In the Middle Read online

  Instead of an embrace, she offers me a watered-down smile. At least I think it’s a smile. Maybe it’s indigestion. I used to make that same face after eating a big bowl of Mom’s chili. She always made it too spicy. Remembering the last chili night with Mom and Dad makes my heart twist within my chest, and I take a deep breath. If I hope to survive without my parents, I need to stop thinking about them. I suppose my therapist at the hospital would disagree, telling me to embrace all of the good times we shared. Really, though, I don’t know what the therapist would say because I never went to see her.

  After several seconds of uncomfortable silence, Aunt Perdita finally clears her throat. “Well, then. Oliver, help Lucil—Lucy to her room, won’t you?”

  Oliver nods and turns to me. “C’mon, it’s this way.”

  I trudge after him, the thu-thump of my uneven gait deafening on the marble floors. Each step makes me more and more self-conscious, until I finally can’t stand it anymore. “Are you my uncle?” I blurt.

  He stops in his tracks and looks over his shoulder at me. There’s that dimple again. My cheeks flush, embarrassed by my lack of social grace more than anything else.

  “No,” he says simply.

  “Then how do you know so much about my aunt’s house?”

  “Oh, well . . . You know what they say about small towns.”

  My eyebrows scrunch up and I shake my head. “Nope, I don’t know what they say. I’m a city girl.”

  He resumes his slow processional down the hall. “Everyone knows everything about everybody else, that’s what they say. Mitte’s no exception.”

  I don’t care what Oliver says; it’s still weird that he knows his way around the house.

  The corridor stretches on a long way. I’m not used to walking long distances, so my gimpy leg protests with each step. Finally, he stops at an open doorway on the right side of the hall. “Here it is,” he announces, “home sweet home.”

  I know he’s just trying to make me feel more comfortable, but I want to lash out at him. This isn’t home, and it never will be. Instead of my canopy bed draped with sheer scarves the shade of ripened plums, there is a queen-sized bed covered in a grey down comforter. The walls are painted white, the hint of sunlight filtering through the thin curtains setting them aglow. The brightness is too much and I squint against it. Hopefully someone remembered to pack my sunglasses because I’ll need them to step foot inside my own bedroom. Great.

  After turning a full circle to take in my new space, I’m surprised to see Oliver still standing next to my suitcase. I’d hoped he would read my mind and leave me alone.

  “Uh, thanks,” I mutter.

  He doesn’t move. I wonder if maybe something is wrong with Oliver.

  “I’m going to take a nap now, so if you don’t mind . . .”

  Oliver stands there for another second or two before he blinks out of his daze. “Oh. Oh! Right. I’m sorry. You’re probably really tired.”

  “Yeah.” I barely nod, trying to keep the pain from shooting through me again. “Long trip.”

  “It was nice to meet you, then. I’ll be seeing you, Lucy.” He winks, then turns on his heel and leaves.

  Part of me wants to chase him down and punch him in the eye so he can’t wink at me ever again—the nerve! And part of me wants to beg him to stay. My new room feels too empty without him here, which is completely ridiculous. We just met.

  Instead of unpacking what’s left of my worldly possessions, I collapse onto the bed and stare at the ceiling until sleep finds me. Sleep remains the only thing I can manage without pain, and even that’s debatable. Sometimes when I sleep I forget about everything: the argument. The God-awful shriek of metal. The blare of the horn. The crying. When I’m awake, I can’t escape the nightmares.

  I’m not sure how long I stay asleep because there’s no clock in this joint. Besides, my watch had been discarded along the way, another thing lost to the crash. Even if it had survived, I would’ve stopped wearing it anyway. IVs and my wristwatch sound like a pretty horrible combo.

  The light filtering through my thin curtains might be fading, or it could be the start of a migraine. If I cared enough, I could hobble over to the window to check where the sun hangs in the sky to get a better idea. But I don’t, so I don’t.

  I lay there for a while until my stomach starts to protest. The more I try to ignore it, the louder it groans and grumbles. I glance at the bedroom door, not looking forward to snooping around the mansion in search of food. When my stomach gurgles again, I sigh and kick my legs over the side of the bed.

