Strange Creatures Read online

  “James,” he said, not looking up, paging through his book. I nodded vaguely. Today, I’d call him James, even though I usually forgot.

  “James. I’ve been talking to a new girl at school.”

  “I know,” he said. Of course he did. Jamie knew everything about me. He added, “Miranda Morganson. She’s Neal’s second cousin or something.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. Miranda had mentioned that, but I’d forgotten. I drew in a breath. “I thought I might tell her about Gumlea.”

  At that, Jamie finally looked up at me. I couldn’t really see his eyes, just two flashes of light. I began to talk more, nervous, trying to fill the silence.

  “She’s not like Nina. She’d understand. She’s into that stuff! Fantasy and all of that. She likes books about dragons and everything. She wouldn’t make fun of us, I don’t think. She’s different.”

  “Different,” Jamie echoed. He put his book in his lap. “You can’t tell her about Gumlea. Look at what happened with Nina. And what if Miranda tells Neal? If other people find out, it would be social suicide. Can you imagine what those guys would say?”

  He sounded patient as he explained it. Not angry or exasperated. I only had the vaguest idea what the guys would say, because of Nina. They’d probably laugh, or call Jamie weird. I knew enough about normal kids to know that. There wasn’t much risk for me, of course. Everyone knew I was weird already. But my brother . . .

  Even in the dim light, I could feel Jamie studying my features, considering me. He sighed.

  “It’s against the Laws,” he told me, which finally softened my heart a little. I didn’t care about those guys. But I cared about the Laws. “Didn’t we decide that, together? It wasn’t that long ago. C’mon. You remember this. Gumlea only works if there are two: the storyteller and the archivist. Right? I’m the storyteller and you’re the archivist. There’s no room for Miranda there. And if you violate the Law and tell her . . .”

  “Blood tithe?” I said. It had only been a few months ago that we’d typed up the contract on Dad’s computer and printed the whole thing out and signed it. We’d promised fingers. Promised toes.

  “Death tithe,” Jamie said sharply. I blinked. Part of me wanted to say that I’d never agreed to that—but Jamie was older, and he always remembered better than I did. “Execution. I don’t take my Vows lightly. Do you?”

  “No, Jamie,” I said. My throat felt tight. “Of course not.”

  The next morning, Miranda was waiting for me on the bus. I sat down next to her, feeling all the things that I wanted to say bubbling up inside me. Popping. Vanishing.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” I replied. I fished for something in my pocket. “These are my dad’s old Magic cards. I thought you’d want to see them.”

  She grabbed the deck swiftly, began flipping through. “These are awesome, Annie,” she told me. I could practically feel her vibrating beside me. But was it enough?

  It wasn’t. It wasn’t.

  “Thank you.”

  “Welcome,” I grunted, and turned my eyes out toward the woods.

  9

  THIS TIME, WHEN THE NAMELESS Boy set a trap, he was all alone. It was late into the golden evening, and the other children were all busy eating their feasts of stolen jelly beans and Kool-Aid and Hostess CupCakes. Perhaps Ijah looked for him as he slipped down beneath the lowest branches of the Great World Tree, but the child was soon distracted by laughter and conversation. And Boy was permitted his task.

  The bait was a fish, which one of the other children had caught the night before and had been cleaned and left to dry on the shore. It was rainbow scaled and nearly as long as his arm. It would have been a fine dinner for someone, but sacrifices would have to be made if he was ever going to leave this place. He pried the jaws of the trap open and set the fish inside it. Then he tucked himself into the bushes to wait.

  Jamie started seventh grade, and our lives began to unravel. Though we now took the same bus together again, once we stepped on it, we might as well have been occupying different planets. His life, once so tightly wound around mine, had taken on a new, hidden form. There had been a time when we had promised each other that nothing would ever come between us. Now it felt like that promise was impossible to keep.

