“Dr. Cliffton?” The door is ajar, and I knock before pushing it open, but I can tell when I enter that I’ve caught him off-guard. He stands abruptly and closes the book he is reading. His glasses slide down the bridge of his nose.
“Aila?” he asks, and I could swear he almost looks guilty.
“Dinner’s ready,” I say. He smiles as if he is dismissing me, and I realize he’s not going to follow until I’ve left the room.
But I catch a glimpse of the book he is reading before he can fully hide it. The silver letters along the spine say Myths, Legends, and Lore: A History of Sterling.
I wash up for dinner and pinch my cheeks. Things still aren’t adding up. The reluctance of Mrs. Cliffton to tell us things. The way people stared at us in town. Mother’s secrecy, even from Father. I’m starting to sense that if I want answers—?real ones—?I’m going to have to find them myself.
Although, when I’m spooning maple syrup over a plump acorn squash, I feel the first glimmer of understanding for my mother. No wonder she left all those years ago and never spoke of Sterling again. After everything I’ve seen so far, what could she possibly have said?
After dinner, I bump into Will when we both stand to leave the table at the same time. “Sorry,” I say, drawing back. Our eyes meet.
“My fault,” he says. He steps aside to give me more room than is really necessary. “Think you’ll join us for a game tonight?” he asks. He shifts his weight. “No pressure. Only if you want.”
I think of the book Dr. Cliffton was trying to hide. “Yes,” I say to Will, pushing my chair in. “I think tonight I’ll join you.”
We sit in a lopsided circle around the library: Will in the oversize leather chair, Dr. Cliffton in a Hitchcock straight back, Miles on the floor. I sink onto the couch next to Mrs. Cliffton. “It will be fun to have another gal in the room,” Mrs. Cliffton says, dealing me in, and I’m surprised to find that it is fun, even though I play horribly. I’m distracted by the fact that Dr. Cliffton’s desk has been cleared and the book is gone.
When we turn in, I can hear Mrs. Cliffton’s voice from the neighboring room as she tells Miles good night. “Miles,” she says, “is there anything you’d like to ask me? Do you want to talk about school tomorrow, or anything else?”
I pause mid-line in my reading of Coleridge to listen, wishing I had thought to ask him that. I never would have before, but it feels like I should start, somehow.
He doesn’t ask her about the Variants or the Disappearances or Mother or the war or any of the thousands of questions that I wish he would. “Does the tooth fairy come to Sterling?” he says instead. “I have a very loose tooth.”
I roll my eyes. I’m fairly certain Miles knows the tooth fairy doesn’t exist. I’m also fairly certain he’s saving pennies for a new Sub-Mariner comic.
“Of course,” Mrs. Cliffton says. “Sterling is one of her favorite places. But you must tell me when it comes out so I can make sure she knows where to find you.”
“Oh,” he says. “All right.”
“Tomorrow’s going to be wonderful,” she continues. “There are so many nice people at your school. It’s exciting, isn’t it? Knowing that tomorrow you’ll meet so many new friends.”
Miles is quiet. And then I hear him repeat the words my mother always said to us when we were young. I haven’t heard them in years. I didn’t even know he remembered them.
“Mrs. Cliffton, may your dreams be filled with stars and not with shadows,” he says. Now that I can’t see him, his voice seems to belong to someone smaller.
“Thank you, Miles,” Mrs. Cliffton says, so softly I almost don’t hear it. “But I’m afraid dreams are another thing that have been gone from Sterling since long before you were born.”
I close my eyes. So it wasn’t a coincidence that my nightmares stopped once we got to Sterling. Dreams, even the bad ones, were the last way I could reach out and touch my mother. And even that figment of her was better than nothing at all.
That night I wait in my room for the house to quiet. My new uniform hangs in the closet. The white blouse, necktie, and dark skirt pressed into crisp pleats seem to promise I will make you appear like you belong. I try not to look at it.
Instead I pull my hair up into a bun, allowing my ears to breathe in the secrecy of my own room. Of all the features I don’t like, it’s the ugly bump of cartilage, knotted like a kernel of corn on the tip of my right ear, that I hate the most. For a few months I’d almost grown to like it when it inspired my father’s nickname for me. “My little elf,” he’d say, and pull me into his lap.
But that all ended one spring day in eighth grade when Dixon Fairweather, the boy I’d secretly pined over for four years, tapped me on the shoulder in class. I’d leaned toward him with the stupidest smile on my face until he suddenly jumped back. “Say, what is that?” he asked, pointing. “Is that a wart? That’s repulsive.”
Repulsive.
The finishing word. For me and my ear.
I’d waited to cry until I was at home, carving the deepest gash into my floorboard. Two weeks later Dixon busted his own nose trying to wallop poor Simon Sneed with a tetherball.
And that time, Cass and I had both shed tears—?of laughter.
I shake away the memory, figuring I’ve waited long enough for everyone to fall asleep. Time to take another look around Dr. Cliffton’s library.
When I open the door, the hallway is dark. I steal downstairs and check the kitchen just to make sure I’m alone. The lights are out, and Genevieve has long since retired for the night. I reach for the light switch.
