True Places(35)

The second layer of the house Suzanne called the “upstairs,” one of the first things she’d said that made sense. “We’re almost done.”

Iris stopped, sniffing the air. “What kind of snake lives here?”

Suzanne seemed surprised. “You can smell it? It’s a black snake. A pet.” She knocked on one of the many doors. “Reid?”

A voice from inside. “Coming.”

The door opened and a boy stood before her, also very tall. He had Suzanne’s eyes. “Hi. I’m Reid. But you probably guessed that.” He smiled and squirmed a little, as if his skin didn’t fit him right. He looked down at his feet. Iris looked at them, too, and wondered what was so interesting about them.

“I’m Iris.”

Reid nodded and glanced at her, longer this time. “Well, if you need anything, I’m right here. Except when I’m not.”

Suzanne said, “School, you mean.”

“Yeah, school.”

“Thanks, Reid.”

Iris’s room was next to Reid’s, opposite a bathroom. Brynn’s room was at the end of the hall, but Suzanne didn’t take her there. Instead she settled Iris in her new room and left, saying she would come back later. Iris gazed around the room in wonder, unable to digest that this entire space was hers. At the hospital, she’d reasoned, she had her own room because she was ill. Suzanne had said the clothes in the closet and drawers were hers to use, but she decided to look through them later. She lay on the bed and stared out the window, thinking she would never be able to sleep in this strange place. The window was open, and the warm breeze reached her. Birds sang, a pair of wrens dueting and a mockingbird running through its repertoire, three times for each call. She closed her eyes and listened to the birds, and before she could worry about anything else, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, it took Iris a moment to realize she was no longer at the hospital. Suzanne was in the doorway, silhouetted by light behind her.

“Dinner’s ready, if you’re hungry.”

“Okay.”

Iris was hungry, even though she’d had lunch. It was as if eating made her hungrier. She would have liked to eat in her room, but Suzanne didn’t offer that.

Suzanne’s family was waiting at the table. Brynn was talking to Whit and seemed happier than before. Suzanne talked to Reid, but he didn’t say much. Iris didn’t want to talk. She wanted to eat, so she took her plate to the kitchen, where she had eaten before. She pretended she couldn’t hear the voices in the next room and finished her food without tasting it. As she passed through the room where the others were, she told Suzanne she was tired and went upstairs. All that food and all that commotion exhausted her, and as she lay on the bed staring out the window and worrying about what would happen to her, she fell asleep.

She awoke sometime later, confused again about where she was. A small light glowed a few inches above the floor near the door. Suzanne’s house, she remembered. It felt like the middle of the night even though it wasn’t fully dark outside. She went to the window overlooking the backyard. Most of the yard was in deep shadow; the light came from the front of the house. Filled with a sudden longing, Iris pulled the blanket from the bed and left the room. She paused in the hallway and listened. No one was moving around. She crept to the stairs and down to the kitchen. She turned the knob of the outside door but it would not open. Her fingers found a latch above the knob, which she twisted slowly until it clicked.

Outside. Alone. How long had it been? She had lost track of the weeks since Suzanne had found her. Iris breathed in the cool night air, the scent of blooms lingering, and crossed the cold, flat stones onto the short grass and then to the far corner, where the shadows were impenetrable. She wrapped the blanket around her and lay down facing away from the house and the light in the road. A car drove by somewhere in the distance. A dog barked several houses away. A door opened and closed. Finally it was quiet. Not woods quiet, but better.

Ash? Are you there?

A feeling, like honey slipping down her throat.

Yeah, I’m here. Where else would I be, chipmunk?

Iris put her hand over her mouth to stop from laughing. He called her that because she never could stay still. I thought you got lost?

Not me. There was a pause. You maybe. His voice trailed into a pool of thick sadness.

Iris’s throat closed. I’m sorry.

What are you going to do?

I wish I knew. She reached her hand out into the darkness to be closer to him. She wished with her whole heart she could have him back, be in the woods with him again, kicking through the stream together, hunting rabbits and squirrels, lying on their backs outside at night watching the stars blinking down at them. Curled in her blanket, arm outstretched, Iris thought she felt a slight thickening of the air between her fingers.

Don’t go, Ash. Don’t leave me.

The night fell into a thorough silence. Iris tucked her hand into the blanket, closed her eyes, and pulled the silence inside herself. Around the small yard in which she lay huddled, a wood emerged, hundreds of trees pushing up from the earth in all directions, straining for the stars, stretching their limbs wide: hickory and bull pine, sycamore and black cherry, sassafras and hornbeam, sumac and ash.





CHAPTER 16

Brynn groped for her phone on the nightstand and shut off the alarm. No way it was time to get up already. She pulled the covers over her head. Her legs felt like tree trunks after the huge set of kickboarding at last night’s practice. It was all good, though. She was getting stronger and faster. No pain, no glory. And if she didn’t get her ass out of bed, no breakfast.