Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, No. 5. Whole No. 855, November 2012

The Closet by Jenny Milchman

This is New Jersey suspense writer Jenny Milchman’s first paid professional publication, but it will be quickly followed up (in February of 2013) by the release of her debut novel, Cover of Snow (Ballantine). The author currently serves as chair of the International Thriller Writers’ Debut Authors Program, and she is also the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, which was celebrated, in 2011, in more than 350 bookstores in all 50 U.S. states and four foreign countries.

It seemed to be darkest in the closet at midday. Ellie didn’t know why. Maybe because of how light it was outside, noonday sun glaring, just before she got locked in. The floor of the closet was carpeted, and the door sill shushed against it. Not even one crack of light could enter.

Ellie hated the dark more than anything else. More than the mixed-up jumble of hidden things her mom threw in here, everything that didn’t have a place anywhere else. More than the smell, which reminded her of her grandmother. Or the feel of the hot, wooly coats that sometimes brushed against her. The worst was the pure, unblinking dark.

“David!” she screamed. “Lemme out!”

She could scream until her throat was raw, and had. Till she coughed blood, and couldn’t make one sound more. It didn’t matter. David never let her out till he was ready.

In the bright, safe rest of the house, he was wrestling with his best friend. A loud boy who lived next door, bigger than David. She never heard David make a single grunt when they wrestled, though. He was silent, action only, whipping his body around, freeing himself from an arm or a chest, before flipping Brad onto the ground and pinning him there. Ellie had seen him do it, his eyes both fiery and satisfied, as he lay heaving on top of Brad. It was after David caught Ellie watching that he started locking her in the closet for real.

Turning the latch. Leaving her there for hours at a time. Ellie didn’t have a watch — and she couldn’t have seen it in the dark anyway — but she knew by how low the sun was in the sky when he finally let her out.

When she was very young, as little as five, it hadn’t gone on for as long, and David had stayed close by, keeping watch outside the door. That was three years ago, and their mom didn’t leave them alone in the house yet. All Ellie had to do was start screaming — and she began screaming the second she went in there anyway, so horrible were the back reaches of that closet — and her mom would come and get her out.

“David!” she’d exclaim. “Why was your little sister in the closet?”

Ellie would be hidden in the folds of her mother’s skirt, tears pouring soundlessly out of her. The dark still clutched at her throat, like a glove.

“I dunno,” he always muttered. “We were playing hide-n’-go-seek!” Or sardines. Or Jack and the Beanstalk. It was never true, any of it. David didn’t play games with Ellie.

“Not in the closet,” their mom would reply briskly. “I don’t know what all is in there now. And it could scare her. You know Ellie only stopped having nightmares last year.”

Actually, Ellie hadn’t stopped having them. She’d just stopped calling for her mother after one. She could remember the latest now, some kind of huge winged animal — not a bird — pressing down on her. She woke up smothered, fighting her blankets.

“Okay,” David would say, every time, head hanging. “I’ll tell her to play somewhere else.”

“Don’t look so upset,” their mother replied, chucking David under the chin as she began to walk out. “Little girls do all sorts of silly things. That’s why you have to be the big brother.”

David would look up at their mom, giving her that sunny grin that always made her take a step back and, whatever she might be doing — and their mom was always doing something — stop and smile back.

“Go on, let her out. I can’t stand that noise anymore.”

It was Brad’s voice. Ellie hadn’t realized she’d been screaming, but she must’ve been because her throat was doing that dead thing again. If she tried now, no sound would come out.

Then her brother spoke.

“No,” David said. “This time she isn’t getting out.”

Ellie never moved when she was in the closet. Not an inch. She sat in exactly one spot, the carpet like burrs under her palms.

She didn’t know what she’d find if she moved.

Or, what would find her.

Her mom had lived in this house forever — before David had been born and their dad had left even — and she’d always shoved everything they didn’t need anymore in the closet. On the shelf high above Ellie, boxes and clumped-up things threatened to topple down, which was why she always ducked, trying to protect her head, so that when she was finally let out, her neck would ache for hours.

