One
Eleanor stared at the grandfather clock in the third-floor hall. It stood eight feet tall, made of dark oak. A bone-white pendulum hung within the case, carved like cords woven together in a loose diamond. It reminded her of the end of a key, but maybe that was only because of the keys that were painted on the wood around the clock face: thirteen identical keys in gold. The last key was almost entirely rubbed away.
The clock must be very old. It felt like it had tracked the passing of years and years. But she was not staring at the clock because it was tall, or impressive, or old. She was staring at for three reasons.
The first was that the clock hadn’t been there when she went to sleep last night. Eleanor was sure of it. It stood opposite her door, and she felt certain she would have noticed an eight-foot-tall clock outside her bedroom or heard someone moving it into place.
The second was that those thirteen keys, gleaming against the dark wood, were the precise shape of the birthmark on her wrist.
The third was that the hands of the clock were running backward.
It’s just a clock, she told herself. Nothing sinister. Maybe it had belonged to her grandparents, and Aunt Jenny had inherited it along with this house and the old car in the back shed that didn’t run and the rambling, neglected orchard that spilled out behind the house like a half-grown forest.
Except that it hadn’t been here last night.
And that wouldn’t explain the keys. Or why the hands were moving backward—the second hand gliding from twelve to eleven to ten, all the way around to one; the minute hand clicking back every sixty seconds as the pendulum went left to right to left to right.
The clock chimed. The liquid, bottomless sound filled the hall, bouncing off the walls with their faded green wallpaper, spilling down toward the spiral staircase. Eleanor counted the chimes.
Seven.
Her phone agreed with the chimes—seven o’clock—but the contrary hands of the clock pointed instead to five and twelve. Seven hours backward from midnight, she thought, and rubbed the birthmark on her wrist reflexively.
“Eleanor!” Aunt Jenny called. “Come grab some breakfast before the bus comes. You don’t want to be hungry on your first day.”
Eleanor didn’t want to be anything on her first day of school at Eden Eld Academy. She didn’t want to have a first day at Eden Eld Academy. But she had promised Aunt Jenny and Ben, and she had already broken enough promises.
She didn’t want to turn her back on the clock, either, but she did, and scurried down the hall with her backpack over one shoulder. The boards creaked and groaned even with the hall rug to cushion her steps, and so did the stairs, which curled in a tight curve down to the first floor. She’d never lived in a house with a spiral staircase. Ashford House, which her grandparents had bought before her mother was born, had two of them. The house was full of odd things like that. Crooked hallways, skewed rooms, a stairway to nowhere. The clock ought to have fit right in.
Except—except she was sure, absolutely sure, it hadn’t been there last night.
Aunt Jenny was in the kitchen, her back to the hall, pushing scrambled eggs out of a pan and onto an old china plate covered in a pattern of blue vines. Normally she had a thin face, like Eleanor, but right now it was soft and round, along with the rest of her. Her belly was so big she bumped against the counter, and as she finished with the eggs, she winced and muttered, “Oh, that’s enough of that, you rascal,” which meant the baby was kicking her ribs again.
Eleanor had always thought she looked more like Jenny than her own mother. They had the same brown hair, though instead of hanging straight down to her shoulders like Eleanor’s, Jenny’s sprang out around her face, escaping her braid. They had the same long nose, the same fair skin and murky green eyes, the same penchant for striped sweaters, and even the exact same glasses, but somehow Jenny always looked romantic and artistic, and Eleanor just felt gawky and plain.
Eleanor’s step creaked a floorboard, and Jenny turned with a beaming smile. Too bright, Eleanor thought; it meant she was trying, which meant she wasn’t really smiling. “Here you go, hon,” Aunt Jenny said. The eggs steamed. The toast was perfectly toasted, just the right shade of brown. The jam was raspberry, thick and homemade.
Eleanor’s stomach turned, and so did her mouth, downward in a little frown she couldn’t stop. She pushed her glasses up, trying to use the movement to hide the frown.
“Nervous belly?” Aunt Jenny asked. She sighed, setting the plate down on the kitchen island between them. “I know it’s tough. But if you don’t start school now, you’re going to get too far behind, and then you might have to stay back a year.”
“I know,” Eleanor said. She looked down at the Eden Eld Academy uniform she’d put on that morning—blue plaid skirt that fell to her knees, polo shirt, dark blue jacket with the school crest on the front. Everything was a bit too stiff and a touch too large. Aunt Jenny had worked hard to get her into Eden Eld instead of the public middle school, which was farther away and allegedly full of kids who cut school and watched R-rated movies without permission, which passed for juvenile delinquency in a town as sleepy as Eden Eld.
Eleanor was supposed to be grateful that she got into Eden Eld Academy, but it was hard to be grateful for anything these days.
“Couldn’t you homeschool me, or something? I can learn on my own. It’s all online now—I can design my own classes. You’d hardly have to do a thing.”
Aunt Jenny put a hand on her belly and looked sad. Eleanor felt a twinge of anger that Aunt Jenny didn’t deserve, but she couldn’t help it. Every time someone looked at her like that, she felt like it was her job to cheer them up. To promise she was okay, even though she wasn’t. Like she had to make them feel better, instead of the other way around.
“I would, hon. But with the baby due any day, and Ben working such long hours, we just can’t. And Eden Eld is a great school. Your mom and I—” Aunt Jenny stopped. It was an unspoken rule that they didn’t talk about Eleanor’s mom. “Just give it a week or two, okay? And then we can see how it’s going.” She nudged the plate toward Eleanor. “Try some toast, at least?”
Eleanor bit back the urge to argue. Aunt Jenny was right. She had to go to school. Going to school was normal, and Eleanor needed to be normal. Needed everyone else to think she was normal. She’d made a plan. Her How to Be Normal plan.
Don’t talk about Mom.
Go to school.
Don’t talk about things that aren’t there.
Smile.
So Eleanor smiled. She imagined puppet strings on the corners of her mouth, pulling them up. She made her eyes smile, too, wrinkling a little at the edges. That smile was the most useful kind of lie she’d learned to tell in the past couple of months. “Thanks, Aunt Jenny,” she said, taking the toast. “I think I hear the bus. I’d better go.”