“Stay here,” I told him. “Breathe deeply. When I clap my hands, you will awaken.”
I didn’t clap yet. I went to the trailer door, threw it open. Autumn looked up at me, embarrassment in her face overshadowed by desperation. “Help me,” she said.
When I pedaled away from Harmony Homes Manor, I felt proud of myself—a feeling that lasted all of a minute or so. The hypnoses would prove successful, I was sure. Jesse would stop taking V, and Autumn would never smoke again. And neither one would remember being hypnotized.
Autumn had begged me to help her quit. I knew the health risks of smoking, and I figured I was doing something good. She was harder to put under than her brother, but once she went, she went deep.
Why, then, did I feel so guilty, after that first minute passed?
In my head I heard my mother’s voice—Meddling is wrong—and father’s words: With knowledge comes the obligation to use it justly.
And I answered them: I didn’t meddle. What I did was just.
So why did the guilt persist?
I rode through town, a sudden wind rising to whip my hair out behind me and to spin the artificial wreaths and candles hanging from overhead wires strung across the street. The sky had turned the color of wet ashes. Two young men in the post office parking lot shouted something after me, but I couldn’t tell if it was “Bitch!” or “Witch!” Once I turned the corner onto our road, the wind seemed to propel me toward home, faster than I wanted to get there.
I left the paved street and pedaled up the road leading to our gate. I found myself listening, listening hard. But the world was silent. No sounds of birds, or insects, or overhead planes. As suddenly as it rose, the wind had died off, and the trees were still. My bicycle tires rubbed softly against the dirt. I pushed my hair back from my forehead and tried to think of a song to push me the last mile home. All that came to mind was “Ring of Fire.”
I rounded the last bend, reminding myself of all I had to look forward to. The Yule feast was only a few days off, and Mãe and Dashay were already baking gingerbread, and Dashay had made a Christmas cake using dried fruit and dark brown sugar. The house would be fragrant with ginger and vanilla and Sangfroid and pine from the Yule tree they’d planned to get today. My first real holiday, I thought.
Then I saw the beige van. It was parked facing our gate (on which I could see the faint outline of the word KILLER, even though Dashay had painted over it).
I braked the bike so hard that I nearly fell. Then I regained balance, jerked the handlebars, and took off in the opposite direction. My heart pounded, and I can’t tell you all I felt. The sense of revulsion was almost familiar now, spreading through me like some dark viscous fluid, rising into my throat, making it hard to breathe.
When I heard the van begin to move behind me, I panicked. I swerved the bike down a side street and into the yard of the first house I saw: small, painted green, set back from the road. I jumped off the bike, let it fall, ran up the steps, and pounded on the front door.
A woman wearing a white apron stained with red blotches opened the door, and before she could say a word I pushed past her, into the house, and slammed the door shut. My hand shook as I set the dead bolt.
The woman was saying something, but I turned toward the front window, and through its lace curtain and gray window screen I saw the van roll up. It stopped. The driver lowered his tinted window. He smiled, showing rows of blackened teeth. I felt his eyes—the white eyeballs with no irises or pupils—pinpoint me, and for a second they seemed to blaze, to cut through the space and screen and curtain like a laser.
I slumped backward, and the woman managed to catch me. “Ariella Montero,” she said. “You’re Sara’s girl. My goodness. Who’s that in the van?”
“Is he gone?” I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate.
“You’re shaking.” She wrapped her arms beneath mine and half dragged me to an upholstered chair. Then she looked outside. “Yes, he’s gone.”
My arms were streaked with something red where she’d grabbed me. “Don’t worry. It’s not what it looks like.” She had a dish towel draped over one shoulder, and she used it to wipe away the streaks. “I just made a red velvet cake. I use cherry juice, and plenty of Sangfroid.”
I took a deep breath and lay back in the chair. “Thank you for letting me in.”
She grinned. “I didn’t have much choice, did I? You tore in here like the hounds of hell were after you.” I recognized her voice, and she began to look like someone I knew. I’d seen her at Flo’s Place, or at the supermarket. Probably both places.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your baking,” I said. “I’ll be okay in a minute, and then I’ll go.”
“You’re not going out there alone.” She was a small woman with curly, dark hair and a heart-shaped face, but her voice carried authority. “He might be waiting. He might come back.”
Her name was Nancy Cousins, and to this day I’m grateful for her kindness. She insisted that I drink a glass of Picardo and tonic, that I eat a slice of red velvet cake, still warm from the oven, and then that I call home.
“Ariella, where are you?” Mãe’s voice had an unusual silky quality to it. She sounded happy, without a care in the world.
Once I’d told where I was and why, she said only, “I’ll be right there,” in her more familiar tone: deliberate calm masking worry.
I hadn’t even finished my Picardo when she showed up. Why is she wearing a dress? I wondered. The dress was boatnecked, made of dark green velvet, and against it her auburn hair shone. Is she wearing mascara?
She was thanking Nancy for taking me in. “So you saw it, too?”
Nancy said, “A Chevy van. Tan colored.”
“And the driver?”
“Some weird-looking bald guy,” Nancy said. “Spooky eyes. You’d better call the police.”
Mãe rested her hands on my shoulders, as if to steady them.
He may not be alive, I thought, but he’s real.