“Why are you holding your head like that, Elizabeth?” her mom once asked.

“Because David—” Ellie had begun.

“David what?” her mother replied, in a patient, jokey tone, ready to smile at Ellie’s response. But her gaze had already lit on her son, and Ellie knew if she spoke now, her mother wouldn’t even hear.

Behind her in the closet loomed shapes Ellie couldn’t see so much as feel. Ellie never even knew if her eyes were open or shut unless she reached up and felt the lids. The darkness was so solid it filled up her mouth, like dirt.

Once something had roared in the closet, a loud, blustery roar that emitted an actual gust of wind. Ellie had screamed and catapulted herself forward into the door so hard she needed stitches. She didn’t get them — her mom was a nurse and did up the cut on her forehead with a butterfly — but Ellie figured that really hadn’t been enough from the way the cut still seeped for days afterwards.

It turned out that Ellie had fallen — there were times she dozed off while in the closet, which astonished her, but her mind did do this funny splintering thing, stopping only after she’d jerked to with a start — into the Dustbuster. David had hauled her out that time — there was a crack in the door he’d taken pains to repair — laughing at her.

“Scared of a vacuum cleaner,” he’d scoffed.

The Dustbuster was just one of the things that caused Ellie to stay stock still now until her imprisonment was over. The thought of that roar, the feel of its hot, dusty breath on her again made her shudder. But this time David had said it would never be over. He wasn’t going to let her out. Ellie didn’t think she could stay in the dark for much longer. It felt like it already had been hours — long past the longest sentence he’d ever inflicted upon her — and everything outside the closet was quiet. No Brad thumping and huffing, no final thud signaling David’s victory. If Ellie started to scream again, would they even hear her? Her throat was still too raw to produce much of a sound anyway. Ellie opened her mouth and tested it, feeling panic when only a dry whisper came out.

Terror-stricken, Ellie suddenly scampered forward, carpet rasping under her fists. She got onto her knees and began scrabbling around for the closet door, finding the softer streak of putty right at forehead height where she’d hit it that time, and which her mom never detected under the new layer of paint David had added.

She began beating with her fists. She could make noise with her hands even if her voice was dead — maybe she’d be able to break through the patched spot and at least let in a saving bolt of light. Even if David really wouldn’t let her out, even if she was trapped in here forever, died in here, she could stand that if she could just have a little light—

The soft spot in the door didn’t give, but a piece broke off and punctured the tender skin on her wrist.

Ellie let out a soundless scream. She looked instantly away, unwilling to see whatever could be making her wrist hurt this much. Her whole arm was hot. But Ellie couldn’t see even if she had wanted to; she just knew something was in there that didn’t belong. Shit. A curse word that she sometimes heard David say, but which she’d never dared use herself, erupted in her mind. She forced her other hand down to try and find whatever was sticking out of her skin.

Her hand came to a stop a good three inches above her wrist. In school two years ago they’d done measurement, discovered why a ruler was better than a hand span for figuring out how big things were. This piece of wood had to be about three inches long.

Ellie was going to have to get it out.

Yank it out, then quick press the wound against her jeans, in hopes of making the blood stop. She knew that from her mom. You couldn’t bleed for very long or you died.

She didn’t want to die in the dark.

Ellie let her good hand float above the dagger of wood. Somewhere, in some deep invisible part of her, she knew what it was going to feel like when she touched that stick that had no business being inside her body.

It was even worse than she feared. Her voice returned enough to allow a low, weak moan when her fingers finally touched the tip of the splinter.

“I can’t,” she whimpered.

Her mother’s voice floated into her consciousness. Can’t what, Elizabeth? she asked, sharing a smile with David.

Ellie’s fingers clenched, and she pulled the piece of wood straight up.

