Текст книги "The Spider Ring"

Автор книги: Andrew Harwell

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

Maria nodded.

“Okay, then,” Ms. Vinita said, and that was the closest she could get to a good-bye. She turned to go back to the front office, while Maria walked, and then jogged, and then ran all the way to her grandmother’s house.

The air was different on Spinneret Street.

It was thinner somehow, as if Maria were at the top of a tall mountain and couldn’t get enough oxygen into her lungs. Maybe that was because she’d just run twenty blocks, and now her legs burned and her breath came in deep gasps. Or maybe it was because the gray clouds swirling overhead were filling the air with moisture, threatening rain.

There was an ambulance in her grandmother’s driveway, and Maria felt a sudden swell of hope that pulled her forward. Ms. Vinita had gotten it wrong. Or maybe she hadn’t said dead because Esme wasn’t dead at all. Maria ran through her grandmother’s front door like it was the finish line of a race.

“Grandma Esme?” she called.

Maria sprinted into the living room, convinced she would find her grandmother there waiting for her. But sitting amid the scattered wreckage from Friday was her mother, looking like she’d just woken up from a nap and had no idea where she was. Maria knew immediately: There hadn’t been a mistake.

Grandma Esme was really gone.

Maria went and sat down in the rubble next to her mom, who put her arm automatically around Maria’s shoulder. Maria took off her glasses and wiped them on her sleeve.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” her mother said. It was strange the way everyone kept apologizing to her, as if she were the one who had died.

Two EMTs, a man and a woman, came out from the kitchen, and Maria nearly jumped out of her skin. She’d already forgotten about the ambulance in the driveway.

The man nodded somberly in Maria’s direction, then turned to her mom.

“Well, Ms. Lopez, I think that’s everything.”

Mom didn’t even bother getting up from the ground. She just said “Thank you. I guess I’ll call if I have any questions,” and the man nodded again before he and the woman left.

Maria waited until she’d heard the front door click shut, then she said, “What happened?” Her voice was soft and scratchy from crying.

“Where to start?” Mom sighed. “Well, I came to check on Grandma Esme, just like I said I would. She wasn’t coming to the door when I knocked, but she’d left it unlocked, so I popped my head in for a quick hello.” Maria remembered that her grandmother had left the door unlocked on Friday, too. She had been forgetting more and more of the little things lately. “She still wasn’t responding when I called, so finally I came back to the kitchen, and … Oh, Maria.” She leaned her head on Maria’s shoulder and cried.

Maria had seen her mother this emotional once before, but that was years ago. From the little she remembered, that time had been much worse. That was the time when the man from the army had shown up at their door, and said that her dad wouldn’t be coming home after all.

“And she was already … gone?” Maria found that she couldn’t bring herself to say the word dead, either. It was too real, too final. The word gone could just as easily mean that Grandma Esme was at the grocery store.

“Actually, no,” Mom said. Maria gulped. “No, I found her right after she’d collapsed. But it was very peaceful. The EMTs said it was a heart attack, but she didn’t seem to be in any pain. She sounded like she was ready to go, Maria. She led a very full and happy life, you know.”

“Wait – you talked to her?” Maria said.

Her mother frowned. “Only a little.”

“What did she say?”

Her mother sat up, then re-crossed her feet. She seemed to be stalling, as if she hadn’t wanted the conversation to take this turn.

“Maria, your grandmother has been so confused these past few months —”

“Mom, what did she say?” Maria repeated anxiously.

“Oh, well, you know how she always was with spiders.”

Maria felt goose bumps on her arms and legs. On Friday, her grandmother had warned her that the spiders were after her. Three days later, she had died, and with her last words she’d tried to warn her mother, too.

“There was one strange thing, though,” her mom continued. She turned to face Maria, to watch her reaction. “She said she had left you something. She said it was in the seashelf. Does that word mean anything to you?”

It did. It meant a lot to her, in fact.

