Servants of the Storm (12 page)

He laughs, his eyes far away, imagining the scene. “Well, I’ve got that night off. I never miss my girl’s opening night. It seems like a strange time to put on
The Tempest
, considering . . . last year.”

I swallow and look down. “Mrs. Rosewater did it on purpose. She said it was like a memorial, that she had a dream about it. She’s got a speech planned, and they’re going to honor the . . . missing students, I guess.”

We both eat quietly for a minute as I try not to cry and he tries to give me the space to feel like it’s okay to cry. After I choke down a few mouthfuls, he tries again.

“You’ve got some lines in this one, don’t you?”

“Barely,” I grumble.

“Oh, honey. I know it’s hard to go from prima donna to fairy number three. You’ll get back there one day. You were born to be a leading lady.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I say, and I mean it, because I know he understands completely. “So how was work?”

He sighs and takes off his wire-rimmed glasses to rub his eyes.

“Long and dull,” he says. “But I came up with a new story idea.”

“That’s great. I can’t wait to see it onstage.”

“See it? Honey, you’ll be the star.”

He smiles his dreamy smile again, and I smile back. I’ve always felt kind of guilty about how he never got to live out his
dreams because I came along. My parents love each other and all, but his life is definitely not what he imagined when he was younger. Then again, he’s never finished a play, that I know of. I actually have no idea what he does in his study all day while I’m at school.

He squints at me and leans closer.

“Are you okay, sweetheart? You seem different. Did you get a haircut?”

I almost roll my eyes. It’s getting pretty old, being asked the same question by everyone I know, even if it’s completely justified. I can’t actually remember the last time I
was
okay. But I slipped up. I was so glad to see my dad that I forgot to act like I was still on the meds.

“Oh,” I say, slumping down. “I guess I forgot to take my pill today.”

I get the bottle out of the cabinet, shake out an aspirin, and gulp it down with milk. My dad makes the strangest face as he watches, like he’s satisfied and disappointed at the same time.

“Guess I need to take mine, too,” he says sheepishly, and I’m surprised to see him fetch a similar bottle out of the vitamin cabinet.

“Since when are you on pills, old man?”

“It’s not a big deal,” he says, tossing back a white tablet. “My blood pressure was a little high at the last screening, so we’re trying to keep it in check. It happens when you get older.”

We both sit back at the table. His eyes go unfocused, but I’m
not done talking to him, so I try to draw him back into conversation.

“So what’s your new play about?”

“Huh? Oh. You know. Life.” He waves his hands around and stares at the wall.

“How far did you get?”

“I don’t know. A little.”

But he won’t look me in the eye, and a ripple of unease goes up my neck. My dad’s not acting like my dad, not at all.

“What was your blood pressure?” I ask him, my voice sharp.

“I don’t remember,” he says, staring off into space. “It’s fine.”

It doesn’t make sense. He takes his blood pressure medicine and goes into a numb fuzz, just like the one I was in on my meds. The bottles are the same. The pills look the same. Why would we both be on the same dopey meds for completely different reasons? Where are these pills coming from? And has my mom noticed the similarity? Or, heaven help me, is she somehow involved?

Or maybe I just need to add paranoia to the list of withdrawal symptoms from quitting antipsychotics. When everything is this weird, maybe I just need to look in a mirror for the answers. But I can’t let it go.

“Old man,” I say. “Dad.” He looks at me and crumples over on the table.

“You look pretty today, honey,” he says.

I sigh. I know I’m pretty, but that’s three times I’ve been told so in less than a day. Something’s definitely wrong.

“I think you need to go to bed before you fall asleep at the table,” I say.

He nods his head and wanders out of the kitchen without a word.

“Love you, old man,” I say to the empty room.

Is he drugged, like I was? Or is he just exhausted from a long shift? I get his bottle out of the cabinet and compare it to mine. Identical. Unmarked. No sticker with pharmacy information. Plain, snowy-white pills. There’s no way it’s blood pressure medicine. But there’s no way my dad would ever lie to me either.

This is so messed up, and he’s the person I would usually talk to when I’m this confused. If I go to my mom, she’ll just tell me I’m crazy and take me to see my therapist. I miss my dad, and I think I know how Baker felt while I was out of it, in the numb fuzz—very, very alone.