It seemed to take forever to leave her body. She felt it as it did, a long, slow sucking, then release. Blood spurted out, and she crushed her wrist against her thigh.

Then she heard voices.

Her brother was coming back.

David’s and Brad’s rooms faced each other across the narrow slit of lawn between their houses. Sometimes at night they played this spotlight game, where one person left his light on and the other person turned his off. Whoever’s light was off could see everything that went on in the other person’s room. Ellie had never dared look herself, but she’d see David there a lot, humped beneath his windowsill like a turtle, peeking in at Brad.

They were best friends. She wished she had a best friend who lived close by. She wished she had a best friend period.

“What happened?” Brad said now.

“Whaddya mean, what happened?” David replied in his lazy voice, the one their mom said sounded exactly like their dad’s.

“She got quiet.”

“Yeah,” David said. “She does that.”

Ellie could make out sounds as the boys arranged themselves, draping their bodies over furniture, kicking stuff out of the way. The bleep as someone turned on his DS.

“You sure she’s still in there?” Brad said. And then he laughed, a funny laugh. It took Ellie a minute to figure out why the laugh sounded funny, and in that time the dark didn’t bother her quite so much. It was funny because Brad sounded nervous.

“Shut up,” David said. “I’m gonna finish this level.”

Ellie twisted to look behind her. She felt the movement in her wrist, and bit back a yowl. Her voice had come back.

The dark was so thick back there, it pressed against her. No telling what might be in it. If she scooted backwards, Ellie had the very real feeling that she might disappear, simply fall off into the place that was left when you weren’t in this one anymore, and keep falling forever.

Her chest heaved up and down in little hitches like when she’d been crying for a long time, pushing small sighs out of her.

She made herself stop breathing so hard. Her voice was back; now she could make noise. And for some reason, Ellie didn’t want to make any noise.

All the pounding on the door she’d done earlier had disturbed things in the closet. Things that were piled up on the shelf had shifted, and Ellie suddenly realized that something was about to fall.

She’d taken gymnastics once. It was during one of the times their dad had come back for a while. She barely remembered it now, just that she’d liked it, especially the tumbling on the slick red floor mats. Despite her policy of not moving in the closet, she tucked her head down and rolled just as something heavy and cold whistled past her and fell onto the carpet, making a heavy, muffled thunk.

“What was that?” Brad’s voice again.

The hole in Ellie’s wrist had started bleeding when she moved, but it was only a trickle.

Ellie wasn’t able to see what had fallen right beside her, almost on top of her — she’d felt its breath as it went past.

“Shut up,” David said. “I almost got this.”

“Are you really going to keep her locked up in there?”

A second or two went by. “Who?”

“You know, your sister.”

Ellie snaked out the arm that wasn’t bleeding. She let her fingers feel around in the darkness, like the tentacles of some never-seen bug. They touched metal. Cold, round, long metal, with a little chain at the top. It was a lamp.

Ellie could remember this lamp; it had sat on the table next to their mother’s bed. If she tiptoed down to her mom’s room in the middle of the night, to ask for a drink of water or an extra blanket on the bed, her mom would reach a sleepy hand up and pull the chain, and light would spill over her face, her half-closed eyes.

It was so quiet now in the closet that Ellie heard the DS as it shut down.

“Whadda you care?” David asked.

“You can’t just leave her in there.”

“Whadda you care?” David said again.

There was some muffled moving around. Then the DS started up again.

Brad had it now; Ellie could tell the difference at once because Brad chortled and crowed whenever he scored points, while David was as silent as he played as he was when he did everything else.

“I care,” Brad said after a few minutes, “ ’cause I got a sister myself.”

“So?” David said.

“And my mom sometimes makes me babysit her and she’s only four and she’s a real pain. She always wants something to eat, and she always asks me to play with her.”

“I said, so?” A pause. “Lemme have it.”

