Help for the Haunted(117)

Eighth grade should have been something I looked forward to, considering it was my last year of junior high. But from the very first day I stepped through the doors to see the same old teachers and Gretchen and Elizabeth, who had never been quite the same toward me since that article appeared in the paper, I couldn’t help but feel that the year ahead was simply something to be gotten through.

What I looked forward to most was our visit to see Rose, since the ninety days would soon be up. My mother informed me that we would be going to Saint Julia’s the weekend after school began. No one mentioned enrolling Abigail as she’d hoped. Instead, she walked me to the bus stop each morning in her bare feet and met me there each afternoon.

Only a few days into the first week, I stepped off the bus to find her waiting for me the same as always. Even before I saw the fresh scratches and bruises on her toes, I sensed something different in her expression, which appeared glazed and distant. As the bus lumbered away, Abigail said in a voice less serene than the one I’d finally grown accustomed to: “Let’s not go home for a little while, okay?”

“Okay. But why not?”

“Your parents. There’s someone in the house with them.”

“Your father?” I said. There was a certain inevitability and relief in my voice. “Did he finally come back?”

“No,” she told me. “Not yet anyway. But that’s what I need to talk to you about. Your mom told me that he’ll be coming to get me any day now.”

She had begun walking, and I trailed along. Soon, she led us to the foundation directly across from our house, where Rose and I used to create our imaginary homes. The crumbling cement steps, the twisted iron rods in one corner, the fallen tree resting in a puddle—I looked over the edge at all those things, trying to imagine us playing there now.

Despite her bare feet, Abigail started down the steps. I worried she might cut herself, but she so rarely bothered with socks or shoes that she seemed unfazed. When she reached the bottom, Abigail picked up a stone and used it to write on the wall the way Rose and I once did with our pastel chalks. An X and a Y—that’s what she drew, placing them at a distance from each other. The sight of those letters put me in mind of that helter-skelter pattern on the van the day she arrived, the doodle of that headless animal with its endlessly swirling tail.

“If you’re in the mood to do algebra,” I said, trying a joke as I looked down at her inside the foundation, “I have plenty of homework in my bag. It’s all yours.”

“That’s not what this is,” she said in a serious voice.

“So what is it then?” I asked, glancing across the lane at my house, feeling impatient.

“It’s more like a geography lesson. One you are going to teach me.” She paused and looked up at me, and I couldn’t help glancing away again across the lane, until she called out. “If I’m at X, which is right here in Dundalk, but I want to be at Y, which is the Baltimore Train Station, what’s the best way to get there?”

[page]It felt odd to have such a serious conversation in the daylight, rather than through the bedroom wall. “Ask my parents. They’ll—”

“They’ll tell me to forget it, Sylvie. They’ll make sure I stay put until my father comes to take me back. And I can’t do that again. Not anymore.”

I stopped and looked at her down in that foundation, the X and Y on the gray wall. “Where are you planning to go?” I asked at last.

“My mother used to have a friend—a nice lady who left the ministry before we did. The two of them wrote letters all the time. I remember that friend’s name and where she moved to.”

“Where?”

“I’m not telling you, Sylvie. Because once I’m gone you’ll feel obligated to tell your parents, to give them the answer they want.”

She was right, of course, but I couldn’t help feeling surprised she’d figured that out about me. I would always give them the answers they wanted. “Well, even if you get to this friend of your mom’s, then what?”

“Then she will help me contact my mother.”

The two of us stood there a moment, staring at that X and Y.

“It’s not the best plan, but it’s the only one I’ve got,” Abigail said finally. “So please. Help me.”

At last, I put down my books and descended those crumbling stairs into the old foundation, where I took the stone from her hand. The last time I had drawn on that wall, it was to create a pretend window, one with pink curtains that looked out onto a yard with lime-green grass and lavender flowers. Now, I drew a map of the path through the woods, past the poultry farm to the spot where you could hear the highway in the distance. “This would be your quickest way,” I told her. “The path opens up right behind this foundation. Just follow it to the highway. Then follow that into Baltimore. There must be signs for the train station, I’m sure.”

“Thanks,” Abigail said, sounding genuinely grateful. “But there’s one more thing. I need money, Sylvie. Enough for a train ticket at least.”

At some point during our late-night talks, I’d let slip a mention of those essay contests and how proud I was of winning them, how I’d been saving the money for something special, though I didn’t know what that was just yet. “Let’s go back to the house and have dinner,” I said, stalling before she mentioned the obvious. “Maybe go get ice cream and swim. It’s still warm enough.”