Hide and Seek (2 page)

In Agatha’s old neighborhood, Hide and Seek was a simple game. Whoever was It would cover their eyes and count out loud to sixty, and all the other players would find someplace within the yard to hide. Once the counting stopped, the It player would search for the rest of the children, and the round ended when each player had either been found or had made it back to home base without being tagged. The first person tagged or found was It for next round. Agatha had always taken her chances as a runner, dashing out from behind a garbage can and pounding toward home base. It was much more exciting than simply hiding somewhere and waiting.

However, that wasn’t the way the game was played in the Farraday house. Agatha was not surprised to find that Summer and Rain had made up their own rules. According to the way they played, Agatha would always be It.

“Does that mean I have to look for you every round?” she asked. That wouldn’t be so bad. She could let them hide and just never bother to find them. It would be a lovely way to spend the day.

“No, you’ll never be the one looking,” said Summer.

“Then what, I hide every time? How does that make me It?”

The twins exchanged a glance, and their lips curled back, revealing identical pairs of pointed incisors.

“You’ll see,” said Rain. “Summer, go count.”

Summer sat down on the floral print sofa and buried her face in the pillows. She began counting loudly. “One, two, three…”

“Come on,” hissed Rain.

Agatha still didn’t understand the rules of the game, but in the months since she’d joined this family she’d learned that a refusal to cooperate was always met with some kind of punishment. She allowed Rain to pull her into the kitchen, where morning light spilled through the green curtains onto gray linoleum-fronted cabinets. Rain put a finger to her lips and slowly pulled open the door to the cupboard beneath the sink.

“Get in,” she whispered.

As much as Agatha wanted to just go along with their stupid game, this was too much. The space under the sink was cramped, and there was a wet spot on the floor where the drain perpetually leaked. She’d also heard her stepfather wonder aloud if that might be where the mice kept getting into the house. Regardless of the consequences, she did not want to spend any amount of time in that space. She shook her head and tried to step backward.

Rain yanked on her arm, and Agatha let out a small squeak of pain.

“Get
in,
” Rain repeated, bringing her face almost nose-to-nose with Agatha’s, “or you’ll be spending the day under the porch again.”

The younger girl swallowed. In August, the twins had tricked her into crawling beneath the wide wooden porch by telling her that they’d hidden twelve dollars in quarters in an old coffee can at the base of the house. If she retrieved it, they’d give her a third of the money. They slid back a loose piece of lattice that acted as a door, and Agatha crawled inside. As soon as her hands curled around the can, however, the twins slid the lattice back into place and nailed it shut. Agatha had army-crawled over to it as quickly as she could, but she wasn’t able to force it back open. Worse yet, when she pried off the can’s lid to see if there was actually any money inside, dozens of tiny spiders burst out and crawled up onto her face. She spent an hour on her belly in the dirt, screaming and smashing spiders with her bare hands until her mother and stepfather returned from the store. She got their attention by jamming her thin arms through the diamond-shaped holes to wave at them. Naturally, the twins claimed ignorance, stating that they hadn’t known Agatha was in there when they decided to repair the broken lattice. They also made it crystal clear that if Agatha said anything to contradict their version of events, she’d wake up with a shaved head on school picture day.

Given the blustery weather outside this morning, Agatha felt sure she’d freeze to death before her mother or stepfather came home from work. Her shoulders slumped, and she knew she had no other choice. Taking a deep breath, she sank down and maneuvered herself into the space beneath the sink, knocking over a few bottles of cleaner as she did.

Rain bent down and stuck her head partially into the cupboard. “I’ve got money riding on you. Make sure you keep still and be quiet so Summer can’t find you, or I’ll give you an Indian burn so bad you won’t be able to open your presents.”

With that, Rain gently closed the cupboard door, leaving Agatha in the dark.

Through the door, Agatha could hear Summer’s voice. “Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three—”

“You can quit counting,” Rain interrupted. “She’s hidden.”

“You’re going to lose so fast,” said Summer. “I bet I find her in less than two minutes.”

“Fat chance. And you know the rules—if you can’t find her in five, you owe me a dollar.”

Agatha breathed a silent sigh of relief. She only had to last five minutes, and then Rain would let her out and claim her prize. She heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs beside the kitchen; it sounded like Summer was starting with the bedrooms. After a few heartbeats, her eyes began to adjust to the dark and she saw that a little bit of light spilled into the cupboard from the space where the door met the wood. It was comforting, for a moment. Until she was able to see well enough to fully appreciate exactly how small of a space this was.

It was cramped. Tiny. The air around her was worse than stale, and the artificial lemon scent of liquid Ajax burned in her nose. Her left leg was uncomfortable. She needed to move it. Before long, it was all she could think about. She inched her foot forward, but her sneaker ran into the opposite wall before she could lay her leg flat. She twisted to the side—if she could angle her leg just right, maybe it would feel like there was more room…

Thump.

It wasn’t a loud sound, but Agatha squeaked in surprise. She’d knocked over a can of Comet. By the thin band of light, she could see the powder puffing upward toward her nose in a fine cloud. As she felt a tickle in her nostrils, she heard Summer thunder back down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Oh no,
she thought.
Don’t sneeze, don’t sneeze, don’t snee—

“Ahhh-choo!”

