“This is for school,” I lied.
“Has school started already?” her voice was muffled. I couldn’t see her anymore, somewhere on the other side of the room.
“Not for two more weeks, but Mrs. Thomas told us to read it over the summer.”
“Seems like advanced reading for third grade.”
“I’m going into the fourth grade.”
“Oh, well then…”
I had no idea what grade would normally read this book, if at all.
“Got it!” she said. This was followed by a crash.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yes. Just my encyclopedias. They really should be on a shelf, but they take up so much room.”
She came back into view, her hair even more disheveled than when she left, a paperback in her hand. “I do have rather fond memories of this book. I may have to read that one again when you’re done. You will return it, won’t you?”
I nodded and reached for the book.
“I suppose your aunt is raising you ‘by the hand,’ as it were,” she thought about this for a second. “Many similarities between you and young Pip, I suppose.”
“What does, ‘by the hand’ mean?”
She smiled. “I don’t want to ruin the story for you. You’ll see soon enough.”
The cover had a picture of a young boy and girl, both dressed in strange clothes. The boy was smiling, the girl was not.
We waited for the pizza guy to arrive. He did not have an axe.
3
On August 17, our air conditioner broke.
We didn’t have anything fancy, just a window unit in the living room, a big beige box of a thing that made gurgling noises when it ran and dripped water on the floor, but it kept the apartment cool on those few days out of the year when the sun reared its head in Pittsburgh.
August 17 was just such a day—93 degrees by noon and creeping up with each passing minute.
“I’m holding the rent back if Mr. Triano doesn’t get his butt up here in the next hour,” Auntie Jo said. She had pulled the tattered leather recliner across the room to the second window, the one without the broken air conditioner stuffed into the frame, and laid down with a wet cloth on her head. At some point in the past twenty minutes, she had removed her blouse and sat there in a pale bra and blue shorts, her bare feet dangling over the side of the footrest.
“That stupid thing always shits the bed when we need it,” she said.
I considered telling her that the air conditioner was far less likely to break during the dead of winter, then thought better of it. “Do you want a glass of lemonade?”
“That would be lovely.”
In the kitchen, I tugged a glass from the dirty dishes piled in the sink, washed it out, and poured lemonade from the pitcher I made earlier. When I handed it to her, she gave it a tentative sip, then gulped it down. “Maybe a little more sugar next time, but I think you’re getting the hang of it.”
I had yet to make the perfect pitcher of lemonade.
She closed her eyes and rolled the empty glass over her cheeks. “Why don’t you go play outside? A kid your age shouldn’t be cooped up all summer. You should be outside with your friends.”
“I don’t have any friends. There isn’t a single kid my age in our building.”
She waved a hand limply through the air. “Maybe we should move to a palace in the suburbs, then, get a giant castle with a swimming pool—maybe a sprawling estate where all the neighborhood kids can line up and fill out applications to be your friend. Then you can select the best of the best and send the others packing. That seems much easier than just going outside and taking a chance on maybe running into someone your own age, making a friend or two the old-fashioned way.” Auntie Jo turned her head and squinted against the sun, painting a bright line across her face. “I love you, kiddo, but you really shouldn’t spend the last two weeks of your school vacation in here with the likes of me. I can be a miserable bitch sometimes, and now is one of those times. I’m ordering you to go outside and have fun.”
“But—”
“Now,” she said. “And I don’t want to see your face back here until six.”
I knew better than to argue. I grabbed my comic book off the kitchen table and bolted out the door.
I found myself in the cemetery.
I hadn’t made a conscious decision to go to the cemetery, but considering it was the only open space anywhere near our building and it was quiet, that’s where I ended up. I stopped at my parents’ graves just long enough to place the dandelions I had picked along Greenlee Road in their vases and wipe the dirt and grime from Daddy’s gravestone away with my shirt. If Auntie Jo asked how I got so dirty, I would just tell her playing was a messy business.
When satisfied with my work, I made my way over the hill and past the mausoleums, careful to hold my breath as I ran the length of them.
I expected the girl to be sitting on the bench, but she wasn’t.The bench was empty, save for a few red maple leaves caught in the metalwork. Clearing off a spot, I took a seat and opened my comic to the center, to the bulky paperback I hid within the pages, the book with the smiling boy and unsmiling girl on the cover. I turned to the first page and began to read.
Two days later, I returned to the cemetery. The day after that, too. The bench was always empty. I went back every day for the rest of that summer and long into the school year, but I wouldn’t see the girl again for nearly another year.
I never noticed the man watching me from the trees, sometimes there, sometimes not.
August 8, 1985
Nine Years Old
Log 08/08/1985—
Subject “D” within expected parameters.
Audio/video recording.
“Is everything recorded?”
“Not everything. Almost, though. Pay attention. I’m only going to explain this once.”
“Sorry.”
“Fresh tapes are in those boxes under the desk. If someone is in there, you always record. If he’s talking, even if he’s alone in there, you most definitely record. That stuff is gold, that’s what they really want. Be careful what you say here in the booth. The microphones pick that up, too, and it will be part of the record. If things get crazy, keep your mouth shut. Doesn’t matter how crazy. Keep your mouth shut and do your job.”
“Load fresh tapes.”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“As long as it’s not a stupid question.”
“I was told not to listen to him. Not to let him talk to me.”
“They solved that problem a few years ago. Pretty simple, really. Everything is on a delay. What you see and hear on these monitors actually happened thirty seconds earlier. It’s safe that way.”
“If that’s the case, why’s he wearing a mask?”
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
“Help me clear this off,” Auntie Jo said, peeling away a vine that somehow managed to snake up out of the ground and wrap around Momma’s headstone in the two days since I had been out here.
I tugged at the base, and a clump of dirt came out with the plant.