The Girl Behind the Glass Page 2

  Before the twins could escape to the car, their mother put her arms around them and pushed them down the hall past the bathroom, to the left and into their bedroom.

  It was, as has been said, the smallest, darkest, worst bedroom. It hadn’t always seemed so. Once upon a time, the wall without windows had a bookcase with two shelves of books and a collection of three little china birds. There had been four until a mean, fluffy orange cat knocked off the robin and smashed it. A blue chair used to be in front of the shelves, just in case someone wanted to grab a different book to read.

  Of course those books had been confiscated a long time ago. For no good reason! A few days after that, everything else in the room had been taken away. Nobody cared much about the curtains. Nobody needed the chair or the bed. But losing the books was cruel and horrible. The characters in those pages had been better than friends.

  Better not get upset again. Better not let anger burn. Once the fire started, everything got black like smoke. Even the things that had been nice. Better not think about the future or the past. Just be like the other critters. Just be.

  Only for almost eighty years, there hadn’t been any good books in the house on Hemlock Road. Some people had brought boring ones, like encyclopedias or almanacs or Basic Cooking. Many clung to their Bibles, especially at night. One man hadn’t had any books at all—just magazines full of nasty pictures. Fortunately the mice soon chewed those all up.

  And now girls had come. The room was full of marvelous things again. A bunk bed, a red bookcase with six shelves, a double desk, two yellow chairs, and three big cardboard boxes labeled H/A BOOKS. Someone had already cut the tape. It didn’t take much of a breeze to blow the flap open. A little more air made it waggle back and forth temptingly.

  The twins stood side by side looking at the yard. Without curtains, the windows stared out back with unblinking eyes.

  What did the girls see? Nothing very interesting. A ditch. That was all. The ditch was empty now. Nobody was pacing back and forth. So why did they keep staring at it? They had books to read. Books could carry them away. Didn’t they want that? Didn’t they need that? Maybe not. They had each other. They hadn’t been left alone with nothing.

  The cardboard slapped against the side of the box of books again and again.

  The twins moved a little closer to each other.

  “That’s weird,” Hannah said.

  “Just a draft.” Anna went to close the window. It wasn’t open.

  They looked at each other and wondered.

  Their mother called, “Hannah Anna! Your dad went out and got dinner!”

  The twins ran down the steps and passed the hall tree mirror without looking in the glass.

  “What did you get?”

  “Indian?”

  “Sushi?”

  “Middle Eastern?”

  They gasped when they saw the yellow-and-white bag their father held up.

  “Oh no.”

  “Not fast food.”

  “Are you trying to kill us?”

  For one brief moment, their father thought he would like to. Instead he gave them each a small red cardboard container. The family all sat on boxes in the dining room to eat sandwiches and crispy potato strips. They drank from straws stuck into enormous paper cups like the ones that often ended up in the ditch next to Hemlock Road.

  The family didn’t talk much. They were all tired and yet they all wondered whether they would be able to sleep. The fast food was indeed eaten very quickly. Then dinner was over. The mother helpfully gathered up the uneaten bits and put them in a corner of the kitchen where the mice could easily find them.

  “I’m going to bed,” the mother said.

  “Me too,” the father said.

  “Good night,” the mother said.

  “Sweet dreams,” the father said.

  As if saying that could make it so.

  The parents climbed the stairs. Would Hannah and Anna go with them? No. Hannah got the canvas bag. Then finally, at long last, she and Anna took out their books.

  In the living room, there was a long gray sofa covered with a sort of leather more suitable for shoes. The cushions leaned against the wall, still wrapped in plastic. The twins sat on the sofa anyway, with their backs propped against the sofa’s arms. Their feet met in the middle. Hannah held The Subtle Knife and Anna held The Golden Compass.