“Not yet, hold on.” The bleep of the stupid game. “So — you’ve given me a great idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And whadda you think is gonna happen if you never let your sister out? Your mom’s gonna find out and you’ll get in trouble. People’ll look for her. Everyone will find out. Right? You know?” Some more bleeps. “I got it! Oh yeah, I never got to this level before.”

Ellie knew what would happen now. David would reach for the game. He wouldn’t say anything, there’d be no noise whatsoever except for the sounds the DS made, and then David would finish Brad’s level, and maybe the one after that.

It gave her a few minutes.

Ellie’s fingers squeezed the body of the lamp. The metal grew slippery in her grasp, and she wiped blood off blindly.

You got the splinter out, a small voice said. It wasn’t her mom’s anymore. You can do this too.

Faintly, Ellie could make out Brad’s voice, wheedling, badgering. Finally David muttered, “Of course I’m gonna let her out, dumb-ass. Soon as I finish this level.”

For the first time since she’d been getting locked in the closet, Ellie pushed herself backwards, into the swallowing blackness. On her bottom, still holding onto the lamp.

When the door finally opened, Ellie had to slam her eyes shut against the sudden explosion of light. She wriggled back a little more, behind the dangling coats, the carpet muffling any sound she might’ve made.

“Where is she?” Brad.

A pause.

“Holy crap, I told you she wasn’t in here anymore.”

“Shut up.”

Silence then, only silence and darkness back there in the depths, despite the light from the door. Ellie had gotten herself in pretty deep. The closet was even bigger than she’d imagined.

“Told you,” Brad said again.

“Shut up, of course she’s in here,” David said. “She can’t get out, I locked the door.”

“Yeah?” Brad said. There was that funny sound in his voice again. “Well, don’t let it lock on us.”

Ellie’s eyes had adjusted by now, and she could make out David, twisting around, feeling for the knob on the outside of the closet door. She could hear the tiny click the lock made as it turned from down to horizontal.

“There,” he said. “Now it can’t lock.”

But Brad took a step backwards into the room anyway.

“You better go in,” he said. “If she really can’t have gotten out, she’s gotta be in there.”

“Ding, ding, ding,” David muttered. “We got ourselves an Einstein.”

Ellie bought herself another inch of space.

“Ellie.” David’s voice was as rough as a strap. “Get out here.”

She cringed in the darkness. She held onto the lamp like she used to hold onto her mother’s skirt.

“Go on,” Brad said again. He sounded very far away. “You scared?”

“Who’s the one standing out there?” David replied. And then he entered the closet.

Ellie lifted the lamp into the air. She was surprised at how heavy it was.

“Ellie,” David said, louder than she’d ever heard him. “You better get out here or you’re not gonna like what happens.”

Ellie forced herself not to say a word, not to let out a single cry.

“It’ll be worse than the closet, that’s for sure.”

Fear sliced through her, and after that everything happened very fast. David walked a few more paces in, close enough for Ellie to hear the rasp of his jeans, to smell his breath, sour from whatever he’d been eating. She’d had nothing to eat since lunchtime at school.

He bumped against something — a carton that had once held an appliance — and ducked to shove it out of his way.

Ellie brought the lamp back, up over her shoulder, sure that David would detect the motion and grab it out of her hands.

But he didn’t seem to see a thing.

“Okay, that’s it,” David said. “If you’re really not in here, I’m going out. Brad and I’ll go over to his house. And Ellie?”

A pause, while Ellie fought not to jump up, tell David she was right here, fall on top of him, and give him the lamp.

“Mom’s not coming home tonight.” And he started to turn.

Ellie brought the lamp down with a hysterical screech. She didn’t know where on David’s body the lamp hit him, she only knew that it did. She could feel the solid weight of metal slamming against something, making the lamp vibrate so hard she felt it in her teeth.

And she heard David — who seldom raised his voice above a whisper, not even when their dad had walked out for the last time, telling David it was all his fault — scream.

