The Girl in the Well Is Me (6 page)

The well is an animal that's holding me in its throat, thinking about swallowing me down all the way. I pat its wall. “Please don't hurt me,” I say. “I won't hurt you.” Maybe the well is just misunderstood like sasquatches and monsters always are in books. Or maybe there is no air down here and my brain is just mashing up a bunch of crazy lies and making them seem real and true, like grapes turning to wine under the bare feet of some hairy Greek men. There actually isn't any air down here. The goats took it all. Goats are greedy and take take take. My dad is a goat. I'm thirsty like a dried-­out snake. Maybe this isn't an air problem, but a water problem. Who says there is a problem?

My foot is itchy now but I can't reach it, and that's when I realize that my shoe must have fallen off because it's definitely not on my foot, protecting it from snakes and dead goat zombies and rampaging, well-­dwelling spiders and crabs. Everyone knows that socks are useless as armor. They are soft and flop at the first sign of danger. I can't even tell if they are still on me, but the shoe is definitely gone. They were new shoes! I used all of the money that I had left in my bank account to buy them. I wore my regular old shoes to school on my first day at Nowheresville Middle School and a boy named Brendan Wilson said that they looked like shoes I had stolen from a bum. Actually, what he said was, “What hobo did you rumble to grab those lame sneaks?” I feel like I need a decoder ring to understand what Brendan Wilson is saying. Luckily, he rarely talks to me.

“They're just dirty!” I said.

“Ha,” he said. “Gruesome twosome.”

“Whatever that means,” I said, being the new tough-­cool-­version of myself.

“Did your mom steal them from the warehouse?” he said.

“No,” I said, and punched him in the stomach. He bent in half like grass in the wind and walked away, all bent over. I don't know why I did that. I don't know why he didn't tell. I don't know why I didn't think to get Mom to order those stupid shoes from the warehouse's website. They probably would've been half the price.

I could have even just put the old shoes in the washing machine at the Laundromat. They have one of those big ones that you could put anything in: shoes, blankets, your brother. (I wish.) But I really wanted the shoes that I'd seen in the window of the big department store in the next town over, where you can buy vacuum cleaners and coats and bicycles and iPhones and, yes, sneakers. Everything and anything is available there, which is super dumb now that I think of it, because probably everyone shops at the warehouse's site. Why wouldn't they? They probably get a discount! That store is not long for this world.

Anyway, I took all the money I had left in the world and I went and bought them. The store is old-­fashioned. The lady at the cash register was about a hundred years old and called me Sweetheart. The shoes are Adidas, which are the best and coolest. They are white with three of the palest blue stripes on the side. They're the nicest things I've bought since Dad's downfall. And now one of them is at the bottom of the well and/or in China and/or has been eaten by an undead goat.

I start to cry again, but my throat is all clamped up from all that crying before and I can't breathe, so I stop and instead do useful things, like whisper-­screaming
HELP
every twelve seconds in the hopes of being helped.

Twelve is my lucky number. When I'm 12, I think I'll probably have a really good year and get all the luck. If you think about it, turning 12 on the sixth day of the sixth month has to be lucky because 6 and 6 are 12, but twelving them eradicates their six-­iness, removing the bad-­luck beast. I'll probably run away when I'm 12 and start over, get a whole new life without an annoying older brother and an exhausted, overworked mother and a dad who is rotting away in prison.

Or I'll be dead.

In a well.

With some goats.

I guess you just never know with this life. You never quite know what is coming next.

6

C
ats

I did not mention before about how my mother is crazy, but that doesn't make it less of a fact. Since Dad went to jail, she has gone totally bonkers, insane-­o-­rama, around the bend. Other than working, which she does all the time, and smoking, which is her new and completely crazy and expensive and dumb habit, the other thing my mother now does is collect cats. Right before I left the trailer park to meet The Girls to do their club initiation (i.e., getting my hair massacred and falling into a well), Mr. Sutton, who owns our place, knocked on the door and gruffly handed me a notice to give to my Mom when she got home from her job at the brewery, which is where she is today, stirring a bubbling vat of hops that will make her stink for days and days. She calls them “hopes” instead of hops. “Just stirring the hopes today,” she'll say. “Maybe I'll throw in some dreams.” Some of the time Mom makes more sense than others.