  The nautical adventure seemed more promising than the whetstone. And it was. The Golden Compass was actually about a clever girl named Lyra who was searching for her friend. Anna read quickly, skipping to her favorite parts. This was a shame because not everyone had read the book before. It was confusing. Could someone’s best friend be a daemon? Maybe so.

  Selena came in. “We could trade rooms, if you want. Except the ceiling is lower in my room so your bunk beds wouldn’t fit. And I know you like sleeping on top of each other, don’t you?”

  The twins each turned a page in their books.

  “Didn’t you tell me once how you like to have the same dream floating above your heads? I thought that was the cutest thing. You always said cute things when you were little.”

  She waited, hoping they would move so she could sit. They didn’t. They didn’t want her anywhere near them.

  “When will you be done reading?” Selena said.

  What kind of a question was that? How could anyone ever be done reading?

  The twins each turned another page.

  “There’s nothing for me to do,” Selena said.

  Hannah and Anna slammed shut their books.

  “Whose fault is that?” Anna said.

  “Dad should have hooked up the TV,” Selena said.

  Hannah and Anna looked at each other. They said nothing in a very loud way.

  “It isn’t my fault,” Selena said.

  “Hmmm,” Anna said. “Why did we move here, Hannah?”

  “Gee, Anna, I don’t remember.”

  “You think you’re so funny,” Selena said.

  “Maybe we got bored living in the most perfect neighborhood,” Anna said.

  “Rated in the top ten by the National Realtors Association.”

  “You’re really annoying,” Selena said.

  “However, since we intend to be famous writers,” Hannah said.

  “Or politicians,” Anna said.

  “We shouldn’t have perfect childhoods.”

  “We had to move to Helton.”

  “So we could suffer.”

  Selena covered her ears. Nothing could keep hurtful words from boring into a person’s brain.

  Some might have remembered other people’s cruel words and felt sorry for Selena. But it was impossible to forget that teenagers were two-faced. One moment, they seemed nice. The next, they would blithely watch someone die.

  “Don’t forget Dad,” Hannah said.

  “He wanted a longer commute to Manhattan.”

  “He can edit lots of articles riding three hours on the train.”

  “Mom wanted to move,” Selena said.

  “Really?” Hannah and Anna said.

  “She’s glad to have a whole room for making her designs,” Selena said.

  “She has to say that,” Anna said.

  “So you won’t feel like you ruined all our lives,” Hannah said.

  Selena snatched the books away from her sisters and threw them on the floor.

  “Hey!” everybody said.

  “You shouldn’t be mad at me. I tried to get into a decent high school in New York City. I don’t do good on tests.”

  “Don’t do well,” Hannah said.

  “You’re just not very smart,” Anna said.

  “I’m smart in other ways,” Selena said.

  “If you believe that, then you really are dumb,” Hannah said.

  Now that was a very mean thing to say—even if it was true.

  Selena stormed out of the living room, past the hall tree mirror, and partway up the steps. When she could see above the landing and into her bedroo
m, she stopped.

  The door to the bedroom was open. The dark oozed across the floor as if it were a thick kind of mud.

  Hannah and Anna could have picked up their books and gone back to reading. Instead they watched Selena hesitate on the stairs. Then Anna got an idea. Hannah was good at reading minds. She knew what her twin sister was thinking. They slid off the sofa and quietly crept out of the living room into the front hall. When they were right beneath the stairway, they jumped up and shouted, “Boo!”

  Selena screamed and ran into her parents’ room. Unfortunately the father was undressing. She screamed again at the sight of his blue-striped undershorts and ran to the front hall.

  The father put on his pajama bottoms and came out. “What’s going on?”

  “Hannah Anna are so mean,” Selena said.

  “Don’t tease your sister,” the mother came downstairs to say.

  “We were only having fun,” Anna said.

  “However we can in this awful house,” Hannah said.

  “You’re the awful ones,” Selena said.

  “Girls, please. Fighting makes everything worse. Everybody should go to bed,” the mother said.

