LITMIR.BIZ

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number,” Joy lied. “They might not be related.”

      “Yeah, but they might,” Monica said. “Seriously, I don’t want to see your name on the news and feel bad that I didn’t say something.” She tapped Joy’s shoulder. “You tell your dad about this? About what really happened at the Carousel?”

      “No,” Joy muttered. “You know he’d freak.”

      Monica shrugged as they made for the doors. “Let him freak. It’s okay to freak. Especially if things are freaky.” She shook her head, jangling the gold hoops in her ears as she took the stairs. “Just tell him. Okay?”

      “Yeah, okay,” Joy said with a wave, but she knew she wouldn’t. Dad was just coming out of that zombie state of post-marital shock and they finally had a delicate peace. Then he’d been out at 2:00 a.m. and called her a liar. She’d told Dad about the thing at the window and look what had happened! Joy wasn’t about to do that again any time soon.

      Joy stayed in the stairwell and clicked into Maps. There were highway 40s in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, New York and Florida. A quick search of Alice Mooreheads turned up hits in Maine, Connecticut, Kentucky.... There were too many to be sure. Something snapped into place as she looked at the White Pages listings. A number plus a street equaled an address!

      She hesitated, popping back into Maps, and typed 48 Deer Run with her thumbs. Three hits. One in Glendale, North Carolina.

      Joy enlarged the image and smiled at the map. She didn’t even need directions. She could practically walk there from here.

      She took the stairs two at a time, determined that no one was going to mess up her life and leave her behind to pick up the pieces. This time, she was going to do something about it first.

      * * *

      She didn’t walk, she ran. It felt good, even with too-heavy clothes and an underwire bra. Joy’s feet hit the pavement with an even, steady thud thud thud. Her skin tingled with heat and sweat, cooled by a breeze that smelled of dry leaves. It didn’t feel as good as training, but it felt better than sitting still.

      She’d tied her hair back with a rubber band, missing half her bangs, and her taped-over eye made her awkwardly blind on one side, but it felt good to move, to be doing something. Joy grinned and added some speed.

      Her feet took the corner, pounding the sidewalk squares and squashing the tiny sprigs that had dried in the cracks. She barely realized when she’d turned onto Deer Run Avenue. She slowed to a walk and placed her hands on her hips, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, digging a knuckle into her patch as she read mailbox numbers.

      Number forty-eight was a gray clapboard house tucked into a wooded lot. Its roof was littered in pine needles and the shutters were painted dark red. Joy hesitated at the mouth of the gravel drive. Now that she was here, she didn’t know what to do. Whatever might or might not have happened would have happened last night. Midnight. But everything here looked normal. Joy wiped her face with her hands. What had she expected to find?

      Walking up the driveway, Joy was all too conscious of the sound of her footsteps crunching loudly on loose gravel, reminding her of shattered glass. As she approached the porch steps, she saw the first hints that something was wrong. There was a mess of overturned planters and downed hanging baskets, trampled, half-buried flowers littered the porch, and smears of what looked like mud dripped down the steps. Joy looked up at the door, also splashed with mud. The windows were intact, but there was something about them.... She didn’t want to climb the stairs. She didn’t want to touch the mud or the flowers or the broken pottery. Some instinct told her to back away, and she did. Joy knew that there were answers here, but if there was more to see, it was around the back of the house.

      Joy had never considered trespassing before.

      She hesitated, then walked quickly around the side of the garage, blood pulsing in her ears. Her steps crushed bits of stone and crispy, dead leaves. Joy kept glancing anxiously toward her blind side, afraid of getting caught.

      She stopped. It was as if this was what she’d expected to see.

      The back deck was destroyed. Smashed planks, broken fence posts, and wide pieces of fiberglass lay scattered in the grass. Chunks of raw wood had been gouged out of the wall with what looked like a hand rake with four tines. Joy squeezed the straps of her backpack and whirled around. Whatever it was that had been at her window had come here, too.

      With one hand on the railing and the other outstretched, Joy sidestepped the splinters and pieces of glass. Easing herself around the corner, she peered into what had been the kitchen. It was demolished; the sink, counter and opposite wall were completely blown through. The floor was nothing but shattered tile and crumbly powder. Even the light fixtures were husks of busted glass, their tiny hanging wires trembling in the wind.

      That’s what made her look up.

      The ceiling was a thick canopy of green—an enormous mandala of leaves, shoots and thorns spreading out from a decorative center medallion. Climbing ivy hugged the plaster with millipede roots, and clusters of red berries shone ripe in the dark. It was unlike anything Joy had ever seen, beautiful and eerie. It made a picture, almost like writing. She craned her head sideways, trying to make it out.

      There was a blur on her blind side.

      Joy spun around. The backyard was empty. A cloud moved, casting shadows and bringing a sudden scent of rain. Branches flickered. Twigs creaked. A shower of sound rustled as the wind overturned leaves.

      There was a whisper of something....

      A crack of wood turned her stomach cold.

      Her curiosity vanished. She’d seen enough—she wanted out of here! Joy crept down the stairs, being careful where she placed her feet, and stepped off the path onto the grass.

      “Excuse me?”

      An old man stood on the edge of the yard wearing a soft felt hat and a long wool coat, clutching a ragged umbrella. His mismatched clothes were all the colors of brown and his face was a raisin of smiles. He hadn’t been there before.

      “Excuse me,” he continued. “Did you see the Kodama?”

      Joy swallowed her first response. While she wasn’t certain what he meant, it was pretty clear the answer he expected.

      “Yes,” she said.

      “Ah, good,” he said, visibly relaxing. “It is you.” He shuffled forward, and Joy watched him shake his head. “Bad business,” he clucked and gestured offhandedly to a Japanese maple that had been recently cut down; its smell permeated the air and a large twist of rope lay coiled around the stump. “He tried to warn them, you know—tried asking for help—but do they listen? Hardly ever. Pity that.” He smiled up at Joy. The man was a good deal shorter than her. His eyes were soft and his hair was the color of bone. “If you would be so kind...”

      He offered her a wrinkled envelope. It looked as if it had been sat on, left in slush and dried overnight. Joy looked at the envelope and him, not knowing what to do. This didn’t seem like a drug deal, but that was the only thing she could think of that made sense. Maybe this “Ink” was a dealer? Maybe she was under surveillance? Maybe this guy was an undercover cop? She glanced around the yard with her one good eye. The old man waved his envelope with an imploring smile.

      “I would’ve waited but, you know, he’s so very busy,” he said almost apologetically. “And with you being here, I thought, well, it never hurts to ask.” Joy still hadn’t moved to take the letter. The man paused and tugged at his many layers of clothes, growing awkward and confused. His eyes suddenly lit up.

      “Ah! Of course...” He hooked his umbrella over one elbow and fumbled inside his coat pocket, then tried an inner coat pocket, his jacket pocket, a shirt pocket, a vest pocket and his pants pocket before he found something that made him grin. “Here.” He placed a small white shell in her palm and folded the envelope gently atop it. “With my compliments,” he added, beaming. “If you listen, you can hear the ocean.” He

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