Mr. Sutton has a long mustache and a plaid shirt, like everyone else in town who is a man. He is trying to grow a beard, but the wisps of hair on his chin make me think of newborn babies. I feel bad for him. No one wants a baby-­head on their manly chin. The hair on his chest is worse though. That stuff makes it look like he is permanently hugging a baby chimp which is showing through the gaps in his pearly buttons. In other words, he's the grossest, most disgusting, pathetic excuse for a human being, ever. I'm pretty sure he chose the orange décor in this dump. He likes orange. His hair is orange. His skin is also a little orange, but that may just be the fake tanner he uses because he for real gets terrible sunburns in the actual sun. Living in Texas was his first mistake. Ours too, come to think of it. I thanked him for the letter as sweetly as I could. I just felt like if he thought I was sweet he'd have mercy on us. I should have known better.

As soon as he left, I steamed open his letter and read it. Who writes letters in this day and age? He should have just texted her but—actually—no, she doesn't have a cell phone anymore, so forget that. Well, he could have called. Mr. Sutton must have known that we're too poor for technology. Where is his sympathy? Where is his kindness?

The letter was written in capital letters on yellow lined paper. It said that Mom's cats were a health hazard, and either they had to go or we would be evicted. I glued the envelope shut again with a glue stick and left it on the table where she'd see it. I hope I put the glue away. If I didn't, then she'll know what I did and then I'll be in for it for reading her mail and for trying to pretend that I didn't. Or what if I left the kettle on? Maybe the whole place will burn down. Silver lining: It will take the evidence of my crime with it.

But it would also burn up all of the cats. The cats! Well, I hate the cats, but I hope they don't die or anything. That would be terrible, too. I don't hate
all
cats, so scrap that thought. I'm scared of (most) cats. Have you ever looked at their eyes? Slits! Strange slitty eyes! That follow you! One of the cats, Cat, is always following me around. He watches everything I do. I feel like Cat is taking notes. When I try to get into Heaven (which may be sooner than planned), Cat will probably provide God with a list of reasons why I'm actually a terrible person. The rest of the cats are better than Cat, but not by much. I mean, it's not like he sets the bar particularly high.

The fact is, the cats smell bad and only love you when you have cat food in your hand. Mom has somehow managed to accumulate 11 cats so far. I don't know how it happens! She goes to the store for milk or cigarettes, and comes back with four frozen dinners and a kitten. She comes home from work, and dumps a kitten out of her purse. She goes out on the crooked front steps and has a cigarette, and comes back in with a kitten in her hands. She's like a cat goddess with no actual powers except drawing cats to her and then having to take care of them and clean out their litter. Lucky for her, they mostly don't use it, so that is not the worst part of cleaning up after the cats.

We stopped naming them after the first eight, which is why we have Happy, Dopey, Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Doc, Bashful, Rory Devon and then just three random orange ones that we call “Cat.” I can't tell if all three of them follow me or if it's just one. They are identical triplets. The threeing of Cat is probably what makes him/her particularly evil.

I named Rory Devon to bug Robby. Everyone tells Robby that he looks like Rory Devon, which he does, but also everyone hates The Devs, including him. (Except for me. I'm probably going to marry him one day, so I am careful to only hate him enough to fit in, while still secretly knowing that we are connected by true love.) When someone tells Robby that he's looking a little Rory-­y, you can see his fists clenching by his sides. The thing is, if he wanted to look less like Rory Devon, he could stop combing his hair in that particular way. (It looks good on Rory, but not so much on Robby.)