  “I can’t sleep. My heart’s still pounding,” Selena said.

  “I hope so,” Hannah said.

  “Or you’d be dead,” Anna said.

  “Stop that kind of talk,” the father said.

  “Can I sleep in your room, Mom?” Selena said. “It isn’t fair that I’m the only one who has to sleep all by herself.”

  How dare she talk about what was fair?

  Once again the mother took the oldest daughter’s side. “Sure you can.”

  The father even fetched her pillow and blankets so she wouldn’t have to go into her bedroom to get them.

  Hannah and Anna were left alone downstairs.

  They got back in their spots on the sofa and opened their books. They hadn’t read more than a few pages before Hannah said, “How long will Mom and Dad let her sleep with them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She really was scared.”

  “Did you see her?”

  “When she screamed?”

  They made their faces into grotesque masks.

  Anna laughed, but Hannah wondered, “What do you think she felt in the closet?”

  “Nothing,” Anna said.

  Hannah wasn’t so sure. She remembered the way the door slowly shut.

  “She’s just being a teenager. They have way too many emotions,” Anna said.

  The twins also had too many emotions. None of them were good. They hated the house. They wanted to leave. So did everybody else. Everybody wanted to go far, far away from the house on Hemlock Road.

  But leaving was impossible for some.

  Anna smiled. She wasn’t happy; she had another idea. “Mom and Dad would do anything for Selena.”

  Hannah smiled too. “So if Selena hates it here.”

  “Mom and Dad will leave.”

  “Since the new house isn’t ready.”

  “We have to kick out the renters.”

  “And go home.”

  “To Brooklyn.”

  They slapped hands in triumph.

  “We need to scare her,” Hannah said.

  “We need a plan,” Anna said.

  “A supernatural plan.”

  They left their books and took the notebook with their drawing upstairs. For the first time all day, they were happy. They felt confident about their scheme because they knew they were clever and they had each other.

  But they would never get their lives back to what had been. Never never never. No matter how many years they tried.

  When the humans were all in bed, the critters began to stir. The mice had a lovely feast on those bits of meat and rolls. Then they gnawed the boxes that smelled most promisingly of food. The spiders repaired their damaged webs. The best excitement was in the attic, when the bats unfurled their wings and let go of the rafters.

  The bats swooped around the empty space. They paid no attention to the father’s spluttering snores. For a few moments, all fifty bats moved together to make a great gray beast. Oh, it was swell to soar like that. Then it was over. One by one, the bats slipped through the gaps by the eaves and out into the night to kill.

  Boundaries meant nothing to them. They went wherever they could find food. Some flew over the ditch. Some flew between the hemlocks and beyond the road. Others flew toward the nearest neighbor, who lived on the south side of the house—the revolting old woman who opened cans of food for the wild cats.

  Tonight the cats hissed and fought. Then the yowling started. Yrrow, yrrow, yrrow. As if they were in torment. Why should they be in pain? They had plenty of food. They came and went, doing exactly what they pleased. They weren’t stuck next to the last place on earth they would ever want to be. How could they suffer—they didn’t care one bit about the living or the dead.

  Yrrow, yrrow, yrrow. The sound drove the bats farther and farther away. Even the ones who usually hunted in the yard left. Then there was no reason to stay outside—especially when the house had so many interesting things in it now.

  The twins’ books were on the sofa. According to the cover, The Subtle Knife was a sequel to The Golden Compass. Because they were both facedown, they couldn’t be read. There was no way to flip the pages. The twins had been very careless and inconsiderate. Other children never treated their books like that.

  The father was still snoring. Selena made little sounds as she slept. Was she saying “me” or “mean”? Who cared about the parents or the older sister? The twins’ dreams would be much more interesting. Almost like listening to a friend.

  Hannah and Anna were sleeping next to each other on the bottom bunk. Hannah held a pencil. Anna held their notebook. They hadn’t added to their picture of the Brooklyn street. They had turned to a new page. Along the top, one of them had written: Ghost in Selena’s closet?

