The Accident Season (5 page)

“I should buy myself a better hat,” Sam says, touching the top of his bare head as if there is a hat there already. There would be if my mother had seen us leave this morning; as it is, we are already bundled up too warmly for the unseasonable weather with our big boots, our scarves, and second sweaters. But it’s hard to get my mother’s voice out of my head even when she isn’t there; if I don’t wear enough layers, I can almost hear her saying,
Take another sweater, would you, Cara? You’ll catch your death out there
.

“That’s true,” I say to Sam. “Any good sailor needs a proper sailor hat.” I run my fingers horizontally across the chest of my yellow sweater. My hand bumps over the embroidered sunflower. “D’you like my stripy sailor T-shirt?”

“It’s the stripiest T-shirt on the seven seas.” Sam draws more invisible stripes on the back of my sweater. Even under all my layers I feel his fingertips tickle my shoulder blades. I find myself wanting to lean in toward his touch.

“We should find ourselves some wenches,” I tell him. “No sailor worth his salt makes port without finding wenches.”

Sam moves his hand from my shoulder down to the ground behind me. He says, “There’s only one wench I want,” and then he starts to hum another one of Bea’s sea shanties,
leaning back on his elbows and singing it to the sky. I stay sitting up, face to the sea.

This is the first Sam’s mentioned about a girl in a long time, and I’ve been sort of secretly glad because I like the way our trio is at the moment and wouldn’t want anything complicating that. And then my mind registers that Sam is singing one of Bea’s songs. I think:
Bea? He likes Bea?
and I don’t know why, but suddenly the day seems a little cold. I hug my arms to my chest.

“You cold?” Sam asks me. “Because I bet it’s a lot colder down there.” He points down at the water and moves as if he’s about to push me in.

I make a face and bump my shoulder with his, and we mime pushing each other into the water for a while, and I try not to focus on the thought of his perfect scratchy voice singing Bea’s songs. I try not to think about why I’m trying not to think about it.

When we make our way back to the bus station, the roads are more crowded. In front of a music shop, a woman is making her small dog jump and turn and even backflip in time with a raggedy old waltz. A crowd of tourists and families stand around and clap. The little dog is dressed as a Pierrot clown, black and white and tear-stained. His ruff looks uncomfortable.

Because I am still looking behind me as Sam pulls me forward through the crowd, I walk right into someone. The
someone is tall and makes a hollow ringing noise when I bump into his chest. I make to stop, meaning to apologize, but Sam is pushing quickly through the crowd, his hand hooked under my elbow. I twist out of Sam’s grip and turn around to look back at the man. For a few seconds I think he has disappeared, but then I see his reflection in the window of the shop beside me. He looks like one of the human statues that busk in the city, but this isn’t one I’ve ever seen before. He is dressed a little like the Tin Man in
The Wizard of Oz
. His suit is spray-painted silver, and so are his shoes, his hat, and even his skin. I take a few steps forward toward the window, noticing the strangest details reflected in the glass. The metal man’s costume is flawless. He seems to be wearing silver nail polish on his fingernails and looks like he has painted the most realistic little hinges at each of his joints. There is something about him that seems strangely familiar. I search through my handbag for a few coins to throw in the box at his feet, but when I turn from the window, there is no one there. I shiver and quickly walk away.

When we are halfway to the bus station, Sam notices the sign for a party shop down a little alley and he takes me by the elbow and pulls me away from the main road.

“Sammy, we’ll miss our bus.”

“There’ll be another bus,” he says. “Let’s go find things for the party.”

Neither of us has ever noticed this place before. The
shop front is grimy and plain, but the door is wide open. I follow Sam through.

Inside, it’s like a little child’s dream has exploded. There are clown wigs and hula hoops, bats and spiders and scrunched-up rubber witch masks; there are Santa Clauses and Easter Bunnies and April Fools’ joke tricks all stacked haphazardly together so that it looks like the whole year just dumped all its holidays in the one small room.

Sam rummages around gleefully. “So what would you go as?” he asks. “To the masquerade. What would your not-disguise be? The real you under the human mask?”

I shake my head and hold up what looks eerily like a real stuffed crow. “A taxidermist?”

“Now that’s a creepy costume.”

