The Turning (4 page)

I wondered what it meant, or if it meant anything at all, that Linda used the world
unusual
so often. Maybe she was nervous about how I’d react to the house and the kids, and she was trying to prepare me. But I couldn’t give it much thought, because I was too busy loading my arms with boxes to carry into the kitchen.

I heard Linda say, “Oh, look, here’s Miles and Flora.”

I turned and saw the children watching me from the doorway …

I’ll write again tonight, I promise. I think I need a whole letter to tell you what they were like.

Until then, stay strong. Stay chill. Write to me now!

Love, Jack

JUNE 2

DEAR DAD
,

Just a note to say I got here okay, and everything’s fine. The kids are cool, and the cook is named Linda. You’d like her a lot. The summer’s going to be easy and fun. I’ll be home in no time. I’ll write more when I get a chance.

Love you,

Jack

JUNE 2

DEAR SOPHIE,

There’s a lot I could say about Miles and Flora. Number one, they’re very quiet. Reserved, as if they’re watching to see who you are—who I am—before they reveal the slightest thing about themselves. And they’re polite, like miniature grown-ups. Miniature, polite grown-ups. Now I know why Linda looked at me strangely when I joked that the kids might tear the house apart when she was gone. If these kids track mud on the floor, they run to clean it up.

But the first thing I noticed, the first thing anyone would notice, was that they looked like little fashion models—like little fashion models from another planet. Like angels or creatures from a parallel universe where everyone is perfect. They both have enormous black eyes, bright and round and startled, like the eyes of the nocturnal creatures that sometimes appeared on the road, frozen in the beams of my dad’s headlights.

Miles has bright red hair (of course I thought of that unhappy woman on the ferry), and Flora has long black curls all the way down her back. For some reason I’d expected them to look pale, as if they spent all their time indoors, but they actually looked healthy, like they went out a lot. They certainly don’t look like regular American kids. You kind of get the feeling they’ve just landed from somewhere else and haven’t yet completely decided if they want to stay. I remembered their mom was from India. Maybe that explained it.

Linda said, “Miles and Flora, this is Jack.”

Just because I don’t have siblings doesn’t mean I’ve never been around kids. I know kids usually ignore you, either because they’re shy or because adults or older kids don’t interest them all that much. Usually kids stand there staring at the ground, basically just waiting for you to lose interest and go away. But Miles and Flora looked me straight in the eye, then stepped forward and shook my hand (first Miles, then Flora).

“Hey, kids,” I said. “What’s up?”

“We’re very well, thank you,” said Flora. “And you?”

What was it Linda said about them? From another era. They weren’t even dressed for this century. Flora wore a long white gown, edged with lace. And Miles wore pants, a blazer jacket with a crest on the pocket, and—you’re not going to believe this—a tie. I assumed he’d put on his boarding-school uniform. Had they dressed up especially to meet me? Or did they dress like that every day? There was starting to be a long list of things I wanted to ask Linda.
Unusual
was the word, all right.

I could see that I had my work cut out for me. Not that the kids would be any trouble. Discipline would not be an issue. But whatever Jim Crackstone had hired me to do, it occurred to me that my real job would be to spend the summer teaching them to be normal kids. I was a little surprised, because Linda was so relaxed and warm, and the kids she’d taken care of practically since birth were so formal and chilly. But she’d said they’d had other teachers. I wondered who had taught them to act like someone’s uptight parents.

Then we just stood awkwardly shifting from foot to foot. You know me, I’m not exactly the quietest person on the planet. But suddenly I couldn’t think of anything to say. What’s your favorite TV show? What music do you like? How do you like school? They didn’t watch TV, and Flora didn’t go to school.

Maybe I should have asked them how a normal kid kept from going crazy with nothing to do on this island, but I figured I’d find out soon enough. And the truth was … well, they almost scared me a little. I felt like I’d have to get to know them a lot better before I could ask them even slightly personal questions.

“Can we help you, Linda?” said Miles. At least he called her Linda and not Mrs. Gross.

Linda said, “Kids, take those grocery bags inside. Jack, can you get that vacuum? Right, that big box there. And I’ll grab these paper towels and stuff.”

The kitchen was bright and cheerful, with windows on three sides and the sunlight beaming directly on an old-fashioned enamel stove. Linda flicked a glass crystal hanging in one window, and a scatter of bright rainbows danced over the appliances, the shiny pots and pans, the shelves of dishes, and the pale green walls. For a moment I kind of missed my dad. I was thinking about how he’d always tried to make sure our kitchen was welcoming and neat, and how after Mom died he taught himself to cook my favorite foods. Maybe I could teach Linda how to make my dad’s special meatballs and spaghetti. Sugar in the tomato sauce. Just a pinch, like he’d showed me.

“Are you hungry?” said Linda. “You must be starved.”

“I am a little,” I said.

“Okay,” said Linda. “Hold everything!” Miles and Flora watched Linda slap together a thick sandwich of delicious ham and cheese with lettuce and the perfect amount of mayonnaise. Then the kids watched me scarf it down in about fifteen seconds. I felt like I was a tiger or a seal they were watching get fed at the zoo.

“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked them.

“No thank you,” Miles said. “We had a very delicious lunch.”

These kids were definitely not like any kids I knew.

When we’d unloaded the last package and I’d got my duffel bag and luggage and backpack from the truck, Linda said, “Miles and Flora, why don’t you take Jack upstairs and show him his room?”

I picked up the duffel bag and told Linda I’d get the rest later. Miles grabbed my backpack, and though it was half as big as he was, I let him carry it. Let him feel like a big boy in his little jacket and tie.

“Take the flashlight,” said Linda.

“The flashlight?” I said. It was late afternoon, but there was still plenty of daylight.