Rory Devon (the cat) is missing all of his teeth and spends a lot of time yowling. If you generously think of the yowling as singing, you can appreciate how he's living up to his name, or trying to. If any cat is going to rescue me from the well, it will probably be Rory Devon. He seems like a cat who is just waiting for his heroic nature to shine through, to compensate for his terrible vocals and gaping tooth sockets. He's also practically a dog in his mannerisms and fondness for belly rubs. He's actually a bit of a special cat. I almost feel like me and The Devs are on the same wavelength. For example, sometimes when I feel lonely or sad, I think really hard about that cat and he always appears. It would be so fantastic if he suddenly appeared now. I close my eyes and think very hard about his frowny little cat face. I try to will him to come to me, to save me.

It's important to be optimistic, even when everything is terrible, that's what I think. Grandma always said that my spunkiness was unparalleled. If she could see me now, still trying to be spunky while I'm trapped in a well, she'd be so proud. She was proud of me once before when I won the kids' baking category at the county fair when I was 6. She actually baked the cookies, so that was cheating, and now that I think about it, she was obviously just proud of herself.

In fact, she was just another liar.

She always said she was The Matriarch, which means the powerful woman who is basically the boss of the family. Well, that may be true. She was certainly The Matriarch of the Lying Family of Liars. I guess it's likely that I am a liar too, genetically speaking, and just don't know it. Maybe I lie to myself about lying, like any liar would. I blame Grandma. Now it's in our blood, the same way that none of us can see anything but a swirling blur of colors without glasses on, and we all hate beets and being up too high on ladders. And clowns. We all hate clowns. Clowns are the worst of all our fears. I'm picturing clowns laughing at me in the well. I can practically see them, miming and gesturing with their red noses and fake tears and plastic hair and now I want to scream. THANKS A LOT, GRANDMA, FOR MAKING ME THINK OF CLOWNS WHILE I'M IN A WELL.

Oh,
Grandma
. Why are you dead? You would know how to save me. I don't know how, exactly, but you'd figure it out. Some people are just people who solve problems. Grandma was one of them. One time, Robby and I got stuck up at the top of the apple tree in her backyard and couldn't get down. I had gone up first, and he had come up to save me when I got stuck. She marched into the garage, found the extension ladder, and extended it, climbed up, and fetched us. Now that I think of it, of course a ladder is an obvious solution to getting kids down from trees and anyone would have thought of that. Still, there are probably other examples.

It was cancer. Cancer won against Grandma. Obituaries in the paper always say things like, “After a valiant fight!” which makes me think of knights, battling to the death with swords. Cancer is a very good swordsman, I guess. Grandma was only 63 and she wasn't ruthless or any of the other things you need to be to win a duel with cancer.

I wonder if being dead and buried is really that much different from being in a well. I guess the major difference is that I can see light (what's left of it, anyway) and she can't. Unless she's in Heaven, if it exists, in which case she is basking in a lovely warm glow and I'm the only one who is stuck in the cold darkness, unable to get into Heaven. Unfair. Not that Grandma deserves to be trapped in a well, but I guess I'd rather she was in a well than dead. The well wouldn't have been so final. Maybe she could have won against the well. But if she's going to be dead and buried anyway, I'm sorry to say that I'd rather it was her down here than me.

I shiver because it's starting to get chilly and I don't have a jacket and I'm in a freezing cold well. Also, thinking about death makes me cold, and possibly the poison from the spider bite that is slowly killing me has a chilling effect.

“Rory Devon!” I yell. “Lassie!”

There is no answer. Duh. It's as quiet as being in a pool with your ears full of water. I like pools. That might surprise you as I mostly hate water things, but pools don't have fish, so they are safe. Plus, they always smell like clean chemicals and lifeguards.

The wind has dropped off and the branch has stopped waving back and forth and back and forth. I miss it. Maybe that branch was Grandma, signaling to me from the other side! Maybe she was saying, “I'm sorry I lied about the cookies!” I hope so. I miss Grandma, that crazy old liar.

I hold my breath so that I can hear Rory Devon when he comes to save me. The trouble with cats is that they aren't dogs. They can't sense when you've fallen down a well! They don't bother themselves with saving you either, evidently. Stupid cats. Right now, Rory Devon is probably stretching in the patch of sunlight that streams across my pillow in the late afternoon, warm and comfortable, tuning out my cries for help. Down with cats!

