A Lily in the Light(13)
“Let’s go,” she whispered.
“Shush.” Madeline pressed a finger to her lips.
Denny stopped. Envelopes bulged unevenly under his shirt. He threw his fist against the door and hammered. They froze. There was a shuffle on the other side, and Denny took off running, Nick and Madeline behind him, scraping the backs of each other’s heels. Mail scattered like leaves. Something caught Esme’s foot. She landed with a thud on her back, crushing a package beneath her, shaking the welcome wreath on the door across the hall. The ceiling was an endless white. She tried to breathe, but jagged, high-pitched sounds came out instead. Of course she’d slipped. She was the stupid one who still needed to be watched, too young to join the over-ten club, too slow to keep up on bikes. Now she’d proved those points ten times over, coughing and wheezing, stunned and staring at the ceiling.
The door swung open. Esme rolled off the box, trying not to make those awful animal sounds. Her hand landed on something soft and familiar. It was hair. Rows of different-colored hair, shiny and tied into neat ponytails without a head. Esme stared at the red ponytail in her hand, more orange than red, and felt sick. Had it come from a real person? She dropped it into the crushed box but couldn’t hide. Birdman’s bald spot shone in the light, his eyes puffy behind milk-bottle glasses, lips cracked. A scar gashed across his bare chest, long healed but thick as rope.
Run. But her breath kicked out in wheezes so powerful they made her shoulders heave. Madeline and Nick thundered down the staircase. The pain in her chest echoed the hopeless feeling in her stomach. They’d left her behind. Her hand slid around the carpet and touched envelopes. Birdman watched her carefully; then he knelt and pulled her up by the shoulders. She looked away from him, embarrassed by the red-brown nipples, the scar, the thin, spidery hair on his chest.
“Can’t breathe?” he asked gently, quietly, as if he were afraid one of the other doors would snap open and someone would take her away. His hands were hot weights on her shoulders and smelled like plastic and glue. Esme stood very still. His thumb moved in small circles, rounding her shoulder like clock hands, ticking away trapped time. She shook her head.
“It’ll come back,” he said. “Just stay still.” Through the open door, Esme saw a plastic arm on a table, its fingers curled gently, the forearm as long as her own. She stared at the small shoulder, the connecting piece to a plastic doll torso. She was able to breathe now but felt light headed, dizzy, her heart oddly still. If she fainted, would he take her ponytail? She pictured it chopped off and in that box, clean and brushed, a stump on her head where it used to be. His hands weren’t tight on her shoulders. She could shrug them off and run after Nick and Madeline, but something about Birdman’s colorless eyes behind those thick glasses made Esme think he’d squeeze tighter if she moved.
“OK?” he asked in that same whisper. She nodded. His hands slid from her shoulders to her waist, pulling the hem of her shirt to straighten it into place.
Get off, she prayed but said nothing. Her throat burned. Her chest ached. If there wasn’t so much burning, she’d feel a scream building. He took a deep breath and sighed, blowing peppermint toward Esme. She wanted to press her hands over her mouth and hide.
“What a mess,” he said. Envelopes scattered the hallway, legal-size ones and colorful postcards with pictures and prices, Pennysavers in red plastic. He kicked things through the open door, where the doll arm was on the table. His spine curved into spiky disks as he bent for one piece after the next. Esme backed away, forgotten. She walked until she reached the stairs, shoulders shaking where his hands had been, and then she ran, thundering down the concrete steps so loudly she hoped everyone would open their doors to see what the noise was so she’d have lots of people to hide behind.
Outside on the stoop, Nick sniggered, waving his pile of mail like a trophy. “Couldn’t keep up?”
Madeline sorted envelopes by size, lining the corners neatly over each other.
Where were you? her siblings should have asked. We were worried about our third musketeer.
“They all have different names,” Madeline mumbled instead.
“What happened, baby?” Denny sneered, spitting the word with such force Esme felt like he’d knocked the wind out of her again. Only this time, she wasn’t wheezing. Her fist sliced through the thick air and left a heat trail behind it, cracking Denny’s nose. She wished she could’ve hit Birdman, broken those glasses in two, leaving him small eyed and blind in his pile of fake mail. Hot, wiry pain shot through her arm and numbed her elbow. Tears sprang behind her eyes, but she stuffed them back into her sore chest and grabbed her elbow, rubbing it the way her mother would have done if Esme had fallen off a bike.
“What the fuck?” Denny’s voice was shrill and muffled behind a mess of blood and fingers.
I did that, Esme thought stupidly. Red spots spread on Denny’s T-shirt. It seemed impossible. Not her small fist. Her knuckles were a blueish purple. Nick caught her hands behind her back just as Cerise’s bride opened the door.
She stood in the doorway, hair braided neatly, lilac blouse tucked into her skirt. Her new diamond glittered in the sun as she pressed her hand against her cheek, eyes narrowed in concern. She hovered by the door, unsure if it was safe to walk past these kids. Esme saw herself as the bride saw her: hands behind her back, chest heaving, red faced, hair shaken loose from its ponytail, sweating and angry in the hot sun. Her shoulders fell.