  Even our mornings were different now. Once, we’d wandered from our rooms at the same time, jostling each other over the sink as we drowsily brushed our teeth. Now, in the blue-gray hours before dawn, I’d wake up to the sound of Dad and Jamie warming up in the driveway. With my eyes turned to the wall, I imagined it. Dad would clutch his travel mug of coffee in one hand and would let it fog up his glasses as he jogged in place. Jamie would stretch his legs, which were long and getting longer. He would double- and triple-check his shoelaces. Maybe he would spit a few times into the driveway stones. I don’t know. I never saw it with my own eyes. I wasn’t invited.

  I heard them speak, but not their words. Mumbled bits of conversation. It sounded fake, like the dialogue from a Lifetime movie.

  By the time I went downstairs for breakfast, Jamie had been awake for hours without me. His gaze was hale as he headed to the back of the bus, where the cool middle school and high school kids sat. Meanwhile, I sat next to Miranda, and we mostly talked about cartoons. Sometimes I’d catch her peeking at my notebook over my shoulder, glimpsing corners of maps and mechanical pencil drawings of the Nameless Boy, but I’d shut them tight before she’d ask me any questions. I’d promised Jamie I wouldn’t talk about Gumlea to anyone. And I, I was learning, was the one who kept promises.

  That fall, Dad dragged us all out to Jamie’s cross-country meets. I’d watch my brother move easily among the other boys, wearing the exact same clothes. Watched him line up on the track with the other runners, flex his muscles, his bare shoulders warm golden in the sunlight. I’d watch him move like a knife through velvet, slicing his way through the pack. Mom and Dad would cheer, and Elijah, too, and everyone around us, and I’d just watch and remember ancient words. Jamie had been practically a baby then, but he wasn’t anymore. If you try hard enough, you can learn to do anything. To be anything.

  Had he finally done it? Become a normal kid? A sports star? The son our father had always dreamed about? It looked like that, but I knew better. I could still feel the real Jamie, trembling beneath the weight of all those medals. I knew, deep down, that he was still awkward in his skin, still scared of his own shadow. He could hide it from the other boys, but he couldn’t hide it from me.

  There were still some days when he’d come into the living room and invite me to the woods out back. I’d pull myself from the sofa, leaving Elijah in the puddle of blue light, and together we’d head out into the early spring chill. One day Jamie challenged me to a swordfight, brandishing a long stick. But the way he moved was too wild and theatrical, like he was a child actor in a badly produced local play. I hardly fought back. I moved listlessly.

  “Come on!” he shouted, striking harder. I could feel his mounting rage reverberate through my forearm. “Fight me, Annie!”

  Something broke. Not wood. Inside me. I raised my arm high. But instead of fighting him, I threw the splintered branch down into the mud.

  “No,” I said. The word came out as a whisper, delicate and trembling. “I don’t want to. James.”

  I couldn’t keep the tears out of my voice when I said his name. That’s when I realized how hurt I was. Jamie was ashamed of me, ashamed of Gumlea. Ashamed, even, of his name. But he still wanted that magic. It wasn’t fair. My throat was tight, but I wouldn’t let myself cry. Not in front of him.

  But Jamie must have felt something, too. His nose wrinkled. He narrowed his eyes. And suddenly, he sprang on me, full up with rage—real, shaking, spitting anger. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. When he jumped, it knocked the wind out of me. I lost my footing. Went flying, face against the mud, shoulders against long-buried stone. He hit me once, hard, in the sternum. I tasted red bubble up past my throat. My mouth was
full of something acrid. Some poison, fantastic in origin.

  “Fight me!” he screamed. He dug his hands into my scalp, tugging up a full rope of muddied hair. My heart pounded. My chest ached. Not because he was hurting me, though he was, but because I had realized something. This wasn’t about me. He didn’t care whether I played in Gumlea with him. He hadn’t cared for over a year. Something must have gone wrong at school. Something terrible must have happened. Something with Neal, maybe? Or Nina? He wanted to hurt me, but only because somebody else had hurt him first.

  He needed me. I knew it. I was supposed to help him. He wasn’t Jamie right now. He was the Nameless Boy, and he was calling on the Emperata Annit to save him. Wasn’t that her job? Wasn’t she supposed to tear the sky open, and then punish everyone who had ever harmed him?

  “G-d damn, Annie!” he screamed again. “Fight me!”

