Starling House(66)

Get you the hell out of here. Before Baine gets creative, before Arthur throws open the gates of Underland, before the mist rises again. Which means cash. Which means—“I’m going down to Tractor Supply in the morning. Figure I’ll get my old job back from Frank.”

Jasper swallows and the whatever-it-was vanishes. “Didn’t you quit without notice and text him a middle finger when he asked where you were? You think he’ll hire you back?”

I smile one of my least charming smiles, all sharp angles and teeth. “Yeah. I think he will.”

He does. I mean, the first thing he says when he sees me walk through the door is “No,” followed shortly by “Absolutely not,” and then “I will call Constable Mayhew and have you removed from the premises,” but he comes around. All I have to do is mention my familiarity with child labor laws and the documented fact that he paid me for more than thirty hours per week while I was a minor. His face goes blotchy pink and he disappears into the back office. He returns with a contract balled in his fist and warns me that he’ll call Constable Mayhew anyway if I try any more “funny business.” He finishes with an admirable attempt at an intimidating glare, and I pay him the courtesy of not laughing in his face. I’ve gotten used to a higher class of monster, this spring.

I spend the next two weeks wearily reassembling the life I’d had before Starling House, like a hurricane survivor returning home after the water recedes. I open the laptop and drag “document 4.docx” to the recycling bin. I wrap Underland back in its shroud of grocery bags and shove it deep under the bed, except this time I add a long woolen coat. It’s too hot for it, anyway.

I charge my phone and make a call to Stonewood Academy to confirm that they received my final payment. I ask about summer courses and discover that, for some reason, room and board is twice as much as the regular term. The bursar suggests, delicately, that we might consider an installment plan. I agree, even though I have no idea how I’ll make the payments. Then the bursar suggests, even more delicately, that Jasper might want to enroll in noncredit courses the first term. “They’re designed to help students like Jasper catch up to their peers.”

“Oh, no, his grades are great.”

“I’m sure they are! Stonewood only accepts the best, after all.” But she keeps talking, circling and insinuating. She mentions culture shock and his background and how hard they’re working on their retention rates for underrepresented demographics.

I find myself picturing those boys on the rowboat, the oversaturated blue of the sky behind them. I bet none of them ever took a noncredit course; they were the lesson Jasper was supposed to learn, the blueprint he would spend the next two years studying.

Eventually I manage, through a suddenly tight throat, “Thank you, we’ll look into that.”

I go through my missed texts, including six or seven from Bev asking if I’ve talked to Charlotte lately and telling me the guests in room 9 left half a pizza behind if I want it. I don’t reply.

I block Elizabeth Baine’s number without responding to her last message. I make sure to walk fast across the motel parking lot. I never see her, but sometimes I feel the sharp press of eyes on the back of my neck.

I hesitate before tapping the conversation labeled Heathcliff,my chest seizing with hope or hate or maybe simple hunger, but his last message is weeks old. Good night, Opal. I wonder if he’s sitting in that big empty house, just waiting for a misty night. I wonder if he’s been sleeping at all. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.

I take the long way to work. At least it isn’t cold anymore; by the end of May the air pants against the back of your neck and the sun lands like a slap.

I pass white crowns of honeysuckle and don’t wonder whether those vines are blooming at Starling House. I kick dandelion heads by the side of the road and don’t see animal shapes in the pale clouds of seeds. I eat my picante chicken ramen in the break room and don’t remember the warm smell of soup simmering in a cast-iron pot. When I see starlings flocking, I don’t try to read the shapes they make in the sky.

It’s only the dreams I can’t get rid of, like stains left behind even when the floodwaters recede. My nights are full of dark corridors and twisting staircases, rooms I remember and others I don’t. Sometimes the hallways turn into caves and I realize too late that I’ve wandered into Underland, that the mist is coiling into spines and skulls. Sometimes the house remains merely a house, and I spend hours running my fingers along the wallpaper, looking for someone I can’t seem to find.

Either way, I wake up with his name in my mouth.

“You could take something,” Jasper says one morning. “To help you sleep.” His eyes are fixed carefully on the back of his cereal box.

“Yeah, maybe I will.” And maybe I would, if I wanted the dreams to stop.

My life is already so much dimmer without Starling House. I feel like one of those maidens stolen back from the fairies, blinking the glamour from her eyes to find that her silken gown was made of cobwebs and her crown was nothing but bracken. Or maybe like one of the Pevensies, an ordinary kid who was once a king. I wonder if the feeling will fade. If the memory of a single season will be buried beneath the weight of ordinary years, until it is just a story, just another little lie. If I will learn to be content with enough, and forget that I was ever foolish enough to want more.