Amity (2 page)

Amity
. It was ours now.

Mom had another little smile as the sign swung in the slow afternoon breeze. Even though we were in the real dog days of summer, there was a breeze coming off the Concord River.

She caught me looking at her. “What do you think, Con?” Her voice turned up at the end. Mom’s voice always turned up at the end. It made everything she said into a question, even stuff that wasn’t supposed to be, which says everything you need to know about Mom.

I shrugged, ignoring the little twitch of disappointment on her face as she tucked a stray, gray-streaked curl behind her ear.

I could have said a lot of things then: How we weren’t the kind of people who named their houses—even if
Amity
did seem like the exact right name for this place. How you
couldn’t, like, change the future, alter your destiny just through the power of positive thinking, you know? How hoping didn’t make things happen.
Couldn’t
make things happen.

How, really, it would take much more than just moving upstate to turn things around for the Webb family.

But I didn’t say any of those things out loud, and that slow grin stayed at the corners of her mouth.

“It’s cute!”

Jules came up behind me. She beamed at Mom, her cheeks all pink and shiny from the humidity. She fixed me with a crooked frown, and shoved an elbow into my ribs. She flashed “thumbs-up” to Mom. “I love it!”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You
love
it?” Too far, even for Jules. It was a
sign
, you know? I mean, a
really stupid
sign, honestly. “Stupid.” I actually said that part out loud, though I didn’t mean to.

“I
love
it.
Love
.” Jules poked me again. “Don’t be a jerk. That’s Dad’s job.”

Fair enough
.

Jules was the only person who could make me see reason. Just a weird twin thing, I guess. She was the one who kept me grounded … when I
was
grounded, I mean.

“Speaking of …,” I said.

Jules wound her mass of bright copper curls into a knot at the base of her neck, patting it in place, and fanned her face with her hand. I thought then how funny it was that we were actually twins, seeing as how we looked and acted like two people who hadn’t even grown up on the same planet, much less in the same family. Jules’s personality was like her hair: thick and wild, impossible to ignore.

Mine was just, you know, brown. Wavyish brown.

“He’s down at the boathouse with Abel,” she said, gesturing. “That little shed at the base of the dock. Apparently, someone left some tools and stuff in there.”

“He’s pissed that stuff was left behind. Or—wait, he’s pissed that nothing good was left behind.”

“Bingo.” She frowned.

There aren’t too many things that get to me, but Jules’s frown does. That twin thing, maybe? Whatever it was, Jules’s smile was just about the only “real” thing I knew. So I preferred when she was happy.

I reached out and pinched the tip of her nose, which I knew she hated, but which always made her laugh anyway. She snorted back a giggle, like always, and ducked, swatting my hand. Then she sighed, folding her arms across her chest. “It’s so weird.”

I followed her gaze. “What? The way the house is, like, sideways?”

It
was
weird, kind of. Whoever designed Amity was trying to make the most of the land they had to work with, I guess; since the lot was deeper than it was wide, the house sat perpendicular from the road. So it was the side that looked out at you as you pulled up the drive, not the front.

And it
did
look out at you, eerily. That’s what Jules meant. That
Amity
sensed you.

That sewing room on the third floor had these little half-moon windows, like blank bookends opening out onto the road. They turned in toward each other, winking in the sun. They almost looked like—

“They look like eyes,” Jules said. Her voice was low and
breathy now. “Beady little eyes, just staring down at you.” She shivered.

“Yeah.”

She turned to me. “Does it give
you
the creeps?”

I shrugged. “It’s a house,” I said, like that explained anything.

It didn’t, of course. Maybe Amity
was
just a house, but there was still that feeling that it was … 
aware
, that it was breathing somehow. Seeing you.

But it still didn’t give me the creeps.

“Right, of course,” Jules said. “Nothing creeps
you
out.”

“It’s a
house
,” I said again, which still wasn’t really an explanation.

We heard a smash, followed by Mom’s usual desperate squeak. Something about the wind on the river made the sounds hazy, but Dad was for sure on another tear. Jules widened those sea-green eyes of hers and ran off. The only thing to do when Dad went off was to get gone.