  The hallway stretches on endlessly without Oliver to keep me company. I curse Aunt Perdita for banishing me to the furthest end of the house, or so it seems, as I pass dozens of white doors on either side of me—probably all bedrooms. Certainly someone must have warned her about my condition. This is probably her way of sneaking in physical therapy or something. Whatever her reasoning, it doesn’t matter. I’m determined to be mad at her anyway.

  Out of breath and trembling, I finally reach the foyer. Another long corridor identical to the one I’d just traveled lies ahead. To my left there’s a closed door, the one Aunt Perdita had come through when we met earlier. I decide to continue straight, which leads me down the hallway lined with more white doors. Luckily the first door on my left is propped open, and from the doorway I spy a long marble counter. The enticing aroma of something—anything—cooking drifts into the hall. With my mouth watering, I clomp inside.

  “Oh dear,” squeaks an old woman bent over a boiling pot on the stove. “You gave me a fright.”

  I blush and drop my gaze to the tile floor. “Sorry. I was just—”

  “Now, now.” She wipes her hands on the bottom of her crisp apron. “I won’t hear any apologies, young lady. It’s not your fault that I’m not used to visitors. It’s been quite some time since we’ve had company.” The woman shoos me toward a stool tucked under the corner of the countertop. “Sit. You must be famished.”

  Bud, the taxi driver, had refused to run me through a drive-thru once he’d picked me up from the hospital, even though I promised to pay him for the ten extra minutes it would take. He’d been overly intent on getting me here with as few stops as possible, though. Thanks to Bud, I haven’t eaten more than a small bag of pretzels since dinner last night.

  I barely plunk myself down on the stool before the woman swoops in with an overflowing platter of turkey drumsticks and mashed potatoes and gravy garnished with a mound of buttered corn.

  “Fankyou,” I mumble through my first greedy mouthful.

  A warm smile lights up her wrinkled features, and she waves me away with her hand. “No, thank you, my dear. I’ve been waiting for you for ages.”

  I wouldn’t call a couple of weeks ages, but whatever.

  As I eat, her eyes track my every reaction to her meal. All the attention makes me self-conscious, especially when I dig into the turkey with my hands, but she’s so eager to feed me. Everything is so delicious that I don’t ask her to stop.

  “I’m Millie,” she offers, still watching me over the top of her round spectacles.

  I gulp down the bite in my mouth. “I’m Lucy.”

  “You’ve made me so very happy, Lucy.”

  No, Millie. You’ve made me so very happy. If I had to choke down what the hospital tried to pass off as food one more day, I would have gone nuts. The meal she’s prepared for me surpasses most of the Thanksgiving dinners I can remember, even my Nonna’s.

  Sorry, Nonna, I think, glancing toward the ceiling. Your turkey was always too dry. But your tamales made up for it.

  Mille chatters while she scoops vanilla ice cream into a small bowl. “You know, I used to cook for a family—a large family, ten children, oh my!—who didn’t have as much as Miss Perdita. We went through some rough times . . . Weeks on end without a crumb to eat.”

  “That must have been horrible,” I reply as I swirl gravy into my mashed potatoes with my fork.

  Millie q
uiets, and I glance up at her. Her hooded eyes brim with tears and her lower lip trembles. “I always regretted not being able to do more to feed those little ones. I should have tried harder . . .” Her voice drifts off.

  “Well, I’m sure you did what you could,” I say, though I’m not sure what she’s talking about. “You sure helped me today. I was starving.”

  “Do you mean it?” Millie’s silver eyebrows shoot upward towards the brim of her bonnet, and she claps her hands. Joy radiates from every inch of her round body, and I can’t help but smile.

  “Of course I do.” I scoop up another bite of potatoes. “Thank you.”

  When I look up from my plate again, Millie has disappeared, leaving me to finish the rest of my meal in peace.

