Unspeakable Things(25)

He’d give me his paper airplane necklace.

But how to stay in contact with him once school was out? No way would I accidentally stumble across him. We ran in different circles, you know? The only way I was guaranteed to run into him this summer was if I joined his church, which seemed unlikely. We were an atheist family, at least that’s what Dad said. When I asked why, he said, “Over in ’Nam I realized the only god is the sun coming up one more day. I swore if I survived, I’d never take another sunrise for granted.”

That started out okay, he said, but then there were only so many kinds of sunrises after a while, and they all started to look the same.

So no worshipping anything at our house.

No, I had one day—tomorrow—to connect with Gabriel before school was out, and the only way I could think of to do that was to have him sign my yearbook. That idea came to me whole. Once I had my plan, I was able to fall right asleep, mosquito or no.



I woke with a start, my blood pumping a warning. I held my breath even though I didn’t know what had woken me. My clock was outside the closet door. I’d have to open it to see the time, but something under my skin was telling me to be still.

The crack of thunder made me squeal, but then I relaxed.

A storm.

That’s what had woken me. The weather had finally broken. I sniffed, inhaling the close sweetness of a spring rain. The temperature had dropped a couple degrees. I snuggled into my quilt nest, a smile on my face.

But then I heard the clip.

And another.

Clip.

Two more.

Clip. Clip.

It sounded so near. Dad must be right below my floor grate, clipping his nails.

How many nails had he trimmed before I woke? How many left before he came to the bottom of the stairs? The silence crackled. My arm hairs were electric. I smoothed them over, trying to quiet the bloodthump of my heart.

The slap of the clipper hitting the kitchen counter chilled me.

Dad sauntered to the bottom of the stairs.

He’d done this on and off since December. Mom had started as yearbook adviser the same month. It meant she worked late, and she’d be so tired when she finally got home that she’d stumble to bed.

Some of those nights she was gone, not every but some, Dad would clip his nails and then creep to the steps, every floorboard groan like a map of where he stood.

He’d walk to the base of those stairs and stand there for minutes at a time, never putting his foot on the first tread. My bedroom was the first one off the stairs, Sephie’s at the end of the hall. There was a room between us, mostly storage. I didn’t know what Dad wanted out of the storage room, but it made me feel trapped-in-a-haunted-house that he could never seem to remember to grab it during the day.

The first time he’d stood at the bottom of the stairs was the last night I’d slept on top of my bed, like a normal girl. Dad’d never gone beyond that first step, not any of those nights, but he could.

Tonight he could.

I knew that I should have hollered down one of those nights that it was okay to grab whatever it was he needed to grab already, that . . . that if he was worried about waking up me and Sephie, lurking at the bottom of those stairs was just about the worst way to go. But I couldn’t open my mouth. That haunted-house feeling wouldn’t let me. Then morning would come, and there would be the sun all bright and safe, and I couldn’t find a single good reason to bring up the stairs thing.

But I’d land right back here, quivering under my bed or in my closet, wondering why the heck I hadn’t brought it up because Dad was standing there, at the bottom of the stairs, I could almost see him through the wood and the walls. I couldn’t quite make out his face, but I knew how it would look, half-erased from drinking, his body swaying.

hurry up, morning

I tried to slow my heartbeat to keep the fear poison from spreading. I bet this was how Clam had felt when he was abducted. The other boy, too, if there was one. I wanted to help them so bad right then, find out who’d hurt them and make it stop even if Clam had gone weird on me. Another rip of thunder tore through the sky, and I bit my tongue to keep from yelping. The wind stretched the branches as close to the house as they could reach, whipping leaves and twigs at the siding, warning Dad not to walk up those stairs.

He didn’t listen.

He stepped on that first tread slowly, I could tell by the tone of the creak, like he was tasting it with his foot. Then came the second stair, its cry as familiar to me as my own name. My intestines gurgled, and I suddenly had to poop so bad I thought I’d die. I shifted, scaring up the wind chime noise of the hangers. I tried to squeeze my eyes shut and breathe regularly.

Mom, I said, but my throat was too bleached to make noise.

Dad paused on the third step.

He’d never gotten this close.

Fear gobbled me.

My senses fell away, leaving only a two-word drumbeat in my skull. Run. Hide. Run. Hide.

Except there was nowhere to go.

The wind screamed at Dad, the lightning sliced through the night, turning the crack under the closet door as bright as day.

Dad listened to that last warning, finally, backing down those three steps. He shuffled off to his and Mom’s bedroom, banging the door closed behind him.

I unclenched my hands, feeling the ridges my fingernails had tattooed into the soft meat of my palms.

I’d die if he ever came all the way up those stairs.