I paused for a minute before following, but I didn’t stop to wonder whether Amity was watching me go.

It was only a
house
, after all.

And nothing creeped
me
out. Never did.

Never does.

MOM CRIED DURING DINNER
, so Abel did, too. I swear, the slightest thing can set him off.

I can relate.

You’d think move-in day would be all hopeful, maybe? The promise of new beginnings, or whatever. And maybe for some people—for some families, I mean—it is. Or it can be.

I wouldn’t know.

All I could see were stacks of unpacked boxes, the monster-sized clumps of dust in the corners, the chip in Abel’s favorite drinking glass, which didn’t survive the ride up intact.

Did any of us?

We ate greasy pizza straight out of the box, sitting Indianstyle on the dining room floor. A dusty chandelier that was still hanging when we showed up swayed, threatening, with any little breeze. Good thing the air was mostly as thick as the mood. It was quiet in that live-wire way. I could hear myself chewing from inside my head, and the clench in my throat when I swallowed. Abel mouth-breathed while he gnawed at his own food.

Then the telephone rang. It was a scratched-up, black rotary thing that had to be as old as the Concord River. Mom’s eyes flew open soon as that bell sounded, and she flashed a glance at Dad, all panicked. I didn’t think they were so free
with their forwarding number when we hit the road, so the call probably wasn’t coming from the local Welcome Wagon.

“It’s loud,” Abel said through a mouthful of cheese. It was. The ring of the telephone cut into me, sending little vibrations buzzing in the floorboards. “Should someone—” He snapped his mouth shut when Mom put a hand on the back of his neck.

Dad cleared his throat, hacking into his closed fist. We all knew that closed fist well enough, which was why Mom cut Abel off when she did.

“Annie, answer the phone,” Dad said.

Jules—Julianne, that is (she went from
Annie
to
Jules
with everyone but Dad by our fifth birthday)—nodded and jumped up. She scampered over to the doorway to the kitchen, grabbing at the receiver and cutting the phone off mid-ring. “Hello.”

I waited, itching to see who was on the line. The floorboards prickled at the backs of my thighs.

“Hello?”

She frowned. She held the receiver at arm’s length so the cord popped and snaked like something alive. From across the room, I swore I could just make it out: the low hum of static, cracking and sparking like a whisper. Like Amity was calling out to us, almost, from those angry, thrumming floorboards.

Jules hung the phone up abruptly. She came back into the dining room, but stayed leaning against the far wall, like she didn’t want to get that close to Dad right then.

“There was no one there,” she reported, like we hadn’t all just heard that for ourselves. “Maybe it was a wrong number.”

Dad grumbled something, stood up, and lumbered to the phone, grabbing the receiver in his hammy, callused fist. Grunting, he stared at it like he could just sort of … 
will
it to tell
us our fortune, to tell us how things would be here at Amity.

I thought,
I could tell you
.

And I didn’t know what I meant by that.

But I still knew it was the truth.

“YOU BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU TELL PEOPLE
when you answer the phone.”

Dad glowered at Jules
—past
her, really. Vacant. His eyes were flat.

“She’s always careful,” I said. We were all careful, in our own way. You learned to be, right from the start. Thanks to Dad.

“I’m—I will,” Jules stammered. “I will.” She shot me a look, asking me not to make things worse. That was always Jules’s part to play: damage control. I rolled my eyes at her, small enough that no one but she could see, and tore my chewed-up crust in half.

Then came the crying. That was always Mom’s part to play.

Her tears were sudden, like a faucet coming on out of nowhere. It reminded me of the sound Butch, our old pit bull mix, made years ago when I ran over his tail with the front tire of my mountain bike.

That was an accident, of course.

Old Butch was long gone, and Dad never let us replace him no matter how much Jules begged. That might’ve been my fault. But that yelp Butch made when he was hurt, it wasn’t a sound you could just forget.

It grated, made my skin feel too tight. Kind of like Mom’s crying was doing now.