Ellie raced out of the closet, stepping on some part of her brother so that she almost tripped, then righting herself and pushing past Brad, who was still standing by the couch, staring stupidly in her direction.

She ran up to her room and contemplated hiding in her closet. She did get down under her bed for a minute or two. But no one came upstairs, and Ellie crawled out. For a while she just stood there, listening for noises down below, but not hearing much.

It was getting dark; it must be late. This really had been the longest time ever. David had kept her locked up until almost dinner. Their mom was going to be mad that the meal wasn’t on the table, wasn’t even near to being prepared.

Finally the front door opened and closed; then there was quiet again.

“Elizabeth!” her mother called.

Ellie went downstairs, heart thudding.

Their mother was crouched before David, who was sitting on a kitchen chair, cradling his arm. Their mom’s gaze flew up to Ellie.

“I have to go back to the hospital,” she said, an unsteady stitch in her voice. “I’m taking David over.”

Ellie waited to be accused.

“You’d better get your coat,” their mother went on.

“Why?” Ellie asked. She didn’t dare look at her brother.

“Well, you can’t stay alone,” their mom said, still squatting on the floor. David’s long legs were splayed out around her.

“No,” Ellie replied, finally meeting David’s gaze. “I mean, why? What happened?”

She looked out at the living room. It had been cleaned up. The closet door was shut.

“Your brother was wrestling,” their mother said, standing up. “With Brad after school.” She gave a short, hard jerk of her head. “I think he broke his arm.”

David was as silent as ever while the doctor poked and prodded his arm, positioned it for X-rays, then set it. There were no chairs in the tiny, curtained-off space, so Ellie had to sit on the waxy tile floor, staring at a streak that might’ve been blood.

“Now will you learn?” their mother said as she helped David off the bed. “You’re supposed to be watching your sister anyway. No roughhousing.” She glanced back at the doctor and gave him a smile that flushed her cheeks. “Thanks, Ron.”

The next day after school, Ellie waited for David to exact his revenge. But he never came near her. It was hard for him to write — the arm Ellie had broken was his right one — and he seemed to labor over his homework, muffling grunts of frustration, bright green cast lying uselessly in his lap.

Ellie took it upon herself to prepare dinner. That was usually David’s job — he often did it while she was in the closet; she’d strain to hear the noises that meant at least one of these seconds, minutes, hours, their mother would be returning home — but she could make macaroni and cheese from a box. She could tear up lettuce.

There was still time left before their mother was due back, and Ellie wanted to stay far away from David. Eventually he’d finish struggling with his homework, or else give it a herky-jerky, left-handed throw aside. Then there’d be nothing left for him to do.

She trudged upstairs.

It was getting dark. The light in David’s room was off, but across the strip of lawn, Brad’s had been turned on. Ellie wondered why he hadn’t come over today. She turned and looked back over her shoulder, making sure David wasn’t on his way up to play spy with his best friend. But all was quiet downstairs.

Ellie took a step into David’s room.

His blanket was in a twist, hanging off the bed. The clothes he’d tried on earlier — two shirts whose sleeves he couldn’t get over his cast — lay on the floor. Some new games were scattered about too. Ellie began to step over them. But when her foot came down on one, Ellie stepped a little harder, listening for the crack.

Still quiet downstairs. No one was behind her.

She’d traveled all the way across the room by now.

She ducked down like David did, peeking through the window.

It was as clear as watching a movie on their dad’s HDTV. Ellie had only been there once — and David never at all — but she had been amazed at how new and shiny their dad’s apartment was. It was as if he’d stripped off the old, gray life he’d shared here with Ellie and David and their mom. Like a papery, outgrown skin.

Brad was walking around in his room, his steps big and angry. Even from here, Ellie could tell he was making a lot of noise. His mouth kept opening and closing. He threw a bunch of wadded-up clothes, or maybe a sheet, onto the floor. Then he ducked out of his room to grab something.

It was a little girl.

Ellie saw her swinging ponytail as Brad yanked her around.