There doesn’t seem to be a shop owner or anyone around, but even so I come up close to Sam and whisper when I say that this is the strangest shop I’ve ever seen. Sam is sorting through a bucket of eyeballs. “Everything looks too real.” Even the rubbery witch mask, when I take it down from its shelf, feels a little too much like human skin. I put it back quickly and wipe my hands on my sweater.

Sam thinks the shop is a treasure trove. “Here,” he says, and hands me a pair of wings. It is like somebody stretched a butterfly so it was as tall as a person, and then cut off its wings. I am used to the little gauze-and-wire contraptions you buy in toy shops or discount stores; the ones with the
elastic straps that cut into your armpits. But these wings attach to the back of your dress (they are the type of accessory that would only ever be worn with a dress, I imagine) and they feel soft and supple, almost leathery, and, like everything else in the shop, just a little too real for comfort.

“They’re beautiful,” I say to Sam, and we both stand admiring the wings. They are a strange bluish-brownish-green color that shifts when I move, as if it’s reacting to the light. After a moment I realize why I recognize this: The wings are the exact color of Sam’s eyes. I put them down and step away. I say to Sam, “I’m not sure I like it here.”

“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat,” he says, and waggles a toy black cat in front of my face. “I’m getting you those wings. You can be like the fairy girl in your dream.”

Only a little reluctant, I pick up the wings again. I think of the fairy girl in her silver Converse. I have a similar pair of shoes at home. “I do like them . . .” I say hesitantly. Sam has his back turned. When he faces me again, he is holding a top hat and a bow tie.

“What is this place?” I ask him. Sam shakes his head. Behind him, hanging on the wall as if it’s being worn by the Invisible Man, is an old, moth-holed suit jacket, pinstripe trousers attached to black braces, and a pair of bright white spats. When I point them out to Sam, his eyes gleam.

“Vaudeville zombie?” he suggests.

I shake my head. “Flickering silent-film ghost guy.”

When he understands that I mean the changeling boy in my dream, he sort of nods in wonder. “This isn’t a costume shop, I don’t think,” he says. “It’s a magic shop.”

I turn around in circles, trying to find a salesperson amid the mess. “A magical shop,” Sam amends.

When I spot what looks like an old-fashioned grocery-store cash register on a table at the far end of the shop, an old woman appears from behind a starry curtain. Her hair is gray and worn in braids that wind around her head like in those medieval paintings and her body is draped in multicolored scarves. Behind me, Sam mutters something that sounds like “Of course,” which I think means that this lady fits in with her shop perfectly.

We make our way past the shelves and bins and baskets toward her. Beside the table with the cash register on it, there is a rack of dresses. One of them immediately catches my eye. It’s green and brown and wet-looking; it seems to be made out of seaweed and fishing nets. Next to it is a dress that looks like it’s been stitched together from moss and leaves. My skin prickles. I take both dresses off the rack and silently hold them out for Sam to see.

I know he can’t possibly be thinking of the other changeling girls I dreamed of, but he thinks of Bea and Alice immediately.

“For Alice and Bea?” he says. “Perfect!”

Sam takes the dresses off me and hands them to the lady
along with the wings, the jacket, the pinstripe trousers, the braces, the top hat, and even the spats. The lady says nothing as she folds everything up and puts it in two big paper bags. She punches some buttons in the old cash register and writes a price on a piece of paper. As we leave the shop, she smiles and smiles. I turn around as we walk away to see the name of the shop to remember for later, but there is no sign above the door and I can’t distinguish the shop from any of the other poky little buildings on the street.

I stop in the middle of the road and quickly snap a picture with my phone. On the bus, I show the picture to Sam. We zoom the image in as far as the screen will let us, until we can finally make out a mannequin in a wizard’s robe in one of the windows on the street.

“There it is.” Sam points at the purple starry fabric.

I am more interested in the woman with the multicolored scarves, who is standing at the window looking straight at me. Standing behind her, almost in shadow but not quite, is someone else. Wordlessly, I point the figure out to Sam. It is blurry but unmistakable. It’s Elsie.

B
efore class on Monday morning, we go to the library. I have the picture of the costume shop saved on my phone and I want to see what Elsie has to say about it. I told Bea all about it over the phone yesterday, and on our way through the school she is uncharacteristically quiet.

