Whisper Down the Lane, Clay Chapman [best short books to read txt] 📗

folding on reflex. Kids ask it a question, and in a matter of numerical combinations, fitting your fingers into the slips, opening and closing its Venus flytrap mouth—one, two, three, four—your fate is revealed.

What do I want to ask it? Most kids test the fortune teller’s grasp of the future with soapy questions like Will I get married? Or How many kids will I have?

In my head, staring at the fortune teller in my hands, I ask it—

Who am I?

I open and close the paper, its mouth segmenting in one direction, then bifurcating in the other, as I count—One…Two…Three…Four…Five…Six…Seven…Eight.

When I flip open the fold, the answer is…

…will now be called Character Day.

Marquis de Condrey, sadist that she is, won’t put this meeting out of its misery until we perform one last teambuilding exercise. Or “team celebration,” as she calls it.

“We’re going to play Jump In and Jump Out.”

Tamara’s eyes finally find mine from across the circle for the first time since Condrey shot her down, imploring me to escape. Told you so, I psychically say back.

Everyone pushes their chairs back but we all remain in our circle, now holding one another’s hands. Mr. Dunstan squeezes my hand a little too tight, his palms sweating. I feel the clamminess of his skin slide over mine. Meaty fingers. Cold-cut flesh.

We no longer need chairs to complete the ring. We are the ring. The circle has integrated itself into our bodies. Condrey calls out one of the following four commands:

Jump left, jump right, jump in, jump out.

“When I call out the instruction,” Condrey says, “not only does the group have to do the command, but we have to call it out while we do it. Easy, right?”

Easy peasy.

But for round two, when Condrey calls out a command, the group has to repeat the instruction while doing the opposite. Jump left now means jump right. Jump in means jump out.

Not so easy.

Round three reverses it. Now we have to say the opposite while doing whatever the hell Condrey calls out. She presses play on the boom box, Enya setting an angelic rhythm to our haphazard hokey-pokey. This circle of teachers, clutching one another’s hands, hops in and out, left and right, creating a rhythm, a clumsy cadence of dancing bodies.

We’re dancing. All of us are dancing. Spinning in a circle. An impenetrable ring.

Sail a-way, sail a-way, sail a-way…

DAMNED IF YOU DO

   SEAN: 1982

Miss Betty cranked the can opener along the rim of a Del Monte can. Sean stared at the purple veins lacing her hands as she flipped the jagged lid back and poured a bland mix of cubed potatoes, diced carrots, green beans, peas, corn, and lima beans onto a slice of white Wonder bread. She slipped the plate into the microwave and heated it up for one minute. Her finishing touch was a pinch of sugar. “My secret ingredient,” she called it.

Sean’s stomach grumbled.

“Sounds like somebody’s hungry,” Miss Betty exclaimed. “Let’s say grace.” She always insisted on saying grace, even if she wasn’t the one eating. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Sean stared back at her. What was he supposed to do? He mirrored Miss Betty without closing his eyes, dipping his own chin to his chest, watching her pruny lips mouth the words. Even though he’d been through this ritual before, he still didn’t know the words. Was he supposed to?

“Amen.”

“Amen,” he echoed.

Miss Betty opened her eyes and smiled. “Dig in.”

Mom was late. Again. The sun had already sunk below the surrounding tree line on their block. The other children from the street had gone home, leaving Sean behind with Miss Betty. It wasn’t the first time. It was becoming something of a habit, actually.

Sean didn’t mind. He kind of liked it, to be honest. The vegetable medley. The stillness that settled over her kitchen. The grandfather clock down the hall that gave her home a pulse.

The houses along their street were mostly small, one-story rentals choked by weeds and made of cracked concrete. Each yard either had a rusted swing set or a cinder-blocked car out front, hood open, its chest cavity missing its most vital components.

There were four houses between Miss Betty’s home and theirs. Sean could walk door-to-door in less than a minute but he’d have to turn the corner at Shoreham Street to reach his house. That meant Miss Betty couldn’t see him open his door. A lot could happen in that blind spot. She’d seen a white van with no windows slowing down along their block, as if the driver were fishing through the neighborhood for kids playing on their own. Miss Betty had called the police several times to tell them about the van with its corroded underbelly, insisting the mysterious vehicle had driven around her block five times in the last few days. She was able to write down the first three letters on the out-of-state license plate, if the authorities wanted it. Could’ve been Florida plates. Or Colorado. Miss Betty wasn’t sure. The police never sent anyone out.

All the kids loved to visit Miss Betty because she let them watch TV. Her twenty-one-inch Zenith color television set, embedded within a varnished maple console, was a tank. As long as her soaps were done for the day, Sean and anyone else could come over and watch whatever show they wanted. After-school cartoons were decided upon democratically. That usually meant Masters of the Universe or Scooby Doo if it was mostly boys—or Monchhichis if there were more girls there. Miss Betty never stepped in. She didn’t care what the kids watched, as long as there wasn’t any foul language.

Miss Betty wasn’t a babysitter. She made that clear to Sean’s mother from day one. “I don’t change diapers or burp babies,” she warned. That Sean was five and well beyond his diapering days didn’t seem to make much difference. Miss Betty was the proxy daycare for most families on the block. She never left home, save for her