Once, years ago, Maria and Rafi had been playing hide-and-seek. They’d been at the beach all day with Mom, but Mom had dropped them off at Grandma Esme’s so she could have a girls’ night out. Grandma Esme’s house wasn’t big, and there weren’t many good hiding places. But Maria had snuck into Grandma Esme’s room and crawled under the bed, sure that Rafi wouldn’t find her there. When he’d called, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she’d felt the peculiar thrill of knowing that someone was looking for her. That there was nothing she could do now but wait and hope she’d chosen the right hiding spot.

Then, lying on her stomach, she’d spied a strange crack running through the wooden bedpost by her face. She’d reached out to touch it and let out a little gasp when a whole chunk of the wood came off in her hand. It hadn’t been a crack at all, but the opening of a small shelf hidden right into the bedpost. This wasn’t the first time Maria had come across a false door or a secret compartment in Grandma Esme’s house. Once, in a hidden drawer under the bathroom sink, she’d found an old whistle with an anchor painted on the side. But each new space was like a delicious new secret. Maria wondered if even Grandma Esme knew about them all.

There hadn’t been anything on the shelf under the bed when Maria had first discovered it. But it looked so empty and inviting, it gave Maria an idea. She reached into her pocket and palmed a seashell she’d found in a tide pool that morning. She set it on the shelf and replaced the wooden door.

“Got you!” Rafi had called hardly a second later, and Maria had banged her head on the bed frame in surprise.

The next time Maria had come over to Grandma Esme’s house, she’d stolen away under the bed to see if the seashell was still there. She’d opened the compartment quickly, unable to bear the suspense. The seashell was gone, but in its place was a silver pendant necklace with a purple stone at the end. Underneath the necklace was a note that read: Thank you for finding me! It was signed, The Seashelf.

Maria and Grandma Esme had exchanged many presents like that – an origami crane for a spun yarn bracelet, a poem for a mood ring – but not so much in the past two years. Maria still wore the pendant necklace sometimes.

Now Maria turned to her mom, who clearly thought Grandma Esme had been out of her mind when she’d mentioned the seashelf.

“I know where she means,” Maria said, standing up. “I’ll go check it and be right back.” She wanted to see what was there alone. She needed a moment by herself.

Maria got down on her hands and knees and crawled under Grandma Esme’s bed. She was almost too big to fit all the way.

She removed the false piece of the bedpost and found a brown wooden box. It was not a perfect cube, which made it look handmade. Maria opened the top and came face-to-face with the black spider ring her grandmother always wore. The box trembled in her hands. That the ring was here, in a box on the seashelf, meant that Grandma Esme had taken it off sometime before her heart attack. If a heart attack was what she’d had, which Maria was seriously starting to doubt.

Turning the box over, Maria discovered a second hinge on the back – the bottom of the box must open, too. She was just about to check when her mother’s voice beside the bed made her jump. It was the game of hide-and-seek all over again.

“What is it, Maria? What did she leave you?”

“It’s her spider ring. The one she always wore.”

Maria crawled out from under the bed. Mom’s face was stuck somewhere between a smile and a frown, as if she wasn’t sure how she felt about this gift. As a park ranger, Mom didn’t have the same fear of spiders that Maria did, but she had always thought Grandma Esme’s fascination with them bordered on the unhealthy.

“Well, that was … very nice of her,” she managed.

Maria decided she would check the other side of the box later, at home.

“We need to go pick up your brother,” Mom said. “I just called Rob’s dad and told him what happened. I’m sure your brother is going to be very upset.”

Maria imagined her brother reaching the bottom of the waterslide – imagined Rob’s dad telling him to hop out of the pool and come inside for a second. That was always the way with bad news, it seemed: It came out of nowhere, before you were ready for it.

“Oh, mija-oh-my-a,” Mom said, pulling Maria into a hug. Maria couldn’t help it. She’d started crying again.