In the library, there is a small crowd at the secrets booth. This happens sometimes, after a particularly boisterous senior party (when the booth becomes a new confessional for the heartsick and the lovelorn, the hungover and the lost) or whenever a local paper runs a piece on the booth (“Online Art Collective Influences Student-Run Secrets Project,” or “Connecting Through the Unsaid: Teenagers, Secrets, and Art”). When the crowd disperses, Bea and I come forward, but just like on Friday, Elsie isn’t at her seat in front of the antique typewriter.

“Where’s Elsie?” I ask the girl sitting in Elsie’s place. Her name is Kim Brennan and she’s a friend of Alice’s, with straight, shiny hair and perfectly applied eyeliner. I’m vaguely surprised to see her here; Alice’s friends aren’t usually the arty library types.

“Who?” Kim asks.

“Elsie. The girl who’s usually at the booth?”

“Oh.” Kim shrugs. “I dunno.”

“But she’s always here,” says Bea.

“Not today,” says Kim. “Clearly.”

“Well, do you know where she is?”

Kim shakes her head.

“Well, did she say anything to you when she left you with the booth?”

Kim starts to twist her hair into a braid. “Ms. Byrne’s the one who asked me to look after the booth today. I guess you could ask her.” She ties the braid off with a frayed elastic. It slips down her hair the moment her hands leave it. “Although you mightn’t get a straight answer. I don’t think she knows who’s supposed to be doing this.” She gestures vaguely at the secrets box. “For a teacher, she’s kind of a weirdo.”

Bea puts her elbows on the desk in front of Kim and assumes her best scary-crone face. “Aren’t we all?” she breathes. I’m constantly amazed by how Bea just does or says whatever she feels the moment requires, but Kim doesn’t seem impressed. Alice’s friends aren’t terribly intimidated by Bea.

“Do you want to leave a secret?” Kim asks us with a hint of impatience.

Bea shakes her head; she likes to say she has no use for secrets because she tells her whole life like a story, secrets and all. She doesn’t need the anonymity of the typewriter text and the little wooden box.

I sit down in front of the typewriter and Kim puts up the folders that act as privacy shields from both her and the rest of the library. I run my fingers over the keys. The space bar is dented in the middle by so many thumbs. The secrets box sits on the floor beside me. I can spy the beginnings of one of the secrets inside through the slot on the wooden box. It says:
I cheated on my girlfriend and I don’t regret it.
I can just about make out another one underneath it that says something about not believing in God. I stare at the blank sheet of paper in front of me as Bea compliments Kim on her perfectly lined cat eyes.
Do you want to leave a secret?
Kim asked, but I can’t think of a single secret to leave.

I look at the typewriter and my mind is a perfect blank. I write:
I am afraid that I have no secrets
. I look over at Bea and think of Sam singing her ditty on the pier. Then I backspace to the start of the line and I type:
I am afraid of my secrets
. Then I think about the accident season and Bea’s cards and Elsie’s worried face in all my pictures, and I backspace again, a little bit frantically, and write:
I am afraid of everybody else’s secrets
. My fingers threaten to slip into the space between the keys.

When I look up, I see that I’ve made a mistake: I’ve backspaced like on a computer, but instead of erasing my words, the typewriter has written my second sentence over the first, the third over the lot. My secret is illegible. I fold it up and put it in the box anyway.

Because I still have a few minutes before the bell rings, I leave Bea with Sam outside our English classroom and go to the art room to find Ms. Byrne, who is setting up the little studio for her first class.

“Ah, Cara,” she says when I manage to catch her attention. “How is your mother?” Ms. Byrne has bought several of my mother’s prints, which is the only reason she knows who I am; I did a week of art in sophomore year to see if I wanted to pursue it but dropped it quickly, much to the relief of all involved. My mother may be an artist, but I can’t paint so much as a stick figure.

“Same as always,” I say, trying not to think about the look on my mother’s face as she pulled down shelf after shelf the other night. I shake my head and ask Ms. Byrne if she knows where Elsie is and if she will be back in school tomorrow.