  But I wouldn’t. Gumlea wasn’t a game we played only when it suited him. I wasn’t like Jamie, couldn’t learn to tuck my true self into my back pocket like she didn’t matter and then parade her out only when he needed her. Maybe he could have it both ways, but I couldn’t. It was either magic or emptiness, but never both. I couldn’t conjure the magic now. I just stared at my brother. I think that scared him most of all.

  He got off me. It took a few minutes to roll my aching body over and push up against the moldering leaves. My hands shook. My throat, when I swallowed, felt full of a thousand little pins.

  “Get out of here, then,” he said. He wasn’t shouting anymore. He was sniffling, crying, though quietly. I should have put a hand on his shoulder. Should have taken the pain from him. But I didn’t. I walked away.

  That day, I didn’t bother walking backward into our yard. Technically, I stayed in Gumlea. That was against the rules, to leave without leaving, to go inside the house without slipping between the Veil first. I would stay up late saying a devotion to the King, begging forgiveness for leaving that doorway open. But Jamie would never know.

  I went inside. Before Mom or Dad or Eli could ask questions, I stepped into the shower, where no one could hear me cry. I stayed in there for a long time, watching the mud pool around my feet.

  Sometimes Miranda came over after school. It didn’t surprise me that she didn’t care about iPads or video games any more than I did. We played Magic: The Gathering or dickered around with a Ouija board. I deliberately pushed the planchette across the board, inventing elaborate biographies of the ghosts in our town to entertain her, unsure if she ever caught on to my lie.

  But mostly I was alone. I’d have felt that way even if Jamie had been around, probably, but I wouldn’t know, because he never was. Not anymore. He had too many sports to play, or friends to hang out with. I was alone in the afternoon in the forest, playing games that felt solitary and hollow. I was alone when the weather turned cold, when, out of desperation or boredom, I don’t know which, I started streaming old episodes of The X-Files. And I was alone when I sat in my room and drew maps that I kept to myself. I put them on the walls over my bed, though they had no story in them. When I stared at them late at night, they might as well have been road maps of New Jersey. Nothing magical. Nothing that meant anything to anyone. Just the same places, hollow, meaningless. Over and over again.

  I definitely didn’t share them with Jamie, though after that day in the woods, he stopped talking to me about Gumlea at all. Anyway, he was busy that year. After cross-country, he started playing basketball, and hanging out even more with Neal, who was on the team. The two of them became best friends, inseparable. There was an apartment in Neal’s basement where his older brother, Calvin, lived. That’s where Jamie started spending all his time.

  “I don’t like it,” Mom said. “Calvin’s in high school. What does he want with a bunch of seventh graders?”

  “He’s a good Christian boy,” Dad said, which was supposed to be a tease, but from the way our mother glowered at him, it was clear she didn’t find it funny. “When I called his dad, he just said the boys eat junk food and play video games.”

  “Dad, I told you that,” Jamie said. Dad reached out and ruffled Jamie’s hair, which he hadn’t cut since the summer. It was coming in darker now, the curls almost black. Mine was still streaked with lighter brown even in the waning light of early winter.

  I don’t know what they did in Calvin Harriman’s apartment. I told myself that I didn’t want to know. Jamie was leaving me behind, and now, for revenge, I was studiously turning my back on him. What I did know about—too much about, more than I could stand, really—was Nina. Not from Jamie. Miranda was the one who told me. She was Neal’s second cousin and she heard all about how Nina had been invited to Calvin’s house one night with her stupid friends Elise and Shelby, and the girls and the boys all played Quarters together. I’d heard the kids on the bus talking about it; it sounded like some kind of drinking game.

  “Jamie doesn’t drink,” I protested, then cast my gaze to the back of the bus, where my brother was busy stealing some other boy’s hat and laughing, too false and too loud. Maybe he did drink. He’d been the one to suggest that the Winter Watchers tapped trees for wine, after all. He’d always had that curiosity in him, that edge.

  But then Miranda explained what Quarters really was. “The girls wear sweatshirts and sweatpants and the boys drop quarters down them and then they turn the lights out and the boys have to find them.”

