The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [58]
“Hey, what are you doing, Queen Shish?”
“Didn’t you notice that you’re not stiff anymore? The colors flew away. Or I thought they did.” She held a candle close to my skin. It felt warm. “Some kind of shadow is still there, like a faint bruise. But with the glasses on I don’t see the colors swirling anymore. I think they left.”
I sat up and wriggled my shoulders around. Then I pulled my sweatshirt over my head. She was right. I could move normally. My back wasn’t stiff anymore. “I’m better! All better!” I almost grinned my head off, then slumped, remembering. “Just in time to die. I wish I could see Jed one more time. And Ma. And Grum. And . . .”
“Pa,” Barbie said.
“Yeah, him too.”
My heart started beating hard, and I felt the hot pressure of tears welling. I hated crying in front of Barbie, but there was no place to go. What a blubbering mess I was. Making myself sick. My stomach churned and all of a sudden I gagged. Up came Sunday dinner. Except why did it smell sweet?
“Oh, wow,” said Barbie, staring down at my mess through the glasses. “You’ve done it again, Seb.”
I grabbed the glasses and saw skinny twirls of color spinning up out of little black dots in the roast and potatoes.
“Are those raisins?” Barbie said, plugging her nose as the colors faded and the truth hit.
“If they are, they’ve been in my stomach since Thursday,” I said with a sinking feeling. “Oh, man, my snacks! That stuff must have gotten into them, too. No wonder I’ve been feeling so crappy lately.”
Barbie leaned over the bits of pretzel that the chickens had jumped away from and studied them. “Yep,” she said, handing me the glasses. “They’ve got it, all right.”
The pretzels flickered with blinky colors like the rocks. “Strange—why don’t the colors just fly out of the pretzels?” I wondered. “How did the stuff even get into the pretzels, if this cave has the power to draw it out of me and the chickens? I just don’t get it.”
“Me neither. And you know what? We never will!” Barbie howled and ran to jump kick the plywood. Then she collapsed in a heap and started to cry again.
“C‘mon, Shish.” I pulled her over onto the mattress beside me. We curled up together like we must have inside our mother long ago and cried ourselves to sleep as the candles burned low.
I doubted we’d ever wake up.
17
It was the darkest of dark nights and a weight pressed down on my stomach. Celery was still my chicken twin! The cookie dough was still in my guts! I was living a nightmare! Then the weight lifted with the sound of wings fluttering and a squawk, and I remembered we’d saved the chickens at the Hole in the Wall. I smiled to myself in the dark, until I remembered the rest of the afternoon and felt my heart go into double time.
The candles had gone out. Had they run out of air to burn? Or just melted down? I groped around for them and couldn’t find anything but cold rings of wax. I did feel kind of dizzy, though, and the air was hard to breathe. Barbie slept next to me, taking shallow breaths, and I could hear the restless chickens moving around.
Ma’s chickens. Ma. We’d probably never be found. After a couple of days searching, she’d think we had run away like Jed. She’d spend the rest of her life thinking we didn’t want to live with her anymore. She didn’t deserve that.
I did run away once. When I was eight. I climbed onto the roof of the henhouse and stayed there all day, waiting for someone to notice I was gone and come looking for me. Finally I got too hungry to wait any longer and went inside. Everyone was gathered around the TV watching a sit-com. I stood in front of it jumping up and down to block their view.
“What’s for supper? I’m starved.