Unspeakable Things(46)

When I was done, I went searching for Sephie. The messy potluck tables were exactly as I’d left them. She must have seen me come out, for sure heard me puking, but she didn’t like throw-up, and so I wasn’t surprised she hadn’t rushed over to hold my hair. I couldn’t locate her on the trails, either, or around the bonfire, so I ran to the cars to count them. The field grass was sharp as I wove in and out of the vehicles, peering in the windows, feeling the sweet dew gather on my calves, shivering under the cold eye of the mustard moon.

I couldn’t find Sephie. Where was Sephie?





CHAPTER 27

May 28, 1983, late!

Dear Jin: How are you? Good, I hope. I’m fine, mostly. I might have an idea who’s attacking boys from my school, but I have to dig around some more. I know from the TV that when a criminal gets as brazen as this guy, he’s losing his mind. If somebody doesn’t stop him soon . . .

I’m really enjoying Nellie Bly’s Trust It or Don’t. Sometimes I think it’s the only thing keeping me from going bonkers. I read one the other night about heliotropes. Do you know what they are? They’re plants that always find the sun. I want to be a heliotrope. Just joshing!

I’d sure like a visit from you. Can you come here?

XOXOXO, Cassie





CHAPTER 28

The next morning, I tiptoed down the stairs and around the sticky red Solo cups and the paper plates crusted with food, the overflowing ashtrays and sour beer bottles. I’d cleaned outdoors but not inside. I wasn’t a saint.

I’d stuffed my pajamas, tomorrow’s clothes, my Nellie Bly’s Trust It or Don’t, and Lynn’s present into my backpack. The gift I’d wrapped was dime-size, a delicate metal moonrise dangling from a silver chain, so precious to me, so special, that I hadn’t yet removed it from its box. Jin had sent it to me for Christmas the year before last, and I’d had to lie to her the couple times she’d asked if I’d worn it.

When I heard someone rustling in the kitchen, I almost scurried back to my room to wait them out. It’d make me late for Lynn’s party, though. It was an all-day party! We were meeting at the roller rink, then heading to Lynn’s for a sleepover. Mom had already okayed me going. It’d looked windy outside when I rose early, and so I’d budgeted an extra fifteen minutes for the bike ride to town. I couldn’t waste that time hiding from a partygoer. I squared my shoulders and soldiered into the kitchen, hoping it was someone relatively sober who was rooting around for breakfast.

“Mom?”

She was kneading dough, flattening it and then wrapping the edges toward the middle until it was a ball again, striking it with the pad of her hand. She’d mixed the dough yesterday and stored it in the fridge so she could bake cinnamon rolls for everyone who slept over. I should have known she’d be up this early taking care of the meal.

For my mom, food was love.

“Morning.” She didn’t glance up, but if she had, I bet her eyes would have been sad behind her owl glasses. Her skin was gray-dusted, her hair pulled back in a greasy ponytail. A wormy blue vein pulsed on the back of each hand as she kneaded the dough.

“Morning. I’m heading to Lynn’s.”

When Mom finally looked at me, I saw I’d guessed wrong. Her eyes weren’t sad. They were ghostly, big scary windows on an abandoned house. Looking into them gave me chest pains.

Mom didn’t respond.

“How’s Sephie?” I asked impulsively. Last night I’d looked everywhere, including her room, until I was so tired I’d walked into a tree. I hadn’t checked her bedroom again before I came down the stairs this morning. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to wake her up.

Mom blinked. “Fine. Why?”

“No big deal.” I shrugged. “I’m staying over tonight at Lynn’s. I already told you, and you already said you were cool with it.”

She went back to her rhythmic kneading. I tugged on the loops of my backpack. I could see parts of her scalp through her thinning hair as she pushed at the dough. I wondered if she felt as pretty as Kristi, or the other women who Dad slept with right in front of her. I moved toward the door but stopped with my hand on the knob, turning back to face her. “You could get a divorce.”

She opened her mouth to laugh, I think, but rock-heavy words tumbled out instead. “It’s not that easy.”

I’d already used five minutes of the fifteen I’d budgeted for biking against the wind. “Can I try?” I pointed at the dough.

“Wash your hands first.”

I obliged. There were three cigarette butts in the sink. Mom hated smoking and loved her kitchen. I chucked them into the garbage and rinsed out the sink before lathering up my hands with the homemade basil soap Mom made every summer before her herbs bolted. I rinsed them, wiped them, and then took the miniature ball of dough she’d pinched off. I mimicked her movements but couldn’t get my dough uniformly flat like hers.

She nudged the rolling pin toward me. “You need to work it.”

I floured the length of the wooden pin before poising it dead center on my dough ball, leaning into the dowel handles to push the dough upper left, then upper right, then toward me left, toward me right. It flattened like Play-Doh, cracking at the edges. I folded it back into a square.

It smelled clean and solid. Flour, milk, sugar, eggs, yeast, salt.