He pulled open the door to his bedroom closet and shoved the little girl inside. Ellie watched as Brad took a key off his dresser and twisted it in the old- fashioned lock.

He stomped out of the room, disappearing from view.

Ellie thought she could see the door bulge in and out as it was pounded, but maybe she was imagining that.

She felt as if she were in a trance. Once somebody — called a hypno-something — had visited their school for a special assembly. He’d made the kids come up on the stage and do all sorts of things, bark like dogs, think their skin had turned purple. Even a couple of teachers had gone up. All the kids thought it was really funny, but Ellie had found it creepy.

She felt like that now. Like somebody besides herself was making her do things.

She tiptoed down the stairs, even more intent than before on making sure David didn’t hear her.

She was almost to the front door, taking the knob in her hand and beginning to nudge it around slowly, soundlessly, when something struck her.

She’d gotten lucky in the closet the last time. Funny to think of it that way, but she had. If the lamp hadn’t fallen, after years and years of her praying nothing would, she wouldn’t have been able to break David’s arm. And not every closet had a lamp in it.

It didn’t have to be a lamp, she realized. The one she’d used was too heavy to carry next-door anyway.

She stood a minute, thinking. Her gaze roamed around the house, lighting on different objects.

She forced herself to hurry, to decide. Brad’s little sister — Ellie didn’t even know her name; her mom had never tried very hard to get to know their neighbors — was in the closet right now. And Ellie knew what she was feeling, what she must be doing. She hoped the little girl hadn’t hurt her hands too badly yet. Or her head.

Then she thought of something good.

She raced back upstairs — saying sorry in her head for the extra seconds; promising the little girl it would be worth it — and swerved into David’s room again. She paused.

“David!” she called. Wanting, needing to know where he was right now.

It was stupid, though. David would never shout back.

She ran across his room and pulled open the third dresser drawer. The box was behind a stack of T-shirts, and the secret drawer was in the bottom, opened by a series of taps.

Easy.

When she wasn’t in the closet, she was usually watching David.

The game she had stepped on in David’s room — broken, you broke it, said the new voice — gave her an idea. Ellie dashed outside and ran across the two front lawns, pants pocket heavy with the thing she had taken. She pounded on Brad’s front door.

“David says you have his X-Men Three!” she shouted breathlessly as soon as Brad opened it.

“What? I do not,” Brad replied. He was giving her a look like his laugh had been, funny, shaky.

“You do too!” she shrieked hysterically. “David says so! Go look!”

Still with the same look, Brad began to back away, and Ellie watched him walk to some distant part of the house.

“It’s not here!” he called out loudly after a moment or two.

Ellie squinted. She couldn’t even see where Brad was calling from.

“Fine!” she shouted. “I’ll tell David but he won’t be happy!”

Brad would start to look again, she figured. At least give it one more try.

She stepped into the house, pushing the door shut loudly, so Brad would think she had really left. Then she tore upstairs.

The screams coming from the closet were so loud they hurt her ears. It was like running straight into a wall of sound. Ellie’s eyes teared, her head smarted.

She didn’t even have to use the map in her head of where Brad’s room must be — directly across from David’s — to locate the little girl. She flung herself around a corner into Brad’s room and ran straight for the dresser. It was tall, higher than any of the furniture in their own house. The key had to be somewhere on top, but Ellie couldn’t see it. She looked around wildly, knowing she’d never be able to hear Brad coming up over all this screaming. But her brother’s friend seemed as unbothered by it as David always was. Ellie stood on tiptoes, straining the backs of her legs till something felt ready to rip inside, and swiped her palm across the top.

The key fell off. It dropped beneath the dresser.

Heaving a grunt of pure frustration, which was lost beneath the little girl’s cries, Ellie dropped to her knees and looked down.

The key was out of reach.