Jules scrambled over to squeeze Mom’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “New places are hard. Change is hard. It’ll be fine.

“It just takes time.”

She sounded so sure. Maybe she just wanted to shut Mom up before the waterworks could get worse. As it was, Mom’s slobbering made Abel screw up his face even tighter, balling his fists all up at his sides.

Dad sighed, then pulled the phone cord out of the wall, leaving it to dangle like a loose thread, or a noose.

A noose?

Yeah
, I thought, watching the loop of the cord sway.
A noose
.

“It’ll be fine. It’ll be
good
.” Jules really meant it, I could tell.

Maybe she felt what I did: that low hum from underneath, lulling me. I couldn’t explain it—it would’ve probably sounded crazy if I tried—but Amity felt sturdy beneath me, like she had … 
good bones
.

Amity felt safe to me, right from the start.

Jules wasn’t worried about Amity.

Neither was I.

I WAS WASHING UP
, sawing a toothbrush back and forth in my mouth while the water in the thousand-year-old faucet splashed back up onto my face like rain on a windshield.

I was actually feeling a little hypnotized, watching the trickle from the faucet seep down the opening of the drain. There was a smell coming from the drain while I brushed, scrubbing until my gums felt raw and bloody. It was like wet leaves gone kind of rotten. I spat, and the foamy dribble was cloudy pink. I shut the water off, twisting the taps tight enough to wrench my wrists. The faucet clanged off with a rattle.

That was when I heard it. The telephone.

It rang out, just like during dinner, all sharp and accusing.

I went into the hallway to see if anyone was going to answer it, but the doors to all the other bedrooms were closed. I could hear the noises of everyone getting settled in for the night. The phone rang one more time, and I stood there, stock-still in the hallway, curling my bare toes against the wide, rough floor planks.

The phone cut off mid-ring.

I heard a doorknob rattle and realized that Jules had come into our bathroom from her bedroom. “You don’t knock?”

“Sorry,” she started. Then she saw the bloody, phlegmy mess in the sink. “Gross, Connor. If we’re going to be sharing
the bathroom, we need to set up some ground rules.”

“Like knocking.”

She sighed, the little breath sending the shorter curls dangling over her eyes bouncing. “Fine. Whatever.”

I moved into the bathroom and shoved her aside, maybe a little harder than I really needed to, but not hard enough to hurt her or anything. I wasn’t that way with Jules. “I’ll rinse it. God.”

I twisted the taps back on and splashed the spurt of water around, watching as the gobs of foam and flecks of pink washed away. When everything was clean enough again, I looked at Jules. “So who do you think keeps calling?”

Jules’s eyebrows came together. “What, at dinner?”

“And just now.” It was still kind of echoing in my eardrums.

She tilted her head. “What are you talking about?”

“You were in your room. You didn’t hear it?” In old houses, sometimes sound carried weird and stuff. “It rang, again. Just now.”

Jules put her hands on her hips. Her eyes were that mossy green they sometimes turned when she was really, kind of … 
feeling
.

“Connor,” she said. She sounded really tired and fed up. “Just don’t. Come on. Dad unplugged the phone. You
saw
him do it. And look.” She pointed to the end of the hallway where Mom and Dad’s doorway loomed. “He was serious about not wanting any calls out here. No one he wants to hear from. Shocker.”

I followed her arm, and blinked. I’d been standing here, just seconds ago, literally, all by myself in the hallway. And there was nothing—not one single thing—to see when I’d
looked around. But there it was, right where Jules was pointing, coiled like a snake.

The phone cord. The
only
phone cord, from the only phone in the house. Still black, and twisted like a vine.

Or
vines
, I thought, like more than one. Because sometime between after dinner and now, Dad had hacked the cord into pieces and dropped them in a pile outside of his bedroom door, a wiry little nest of tiny black tentacles.

That echoing, thrumming sound was back, humming against the soles of my feet, and when I looked at the pile of phone cord again, it felt like the door behind it buckled. For a second, I thought that if I wanted to, I could have passed straight through the door myself.