Wink Poppy Midnight(6)

There weren’t sheets on the bed, but the frame and mattress were up. I stepped over two boxes and then moved around the room and opened all the windows. All four had faded yellow curtains that smelled like dust.

I went back to the door and closed it. Dad wouldn’t bother me if my door was closed. He respected privacy. Privacy was like gold to him, as in worth-its-weight. He wanted it, and so he gave it to others freely and without question.

I had to push the door shut the last few inches, so it would latch. This house seemed to be leaning on its side, like an old woman with one hand on her hip, and it made everything off kilter. Later on, I would come to like it. Later on I would hear the creaks and moans and feel welcome, and comforted, like the house was speaking to me in its own gasping, rickety voice. I would be able to tell where Dad was, down to which corner of the room, just by the series of pops and shudders and squeaks that echoed down to me like the refrain of a song I knew by heart.

But back then, it was just an old house, two miles away from Poppy, across the road from the Bell farm.

I turned around.

Poppy stood in the dusty sunshine of my bedroom, wearing nothing but a thin white summer dress and the skin she was born in.

How could something so soft and supple and flawless as Poppy’s skin hide a heart as black as hers? How could it show none of what was underneath, not one trace?

I’d read The Picture of Dorian Gray. I wondered if Poppy had a painting of herself locked in an attic . . . a painting that was growing old and evil and ugly and rotten, while she stayed young and beautiful and rosy-cheeked.

I sat on the bare mattress with a sigh. Poppy crawled into my lap. She kissed my neck. Her hands were on my shoulders, chest, stomach, down down down . . .

“No,” I whispered. And then louder. “No.”

I picked up Poppy by her hips and moved her onto the bed beside me. Her dress was pushed up to her thighs, and she crossed her naked legs, looked up, and smiled. “So never again? Is that it? You’re done with me now? You move out to this rat-hole farmhouse and suddenly it’s over?”

I met her eyes. “Yes.”

She laughed. She laughed, and it was hard and slick and cold, like chewing on ice. She got up from the bed and went to one of the two big windows on the east wall that faced the road, and the Bell farm.

“You’re going to be living next to her now.” Poppy glanced at me over her shoulder, her eyes mean and sly. “Feral Bell. That should prove interesting for you.”

“Don’t call her that.” I got up off the bed and joined her at the window. I looked past the three lilac bushes, past the old well, past the rope swing on the ancient oak tree, past the pine trees, past the fields of corn on the left that were rented out to a neighboring farm, past the apple orchard, across the road.

Our houses were close, even with the gravel lane between them. I could see everything. I saw chickens running around, following a rooster, and two goats in a white pen, and three kids playing with a dog, and another climbing the ladder of the red barn. I could hear shouts and laughter and crowing and clucking and barking. I could even smell gingerbread in the oven—the dark, sweet, spicy smell drifted right over the road straight to my nose.

It seemed so much nicer over there, in Wink’s world. Much, much nicer than being in this empty, foreign bedroom with a red-blooded Poppy.

“Don’t call her what? Feral? It’s better than Wink. Wink is like something from a children’s book. And then Wink and her pink horse, Caramel, rode off to Fairyland on a path made of clouds.”

Poppy was watching the farm, closely, almost as if she’d forgotten I was there. “Look at all those kids running around. Why should Wink get so many siblings while I have none? Leaf said once that I would have been a better person, if only I’d had a sibling or two. He said I’d be ‘less selfish by half.’ As if I—”

“Leaf?” I said. “Leaf Bell? You used to know him? People at school said he’s down in the Amazon searching for a cure for cancer. They said he sleeps on the ground and eats nothing but nuts and berries and he speaks their Mura language like a local—”

“Shut up.” Her eyes were back on mine. “Just shut up, Midnight.”

She went to the door, opened it, left.

Came back.

She sidled up to me and put two fingertips on my heart. Pressed.

“You and the Bell girl . . . you looked good together.”

I said nothing, waiting for the punch line.

“I mean it, Midnight. You should get to know her better.” She moved her fingers to my cheek, and ran them down, over my jawbone, across my neck. “Wink is weird and quiet and so are you. You two should be friends.”

I flinched. “What are you up to, Poppy?”

“Nothing. I’m just trying to be a better person. I’m bored with being mean, bored, bored, bored. So I’m attempting to improve myself. I’m setting you up with the weird girl across the road. I want you to be happy.”

“No you don’t. You don’t even know what the word means.”

But she just shrugged, and laughed, and left.





I SNUCK OVER to the Bell farm once a few years ago, and just watched the goings-on from the shadow of the woods. I was there for a while, and they never even looked in my direction, not any of them, like I was invisible, like I was a ghost.