That night, Maria’s mom ordered a pizza, and she, Maria, and Rafi sat in the living room not saying much. They’d put on a movie – something funny about a family of tractors who could talk and wanted to move from the farm to the big city – but none of them was really watching it. Rafi kept saying things that started with, “Remember that time when Grandma Esme …” But Maria wasn’t in the mood to reminisce with him. Just for tonight, she wanted to keep her memories to herself.

She must have fallen asleep on the couch at some point, and her mother must have carried her back to her room. At least, when she woke up in her bed, she couldn’t think of how else she’d gotten there. Wondering what time it was, Maria reached for her glasses on her bedside table, but instead her hand closed around the box with the ring. She couldn’t feel her glasses anywhere.

Without her glasses, Maria’s vision was terrible. Her eye doctor had said she was legally blind, but Grandma Esme had always argued that Maria could see everything that mattered.

Maria clutched the ring box to her chest, missing Grandma Esme more than ever. She opened the top and removed the spider ring. She had seen it so many times before, she could almost picture it as she slipped it onto her finger. But the ring in her head was inseparable from its place on Grandma Esme’s hand. This ring, surprisingly, fit Maria’s finger exactly. She wanted to get a closer look, but she didn’t dare try to make her way to the living room in the dark without her glasses.

If only my glasses would come to me, she thought.

No sooner had she thought this than a strange rustling sound, like the swish of two hands rubbing together in the cold, reached her ears. She sat up higher in her bed, and after a tense few moments in which she was certain someone was in the room with her, she suddenly felt a small weight on her legs.

She reached out, trembling, and when her fingers closed around her glasses, she wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or terrified.

“Who’s there?” she whispered, scrambling to put on her glasses. She still couldn’t make out much in the darkness, but, blinking, she thought she saw something moving, like a cascade of shadows pouring in from the hall.

She leaned over and turned on her bedside lamp, then let out a sudden yip. A tiny brown spider with long, thin legs was scurrying down the lampshade. It wasn’t alone.

There were brown spiders everywhere, covering her bedspread, her table, her walls. The shock of it paralyzed her. It was as if her mind was too busy taking in the sight to remind her to scream for help.

And yet, even as she watched, the spiders were moving away from her. A small circle of them were skittering from the spot on her lap where her glasses had been.

Her mind came unstuck. She found her voice.

“Did you … did you just bring me my glasses?” she whispered to the room.

The spiders stopped in their tracks. They turned to face her.

“Can you understand me?” she said. She supposed she should have started with that one.

If the spiders could understand her, they couldn’t seem to reply. But they were standing there still, in rapt attention. And really, that was reply enough.

“I’m sorry if the light scared you,” Maria said. “But to be fair, you scared me first.”

The spiders continued to stare at her.

“All right, I did wish for the glasses to come to me. So … what I mean to say is, thank you.”

At this, the spiders seemed – well, pleased. They resumed their march out of Maria’s room, but not before they had formed a proud sort of pattern on Maria’s wall, like two lines dancing in and around each other. And if, like Maria, they were still a little scared, at least they didn’t seem to be hurrying so much.

When the last of the spiders had gone, Maria breathed deeply and willed her heartbeat to slow. Whatever she’d told them, she’d truly been terrified. If these were the spiders her grandmother had warned her about, she may have been lucky to escape with her life. Had the ring protected her?

Maria looked down at her hand. She hadn’t imagined it; the ring really did fit her perfectly.

Hoping for some further clue, Maria reached for the ring box and brought it up to her eyes. The box was a rich brown wood that had been polished unevenly. Four untidy letters had been scratched into the bottom:

Maria had no idea what the letters meant, and she paused, feeling suddenly like she was prying into a secret that wasn’t hers to know. But her grandmother had wanted her to have this ring and this box. Whatever was inside, it belonged to her now.

Slowly, fearfully, she pried open the bottom lid. A piece of paper fell out, folded into the shape of a crane just like the one Maria had left Grandma Esme years ago. When Maria unfolded it, she found a note written in her grandmother’s cursive.