  “That’s stupid,” I snapped, my voice a box cutter’s edge. I didn’t want Miranda to know how much the idea rattled me, how it made my stomach feel knotty and squeezed. I could almost see it: Jamie groping around Nina’s skinny thighs, touching the thin fabric of her underwear. Touching other things. The idea made me feel sick. “If they want to touch each other, why not just do it? Why do they need some excuse?”

  Miranda’s eyes went wide. She blushed faint pink, like a little kid.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone would want to touch each other at all like that. Nina could get pregnant.”

  I rolled my eyes. I let out a scoffing sound. I did everything I could to register my disgust. But whether it was at Miranda or Nina or even at Jamie, I wasn’t even sure.

  10

  THE NAMELESS BOY WAITED. AND waited. His body ached. He contemplated returning to his home. But he already had so much invested in this—his time, his hope. And so he waited longer still, until the sky began to go purple at the edges and even the larger moon began to fade.

  At last, a snap. A wheeze. A cry.

  I was still going to Friday-night services with Mom then. Sometimes Dad or Elijah would come, but mostly it was just the two of us. I think we both knew that it should have been Jamie—he’d be bar mitzvah soon and was supposed to be studying for it. But he was usually too busy with Neal.

  Sometimes, after services, Mom and I would go watch the rabbi light the candles and say the prayers over bread and a Dixie Cup of grape juice back in the meeting room near the kitchen. A few people would bring potluck, a strange mixture of homemade kosher foods and dishes from local restaurants. There would be kugel and pizza, brisket and California rolls.

  “Let’s nosh,” Mom would say to me. She always treated Yiddish like it was some kind of secret joke between us, one of many jokes, like the faces she made when Neal’s mom called or the complaints she’d lodge about Dad’s parenting when she thought Elijah wasn’t listening. But I didn’t mind. Not on Friday nights. Friday nights were candles and prayers and some faint, beautiful peace blossoming inside me, untouched by Jamie.

  That was the truth, the real, ugly truth. I was glad he wasn’t there. Glad it was just me and Mom, for once.

  At least, on most nights. Because one night, Cantor Liebowitz turned to Mom and said, “Your son should be here. He has the best voice in his b’nei mitzvah class, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” Mom said. His voice had been sweet when he was younger, but I hardly ever heard him sing anymore. Singing was one of those things that he and Neal and the rest of t
hem had dubbed gay.

  “He doesn’t study,” Cantor Liebowitz went on. “He has the most beautiful voice but he doesn’t study. Boys like him, we never see them after they become bar mitzvah.”

  The line across Mom’s forehead, the one that had been growing over the past few years, got deeper now. There was even a pair of parentheses framing her mouth. “He told me he’d been studying,” she said.

  Cantor Liebowitz pounded his fist on the table. Everybody jumped, even Rabbi Shulman. “Kids have no sense of the importance of religion anymore—”

  “Hiram,” Rabbi Shulman interrupted, her voice firm. It was the same voice that rose from the pulpit on High Holy Days. Sometimes I felt that there were two sides of her: the G-d side, and the friend side. On this night, she spoke with command presence to Hiram Liebowitz. “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  Cantor Liebowitz scowled, fell silent.

  In the absence of his words, Rabbi Shulman softened her voice. “Besides, some young people care. After all, Annie is right here, isn’t she?”

  Maybe I should have blushed from the attention. Maybe I should have glowed. But my eyes stayed on Cantor Liebowitz and stayed hard. It was easy to glean his feelings: I wasn’t enough for him. I wasn’t Jamie.

  That night, as Mom pushed our car through the winding roads, past dark woods and broken branches, she shook her head, muttering to herself about how she was going to make sure Jamie studied—how she couldn’t let him let down the family. I said nothing, instead glowering out the dark window, watching darker shadows streak past. My hands were balled into fists on my thighs. It didn’t matter to her, either, that I was there, that I had always been there, davening with Dad while she distracted my brother in the hallway. Begging her to tell me about the meaning of those dense Hebrew letters when she returned. My brother was all she could talk about, all any of them could talk about.