I try to finish my breakfast, but the cereal sticks in my throat. My mind is an unfamiliar and unwelcome snarl of emotions. Confusion about what’s become of my life. Anger at Baker. Worry for my dad. Curiosity about Isaac, and an eerie fascination with Charnel House. And an overall, constant sense of disquiet, of fear looming like storm clouds. The pieces of the puzzle are ugly, and they don’t fit together. Mr. Hathaway and Grendel, Old Murph and the fox-eared girl and the whispering catwalks. And, now that I think about it, Tamika. I haven’t seen her since I ran offstage. She’s not the kind of girl who misses school or rehearsal, and I’m surprised that she didn’t call to gossip about what happened with
Mrs. Rosewater, now that she knows I’m off my meds and back to mostly normal.

Back down the hall, I stand in the doorway staring at the dark pit of my room, which hasn’t changed in a year. Lights low, curtains closed, musty. It looks like a cell, and I hate it. I especially want to get my bed away from the paw prints on the window, so I start throwing things around and tugging furniture. My twin bed goes from under the window to against the solid wall shared with my dad’s study. Under where the bed used to be I find all sorts of crap I’d forgotten about, including most of my socks and a book I never finished and half of the Best Friends necklace Carly and I wore all through middle school.

My half is a broken gold heart that says
Friends
, and Carly was buried with the other half of the heart that reads
Best
. There’s some crud on mine, and I feel horrible for letting it sit in the dark all this time. I take it to the bathroom and rinse it under the water until it shines again, then leave it on a washrag to dry beside the sink.

Back in my room I get the bed where I want it and toss the socks into the hamper and dump the trash into an empty bag. It’s invigorating, having a little power again.

“Dovey? What on earth is that racket?” My mom appears in my doorway, bleary-eyed and frizzy-haired.

“Wanted to move my room,” I say dully, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Had a nightmare.”

Her mouth twitches back and forth, and I can see the thoughts ticking by behind her eyes.

“They said nightmares can be a side effect of your pills,” she finally decides. “Maybe ask me first next time, ’kay? And wait until I’m awake?”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry,” I mumble.

Her face softens, the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes deepening as she looks at me.

“Don’t worry about it, honey,” she says. “You do what you need to do.”

She cups my face, her hand warm and dry. I lean into her. Comfort is comfort.

“Besides,” she adds, “that damn dog was howling all night long. That would give anybody nightmares. And your window backs right up to the alley, poor thing.”

I just nod against her.

“What are you doing today, Dovey?”

I sigh into her hand.

“I need a new leotard for the play. I was going to go to the dance store downtown.”

She chuckles. “Grew a bit since gymnastics, didn’t you? Need some money?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll leave a twenty on the counter. I’ve got to go do some business at your grandma’s house. Mrs. Finnegan says she saw shadows inside, thought maybe we had some squatters.”

“Yuck,” I say.

But inside, my guts are seething. The thought of people using
my grandmother’s flood-ruined house, moving around in the places where she lived, is infuriating. I know it’s the poisoned thorn in my mom’s side that we don’t have enough money to fix it back up, and we didn’t have flood insurance, and it’s just sitting there down the street, rotting and unsellable.

“A daughter’s work is never done,” my mom says with a sigh.

She gives me a final pat and walks out into the hall. I shower and get dressed in pretty but nondescript clothes, including a cute jacket that used to be baggy but now fits like a glove. I wear my hair down loose for the first time in months and am amazed at how long it’s gotten. It’s not until I find myself searching for glittery lip gloss that I realize I want Isaac to notice me.

I boot up my laptop and do a search for “Charnel House” first, adding in “Savannah, GA” and “Broughton Street” and “Bull Street,” but still—nothing. Annoyed, I start over with “Catbird Inn” and am gratified to find that it exists—and has decent reviews. And it’s pretty close to the dance store.

I grab the twenty my mom left on the counter, but next to it is a note.
Don’t forget the trash can,
it says. With a groan I head out the back door and hurry down the alley, hoping that Mr. Hathaway and his nasty dog are back inside the house where they belong.

But when I get to his yard, I stop in my tracks.