The doors to her cupboard were yanked open, and Agatha was blinded by the sudden burst of light. Blinking, she was dragged out from beneath the sink by rough hands. She could make out the shape of her stepsister, who was clapping her hands.

“Found her!” crowed Summer. “You owe me a dollar!”

Agatha’s vision returned just in time for her to see Rain burst into the kitchen.

“How’d you find her so quickly?”

“The little mouse sneezed.”

“You sneezed?” Rain’s eyes flashed, and before Agatha could act on her instinct to flee, Rain pushed up the younger girl’s sleeve and began twisting her arm in two opposite directions.

Agatha’s skin burned. It felt like sandpaper was being dragged across her forearm, and it wasn’t long before she was whimpering in pain.

“There,” said Rain, letting go. “That oughta teach you.”

As Agatha massaged her red and aching arm, Summer clapped her hands again.

“My turn!” she said. “I’ll show you what a good hiding place looks like, Rain. Go count.”

Rain stomped off to the living room to assume the official position, and Summer jabbed Agatha in the back.

“To the stairs,” she whispered.

Agatha tiptoed toward the switchback staircase that led up to the bedrooms. When she reached her foot forward to begin the climb, Summer jabbed her in the kidney again.

“Not those stairs, idiot. To the basement.”

Summer turned Agatha around by the shoulders so that she was facing the door to the cellar, and Agatha’s stomach lurched. Aside from the twins’ bedroom, which she considered a carnival-worthy Chamber of Horrors, the basement was the scariest place in the house. She’d only been in it once, when she first moved in, and she’d refused to let go of her mother’s hand the entire time. It was several degrees colder than the rest of the house, and cobwebs hung from the exposed rafters in the ceiling, ready to grab at her as she passed. On top of that, Agatha was certain that at least four ghosts haunted the basement, possibly more.

“I don’t want to go down there,” she told Summer.

“Do you think I give a crap what you wanna do? You either get in the basement on your own, or I’ll chuck you down the stairs.”

It might have been an empty threat, but Agatha couldn’t be sure. Her stepsisters were constantly threatening to do things that would result in broken limbs or certain death, but they always limited themselves to punishments which could be easily hidden or explained away.

So far,
a voice in the back of her head warned.

Agatha took a deep breath and reached out a hand, resting it on the doorknob.

“That door better not squeak, butt face,” Summer warned.

“…Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three…” Rain’s counting carried through the kitchen.

Slowly, so as not to test the antique hinge, Agatha pulled open the door. As soon as the opening was wide enough to slip through, Summer twisted her finger between Agatha’s ribs, prodding her to move forward. As Agatha descended, she took care to rest her weight on the inside edge of the staircase, where the wooden steps were nailed into the beam.

The basement was the same size and shape as the ground floor above it, one narrow room cluttered with cast-off furniture and cardboard boxes. Yellow sunlight filtered in from small, dirty windows that dotted the walls at regular intervals. From above, Agatha could hear Rain’s voice and assumed that she was still counting; the sound was too muffled to make out any words. When she reached the concrete floor, Agatha glanced up at the ceiling to check for spider webs. Sure enough, several long, sticky threads hung from the rafters and the pipes that ran down the length of the room.

“Where to now?” she asked.

“Back here, behind the furnace.”

Summer guided Agatha to the back corner beneath the kitchen, where the ancient furnace loomed like a troll guarding a bridge. A box was pushed up against the wall, creating a narrow space just big enough to conceal a crouched figure between the cardboard and the concrete.

“Get in there,” said Summer.

Agatha’s face flooded with heat. She recognized that box. It contained all of the Christmas decorations that she and her mother had collected over the years. Miniature pine trees, complete with tiny ornaments. Stout red candles surrounded by artificial holly leaves. Stuffed bears dressed like Santa and Mrs. Claus.

On the first Sunday of Advent, when it was time to decorate for Christmas, Agatha had been looking forward to seeing her mother’s old decorations in the Farraday house. She thought it might help the place feel like home. But Summer and Rain had insisted that their family’s decorations—a collection of sticky window clings and oversized red and green bulbs—be the only ones put out this year so that Agatha could “get used to the way we celebrate around here.” Agatha’s mother, ever eager to stop an argument before it began, gave in to the twins’ demands and quietly stored the Mulchinski’s traditions away in the basement.

Summer and Rain had worn their smug triumph like crowns, and Agatha knew they counted that victory as the first of many over their new stepmother. Now she was convinced Summer was going to make her hide behind that box of decorations to remind Agatha exactly who was in charge in this house. Not their father, and certainly not her mother.

The fire in Agatha’s face spread to her belly, and she balled up her hands into small fists. She wasn’t going to spend Christmas Eve cowering in the basement, waiting for either Summer or Rain to hurt her again. She pulled herself up to her full height and glared at Summer.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to.”

Summer raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“I said, I don’t want to. I’m not hiding back there. This game is stupid, and I don’t want to play it anymore.”

The older girl frowned, but nodded her head. “I’m impressed. I’ll be honest with you, Agatha. I never thought you’d have the guts to stand up to me like that. If you don’t want to play this game, we won’t play.” She tilted her head back and shouted up at the ceiling. “RAIN! You can stop counting!”

Something wasn’t right. Summer’s words should have made Agatha feel relieved, but instead they made her shoulders tense up, and the anxious ball in her stomach hardened once more.