The Broken Girls
Katie had heard this one before. It was one of Idlewild’s myths, though she had no idea if it was true. Everyone hated the garden, which they were all forced to use in weekly sessions called Weekly Gardening. There was no one reason the garden was so hated, though the strangely slimy soil and the pervasive chill created by the shadows of the two buildings that bordered it were part of it. The garden never drained properly, and it always had an odor of rotting vegetables to it, mixed with something more pungent. Every once in a while someone resurrected the dead baby story, probably to scare the freshman girls.
Katie looked up when she noticed movement on the wall. A spider was crawling down from the ceiling, its legs rippling gracefully, its body fat and black. Katie stared at it for a long minute, transfixed and shuddering. Idlewild had a lot of spiders—and mice, and beetles, and bats under the eaves outside the locker rooms. But the spiders were the worst. If she killed it with her shoe, she’d be stuck looking at its dead black smear for the rest of Special Detention. Reluctantly, she looked down at the books again.
The next textbook had other bits of wisdom: If you call for Mary Hand at dusk under a new moon, she rises from the grave.
Beneath this, a different girl had written in bold, black pen: Tried it not true
The conversation was continued by a third girl, writing along the bottom of the page: She is real. Died in 1907 after miscarriage. It is in the records.
A debater chimed in: Idlewild was not opened until 1919 stupid
To which was returned: This house was here then look it up. Her baby is buried in the garden
The baby in the garden again. Katie glanced up at the spider, which was halfway down the wall now, intent on its spider business. There was a second one in the far corner of the ceiling, still and curled. She could not see a web. Maybe I should kill them after all, she thought. Feeling like she was being watched, she forced her gaze down and reached forward to turn the page.
Hold still, a voice said in her ear as a spider, black and cold, crawled over the edge of the desk and skittered over the back of her hand.
Katie screamed, upending the chair and backing away, shaking her hand. The spider dropped out of sight, but she could still feel the touch of its tiny legs on her skin, the feather pokes of its feet. Her heart was pounding so hard her vision blurred, and she heard deep, gasping breathing that she realized was her own. She put her hands to her ears.
Hold still, the voice said again.
Her teeth chattered. She struggled to inhale a breath that tasted like old chalk and something acid, sour. She backed up against the wall, her shoulders bumping it, then too late remembered the spider she’d seen. She looked up to find it poised several feet above her left ear, utterly still, clearly watching her. It began a slow, deliberate pace toward her, somehow intent. The other spider was still in the corner of the ceiling, curled, though its legs were now waving helplessly, as if it couldn’t move.
Katie tried the locked door again, her clammy hand slipping on the knob. Then she lunged to the desk, picked up one of the textbooks, and smashed the spider on the wall.
She couldn’t look at the mess it made. She dropped the textbook and picked up the next one, holding it up, maneuvering back toward the door. Somehow the door seemed the safest place. Her hands were shaking. She nearly put her back to the door, then realized there could be more spiders—spiders—and stood several inches from it instead, the textbook under her arm. The silence beat in her ears. There was no movement.
“Fuck,” she said into the silence. It was an awful word—the worst curse she knew, the worst word in her entire vocabulary. Her mother would have slapped her if she’d heard her speak it. It felt good, somehow powerful, coming from her mouth right now. “Fuck,” she said again, louder. “Fuck!”
There was no answer. She spun in a circle, still keyed up and shaking, the textbook raised, her gaze skipping over the disgusting smear on the wall. Everything was still. The thing in the top corner had stopped moving.
She let out a shaky breath. There were cold tears on her cheeks, she realized, though she had no memory of shedding them. She looked down at the textbook in her hands and opened it. Written in pencil, the lines of a familiar rhyme looked back up at her:
Mary Hand, Mary Hand, dead and buried under land. She’ll say she wants to be your friend. Do not let her in again!
She stared at it, her head aching. Her eyes burned. Those two words: Hold still. She wanted to cry again.