Linda shrugged. “Some of the halls are pretty dark, and I can’t always keep on top of when the lightbulbs burn out. Plus I always have to stop the kids from closing the curtains. For some mysterious reason they seem to like it dark. Don’t you, kids?”

Miles and Flora looked at each other.

“We don’t need the flashlight,” said Miles.

Linda said, “I know you guys can find your way around in the dark, like baby raccoons. But it might be harder for Jack—”

“We can help him,” said Miles.

“Hey, I’ll be fine,” I said lamely. I’d come there to take care of the kids, and already everyone was acting like I was the one who needed help. I had to take charge. Jim Crackstone hadn’t hired me so the kids could take care of me.

“Follow us,” said Flora, and skipped on ahead of her brother. I don’t know why I needed reassurance, exactly, but it reassured me to walk behind Miles, so that I was walking behind my own backpack. Inside it, I knew, were the video games I would teach the kids when things got slow, and I was beginning to think they would get pretty slow, pretty soon. I especially liked knowing that inside the pack was my laptop. I could write letters to you. It made me feel like you were a little less far away. I heard your voice inside my head, saying, “Only two months!”

But two months had already begun to seem like an eternity. Maybe anyone would have felt edgy, heading into a dark, spooky house where he was going to spend the summer. Anyone would have felt jumpy leaving the comfortable kitchen, where Linda was putting away paper towels, a normal thing that normal people did in any normal household. I felt like I did when my dad and I went to the amusement park for my birthday, when I was eight. Following Miles and Flora, I felt those stomach flutters like when they belt you in for the haunted house ride, and the car starts rumbling along the track, and all you can think about is how soon you’ll enter the dark tunnel and the ghosts and monsters will start popping out of the walls.

What made me feel even worse was that it seemed as if all the light had decided to stay behind in the kitchen. A thick velvet curtain covered the door that led to the rest of the house, and when it swung shut behind us, I went semiblind for a minute until my eyes adjusted. Miles and Flora ran ahead. They certainly did seem to know their way in the dark. Maybe it didn’t seem dark to them, and maybe soon it wouldn’t seem dark to me, once I got used to it. I reminded myself how places and people look different, once you get to know them. Remember how, when we first met in the school lunchroom, I thought you were stuck-up and snobby and you thought I was a weirdo nonstop talker?

The halls weren’t exactly pitch-black, but they were pretty dim. All the windows were covered by heavy curtains. The lamps that worked were so low-wattage they could have been candles. And nothing was laid out the way you’d expect. Wouldn’t you think that a hall would eventually lead to a room? But some halls led only to other halls that right-angled and doubled back. We went up a winding staircase and down a corridor, then up a staircase, across a sort of bridge, and down another staircase. I couldn’t tell how far we’d come or what floor we were on or if the kids were messing with my head by taking me the long way. We passed a lot of doors that were closed and looked as if they hadn’t been opened in a long time. Maybe they were locked. Miles and Flora weren’t exactly giving me the guided tour of all the interesting parts of the house we passed on the way to my room.

I felt as if Miles and Flora were the grown-ups, and I was the child, being led through the maze to the center of the labyrinth, where the witch or monster waited. I thought, You should be dropping bread crumbs or M&M’s or any of the secret markers that smart children in fairy tales use when they’re being led into the forest and they want to find their way home. But Miles and Flora knew exactly where they were going, and all I had to do was follow. Still, my duffel bag was getting heavier by the minute, and I could only imagine how heavy my backpack was beginning to seem to little Miles.

“We’re almost there,” Miles said.

Suddenly the corridor dead-ended at a door. This one was definitely locked. Miles tried to open it, then Flora, and then I turned the knob and even banged on the door, though I knew it was stupid. There was no one behind it. I hoped.

“What’s up with this?” I asked them. “What’s inside the room?”

The kids exchanged another one of those looks I’d seen pass between them in the kitchen.

“Don’t worry,” Flora told me. “There are other ways. We can go around.”

I said, “Whoever designed this place must have been pretty twisted.”

Miles said, “It happened over a long time. Our great-great-grandparents and then my great-grandparents kept building new additions and firing and hiring architects, so the floor plan got kind of scrambled.”

“Why did they hire and fire so many?” I said.

“I thought the architects all quit!” said Flora.

“You heard wrong,” Miles said quietly. “You often do.”

Flora was silent after that.

I told myself, You just got here. It’s too early to tell the kid to talk nicer to his sister.

Anyhow, I was starting to understand that the children had secrets. Their quick, silent glances were like a private language invented to keep strangers—like me—from finding out what they didn’t want me to know. Already I sensed that the secrets they shared were part of why they seemed so strange, and were about something more serious than whether the architects who’d built their house had been fired or quit. The big, dark house was their world, and they were letting me in. But only so far.

We passed a dusty living room, where I could tell that no one ever sat on the dusty velvet couches and no one ever built a fire in the huge stone fireplace. At least not for a very long time. Finally we came to a large room in which a row of chairs ringed the mirrored walls. In the middle of the floor was a gigantic pool table. I was practically ecstatic.

I said, “You guys play pool?”

A giant cobweb covered half the table, and as the pale light from doorway trickled in, I thought I saw something disgusting scurry through the furry webbing. But that was easily fixable. Hadn’t Linda just bought a brand-new vacuum cleaner? Flip the switch and the tarantula nest would be toast in thirty seconds.

This time Miles and Flora looked up at me as if I’d asked if they liked to eat the spiders that lived on the pool table.

Miles said, “I guess somebody must have played, once. But we don’t …”

I said, “Would you like to learn?”

“I’m not very good at sports,” said Flora.

“I bet we could find a pool cue your size.”

Miles and Flora exchanged a whole new set of solemn, secretive looks.