  Maybe Aunt Perdita’s wouldn’t be so bad with a sweet old cook like Millie around. I can’t remember what it’s like to have a grandmother care for me, since one of mine passed away before I could remember, and Alzheimer’s stole Nonna away from me. Millie seems like the next best thing. I take one more bite of mashed potatoes and close my eyes, willing myself to feel happy.

  The next morning, I wake up and set out on my trek to the kitchen, where I pray Mille will have bacon and eggs frying on the stove. Instead, Aunt Perdita greets me with a dark gaze over the brim of her coffee cup. A bowl of cereal sits on the counter in front of her. No eggs or bacon in sight. And no Millie. I fight my disappointment.

  “Good morning, Aunt Perdita,” I say, even though she clearly doesn’t appear to be a morning person. “Where’s Millie?”

  My aunt slams her mug onto the counter, and I jump at how loudly it rings throughout the kitchen. Yeah, she obviously isn’t a morning person. I make a mental note to remember that for tomorrow morning: don’t ask Aunt Perdita questions until she finishes her coffee.

  “Why are you asking me?” she snarls. “You’re the last one to see her.”

  I wrap my arms around my chest, not liking her sudden display of aggression. “Okay, I have no clue what you’re talking about. Millie made me dinner and . . . And then she was gone,” I stammer. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

  “Millie’s been with me for years, then you show up and she’s nowhere to be found,” Aunt Perdita spits. “Funny coincidence.”

  A long row of stark white coffee mugs hangs against the wall next to the coffeemaker. I pretend to take a while selecting my favorite so I can figure out what to say back to her. Once I pull one from its little hook, I grab the carafe, only to discover my aunt hasn’t saved any coffee for me. It’s only coffee, not the end of the world. But still, her oversight makes me feel even more unwanted by my only family.

  Tears well up in my eyes and threaten to spill out. “I didn’t do anything. She told me about the family she used to work for and I thanked her for feeding me. That was it,” I insist, staring down at the empty carafe in my hands.

  Aunt Perdita shuts her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose with her thin fingers. “You thanked her?”

  “Yeah, you know. The three magic words—please and thank you. Was that wrong?” This is confusing. Since when were manners a problem?

  She places her hands down on either side of her cereal bowl, but they’re clenched in fists. “You’d do best to keep your mouth shut.”

  My mouth falls open in direct violation. The woman who sits before me resembles my mother in all the most obvious ways—her full, flaxen hair; the structure of her cheekbones; those sparkling blue eyes—but my mother never treated me this way, even at my worst teenage moment.

  Without another word, I slip the carafe back into its spot on the coffeemaker and rush from the kitchen. If Aunt Perdita wants me to keep my mouth shut, I will.

  Chapter 3

  I don’t know where I’m going, only that I can’t stand to be in the house with her for one more minute. Storming out the front door and slamming it behind me would feel so satisfying, but my dumb leg slows me down so much that my dramatic exit turns out to be pathetic instead.

  Norman isn’t in the yard when I work my way down the steps to the driveway, and I breathe a sigh of relief. My pulse picks up as I remember the crazy, panicked look in his eyes and the way he’d rattled me around. He’d been so sure I held the answers to something big, something life-changing. Sorry to break it to poor Norman, but I won’t be of much help to him. I need answers of my own.

  My stomach gurgles impatiently, reminding me that I skipped breakfast in favor of getting as far away from Aunt Perdita as possible. I hadn’t paid close attention to the shops near the city square when we drove through yesterday, but there has to be food somewhere. When I reach the end of the drive, I hobble to the left, staying on the sidewalk. My legs are already jelly and beads of sweat dot my brow. This is going to take a while.

  Rows of fairly ordinary houses make up this part of Mitte. Vinyl-sided bungalows in faded shades of brown and grey congregate with garish brick ranches and moss-covered wooden A-frames. In comparison to the rest of her neighborhood, Aunt Perdita’s place is a castle. She’s probably some kind of big deal around here. Big deal or not, it doesn’t give her the right to treat me like scum.

