The weird girl turns and sees me. She steps away from the circle and joins me. I wait for her to say somethin’, but she doesn’t speak this time. Her eyes stay on mine as she opens my hands and places two small objects in my palms. I flinch at first because they’re wet, and I wasn’t expecting that. They kinda look like oblong rubber balls, slit down their middles.
Then the slits start to move. Coarse, tiny hairs sprout out along the slits’ edges. They begin to open, and dirty water comes flowing out of them into my hands, spilling onto the ground. The slits peel back to reveal two familiar eyes. Ocean-blue eyes starin’ up at me.
I stifle a scream. I sit straight up. Back in my room. The hummin’ of the haints morphs into the eerie lullaby that my colored ballerina can’t stop twirlin’ to. I run into the bathroom and throw up in the commode. It’s always awful to puke, no matter what, but at least this time it’s quick, and I feel somewhat better once it’s done.
I hear voices in the kitchen, so I know I have to wrap this up fast. I go back into my room and tear his handwritten note into strips. I torch several of his hairs along with some of the note strips. Once every letter I’m holding has been touched by flame, I drop what’s left of the scorched debris into the pot, and it sizzles out. I want to burn it all right this minute, but what if I need to redo this later? I save what I have left and hide it back in the music box, closing the lid and silencing the lullaby.
I admire my restraint. Because I badly want to burn all of it.
Doralene barges into my room.
“What stinks in here?”
I douse the flames.
“Just some candles,” I say to her.
“Why?”
“Cuz I felt like it.” I wait for the barrage of whys, but her face changes.
“It’s for that man, ain’t it?” she asks.
“SHHH!”
She whispers, “I won’t tell, Evvie. Will them candles keep him from comin’ back?”
Wow. She’s way more perceptive than I realized.
“I hope so.”
“Me too,” she says. “I heard him say he wants to play with me and Coralene, but I don’t wanna play with him.”
I’m sorry she heard that. I guess they both did.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let him,” I assure her.
She sits down next to me on the floor.
“I dreamed that he came back and he took your smile away. Mama and Grammie Atti tried to get it back for you, but they couldn’t.”
I pull her onto my lap and try to stay coolheaded. I don’t wanna scare her any more than she already is.
“Nobody can take my smile away. Yours either. We’re gonna make sure a that right now. Open your hands.”
She does. I smile like a demented clown and she starts laughin’. I pretend to peel my smile off, leaving my lips in a boring straight line. This makes her laugh harder.
“Here.” I hand her my “smile.” “You put it somewhere where nobody can ever take it, okay?”
“Okay. You take mine.” Doralene imitates my actions to a T and hands me her “smile.”
“Let’s make a deal to always keep our smiles in a nice, safe place. Sound good?” I ask.
She nods and puts out her hand, and we shake on it.
Then Mama hollers at us to come down for supper. Doralene races outta the room, her worries forgotten. It’s silly, but I take The Golden Book of Astronomy down from the shelf, open it up and place my sister’s “smile” inside it.
Nobody’s gonna take it.
24
Faith
IT’S THUNDERING AND RAINING OUTSIDE. We’re on the floor in the old colored children’s library. I could stay here all night and be completely happy. I think Clay’s gettin’ bored, though.
“Maybe we could find a broom. Clean up the cobwebs and mouse shit,” he suggests, looking around.
I groan. “I don’t wanna clean!”
“We could get this place lookin’ nice again. Maybe the town would open it back up.”
I stare at the cobwebs on the ceiling, not mindin’ ’em so much. I know his heart’s in the right place, but not only do I have no interest in cleaning—under any circumstances—at best, if we did make the place look presentable again, somebody would notice and take it over, and it wouldn’t be our secret spot no more. At worst, our work would make someone realize all this space has been going to waste, and then they’d just tear it down to build somethin’ else.
“I don’t know, Clay. Might be best to leave things the way they are.”
“I disagree,” he says.
The door clatters and I gasp but quickly see that it was just the wind, and it’s an old rickety door.
“Did that scare you?”
“Nah, I’m fine,” I say, but the truth is the thought of Virgil out there somewhere keeps me on edge. I’m jittery these days, and I never used to be.
“Nasty,” he says, running his finger along a table, makin’ dust bunnies. Apparently my brief scare didn’t make much of an impression.
“Okay. You can sweep if you want. While you do that, Imma take a nap,” I inform him.
He glances at me.
“Could you—like—clean this place up with your mind?” he asks.
Before I answer, I check him to see if he’s makin’ fun. Doesn’t look like he is.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t want you to think I’m some freak of nature, Clay,” I tell him.
“I don’t, Evvie.” He says the words, but he seems doubtful. “It makes sense that you’d have powers science can’t explain,” he reasons.
“Why do you say that?”
“Cuz you’re special,” he says. He doesn’t stop talking long enough for me to swoon. “The only thing is… What if we got in a fight, or you just got real mad at
