The Curiosities (Carolrhoda Ya) (27 page)

Abby follows my gaze, waving the Polaroid in one soft, little-girl hand, careful to keep it turned away from me. “Do you ever feel...forgotten?” she says, and her voice cracks on the last word. Behind her, her brother is still staring into the vortex of his phone, ignoring the way she slouches by the fence.

The summer has been the longest, slowest, stupidest of my life. My dad sits in his study or in front of the TV, and talking about feeling forgotten just makes you feel more forgotten, so I smile like nothing is wrong. “Look, I’m sure he’ll get over it. Maybe I could come over and see your album sometime.”

“No,” she says, the word coming out much too loud. Then she takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “I mean, I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

“So, are you going to show your brother my picture?”

She gives me a sideways look and shakes her head again.

“Can I at least see it then?”

“Only if you really want to.” Her expression is so empty it’s unreadable.

“I do.”

She holds out the picture, offering it to me over the fence. I don’t take it from her, just look. The paper, shiny and old-fashioned, familiar band of white along the bottom. In the foreground, the pickets of the fence are jagged like teeth. Behind it, empty sky.

Where there should be a girl with long brown hair and freckles, there’s nothing.

Abby looks up at me, near tears. “I’m sorry,” she says in a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

I just shrug, smile weakly. I mean, what can you say?

“How did you die?” Her voice is thin and shaking.

And I want to tell her that I don’t know. I don’t have even the faintest idea. But I do. Sometimes you make yourself forget the things that make you stop breathing. You remember them, and you still forget anyway. I was riding my bike to the lake, out along the county road, and then it was over. Just like that.

Abby backs away, clutching the photo. “Did you not know?”

“I guess I knew,” I say. “Yeah, I did. But sometimes...well, it’s just nicer to think it never happened, you know?”

She watches me with brimming eyes. “You’re not going to haunt me, are you?”

“What? No, I’m not going to haunt you. Don’t be stupid.”

“What do you want, then?” she says, looking miserable.

The question is so honest it’s painful. I want to eat Sour Patch Kids and kiss boys and walk down to the Dairy Queen with my friends—all those friends I used to have. I want to spend my days with someone else, do what they do and not be shut up in my house all the time, alone with no one but my father.

She looks so lonely standing there. So lost, and I want to hug her but the fence is in the way and what if my hands go right through?

“Can I take your picture?” I ask, because it seems to be a language she understands.

When she passes me the camera it feels angular and solid, like I am really holding it. Sometimes I remember the world so clearly it almost seems real, and even though I can’t shake the knowledge that I’m not there, I push the button, take the picture anyway.

The camera whirs and grinds, spitting out the square of paper, and we stand with our heads together, with the fence between us, waiting for the image to show up.

Shapes appear, ghostly at first, then showing up clearer and clearer. Her lawn, weed-free and carefully mowed, racing to the edges of the photo like a tiny green sea. There in the background, her brother is texting, sitting on the steps beside the abandoned box. The Abby box, overflowing with notebooks, stuffed animals, photo albums and an old Polaroid camera, and this whole time, they have not brought in one stick of furniture that looks like it belongs to a twelve-year-old girl.

The photo is crisp, everything bright and in focus. There is no black-haired Gothic baby doll—no Abby, besides what’s in the box—and I knew that too. I knew it since she crossed the lawn to talk to me. Knew it even when I wanted, wanted, wanted to know something else.

“I’m sorry,” I say, because the look on her face is like looking at myself.

Leadership is one of Maggie’s recurring themes, from the very beginning up through the novels she works on now. Leadership and the relationship between a leader and her followers, and what impact being a leader has emotionally and psychologically. What does it mean to be listened to? What does it mean to be responsible? Some of her favorite questions. —Tessa

What Tessa said. Pretty much all of it
. —Maggie

I
t’s been about twenty-four hours since we took over the government of the United States of America. About six since I’ve seen Raphael.

When he joins us, we can all see he’s nervous as hell. He’s pacing, shaking his hands back and forth at the wrists, like he’s going to loosen them up for some great physical task ahead of him.

“You know what’s stupid?” he asks me, because I’m still his best friend, even though that means something different now. He smiles, foolish. “I couldn’t stop thinking last night about my Civic. About how I’m going to miss just getting in and driving it.”

I smile encouragingly back at him while loading my pistol. “You’ve been pressed into greater things, Rafe.”

“I’d rather be pressed into my Honda,” he says, and we all laugh, because we need it.

Outside, the crowd is loud, screaming and shouting, waiting to see Raphael. They’re waiting for his State of the Union address, even though all of them know the State of the Union is Crap. Raphael watches me shove the magazine back into my pistol. He looks tired and way older than just a few weeks ago, back when we were just juniors at Boston College. “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

“Don’t be stupid,” I say. “You’re worried about the audience? They’re just impatient.”

“Is it an audience, or is it a mob?” His runs his fingers through his brown mop of hair again and again, leaving tracks of anxiety behind. “This is crazy. I’m nineteen. My dog won’t even listen to me.”

This is such a lie that we all jump in to correct him. Jules’s voice is fond: “Raphael, everyone loves you. Everyone listens to you. That’s why you’re here.” What she doesn’t say but means is, Raphael is the only thing that keeps us from being a bunch of armed teens. We need him. More than his Honda needs him.

The door opens. It’s the oldest person I’ve seen in the past two days: some guy in his late thirties. The oldest person alive, anyway. He looks at Raphael and smiles a tight smile—he’s nervous too, but like everyone, he loves Raphael. He’s probably read his blog. The world has. “Mr. President?”

Rafe closes his eyes at the title.

“It’s time to roll,” says Cayden, who never could tell when someone needs a second to friggin’ catch their breath and get used to the idea of addressing a crowd of fifty thousand.

Raphael looks at me, and his expression contains the pain of every single life that’s been lost over this. “Are we terrorists or revolutionaries, Matt?”

I hold his gaze for a long moment. “Something had to be done. People were dying. Someone had to do something.” I holster my gun with a soft snick.

Raphael bites his lip, and I wonder how I could’ve ever thought he looked old. But there’s no turning back. We lead Raphael to the balcony doors, and as we stand inside them, the sound of the crowd outside is deafening. Raphael shakes hands with me, really formally, because he knows just like me that he might be going out to his death. And he knows I’m going with him, either way.

Thirtysomething guy pushes open the balcony door, and I walk out first, in front of Rafe, just in case someone’s got a gun out there. The crowd goes quieter when they see me. I survey their faces.
They’re young, young faces everywhere—teens like us. Maybe there aren’t any older people left.

Raphael steps out from behind me and leans into the microphone set up for him. He smiles as if he’s not afraid. “Hi, America. Did you miss me?”

The crowd goes absolutely wild. Old America is dead.

I read a line in a guidebook when I was in Wales about an old ritual where somebody would knock on your door wearing a horsehead. I wrote it on my hand and
thought,
horsehead!
kissing! obviously! —Tessa

O
n the first night we slaughter animals for the winter.

I walk behind my father, carrying a shallow bowl of blood. Mother and I drained it from one of the chickens moments ago, and it’s still warm.

We are a chain of people weaving through the field. Father first, then me, then my mother and sisters with black veils over their faces. The rest of the town comes behind, trailing back to the edge of the trees. We are a snake, a serpent of frost, of death, searching out the oldest of the cows, the ill hogs, the troublemaking goats. When Father chooses a beast for death, he turns to me and dips his fingers into the cooling blood. I murmur, “Blood to mark,” and he replies, “God protect us.” He smears a widdershins circle onto every forehead—enough to feed us throughout the long dark of the year.