After a long silent moment, Mr. Sterling wipes his mouth with his napkin and gives the table a gleaming smile.
“Well. It’s been quite a lovely dinner.”
Nine
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
After watching the sun start to come up for the thousandth time, I had just fallen back to sleep when the knocking starts. Or I should say pounding. Like the police are at the front door. And that’s the only reason I jump out of bed.
The house stirs, each door opening. I step into the hall just as Piper does, rubbing her sleepy face.
“Who is that?” Mom grumbles. “It’s six in the damn morning!”
Alec throws on a shirt as he runs downstairs.
“Yes?” he says, opening the door.
An old Black man stands behind the screen door, his face in a deep scowl.
“Yes?” he snaps. “That’s all you got to say? You gonna explain this?”
Alec steps out while we stay inside, protected by the screen door, crowding around each other to see.
On the porch sits a pile of various tools—a power drill, chain saw, even a little push lawn mower. None of which belong to us.
Alec and Mom give each other a look, still puzzled.
The old man points again at the tools, frustrated by something unsaid.
“Wait, are these yours?” Alec asks.
He scoffs. “You know damn well these are mine because you took them from my shed! I spent all morning driving around looking to see who stole my stuff all to find it here! And you didn’t even bother to hide it!”
Alec, dumbfounded, glances around, as if an answer to the problem will appear.
“Um, look, sir . . . ,” Alec says.
“It’s Mr. Stampley to you!”
“Right. Mr. Stampley. We didn’t steal your things.”
“Then how you explain this!”
“I’m just as surprised as you! Maybe someone dropped them off at the wrong house.”
“Pssh! No one would do some foolishness like this.”
“Maybe someone was playing a little practical joke on you.” Alec lets out a nervous laugh. Mr. Stampley only stares, fuming.
“Ain’t nothing funny about stealing a man’s things!”
“Did any of you see these here last night?” Mom asks us in a low voice.
We shake our heads. I was the last in after taking Bud for his evening walk and the porch was empty.
“Well, sir, I’m sorry but . . . I have no clue how your stuff got here,” Alec says, hands on his hips. “But I’ll be happy to load it back in your truck.”
Mr. Stampley shakes his head, adjusting his cap. “I should’ve known. Only crazy people, troublemakers, would move to this block!”
He looks up at the house next door, visibly shivers, and starts collecting his belongings.
“Where’s my ax? I know you have that too.”
The school’s track team has a meet today. I sit in the rusty bleachers, watching the 100 meter with my hoodie up. Don’t know why I’m doing this to myself. Guess I’m a sucker for self-torture.
Monica Crosby is the team’s star runner. She’s toned, tall, slender build . . . and she’s good. Almost too good for this school. If circumstances were different, I’d suggest she try out for a private school; she could totally score herself a scholarship, maybe even try out for a pre-Olympic team. She’d boost her speed if she focused on her core and tightened her strides. But here, in this new town, I keep my mouth shut and mind my business.
I can’t believe Coach let David back on my old team. Then again, why would I ever think he would let me back? Especially after I fucked up. All the practices and meets I missed . . . with my record, no one should ever trust me on their team. I’ll just screw up. Always do.
“That’s the girl who lives on Maple Street,” a girl whispers behind me.
“For real?” her friend gasps.
Tightening the hoodie around my face, I head for the stairs.
I was my old school’s Monica Crosby. Now I’m nobody but a girl who lives on Maple Street.
Whatever that means.
“So what’s the big deal about me living on Maple Street?”
The garden club asked for volunteers to help clean a piece of property in the hopes of converting it into a community garden. Yusef and I team up to comb through the perimeter with trash bags and sticks. But I’m already regretting it. Because a few yards away, I can see a moldy queen-sized mattress in the rubble-strewn field. An oasis for bedbugs. I can barely keep my eyes off it.
FACT: Bedbugs can live up to eight months without a blood meal, meaning they can survive on furniture until a new human host nears.
Yusef wipes his forehead with his sleeve. “Why do you ask?”
“I mean, I get I’m fresh meat, but everybody at school keeps specifically talking about how I live on ‘Maple Street,’ like that means more than it should.”
Yusef twists up his mouth a few times. “Nobody’s lived on your block in a while.”
“No shit,” I chuckle. “But what else don’t I know?”
Yusef sighs, squirming as if he is about to tell me the most embarrassing story.
“Aight, well. It’s just that everyone surprised you’re still alive, with your house being haunted and everything.”
I snort and pick up an empty Coke can. “Oh. Is that all?”
“Nah, Cali, you gotta understand, your house . . . it has history,” he says, following me. “No one thought you’d survive this long living with the Hag.”
“The Hag? Who’s that?”
“Not who, but what,” he says, all serious. “It’s this creature, a demon woman, who comes in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping, cast some type of spell on you. You wake up, but you can’t move or talk. You’re, like, paralyzed.”
“You mean . . . sleep paralysis?”
“Yeah, that’s what it’s called!”
My mouth dries, thinking of that night I almost choked on my own tongue . . . and the shadow in the hallway.
“And while you down, she steals your skin,” Yusef says. “She collects other people’s skin to wear during the daylight like she’s normal. And when the skin gets too old and baggy, she has to find new skin.”
“So, what you’re saying is . . . people think that I’m the Hag, dressed in my skin, plotting to take theirs.”
“Yup.”
I shrug and pick up some empty food containers. “Cool.”
“Cool?” he scoffs.
“Well, if everyone thinks I’m a demon, then they’ll leave me alone.”
He laughs. “I guess that’s one upside.”
“The best upside I could ask for.”
“Oh, hey,” he says, pointing. “You got something on your sleeve.”
I glance at my arm and find three tiny red spots. The world comes to a screeching halt.
FACT: Bedbugs are small, flat, oval, brownish, wingless. They turn red after feeding on the blood of a human, like vampires.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”
Yusef laughs. “Girl, it’s just some ladybugs. Relax! They’re harmless.”
That mattress . . . I knew it! I knew it!