if he was feeling as hesitant about the whole thing as I was. “You think it’s still here?” I asked.

“None of the dirt had been touched,” he said, sinking next to me. “And the little rock I put on top of it was still there. It’s gotta be here.”

I watched him dig, undoing the very work he had completed just twenty-four hours ago, until he stopped, breathing hard, and sat back on his heels. “There,” he said.

I leaned in to inspect the tiny animal. Except for a layer of dirt, which coated its body and wings like a filthy blanket, it looked just as I remembered. The tiny beak parted ever so slightly. Eyes shut tight, the thin lid like a transparent shade, frond-feet curled up beneath it. Asleep, not dead.

Dominic squeezed my shoulder. “You want to take it out?”

I lifted the bird from the hole and held it in my hand. “Dominic,” I said. “You’re not gonna …” I glanced down at it, feeling an infinite tenderness toward the tiny animal, an unexplainable protectiveness.

“What?”

I shook my head, erasing the mental picture from my head.

“What, Marin?”

“Cut it,” I said, wincing. “You’re not going to cut it open, are you?”