Chapter 1

He looked into my eyes as I looked back into his, his hair, light brown and short was drenched with rain, but I probably looked the same way. We did not bring umbrellas because the weather was supposed to be sunny, my black dress swayed as a cold wind started to blow. I took my little brother by the hand and we turned to leave. Everyone else had already gone home, even my mother. We had no means of transportation, so we had to walk, walk and walk endlessly until we reached our little home by the water. We lived in Wisconsin, so close to Lake Superior that you could see it from the second story window. Cold weather hear was common, the only thing was, it was summer. We opened the door to find my mother sitting on the couch with a jar of gummy bears already almost empty, I looked to Tommy for a sign in his face, mother usually ate a lot of junk food when she was upset, his face was as motionless as stone. Without a word Tommy walked toward mother, still in a dripping wet suit and sat down next to her. She jumped a little, as if she had not heard us enter, but she settled down again and went on eating her gummy bears. There they were, my eleven year old little brother and my mother, just sitting on the couch watching the rain, the only thing out of the ordinary were the gummy bears.

I was jealous, jealous that they could have that kind of wordless relationship with each other, knowing what the other was thinking simply by sitting down. I scowled and ran upstairs to my room. When I got there I slammed the door shut and ran to my bed, then immediately got up and tore off the wet dress. Then, wearing my white under dress I curled up in the covers and cried until my pillow was as wet as the rain that was begging to come in and pounding at my window. When tears would no longer come I took the picture off of my nightstand that held my most wonderful memory, a picture of my whole family, Tommy, my mother my father and I, all smiling on the top of a huge ski slope, ready to take on the powdered mountain as one. It was hard to believe it was only taken last year, when we were all together.

Several months passed, summer turned into fall and my last year of middle school dragged on forever. Finally, when the first quarter was over and everyone exited for fall break my mother seemed to get a little better. I noticed that when I came home on Friday and the lights were actually on. I went to look for her to try to start a relationship like Tommy’s, but she was nowhere to be found. Neither was Tommy. That was the thing that prevented me from sitting down in front of the TV, finding Tommy. He was my little brother and also my responsibility, mother would be terrible if she found I had “lost” him. As I was passing the kitchen to go up to his room I heard a noise outside of the window, and there they were, like two old friends just sitting out on the deck, watching the grass bend in the wind. I was immediately jealous of Tommy, getting mother all to himself again. Usually when this happened I spent time with father, but I couldn’t do that anymore.

The noise of a dripping faucet turned my attention back inside the house. I turned to look at the kitchen sink, it was on. I went over to turn it off and stepped in a small puddle. I looked down then up, the ceiling right above me was stained and dripping. I let out a gasp and ran upstairs to the bathroom. I ran onto the soaked tile surface to see that the sink had been completely clogged up with toilet paper. The water was turned on full blast and was flooding the bathroom. I turned off the water then ran downstairs to get my mother. I yanked open the back screen door and without looking who was there I yelled,

“Mom! The bathroom is flooded! It’s dripping down into the kitchen!” Three pairs of eyes stared blankly back at me. Guess we had company. I looked at our guest to see that he was a man about fifty years old, wearing a black suit and wearing a bowler hat with a white brim.

“Taylor, what are you talking about? What happened to the bathroom?” My mother asked starting to get up out of her seat. She turned back to the man and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wood, this will just take a moment,” then she turned to me and said, “Now what’s this all about? Did you say the toilet was dripping into the kitchen?” Then she turned back and motioned for Tommy to follow us.

“Yeah,” I started to say, “I don’t know how or who did it but the bathroom sink was totally clogged up and there was a huge puddle on the ground and it was dripping onto the kitchen floor!” I grabbed her hand and led her upstairs to the bathroom to show her the proof of my story, only when we got there and different sight fell before me. The bathroom was completely cleaned up. No wads of toilet paper, no big puddle, no nothing. Mother looked at me with that expression she always gave me, like I was a dirty stray mutt that had somehow gotten into the backyard.

“Taylor, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, if it’s a joke or you’re coming down with a fever, but we have a guest. Mr. Wood is Tommy’s and your new school nurse, he came by to introduce himself so be polite.” Now, I don’t know if my mother was listening to herself but how often does a school nurse visit a student’s house? We all walked back downstairs so I could ‘introduce myself’ and no one said anything about the bathroom incident (only I was extremely convinced of what I saw). As we were nearing the back door Tommy leaned over my shoulder and whispered,

“I believe you, Tay. I saw something too. I think it’s that man; he can light his cigarette without striking the match. I think he’s here for something other than an introduction.” I looked back at Tommy, but his face had become stone again as we went to the back patio.

But it seemed that Mr. Wood was only here for introductions, he stayed about another five minutes saying he wanted to meet as many students as possible over break because he wanted to feel like the school was home to him.

When he left we all saw him to the door and watched as he drove away in a small car. Feeling like my break had had a rocky start I wanted to fix the beginning by doing a little bit of gardening. That always helped my mood. We had two small pine trees that needed planting so I took them out front and then went back inside for the tools. I had found the small rake and the bag of soil but no matter how hard I looked I could not find the small shovel. Finally I gave up and decided to just bring the plants back in. As I was about to go out front again I saw Mr. Wood’s car parked across the street with him inside of it. He looked like he was taking something apart but I couldn’t see what it was. Then I saw perfectly. He was taking a fingerprint off of our mini shovel. If that wasn’t weird enough he got out of his car, ran to our front yard and dug the shovel into the gravel right next to the pines. Then he ran back to his car and was about to drive away when he noticed me looking at him from the window. He got a wide-eyed look, as if he was afraid of what I had seen, then, suddenly, he was gone. Just vanished. It was instantaneous, like turning off a light switch. It was almost like he was never there at all, but the proof was that the shovel was still stuck in the gravel where he had left it. I was terrified; I ran up to my room and crawled right into bed. Maybe I was coming down with a fever. Yeah, it was just all in my head.