The Girl from the Well

“And now we’re in Applegate, where the sun is actually doing its job but where the people are all so. Damn. Friendly. I can’t take two steps without someone asking how I’m doing, or what my name is, or why I’m wearing thick clothes in this kind of weather, as if they’re all required by the government to introduce themselves to everyone else like friendly, neighborhood child molesters.

“We’re here because Dad found a bigger and better-paying white-collar job—you’d think he was the only investment banker up north the way he carries on—and so we could be closer to my mother, who is clearly crazy and who has on occasion declared her undying love for her only son by nearly strangling me to death. So yes, I am thrilled at the prospect of putting myself within spitting distance for her to try again. And the absolutely mind-blowing conclusion you’ve reached is that I may be having ‘difficulty adjusting since moving to Applegate’? Really, Sherlock?”

The woman waits placidly until he is done with his spiel before speaking again. “Do you hate your mother, Tarquin?”

The boy looks back at her, and some of the anger leaves his face. “No. I’ve never hated her.”

“Are you afraid of what she might do to you?”

“Only because what she does appears to be catching.” A pause. “I killed someone, you know.”

The therapist sounds calm and unworried despite this admission. “Who did you kill?”

“Some boy at school.”

“Was he a friend?”

“Only if you’re the kind of masochist that enjoys being beaten up by ‘friends.’”

“I was told by your father that the police investigated what happened to you at your old school. They said there was no possible way that you were responsible for that.”

“Still my fault he’s dead.” The boy shifts. “I really don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“That’s all right. I don’t want you talking about anything that makes you uncomfortable. How about telling me something about your relatives here in Applegate, instead?”

“You mean Callie? She’s great. She and Aunt Linda are the sanest and nicest people I know, which is another reason Dad decided to take the job and move here.”

“I’ve heard she works as a teaching assistant at Perry Hills Elementary.”

“It’s something you’d expect someone like Callie to do. Callie loves kids. At least three times a year they visit us in Maine, despite weather that can freeze your toes off, and she never complains. We’ve always been close, for two people who live several hundred miles away from each other. She’s like the big sister I never had. Callie’s always taken care of me, even back then.”

“How so?”

“She gets me out of trouble, for one thing.”

“And are you often in trouble?”

“Got a knack for it. When I was six, I decided to eat crayons—I wanted to see if it would, uh, come out the other end in different colors, and my repeated failures made me all the more determined—and she made me barf them all out every time I did, before I could get sick. Another time I nearly sliced off my thumb making dinner, and she got me to a hospital before I was done hyperventilating. Little things like that.” The boy smiles faintly at the memory. “I always joked that she was born old. She said it’s because one of us had to grow up, and it wasn’t likely to be me. I’d always been a stupid kid. Probably still am.”

The boy pauses again. The woman is quick to pick up on the sudden change in his manner.

“Have you asked her for help recently?”

“Not…not recently, no. I decided not to.”

“And why not?”

Again he hesitates. His eyes drift back to the painting. Ninety-eight, I count. Ninety-nine. One hundred.

“Because she won’t believe me.”

? ? ?

But the young woman has a strong capacity for belief.

“They’re kids, Callie,” her friend objects, a woman with short, black hair and a round face, nearly six years older. They are preparing to leave for the day, the school corridors empty of the students who swarmed out only hours before. “Of course they’re going to say they see dead people. Didn’t you watch the movie?”