  As I walk toward the center of town, I keep expecting to see the usual neighborhood activity: people out watering their lawns before the heat of the day, or kids crouched down drawing hopscotch squares on the pavement. But there’s nothing. No one jogs past me during a morning workout or lets their dog sniff and relieve themselves on the trees lining the street. Come to think of it, I can’t remember hearing a single dog bark a hello as I passed. That alone is really strange.

  Just when I begin to wonder if my aunt and I had missed a town evacuation or something, a black cat scurries across the street. It bounds up to a bungalow the shade of a robin’s egg and slips inside through a cat door. As I watch the flap of the cat door swing shut once again, something furry bumps against the bare skin of my lower leg. I yelp, and the sound echoes down the still street. A well-fed orange tomcat rubs his chin on my calf, then winds a figure-eight around my legs, purring the whole time. I nudge him away with the toe of my sneaker, and he sneezes in indignation.

  “Go on, now,” I say. He sinks to his haunches in the center of the sidewalk and blinks at me twice. A block or so down the street, another cat attempts to climb a tree.

  No dogs, though. And no birds flitting from tree to tree. I haven’t even needed to slap at a nibbling fly. But cats? Oh yeah. There are cats.

  Mitte probably has ordinances against dogs. For Spring Break a couple of years ago, I visited my best friend’s grandparents in Boca. They live in a community full of shuffleboard lovers. Maybe Mitte’s like that, except everyone here is a crazy cat lady. They must have an excellent exterminator, too, to get rid of all the unsightly pests. If my aunt has anything to do with Mitte’s operation, I’m sure I’m right. She probably kills everything with her bare hands.

  Where are the people who lived in the houses, then? My stomach rolls at the thought of being stranded in this ghost town if my hip gives out or I lose my way. I don’t even know my aunt’s phone number, and even if I did, I lost my cell phone in the car wreck. Maybe I should admit defeat and turn back toward Aunt Perdita’s.

  Considering my options, I glance back the way I’d come. I can barely make him out, but a man—Norman?—stoops down to prune the bushes around the mansion’s massive gate. Coming within 100 feet of Norman is a worse idea than collapsing on the sidewalk, so I bite my lip and press onward. Someone would give me a lift if I really needed it. I mean, cars are everywhere—resting along the curbs and in some of the driveways. Though I haven’t actually seen a vehicle in motion other than Bud’s taxi since setting foot in this place, I’ll figure out a way back to the mansion if I really need it.

  After what seems like hours, I stumble across a diner tucked into the corner of a row of buildings, what must be Mitte’s Main Street. I pull open the heavy glass door and walk in, expecting to be the only one there. To my surprise, patrons fill most of the dozen or so b
ooths lined up along the windows. I release my breath, relieved I haven’t missed the Rapture after all.

  There’s an empty spot at the counter. I slide onto the stool between a motorcyclist encased in black leather and chains and an old man who eyes me then shifts his plate away with a gnarled hand.

  Because I’d been in a hurry to leave the house, I’d forgotten to wrap my head to hide the series of long scarlet scars running from the top of my head to the middle of my forehead. The scarf I wear each day makes me less self-conscious about it until my hair grows back in and covers the damage. I assume my patchwork of flesh frightened the old man, and shield my forehead with my fingers. I’d be frightened of me, too, if I didn’t know my own story.

  A gum-popping woman with an impossibly high mound of black hair on her head sashays up to me. She drops a smudged menu in front of me.

  “Hey, sugar. Whatcha drinkin’?” Her words squeeze straight out of her nostrils.

  I unfold the menu and scan their breakfast offerings. “Water, please.”

  “You got it.” Off she sways to grab my drink. She returns impossibly fast, glass in hand. “Know what you want?”

  Looking at the menu had been pointless. The idea of Millie’s eggs and bacon is stuck in my mind, so that’s what I order.

  Halfway through my omelet, I remember something else I’ve forgotten. My money.

  The restaurant bustles with customers, and I debate on the likelihood of being caught if I try to skip out on my bill. In the end, though, I talk myself out of it. Everyone would know the awful thing I’d done, and in a town as tiny as Mitte someone would recognize me almost immediately. That isn’t really the kind of first impression I’d hoped to make. So I do the only thing I can think of.