Mom must be home from work by now. I wonder if she'll read that letter and then sigh and pour some wine into her favorite green glass and then go to put a Lean Cuisine in the microwave. Sadly, there aren't any left, but maybe she'll eat some actual food with calories instead, and that might give her the energy to sprint across the open fields yelling my name. Or else she'll just eat a salad and then wilt onto the couch, exhausted and weak, and fall asleep, the cats all piled up on her like she's their savior, which I guess she is, even if she's hardly ever home.

My stomach is grumbling, which means it must be pretty far past dinnertime now. I've lost track, I've lost time, I've lost everything that matters and I would kill for a stupid Lean Cuisine—that is, if I could use my arms. I can't kill anything while my arms are pinned to the walls of a well. Right now my own shoulder would probably taste good, even without bright orange, salty, sticky sauce on it.

The girls aren't coming back.

It's actually possible that I'll never be found. I'll be a mystery that you read about in the newspaper and sigh sadly to yourself while you chomp down a bowl of Cheerios, thinking about my young life, cut short so tragically. I hope they use my school picture from last year because it's my favorite. In it, my face is at an angle so you can't tell that my two front teeth overlap each other. And the way I'm kind of looking up a little bit, I look like maybe I'm shy, which I am, but I don't usually look the same way that I feel. I really love that picture because it looks like how I look in my head when I think about how I look, not like how I usually look in the mirror, which is freckled and pink-­cheeked, like my skin is too many colors, like my face is louder than my soul.

I wonder what the headlines will say if they
do
find me, dead and gone, half-­rotted with the goats. dead girl in a well? girl in well with dead goats? girl perishes in well? the girl from family of liars dies in a well? goats, girl dead in well. daughter of embezzler dead in well. karma strikes back in nowheresville.

I wonder if Marianne Singleton will read about me to the whole class, who are now in sixth grade, just like me, but at my old school. I wonder if they will remember me. I wonder if anyone will cry. Maybe Tracy Kelliher will. She was my best friend right up until my dad was put away. Her dad is a policeman. Her dad took my dad to jail. I guess that's an important detail that I should have mentioned before. My bad.

The night before the arrest, Mr. Kelliher had been at a barbecue at our house. He'd eaten a steak (well done) and chewed with his mouth open. He'd made dumb jokes about baseball and farting. He'd dropped me and Tracy, one by one, off the diving board into the pool in our clothes while we screamed and laughed. Then he'd tried to do it to Robby, too, but Robby was almost as tall as him, and managed to push Mr. Kelliher in instead, raising his hands in a victory salute. But while his arms were still up, Dad pushed Robby in from behind. Pretty soon everyone was fully dressed, in the pool, laughing like hyenas.

After Dad was arrested, Tracy Kelliher, my lifelong BFF, stopped talking to me at all, which was fine by me, because I didn't have anything left to say. Not to her. Not to anyone.

“HELP!” I shout because it's been a while since I shouted. “Oh help.”

It's hopeless.

I am going to die.

“Goats,” I say. “It's you and me.”

They don't answer. Zombie goats are very unfriendly, as it turns out.

I'm about to close my eyes and breathe my last, when I hear voices.

Grown-­up voices! Of people!

Oh, happy day! I'll be saved! Hurray! I'm so excited and so hungry and I have to pee so bad that I start crying and laughing and gulping and shouting, all at once, and the most terrible thing happens: a hot gush of liquid rushes down my leg, pooling in my remaining favorite shoe.

“Kammie!” shouts a voice that I don't know. “Kammie!”

I move my sodden foot from the rock that is holding me up and I slip down again, fast, but not as fast as a roller coaster, not as fast as going down the Matterhorn at Disneyland, which I went to during spring break with Tracy's family back when Mom and Dad could afford to buy me a plane ticket, back when Tracy wanted to invite me to Disneyland. Disneyland was so great. I wish I was there right now, cruising down the river on the jungle cruise, which might be the lamest ride, but it's 10,000 times better than being in a well with wet shorts and a soggy shoe and no skin left on my elbows.