I enter my room with its polished wood floors, desert-brown walls, and heavy furniture. My eyes are pulled to the only thing out of place—the big steel trunk at the foot of the bed. My parents got it for me to take to camp the summer I turned nine. They told me I was brave to go off on my own, but I got so homesick I couldn’t even make it through the first night.
I drop my backpack to the floor and lift the trunk’s heavy lid. My heart squeezes as I look down at all the things I love: photo albums and Elian Mariner books and my mother’s green spiral notebook. I leave that untouched for today and fish around for my own notebook. I flip a few pages, then pick up where I left off.
It’s hours later when I drop my pen at the sound of a car pulling into the garage. It’s after eight o’clock, but sometimes my uncle gets home even later. And sometimes, if he has to go meet with clients in other cities, he doesn’t come home at all.
I watch my bedroom door, the way the light from the hall shines around the perimeter like an entryway to another dimension. I listen for the sound of him climbing the stairs to his office, because even when he’s home, he’s usually working.
Instead, I see a shadow fall beneath my door.
I close my eyes, but I can’t teleport, and I can’t disappear.
My uncle Russell once told me he used to be so tall and willowy that when his high school theater put on A Christmas Carol, he was asked to play the grim reaper. I’ve tried to picture it, but it’s hard to imagine he was ever frail.
Russell doesn’t speak, just lifts the conch that sits on top of my dresser and turns it slowly in his hands. His fingers are long and thin like stretched putty.
“Getting homework done?” he finally asks.
“Yes,” I answer, and immediately feel guilty. It’s late and he’s just getting home from work, still neatly dressed with a tie around his neck, while I haven’t even opened my backpack yet.
He returns the conch to its place, then takes the notebook from my hands. He squints at it, turning it upside down, then sideways, then right side up again. He does this sometimes, a sort of joke about my terrible handwriting.
“What is this?” he asks.
“A book report.”
He gives me a sharp look, and I’m afraid he can tell I’m lying. I peek up at the deep fault lines in his forehead and under his eyes, trying to read him. Some nights when he comes home, usually after he’s been gone for a few days, he can seem drowsy, relaxed, almost like he just finished a big meal.
Other nights it’s as if there’s something moving just beneath his skin, something crawling and scratching to get out. On those nights it would be better to hear his office door shut. Lonely and locked out, but still better.
His mouth twists to the side in an almost smile. “You misspelled sinister.” He drops my notebook to the floor. “Come into the kitchen.”
I follow him to the other room, where he opens a take-out container. He stands at the black granite countertop, slicing his steak with a sharp knife and eating dripping red bites. The house is quiet except for the distant metal thumping of the water heater, like the sound the dryer makes if you leave coins in your pocket.
“Your principal called me today.” Russell’s voice is deep, calm, and steady, but his words prompt a heavy thumping in my chest. Mr. Pearce said he wouldn’t call if I promised to go to class, and I’d promised.
For just a second the image of my father standing to meet me outside the school flickers behind my eyes.
“Are you listening to me?”
I nod hastily, ashamed. I don’t work hard enough. Not like Russell, who works harder than anyone I know. He’s had to ever since his dad died when he was seventeen. Again I try to picture a young, frail Russell, but I can’t.
He slices the steak and takes another red bite. “How long have you lived here?”
My stomach goes cold, like I’ve swallowed winter. He’s going to kick me out. I’ve pulled this one too many times, and he’s done. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“Four years.”
“In all that time, what’s the only thing I’ve asked of you? What’s our only agreement?”
“That you can trust me.”
“And?” He takes another bite.
“You can trust me to do the right thing.”
“And?”
“You won’t have to look into what I’m doing.”
“I don’t ask too much of you, do I?” All the feeling that’s not in his voice starts jumping in the vein in his neck.
“No.”
“I understand your…limitations. I don’t expect A’s from you. I don’t even expect B’s. But sitting in a classroom isn’t too difficult, is it?”
“No.”
“I don’t like getting called by your school. I want to be able to trust you.”
“I’m sorry.” I really am.
He sets the knife next to the clean bone. “Go get it.”
SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS going to happen.