The chain-link fence has a huge rip in it, like a car burst right out of it. But Mr. Hathaway doesn’t have a car. The wire curls back from the jagged opening, and little drops of dried blood paint
the rusted metal. Otherwise everything is the same as it’s always been, which means his house looks like it was abandoned a century ago. Even his lawn chair from last night is untouched among the weeds. Grendel’s frayed leather collar is broken and laying across the dirt-stained seat.

I speed past, collect the empty trash can, and drag it home as fast as I can. The more quickly I’m out of this neighborhood, the better. It’s hard to believe that it used to feel safe and comfortable. Our happy little house, Carly’s house around the corner, my grandmother on the other side of the alley, and Baker’s house just a few streets over. Now everything about it looks forgotten and sinister, even in the morning sun.

When I back the trash can into its corner of our yard, I stop. Something’s different. At first I think it’s just the usual stink of an old garbage can that should have been replaced last year. But there’s something more under the residual rot. I move around the house, hunting for the source of the stench. It’s somewhere in my yard. I grab a stick and poke around in the bushes.

There it is, behind the hedges against the house. An unidentifiable mass of guts and blood. Long, goopy strings of intestine tangle with bits of wet bone. I shudder when I find the chicken carcass next to the opossum’s face, its beady little eyes wide open in horror. The thing is spread out all over the place. But most of it is under my window, surrounded by bloody paw prints.

I’m sick to my stomach, but I know what I have to do. I’m no coward, and I’m not letting my house carry the stink of death like
that. I use my stick to nudge all the possum chunks into a pile, then go inside and get a garbage bag and scoop them in there with an old shovel. Then I run back down the alley with the bag held far in front of me and dump it all in Mr. Hathaway’s dented old aluminum can. If his dog is going to kill innocent animals, the old man can deal with the guts himself.

I toss the shovel on the ground in my yard and go back inside, where I can finally breathe again. After washing my hands until they burn, I head out to my car and hit the road. Truman Parkway is abandoned this morning, as always, and the streets downtown are quiet too. I park on the curb and run into the dance store. After trying on several leotards, I find one off the clearance rack that I’m willing to wear onstage in front of the entire school and pay for it with my mom’s cash.

Once it’s stashed in my trunk, I’m ready for my next objective. I check my hair in the side mirror of the Buick and put on a fresh coat of lip gloss before driving to the Catbird Inn, which is just as adorable and historic as it sounds. The sidewalk is lined with freshly planted pansies, and the sign proclaims no vacancies. I take the stone steps to the front door and open it sheepishly. An older lady smiles at me from behind a vase of lilies on the counter.

“Can I help you, dear?”

“I’m looking for Isaac, please, ma’am,” I say.

Her smile deepens, and her eyes twinkle impishly.

“He’s in the back garden,” she says. “Right through those doors and down the stairs.”

I thank her and walk through the old-fashioned sitting room. I bet they serve tea in here and tell ghost stories, the bread and butter of a Savannah bed-and-breakfast. My grandmother worked in one when she was younger, and she used to love to tell me about the crazy people who came to stay in the Stanford Room to see a famous ghost that was entirely made up just for that purpose. Part of her job was to play ghost by knocking on the walls and flickering the lights at night, doing her part for the Savannah tourism industry. After hearing her story and seeing how hard she laughed about it, I never considered for a moment that ghosts could be real.

Pushing through the French doors, I emerge on a pretty terrace with the sun in my eyes. The garden is small but beautiful, with a brick walk and roses and a fountain, all twinkling with dew. I have to look around for a minute before I spot a figure pulling weeds against a carriage house. I can tell from the disheveled blond ponytail that it’s Isaac.

I walk up slowly and deliberately, giving him every chance to turn around and start the conversation. But he just keeps at the weeds, shoving them into a yard bag with angry grunts. When I get close enough to see the sweat stains on his raggedy henley, I can see why he hasn’t noticed me. He’s got earbuds in, and music is blaring.

After taking a deep breath and putting on a careful smile, I tap him on the shoulder. He startles and whirls around violently, teeth bared and dark chocolate eyes narrowed. I jump back and
start to wonder if coming here was the best idea, but when he sees that it’s me, he grins and chuckles to himself.