The Invited(11)

She’d make it up to him later. Buy him one of the chocolate puddings he loved from the school cafeteria or leave a new comic in his locker. Mike loved the Green Lantern. When they were younger, they used to play this imaginary game where Mike was always the Green Lantern—he even made his own magic ring out of a short piece of copper pipe that turned his finger green—and Olive was the bad guy he was trying to catch. Olive knew Mike still carried that old ring—far too small now—around in his pocket, his own weird good luck charm.

Olive looked back at the out-of-state couple now, binoculars pressed against her eyes, and felt anger writhing around like worms in her belly.

“I banish you,” she said, which sounded dumb, really, but it was something she’d read in a book once. A book about a kingdom and dragons and magical things, and she thought maybe they were magic words that might drive the people away. “I banish you.”

She was no better than Mike and his dumb old ring. There was no such thing as magic. She was fourteen years old. Too old to believe in stupid things like wishes and magic words or rings.

    Their being here would ruin everything.

She would never find the treasure if she had to sneak around in the dead of night. And she had to find it soon. Time was, as they say, of the essence.

Some people said it was all a lie, a rumor, that it didn’t even exist. Even Mike didn’t believe. Not really, anyway. He pretended to, just to make Olive happy. He went along with her whenever she searched for it and acted like she might find it any day, but she could tell he didn’t think it was ever gonna happen.

But Mike, smart as he was at math and reciting every fact he’d ever read in any book, was also clueless about so much. And of course, most people were idiots.

Olive knew better. She knew because her own mother had told her the truth.

“Of course it’s real!” her mama told her two years ago. They were in Olive’s room, doing spring cleaning—taking down the curtains, washing the windows and woodwork. Olive loved spring cleaning. She always kept her room neat and organized, but it was even better after she and Mama scrubbed everything down. Everything glowed, and the lemon cleanser smell made Olive feel bright and warm.

“She knew they were coming for her, see, and she took all the gold and silver, all the jewels, and buried it in a secret place,” Mama explained as she pulled back the bed so they could scrub the floor underneath. “Somewhere in the woods that border the bog. Then, once the treasure was safe, she tried to run, thinking she’d come back for it later.”

“But they caught her,” Olive said, dipping her mop into the sudsy bucket.

“They sure did. Her own daughter led them right to her. That’s what folks say.”

“I would never do that to you, Mama,” Olive said, wringing out the mop.

“I know you wouldn’t.” Mama ruffled Olive’s hair. “And there’s something else I know, Ollie Girl; something I’m absolutely sure of. You and me, we’re going to find that treasure. It’s our destiny.”

Olive loved this: knowing they had a destiny. That they were a part of something that was bigger than them, connected to events that had happened lifetimes ago. She could see it so clearly that day as they cleaned together: her and Mama finding that treasure, digging it up out of the ground. They’d be famous. Rich. Mama said they could use that money to pay off all their bills, pay off the mortgage even, then go traveling around the world—just them and Daddy. Olive pictured it: how all the kids at school would turn on the TV at night, and there would be Olive, smiling out from the evening news, because she and Mama had found the treasure that no one believed was real.

    But then something changed. Mama discovered a different destiny for herself—one that didn’t include Olive. It started small: she got quieter, more secretive. Olive couldn’t pinpoint when it started, but Mama stopped talking about the treasure. Once, at dinner, when Olive asked about it, Mama laughed at her like she was stupid, said, “There is no treasure, Ollie. Not really. It was just a story I told you when you were a kid. But you’re getting to be too grown-up for silly stories like that.”

And Mama started acting like she hardly knew Olive and Daddy, like being in the house made her skin crawl. She got all jumpy, was always making up excuses to go out: they needed milk; it was a beautiful night for a long walk; a friend needed help with something. She started spending more and more time away from home. She even skipped spring cleaning that year, and when Olive brought it up, Mama shrugged, said the house was clean enough.

Olive heard her parents fighting late one night last summer, heard her daddy say, “Who is he?,” followed by “Half the town knows it.” Mama denied it, asked him please for the love of God to lower his voice.

Then, in the morning, Mama didn’t come down for breakfast. Usually, she was the first one up and had the coffee perking, but that morning, Olive came into the kitchen and found Daddy pouring hot water over instant coffee.

“Mama’s not up?”

“She’s not here,” Daddy said, clenching his jaw.

“Where is she?”

Daddy didn’t answer, just looked away, dark circles under his red eyes. And part of Olive was glad he hadn’t answered, hadn’t told her the truth.

    Over the next days and weeks, Olive tried hard to block out the gossip she heard around town: the hushed whispers spoken by all the adults at the general store and the library, even by the kids in school. That was the worst—starting high school last fall and hearing all the older kids whispering, “Her mama ran off with some other man. Must suck to have a slut for a mom.” She walked the long, too-bright halls with her head down, pretending not to hear, pretending not to notice.