The spiders are your friends, the first line read. And underneath that:

Do not abuse their friendship.

News of Grandma Esme’s death traveled fast, and the next day saw an almost constant parade of visitors bearing casseroles and desserts. Rob and Claire’s mom came by with banana pudding. A bouquet of flowers arrived with a note from Derek’s parents. And a group of fellow park rangers from Falling Waters brought a whole cooked turkey, along with a collection they’d taken up to help pay for the funeral.

All in all, the day felt so out of the ordinary that it only furthered Maria’s feeling that none of it was really happening.

It wasn’t until Derek came over around three thirty that everything finally started to sink in.

“Maria, Derek’s here,” Rafi called from the front door. Her brother had been antsy all day, happy at first to get to stay home from school, but then, when Mom had said he couldn’t play outside, increasingly rambunctious.

Derek had been to Maria’s house enough times that he usually didn’t have a problem walking right in (and going straight for the refrigerator). Today, he stood on the doormat, looking in every direction but straight ahead and fidgeting absently with a single yellow flower.

“Hi,” Maria said, shooting her brother a look to let him know he could leave now. Rafi shrugged and went to join Mom in the kitchen.

“Hi,” Derek said.

“Is that for me?” Maria nodded to the flower in Derek’s hands.

“What? Oh, yeah.” He seemed to have forgotten that he was holding a flower at all, but now he handed it to Maria with a flourish. “Well, you and your family. Mom said yellow means hope. And friendship.”

“Thanks.”

“Also, I took notes for you in history. We started on the Civil War.”

“Thanks.”

Maria racked her brain for the right thing to say. Something like, “Grandma Esme really liked you,” or maybe, “Thanks for always being so nice.” She knew Derek would have no problem saying something like that if their roles were reversed. What she finally said, in a breathless whisper, was, “Do you want to see what Grandma Esme left me?”

Derek smiled, nodded, and followed her inside. Mom always made Maria keep her door open when she had friends over, but today Maria bent the rule, leaving it open only a crack.

She went to her dresser and pulled out the second drawer. She reached into the back and removed the wooden box. She opened it toward Derek.

“Whoa,” he said, leaning in until his face was almost right next to it. “That’s the one she always wore, right?”

“Yup. She left it for me in one of our secret hiding places. Don’t you think it’s weird that she took it off like that? Almost like she knew something was going to happen to her.”

Derek gave her a funny look. “You don’t think … I mean, my mom said it was a heart attack …”

“Well, that’s what the ambulance people said. But Mom said when she got there, Grandma Esme was still awake. She even talked to her. Does that sound like a person who’s having a heart attack? And plus, she said the thing about the spiders again. The same stuff she was saying to me on Friday.”

Her theory seemed to upset Derek immensely.

“You really think someone would hurt your grandma?” he asked.

“No. No, not really,” she said, if only to make him feel better. “But there’s something else. When I put the ring on last night, I’m pretty sure that – Well, it’s going to sound crazy, but I’m pretty sure that it made the spiders in my house listen to me.”

Now Derek had a very different look on his face. His right eyebrow arched up higher than the left, and his mouth turned down in a skeptical line.

“I’m serious, Derek. My glasses were in the living room, and I wished that they would come to me. And the spiders, well – they brought them.”

“And you saw this happen without your glasses on?”

“No. Not exactly. I mean, I heard them, and then I sort of talked to them, and then I saw them leave. Basically.”

“Right.”

“Oh, and there was this note from Grandma Esme.” She opened the bottom of the box and showed him the cryptic letter – the one she was blaming for her nightmare last night about sitting at a table with seven spiders and playing a game of cards. In the nightmare, she’d thought it was funny that there were seven spiders instead of eight. Then she’d realized that she was the eighth spider. She’d woken up itching.

Derek read the note. If anything, his eyebrow only shot higher.