She’d met Thomas when she was thirteen. He was sixteen, with big, heavy shoulders, eyes that drooped sleepily, and a curious smell of mothballs. He’d lived on the other side of the block. He’d liked to flirt with her, and she’d loved the attention: tickling, chasing, wrestling. More tickling. He had given her silly nicknames, teased her, made fun of her. She’d played along, breathless, feeling special, singled out among the other girls. He was sixteen!
And then, an afternoon in July: the air hot, the sky high and blistering blue, the two of them in the empty school yard, chasing each other around the playground, abandoned in the summer heat. He’d caught her behind the slide, which was too hot to touch that day, the slide that was so familiar to her with its nonsensical words painted down the side: big slide fun!
Thomas had pinned her to the ground, shoved at her skirt. Hold still, he’d said.
He’d knocked the wind out of her, and for a second her eyes focused on those bright yellow words—BIG SLIDE FUN!—in confusion, the letters crossing over one another. Then she’d felt his fingers on her, and she’d fought him. She’d bitten him, scratched him, thrashed him with her feet. He’d hit her—hit her—and thumped her to her knees on the ground when she’d tried to run, his big hands on her, his mothball smell in her nose. Hold still. Yanking her cotton underpants off, his only words to her for those few frantic, hot minutes: Hold still.
She’d managed to run. She wasn’t faster than he was, with his big, long legs, but he gave up quickly, not wanting to chase her publicly through the neighborhood. She remembered coming through the front door of her house and seeing herself in the eyes of her mother, who was just then coming down the stairs: disheveled, her stockings ripped, her underwear gone, dirt in her hair, blood on her knees, a red mark on her cheek. Her mother had stared at her in shock for a moment and descended the rest of the stairs in one quick motion, gripping Katie by the arm.
“For God’s sake, get cleaned up,” she’d said. “Do you want your father to see you like this?”
“I don’t—”
“Katie.” Her mother’s grip was painful. She was wearing a flowered silk blouse and a dark green skirt, stockings, heels. Katie could smell her mother’s familiar smell, the Calgon soap she used and the Severens Ladies’ Pomade she used in her hair. She could see the familiar look in her mother’s eyes: anger, wretched fear, bone-deep disgust. You’re going to get in trouble, her mother had warned her countless times, hissed angrily when her father was out of range, when she’d tried to run away yet again. I don’t know what’s the matter with you. I’ve never known. You’re going to get in trouble.
“Go,” her mother said, shoving her toward the stairs.
They blamed her, of course. They never even asked who the boy was, not that she would have told them. The low, murmured conversations behind closed doors were almost expected after that. Katie thought about running away again, but instead she’d been dropped off at Idlewild three weeks later, the mark on her cheek faded, the scrapes on her knees healed.
The Special Detention room was still. The air was thin, stale. The spider in the corner had quieted. But Katie was not fooled.
Somewhere here, breathing. A quiet sound, somewhere she couldn’t see.
And then a breath of voice, pleading. Let me in . . .
Katie felt her legs tense. She squeezed her bladder, trying not to let it go.
Let me in. More clear now, coming from the direction of the window. Please. Please, I’m so cold. Let me in!
“No,” Katie said. She made herself shout it. “No! I’m not letting you in! Go away!”
Please. The voice was high, pitiful, pleading. I’ll die out here.
Katie was shaking. “You can’t because you’re already dead.” She stared at the window, saw nothing, and turned in a full circle, her eyes panicked and staring. “I’m not letting you in, so go away! I mean it!”
Let me in, came the plaintive cry again—and then her mother’s voice, close to Katie’s ear, spoken like an expert mimic. You’re going to get in trouble.
She exhaled a long terrified breath. She waited, but no more voices came, not for the moment. But they would come again. She already knew she was going to be in here for a while.
She stepped to the desk, picking up the pen and tapping it experimentally, looking for hidden spiders. Then she retreated to her spot next to the door. She balanced the textbook on her other arm and managed to write with cold, stiff fingers:
I am trapped in Special Detention with Mary Hand and I can’t get out
She stilled for a long moment, waiting. Waiting.
Then she added: Mary knows.
She lowered herself to the floor and crossed her legs beneath her skirt as something faint and weak scrabbled at the window.
Chapter 12
Barrons, Vermont