Ellie stretched her fingers, feeling splinters from the underside of the wood break off and stab the skin on her hand, before she touched its jagged edge. She forced herself to go slowly, nudging the key out, so she wouldn’t lose it again. For a moment she paused to clap her hands over her ears, shutting out the sound of those awful screams. But she knew she couldn’t stay like this because she wouldn’t hear if Brad came upstairs, not even if he walked right up behind her.

On hands and knees, she swung around.

It didn’t seem possible, but the little girl had gotten even louder, the whole room shaking now. Ellie understood. She could remember pushing her own voice beyond limits she hadn’t known it had, stopping only when her tongue blocked her throat and she started to choke.

The key was in her hand.

Ellie stood up and fitted it into the lock on the closet door.

There wasn’t so much as a break in the little girl’s screaming before Ellie pulled the door shut again and dropped down beside her in the dark.

“Shhh!” Ellie hissed. “You have to stop screaming! Now!”

Unbelievably, the girl fell silent. She didn’t question Ellie’s presence, or why Ellie hadn’t let both of them out. All went quiet around them, two girls huddled in dark as complete as any Ellie had ever known, but somehow not as scary, as paralyzing as it had been only a day ago.

And then they heard footsteps coming into the room.

“Lily?” they heard Brad say.

Ellie located the jackknife in her pocket in the dark. She had to prod out its blade by feel, pushing the can opener back in when she ran her thumb across it and didn’t feel a sharp tip.

Beside her, the little girl’s breath heaved in and out, as if she were a small animal. Ellie couldn’t see anything, but she gave the little girl — Lily — a nod, hoping she could somehow sense it in the dark.

“Lily? You in there?” Brad said again.

They would be blinded when the door opened, Ellie knew that.

She raised the knife to what she hoped would be mid-section height on Brad, gauging it by feeling her own chest, then moving up several inches, and turning the tip so it faced out.

Footsteps strode across the room and the door was yanked open.

Ellie thrust forward with the sharp end of her blade.

She missed completely — Ellie could tell because the knife had sunk into nothing but air — but it didn’t matter. The second he knew who she was, and what she had done, Brad fell backwards onto the floor, like he did when David wrestled him, soft belly exposed.

Ellie crawled across the floor. The knife was still open; she was holding it out. She bent down over Brad and whispered into his hot, red ear. “If you ever put her in the closet again—”

“No—” Brad shook his head. He had started to cry. “No, okay, I won’t, I promise—”

Ellie jumped to her feet. She turned around and took one look at Lily. The little girl’s face was all smeary with tears and she’d bitten right through a spot on her lip. But she didn’t look scared anymore. Her eyes were big and shining as they gazed up at Ellie.

Ellie pocketed the knife, and ran.

They ate Ellie’s macaroni and cheese for dinner, and her mom said it was good.

David kept his eyes cast down, refusing to look at Ellie. He wouldn’t quit cradling his cast, which already looked grimy.

When their mother tried to coax him to speak, David’s voice reached a high-pitched, teetering note. “I said I don’t want to talk!”

The next day, David stayed home from school because he said his arm was hurting. Ellie figured he’d play his DS all day long. He’d gotten pretty good at it left-handed.

At recess, Ellie spotted a little boy in the grade below hers. He was sitting on a railroad tie at the edge of the playground, clenching his hand.

Ellie went over and sat down beside him. “How come you’re not playing?”

“I can’t play,” the little boy said. After a moment, he slowly opened his hand.

Ellie looked down and studied his palm. He seemed to be holding a fistful of rosebuds, small red blooms across the skin.

“What happened?” Ellie asked.

“My sister,” the little boy said. “She made me hold onto a whole bunch of rocks. Little tiny ones. Then she squeezed my hand as hard as she could.”

Ellie nodded.

“She likes to do medical speriments,” the boy went on. “Today I have to tell her if it hurts a lot or a little less. Like a seven or a two.”

Ellie nodded again.

After a while she asked, “Do you have a closet?”

Copyright © 2012 by Jenny Milchman