“Okay, yeah, so this is a little weird. But, Maria – and I mean this in the nicest possible way, because I loved your grandma, you know that – Grandma Esme has been a little confused lately. My mom said maybe she had dementia or the other thing, old-timer’s.”

“Alzheimer’s,” Maria said sharply. “And, Derek, she was scared. She wasn’t crazy.”

“I didn’t say ‘crazy.’ I said ‘confused.’”

“You believe in magic, don’t you?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean like the coin, and the pen, and all that stuff. You do it because you believe in magic, right? Well, what if this ring is magic, too?”

“Maria, those are all magic tricks. ‘Tricks’ is the key word. You want me to tell you how I did the coin trick for real? Because I’ll tell you. I just —”

“No, I don’t want to know,” Maria said, cutting him off and putting her fingers in her ears. “La la la,” she said.

Derek gave up then, his shoulders slumping like he’d just bowled a gutter ball.

“Tell you what,” he said, gently pulling her hands from her ears. “How about you bring the ring by my dad’s shop? Maybe he’ll be able to tell us something about it. He’s got all those appraisal books and stuff. And if it’s got powers – I mean, if it’s rumored to have powers – he’ll be the one to know.”

Derek’s dad did know an awful lot about antiques. He’d even shown Maria a collection of old rings once and told her what some of the symbols meant. But Maria wasn’t sure she was ready to tell anyone else about the ring. Her grandmother hadn’t just left it for her; she’d left it for her in a secret box on a secret shelf. There had to be a reason for all that secrecy.

“The funeral is on Thursday,” Maria said. “And tomorrow, Mom and I are going back to her house to sort through her stuff. Maybe after everything is done, I’ll bring it by.”

“Does that mean you won’t be at school all week?”

Maria nodded. “Mom said I should go back on Friday. Give myself the day to catch up without too much pressure.”

“Man. How will I survive lunch without you?”

Maria smiled. She knew that Derek was only being nice – any day she wasn’t there, there were a ton of people who would want him at their lunch table. But still, it made her feel better just having a friend who wanted her to feel better.

“I don’t know,” Maria said. “I guess it’s like a magic trick. The secret is practice.”

The next day, Maria, Rafi, and Mom went back over to Spinneret Street. Mom had handled all the official business with the funeral home that morning – Maria couldn’t bear to be there for that – but she needed help organizing and cleaning the house. It had been left to them in Grandma Esme’s will, and Mom had hinted that her plan was to sell it. Maria was just waiting for her to say it outright so she could argue. The house was all but built out of memories. Every architectural imperfection and secret hideaway was another family story told in wood and concrete.

When she thought about it practically, Maria knew that her family could use the money. And their house was bigger than Grandma Esme’s, so it didn’t make sense for them to move. She just hated that she was being forced to think practically at a time like this.

Mom fiddled with the lock on the front door, as if she couldn’t figure out how to work it. Finally, she said, “Huh,” and pushed the door open. “I could have sworn we locked it when we left the other day.”

Maria shivered. She was sure they’d locked it when they’d left on Monday.

And there was more amiss than the door. Mom and Rafi didn’t seem to notice, but to Maria, the differences were obvious. There was still a large pile of stuff on the living room floor, and the cabinets and shelves were still teeming with books and bric-a-brac. But everything had been rearranged, just a little bit. Objects were in different orders or inches from where they had been.

“Someone’s been here,” Maria said.

“What? For real?” Rafi said, looking to Mom to confirm or deny this.

“Maria, stop scaring your brother. This is not the time for that kind of behavior.”

“I’m not kidding,” Maria argued. “They could still be in the house right now. We shouldn’t be here.”

Rafi grabbed Mom’s hand, looking like he might cry, but Maria was too scared herself to enjoy that fact.

“That’s enough, young lady,” Mom said, disappointment and worry competing on her face. “Both of you, outside. Right now. I’ll come get you in a minute. Hopefully you’ll be ready to behave a little more maturely then.”

