Smoke, Chapter 2

The morning brought tears.

Penelope had once broken her foot. She had overheard some girls at school making fun of her. The family dog had died when she was 8. She knew what it was to be so jealous she felt sick. Yes, she had experienced some pains in her brief 12 years of life, but this particular vein of sadness had a depth that, for her, nothing else but love rivaled. It was like the creak of an old wooden stair in the middle of the night, or stepping on broken glass, or the stare of an owl before you knew it was there. There was a pitch black hole carved into her heart. Nothing could fill it or erase it. It was a constant companion for most of her life.

So when Tim came into her bedroom rubbing red eyes and told her, "Dad isn't coming to see us for a whole month," Penelope understood why he was crying in a deep, personal way: a feeling instantly manifested as though his words were a bullet that lodged in her gut.

"Why not?"

Tim sat on the round turquoise rug beside her bed and began idly playing with a loose thread. "Mom says it's 'cause he has to work in another state."

"Oh." That made sense, and there was nothing she could really say about it. She knew that her father didn't have much money, and it would only make him sad if she begged him not to go. She knew she should at least try to comfort Tim, but she didn't have it in her. He isn't coming, not just this week, but the week after that, and the week after that, and...

"Come on Tim!" she suddenly cried. "Let's eat Lucky Charms for breakfast!" She sprang out of bed.

"OK," he snuffled, following after her. She could tell he was trying to stay sad for integrity's sake, but was more excited about the Lucky Charms than he wanted to let on. He was running too by the time they slid onto the shining white kitchen tiles, where Penelope opened the fridge and plunked down a gallon of milk.

"Did mom already leave for work?" she asked with surprise, surveying the empty kitchen and living room.

"Uh-huh." He climbed into one of the stools at the kitchen counter with the big box of Lucky Charms. Penelope poured them each a bowl. "I can do it myself, Penelope!"

"OK, Timothy," she replied before she could help herself.

Scowling, he wrenched the gallon of milk out of her hands and accidentally sent it tumbling onto the kitchen floor. Penelope was too shocked and horrified to do anything for a moment, so most of the milk had glubbed out before she rescued the jug.

"Timothy!" she cried, staring down at her wet feet and the lake of milk on the floor. "What's wrong with you?"

His furious face screwed up tighter and tighter until finally he burst into bawling tears. He jumped down from the stool, ran straight through the milk and down the hall to his room, then slammed the door with an echoing bang.

Penelope sighed with her whole being. She almost dropped to her knees or curled up on the couch, but she caught herself. She couldn't do that. She had to be the adult. So she made herself grab a mop and get to work cleaning the mess. If we had a dog, he could help.

Penelope went out to wander along the shore after eating her breakfast alone and changing out of her pajamas. She didn't want to think about any part of the day so far, so she occupied her mind with the previous night's mystery of the creature and the old woman.

For some reason, it wasn't the creature nor the enigmatic secret about time that most stuck in her mind, but instead the dull metal ring that the old woman had been wearing. She explored it in her mind, noting its lack of adornment, its lack of femininity, how snugly it fit, and its location on the middle finger. She felt as though it were the clue in a crime scene that nobody was expected to notice, but she had no way of investing further without seeing the old woman again.

Penelope walked splish-splosh along the shoreline, pausing now and again to skip a rock, rolling that ring over and over in her mind. It was like a visual earworm, the pink elephant you're not supposed to think about. But she couldn't stop thinking of it, because that would mean thinking about her father and her mother and her brother. Feeling in a daze, she walked well beyond their property and down the beaches of a dozen neighbors before she came to her senses. The pin that had pricked her into awareness was a madcap idea.

Penelope decided that the best way to see the old woman again would be to try to draw out the creature again. Obviously she was there for it. Penelope wished she had watched what the old woman had done, though, and wondered why she hadn't looked back. There were too many questions, and she wanted them all answered. Demanded that they be answered. Suddenly she felt herself growing very angry with the old woman. Who was she to enter their property, spout mysteries, tell them what to do, and disappear without further explanation?

I'll go stand there at the same time tonight, Penelope thought. Like a human sacrifice, she added dramatically, and skipped a shell once on the water. And nobody's going to stop me.

Image Credit