  One had drawn an absurd picture of a sheet with eyeholes. The other had drawn a blob of dough with a tuft of hair. What did they know about ghosts? Nothing. Neither drawing looked like it had ever been human, once upon a time.

  The pencil slipped from Hannah’s fingers and rolled across the floor, scaring a mouse. The notebook fell from Anna’s hand. A blank page blew to cover up their drawings. There. That was better.

  Hannah opened her eyes. She stared across the room. Sometimes it was easier to see things in the dark. Other people had found that to be true in the house. That was why they left. No one cared about them. Even if they had brought fascinating books, no one would have ever hoped they would stay. No one would have wanted them as friends.

  Slowly Hannah lifted her head and propped herself up on her left elbow. She blinked. Beyond the lump of Anna under the blankets, Hannah could see shadowy shapes. The flap on the box wasn’t waggling anymore. She held her breath to listen. All she heard was Anna’s breathing—and the pounding of her own heart.

  She shouldn’t be afraid. No one wanted to hurt her. She should go back to sleep. When the sun shone, the house wouldn’t seem so gloomy. In the morning, she would accept the fact that she had to stay.

  Finally Hannah put her head back on the pillow and curved her body around Anna. The two girls fit together as precisely as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  And yet there was room for something to slip between them.

  The next day, a man with tools knocked on the door and asked for Mr. Zimmer. So that was the family’s name.

  “I’m glad you could come so quickly,” Mr. Zimmer said.

  “I bet you are. In a place like this, you need a phone to call for help,” the man with tools said.

  He strung a new wire from the telephone pole into the house. He ran another wire into the kitchen, where the telephone had always been. This new telephone didn’t hang on the wall. It sat on the kitchen counter. Its numbers were on buttons. And it had a shiny silver antenna.

  The first telephone call was for Selena. “Hello,
” she squealed. She didn’t stay in the kitchen, where her mother could hear what she was saying and her younger sisters could supply sound effects. Selena took the phone up to her room and shut the door. She flopped onto her bed and gushed to her friend about the big house in the cute town and how huge her bedroom was.

  She neglected to mention the shut door at the far end of the bedroom. Or what was behind it. In fact, she had forgotten all about it. Her thoughts were a boring jumble of who liked who and who didn’t like who and who would like who if only someone knew who didn’t like who. It didn’t matter what she thought or what she did—until she put down the phone and took an armful of coats over to the closet.

  Would she go in there again?

  A small breeze lifted the hairs along her bare arms. She dropped the coats.

  “I’m all right,” she said. As if anyone in the room cared.

  She thought how she didn’t need a closet. She hadn’t had one in Brooklyn. She would have a beautiful new closet in the new house. Until then, she could make do. She put the coats back in the WARDROBE box and spent the rest of the morning covering the drab brown sides with pictures of handsome men.

  Downstairs, Mr. Zimmer was trying to find places to plug in everything. Since he couldn’t, his thoughts weren’t very nice. Almost everything they owned had cords—including Mrs. Zimmer’s sewing machine. She put it in the dining room next to the big table. Where would the family eat if that was her work space? She wasn’t thinking about meals. She rolled a dressmaker’s dummy in front of the dining room window. It had the curves of a woman but no head—just like a silly teenage girl. Ha!

  Where were Hannah and Anna? They weren’t reading The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife anymore. That was good. Those books were too unsettling for those who really had been cut off from loved ones.

  Why didn’t Hannah and Anna get a book like The Story of the Treasure Seekers? Yes, the Bastable children had their sorrows. Their mother was dead and their father had lost his money. The children were always getting into trouble. Like the time they made the neighbor boy Albert dig for treasure and he nearly got buried alive. The Bastables squabbled too, because Dora was so bossy and acted like she was better than the others. But in the end, everything came right. What was the point of reading a book if it