Mom ushered them out over Maria’s protests. Maria and Rafi stood there in the little front yard, their eyes glued to the door. Every second that went by was another second in which Maria was convinced something terrible was happening to her mother. What if the spiders were in there wrapping her up in a web right now? Maria wished she’d worn the spider ring today. Maybe then she could ask the spiders to leave Mom alone, please.

Finally, the front door opened and Mom came out. Maria and Rafi exhaled together.

“Okay, guys, all clear. Now can I count on you two to be helpful today and work together? We’ve got a lot to do.” Mom said this to both of them, but she was especially watching Maria.

“Yes, ma’am,” Maria said.

As soon as she was back in the house, though, she went straight for Grandma Esme’s bedroom and peeked under the bed. Sure enough, the door to the seashelf had been removed. Maria found it all the way across the room, as if it had been flung there in frustration. Someone definitely had been here since Monday. And whoever it was, Maria had a pretty good idea what they’d been looking for.

“What are you doing in here?” Rafi stood in the doorway. He eyed the piece of wood in Maria’s hand with a mixture of fear and suspicion.

“None of your business,” Maria said.

“Mom said we’re supposed to work together.”

“Trust me, Rafi – you don’t want to work with me. The less you know about what I’m doing, the safer it is for you.”

Rafi rolled his eyes. “You’re just trying to scare me again.”

“Believe what you want. But don’t come crying to me when the spiders …”

“What? When the spiders what?”

But Maria couldn’t speak. Her throat was closing up again, the way it always did when she was terrified. She’d been in such a hurry to check the seashelf, she hadn’t noticed the spiderweb stretching over the inside of the doorway. Now a fat black spider with a bright red spot was scuttling down that web, lowering itself right into the air above Rafi.

Rafi could see the fear in Maria’s eyes, but he didn’t turn or run. Instead, he scoffed.

“Let me guess, when the spiders come and get me? Maybe when I’m asleep?”

In the second before the spider landed on Rafi, Maria reached out and grabbed her brother’s hand. She pulled him so hard they both fell backward, and he let out a yell of surprise that Maria matched with a scream of her own.

“What in the world is going on back here?” Maria’s mom rounded the corner to the room so fast she nearly collided with the black spider, which dangled in the air a few feet above the ground. But she recoiled just in time, sizing up the situation and reaching immediately for her foot. Shoe in hand, she pulled back her arm to strike.

“No, Mom, don’t!” Maria shouted.

“Maria, it’s a black widow. See the little red hourglass on its belly? That’s because when it bites you, you can go thirty minutes before you feel it, and then you don’t have much time left. One bite from that thing and I’d have to take you to Dr. Gutierrez right away.”

“I don’t care. Don’t hurt it,” Maria pleaded.

“She’s right,” Rafi said. He was breathing heavily beside her. “Grandma Esme always said we shouldn’t hurt the spiders.”

Their mom looked at them as if she wanted to disagree. Or maybe she was just processing the fact that, for once, she was the one who wanted to kill a little creature, and Maria was the one who was sticking up for it. Unless Maria was crazy, the black widow spider had paused as well, like maybe it knew Maria held its fate in her hands.

“All right,” Maria’s mom said at last. “But if either of you starts feeling sick, we’re headed to the doctor. Now I’ll go get a jar from the kitchen, and we’ll release this little guy in the woods at home. Both of you stay where you are until I get back.”

The black widow spider had other ideas. As soon as Maria’s mom disappeared down the hall, it turned to look at Maria and Rafi. Maria knew she wasn’t crazy this time – the spider clearly moved its body around to face them. Then, so fast that Maria could hardly follow, it pulled itself back up to its web, then scurried into the corner of the ceiling and disappeared.

Maria exhaled.

“That was close. I hope we made the right call,” she said.

Rafi stared at her as if she had just sprouted an extra set of eyes. Then he gave her a hug, jumped to his feet, and ran to the kitchen, leaving Maria to wonder whether her life would ever feel normal again.