“Elsie, Elsie,” she says distractedly, as if she isn’t sure who I’m talking about. She has her head in the storage cupboard and is rummaging around for supplies. “Here it is,” she mutters, pulling out a roll of tracing paper.

“Elsie? The secrets booth?” I say to jog her memory. I
wonder if it is a characteristic of all artists to be so scatty.

“Oh, someone asked me about that the other day,” she says, ducking back into the cupboard. “I put a senior in charge of it. That . . . um . . . whatshername—Kate?”

“Kim?”

“Kim, of course, sorry.”

“Yeah.” I bend over toward the cupboard as if that’ll make her hear me better. “But it’s not Kim I’m looking for, it’s Elsie. She’s usually the one with the booth?”

Ms. Byrne’s phone rings from across the room. “Dammit,” she mumbles. “Sorry, Cara, I have to take that, I’m expecting a call.” She pulls a box of paints out of the cupboard with her when she stands up to answer her phone.

“Sure, but do you know if Elsie’s off sick or when she’ll be back?”

“Elsie?” she says, her eyebrows furrowed. “Oh, well, no, I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Do you know where she lives?” I ask.

Ms. Byrne reaches her desk, still looking at me with a vaguely confused air, as if she isn’t quite sure what I’m asking her. “No,” she says, picking up her phone. “I don’t. But I’m sure one of her friends could probably give you her address. Or her phone number.”

I thank Ms. Byrne without telling her that Elsie doesn’t have any friends, or a cell phone. At least, I’ve never seen her with one, which is unusual in a school full of surreptitious
under-the-desk class-time texters and loud lunchtime music-players.

I slip into English class just as the bell rings and take my usual seat beside Bea by the window. Sam sits alone at the desk behind us.

“So?” Bea says as Mr. Connolly calls the class to order.

“Nothing.” I drop my books on the desk with a dull thump. “Not a thing.”

Sam leans forward so that his breath tickles my neck. “Did she at least say why she’s not in?” he asks.

I half turn in my seat and spread my hands palm up. “She didn’t seem to remember
who
Elsie is, let alone
where
she is.” A small knot of frustration has gotten caught just below my breastbone. It feels like butterfly-nerves.

Bea is chewing on her pen. “Kim’s kind of right on this one, though,” she says. “Ms. Byrne is particularly spacey, you have to admit.”

I purse my lips glumly. “I know. I just . . . It’s stupid, you know? I haven’t talked to Elsie—or even really thought about her—for years, and now there’s this huge big question mark about her and
this
is when she’s not around?”

“Cara,” Sam says calmly, “it’s been three days. Seriously. She’s probably just at home with a cold.”

“I know.” The wedge of frustration is like a lump of bread that hasn’t gone down right. What he says makes me think of Alice.
I think there’s a rational explanation for everything.
“I just want to talk to her.”

“So we’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but—”

At the front of the classroom, Mr. Connolly clears his throat loudly. A few of our classmates titter. “Cara?” he says, as if he’s repeating himself.

“Sorry, yes?” Louder laughter comes from the back of the class. I can feel Bea twist in her seat to glare.

Mr. Connolly sighs. “I’d like you to stay with us, please,” he says wearily. “Class has started, so I expect your private conversations to stop—and will you please cease that tittering in the back, Mr. Jones. I really don’t see how this is funny.” Beside me, Bea turns back around with a smirk.

“Okay, Cara,” says Mr. Connolly heavily with an expression that is pure, unadulterated Monday morning. “As I was saying, will you please start us off on Act Four, Scene One, and let’s see what this ghost child has to tell the Thane of Cawdor about his future.”

When the task of reading
Macbeth
aloud has passed along the rows of desks to Stephen Jones at the back and Mr. Connolly looks like he’d easily murder one of us for a cup of coffee, I judge it safe to lean very slightly in toward Bea. She is scribbling in a notebook and is clearly not listening to the desecration of Shakespeare’s words that is happening at the back of the class.

“Did you bring in the invitations?” I ask her in an undertone.

Sam and I told Bea all about my idea for the masquerade ball over the phone yesterday, and since then it’s almost all we’ve been able to talk about. Even Alice thinks it’s a great idea, especially because Nick has said he’ll let us have it at his place. The dresses Sam and I bought for her and Bea fit perfectly. When Alice tried hers on last night, she actually laughed at how perfect it was.

