When the Sky Fell on Splendor(22)

“Don’t just leave me!” I hissed as I yanked against the handle. “You can’t just leave me stuck here.”

Arthur had realized I wasn’t behind him and doubled back.

“Franny, stop,” he said, voice muffled by the tinted glass. “It’s locked.”

He was annoyed. Some part of my twelve-year-old self understood why he would be, but all I could do for another second was pull at the handle, still crying under my breath, “You can’t just leave your kid in the car.”

“Franny, unlock the car!” Arthur yelled. “I can’t do anything to help you! Unlock the freaking car!”

I pushed the lock up, and Arthur threw the door open, then turned and ran.

I jumped out of the van and chased him across the lot, feeling stupid and lonely and angry and scared all at once, feelings caught in my belly like a rock too big to pass through my intestines.

I wasn’t thinking about Mark.

All I was thinking was, She didn’t notice I was stuck. She didn’t even notice.

She was a good mom. My parents were good parents. The kind who told you they loved you every time they dropped you off at school or said good night. They took us camping in the summer and bought pumpkins for us to carve in the fall, and they knew our teachers’ names and whether we liked them or not, and when I got inside, I was sure she would wrap her arms around me and apologize for leaving me, and I would know that everything was going to be okay.



* * *




*

My bedroom doorknob shocked me on my way out to meet Remy. This was getting ridiculous. In the time since the sheriff left, I’d mildly shocked myself on the teakettle, two light switches, and the spoon I’d eaten cereal with at dinner.

And not when I’d picked it up. I’d just been holding the spoon when suddenly, a pale-blue spark jumped between my skin and the metal.

Whatever else that thing had done to us, it had left me statically charged.

No sooner did I have the thought than the memory rushed painfully over me.

A horrible sound.

No, a terrifying sound, but beautiful. A thousand violins drawn across strings. Sound everywhere. Sound inside me, and the pain it causes. Splitting me open. Too much pushing through me, my body a sieve for the light to pour through and—

I gasped clear of the memory like I’d just come up from water, and collapsed against the door, breathing hard. I reached for the necklace, and my bare throat felt rubbery and foreign to me.

I spread my palm on the door.

Solid, wooden, sticky with humidity. This was real; what had just happened was, at best, a splotchy memory, and more likely, my imagination.

Still, my teeth were chattering, and the pain throbbing through my body was taking its time easing back.

I looked over my shoulder, checking the crease of light around the door to Mark and Arthur’s room. I’d waited to sneak out until the last possible minute, with the hope that Arthur would have gone to sleep by now.

But now I was relieved to find the light on.

It reassured me I wasn’t alone, that I hadn’t actually been pulled out of my house and body, into a blinding white.

You’re here and whatever that was, it’s over.

I wouldn’t think about it again. If Arthur wanted to spend his last two weeks here going all regressive hypnotherapy to recover those few hours, I couldn’t stop him, but as soon as I talked to Remy tonight, I planned to be done with all this.

I tiptoed down the stairs, and Droog clambered up from the woven rug, tail thwapping the wall. Silently, I signaled for her to lie back down, but she turned her nose to the door and whined.

I waffled for a minute. If I left her here crying, Arthur might hear and realize I was gone. I grabbed her leash, clipped it on to her, and slipped into the inky night.

As soon as we were outside, Droog started straining against the leash, trying to run back through the field. Usually, she knew better than to tear back there—I wasn’t convinced the hermit wouldn’t snap her neck and eat the meat off her bones if she got too close to his fence—but tonight she was throwing a fit, crying and pulling desperately.

I dragged her to my bike and carefully grabbed the rubber handle to avoid another shock as I boarded, then looped the leash around my hand. I flicked on the headlight Arthur had attached to the handlebars for my birthday. He was always getting on me for riding without it, just like he did whenever he saw I’d left the Mace key chain at home.

“I paid good money for that!” was his go-to defense for why it made him so angry, but I suspected it had been shoplifted by Nick, who, in addition to lying, might’ve been a little bit addicted to stealing.

It took only a handful of trips to the mall with him to realize he had a habit of showing up wearing the expensive neon sneakers and black band T-shirt you’d watched him not buy the day before. From there, you started to wonder how a part-time Walmart employee—one responsible for keeping his mother fed and housed—could afford to randomly and regularly present his friends with the exact items he’d watched them pining over.

Sofía, in particular, responded with visible anxiety whenever Nick gifted her something she’d just been eyeing. But our family’s budget was comparable to the Colasantis’, and I probably would’ve felt more guilty if Nick had actually spent money on the baby-duck phone case I was now using.