Sam leans forward in his seat at my words.

Mr. Connolly looks over at us sharply, so we fall silent for a few minutes while Emma McNamara stumbles over her lines. Bea quietly takes out a notebook that seems to already be entirely dedicated to the party. She flicks through pages of sketches of masks and lists of songs to put on the party mix-tape. Spooky, witchy folksongs, drowning sailor ditties, black cat and whiskey moon waltzes. She takes out a stack of fancy lacy invitations she has clearly made herself.

“
You are cordially invited to the Black Cat and Whiskey Moon Masquerade Ball
,” she reads reverently. “All great parties should be named.”

Sam reaches forward and tussles Bea’s already-messy hair. “It’s perfect,” he says.

The smile he gives her leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

***

Before our last class, Sam reminds me that we’ve a note from my mother excusing us from chemistry experiments this month. The chemistry teacher, Mrs. Delaney, shakes her
head but hands the note back to Sam and lets us go, leaving Bea sitting in front of a line of Bunsen burners emitting long pale flames.

Sam caught his finger in a locker door this morning. The nail is mottled and blue. I press the heel of my hand hard into the bruises on the side of my left arm. Pain glows like a flare. As we walk down the road toward the river, Sam complains halfheartedly about getting bad marks on our experiments this term, but I am secretly glad to be away from unstable chemicals and open flames.

When we’re halfway home I lose my footing and almost slip, but Sam takes my hand and steadies me. His bandaged finger feels rougher, slightly swollen still from where the locker door caught it. Suddenly I think of the Elsie doll in the mousetrap.

“I want to show you something,” I say to Sam, and I pull on his arm and we turn around and go back along the river toward the town, to the big stone bridge that people throw their fishing lines off of in summer. There is a family with two small children crossing it from the other side. The children’s bags are almost as big as they are, but the kids run like they weigh nothing at all.

“Why aren’t we crossing at our bridge?” Sam asks me.

“It collapsed,” I say simply. Sam just stares. We cross the bridge and walk along the bank on the opposite side of the river.

“And you were nowhere near it at the time of the collapse, right?” Sam says with a pained expression.

I wince. “I was kind of on it,” I admit. “Don’t tell Mom.”

Sam stops for a second, and closes his eyes.

“I’m fine,” I tell him, and I pull on his elbow to lead him toward the woods.

Sam walks on, but his expression is strange. He says something too low for me to hear. Then he clears his throat. “So,” he says at normal volume, “where are we going?”

I tell him about the mousetrap while we walk; about the doll that looked just like Elsie, which had been set like bait in the trap.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I think she put it there herself. I just don’t understand why.”

Sam isn’t looking at me like I’m crazy, which is reassuring. He just says, “Show me,” so I point through the trees to the clearing and tell him it’s right up ahead.

When we come to the clearing, we both stop and stare.

“Was it like this when you came here the last time?” Sam whispers.

“No,” I whisper back. I’m not sure why we’re whispering, but it feels appropriate. All around the clearing, hanging from the branches of every tree, is a flock of dream catchers, the kind you can get at the Saturday market in Galway: colorful webbed circles hung with little beads and
feathers. There are maybe fifty of them, all different shapes and colors, just hanging there at head height.

“What is this place?” Sam reaches up as if to touch one of the dream catchers but then drops his hand.

I feel a lump forming in my throat. I can hardly breathe past it. My heart thuds in my chest and goose bumps prick up along my arms. “Elsie did this.” I turn around and around so that the trees revolve about me, and the dream catchers blur. I can feel my heart beat in my ears.

“But why?”

“I don’t know.” I stop spinning and close my eyes. It takes a few seconds for my balance to steady, for my breaths to slow, for my heart to beat normally again. I take Sam by the hand and lead him over to the little bush that hid the mousetrap. When I carefully part the branches, we can see it clearly: an ordinary mousetrap, wood and wire, with a tiny little doll sitting on top of it.

Sam laughs, but I recognize it as disbelief rather than humor. “Who
is
she?”

There is a strange sinking feeling in the bottom of my heart. I say it again. “I don’t know.”