Chapter 9: Early Thanksgiving Morning

“Wake up! Wake up, Bec.”

“Huh? What? What is it?”

“You were dreaming – thrashing around all over the place. I felt like I was trapped inside a washing machine.”

I looked around, which was pointless because it was pitch black inside the closet. I could feel Tara directly in front of me, crunched up against me.

“Sorry! That was a really weird dream. I think I have a talent for weird dreams.”

“Really? What was this weird dream of yours about?” asked Tara.

“Well, it gets all mixed up with the intruders and us hiding in the bathroom.”

“What? What are you talking about?” asked Tara.

“I’m talking about the people who tried to get into the house.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But ... that was real! I woke up Dad and he got everyone out of bed.”

“Nah! Sounds like more of your weird dreams to me,” said Tara.

“Oh!” That was really strange. It had all felt so real.

“Tell me more about this wacky dream of yours.”

“We hid in the bathroom. The police came. It was all very intense. I thought it was really happening,” I said, feeling really confused. I’d been so sure that had been real.

I heard a sound – a weird sort of snorting sound. I reached out and found her shoulders. They were bouncing up and down. Tara stopped trying to hide her laughter and started giggling out loud.

“You’re so easy,” she gasped, in between the giggles.

I slid my hands from her shoulders to her neck and closed them around her throat.

“One of these days, I’m going to kill you,” I hissed at her through clenched teeth. “I’m going to kill you over and over until you’re completely dead.”

I squeezed but apparently not hard enough because Tara kept on giggling.

I sighed and dropped my hands.

“That was really mean,” I said.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I’m sorry for doing that.” But she hadn’t stopped giggling. I guess that tells you how sorry she was.

“So, there really was someone trying to get into the house?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“And we really did hide in the bathroom?”

“Yeah! You weren’t dreaming. It all really happened.”

“Um ... no! I don’t think it all actually happened,” I said.

“Absolutely. I promise you, it’s all true. Everything that happened actually happened.”

“Oh!” I frowned into the darkness. “So, how long do you think they’ll keep us in here?”

“What?”

“How long do you think they’ll keep us in here?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The Martians.”

“What Martians?”

“The Martians that captured us and threw us in here when they broke into the house.”

“Ah...”

“You said that it was all true, every bit of it. That must include the Martians capturing us and locking us in the closet.”

“Maybe that bit didn’t happen,” said Tara.

“I kind of figured.”

Our chuckles danced around us in the dark like fireflies – brightening up our moods if not the actual closet.

“Did you seriously dream about Martians breaking into the house?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“So, what else did your Martians do apart from capturing us and locking us in your closet?”

“Well, they waited until the police had gone and the house was all dark again. Then they broke in and went looking for Dad because they wanted him to make them a new death-ray.”

“Since when would Dad know how to build a death-ray?”

I guess shrugging in pitch-black darkness is pretty pointless but I did it anyway.

“The two of us were sneaking around the house in the dark, trying to dodge the aliens. It was pretty creepy.”

“What did the aliens look like?”

“They were all pretty much clones of Jerry Springer.”

“If they all looked like Jerry Springer, how do you know they were aliens?”

“Jerry Springer has to be a Martian. No earthling could ever look like that. He must be a scout for a huge army of aliens. Why else would he try to destroy the country from within with his bizarre TV program? Obviously, he’s trying to soften us up for an invasion by the Martians.”

“Good point. So how did the Jerry Springer aliens manage to capture us?”

“Well, we came up with this brilliant plan for rescuing Dad. You dressed up in Mum’s wedding gown and floated around outside the window pretending to be a ghost. That was supposed to distract the Jerry Springers. In the meantime, I dressed up like a farmer’s wife so that I could crawl into the room and cut Dad free with a carving knife.”

“Uh huh. So, what went wrong with the plan?”

“The Jerry Springers weren’t as distracted as we hoped. They introduced from back-stage a dozen other girls wearing wedding dresses. They were all pregnant with Jerry’s babies and they said you couldn’t marry Jerry because they’d gotten to him first. Then the girls threw chairs at each other and started pulling each other’s hair. Then they all teamed up against you and tore Mum’s wedding dress into little pieces and you had to run away and hide because all you had on were your Minnie Mouse knickers.”

“Those things? I threw them out when I was, like, nine,” said Tara.

“Anyway, I crawled into the room but I couldn’t get Dad free because there was a Jerry Springer holding him by his long mouse’s tail.”

“I didn’t know Dad has a mouse tail?”

“Neither did I. Anyway, to get Dad free I had to slice off his tail with my carving knife. I went blind and turned into a mouse and ran up the clock. That’s when they caught us and locked us up in my closet.”

“That whole thing didn’t make much sense.”

“Yeah! I know! That’s how I figured it was probably a dream. My dreams often don’t make much sense.”

“Like you said before, you have weird dreams. All I ever dream about is running through the woods because I’m being chased by something – and umbrellas. Sometimes I dream about umbrellas.”

“What’s chasing you through the woods?”

“I don’t know. It’s never caught me. Sometimes it gets close, but I always wake up before I see it. Sometimes I run off a cliff and fall – then I wake up just before I hit the ground. Sometimes instead of falling, I open up an umbrella and float away.”

“I knew ‘Mary Poppins’ was bad for you,” I said.

“I don’t know. The floating away dreams are much better than the falling ones.”

“Hmmm! Fair point.”

“Well, I have to make a break for the bathroom. Do you think I can get there without Jerry Springer setting his pregnant brides on me again?”

Tara pushed the closet door open and crawled out into my bedroom. It was still dark out there, but apart from that I had no clue what the time was.

I hesitated for a moment and then I crawled out of the closet myself. I picked up the comforter that we’d had wrapped around us and clambered up onto my bed. I shivered a bit because we’d been toasty-warm inside the closet and my bed was cold. I curled up into a little ball and stared out into the dark of my room with unblinking eyes. Echoes of my dream still rattled around in my brain. Parts of it were scary. Parts of it were disturbing. Mostly, it was violent and ugly. I had kind of edited the version I told Tara. Fortunately, the worst parts were already fading into a half-remembered mass of images.

My bedroom door opened and spilled light into the room. Tara must have turned the hallway light on and left it on so that she could navigate around my bedroom. I felt the bed shift as she sat on the bed beside me. A hand pulled hair away from my face and smoothed it against my head.

“I’m sorry.” Tara’s voice was soft and gentle.

I didn’t know what she was apologizing for. Puzzled, I rolled onto my back and looked up at her silhouette.

“I shouldn’t have teased you about the wedding dress earlier.”

I looked up at her with a frown on my face. Inside my head, all the bits of my brain went still. I was blank – a completely blank piece of paper waiting for Tara to pick up her pencil and start drawing.

“You worry about that, don’t you? You worry that you’ll never get married.”

My eyes blinked. I don’t know why. The rest of my body had frozen into a solid block of stone.

“You think you won’t find someone who will love you – because of your weird brain.”

I retreated – crawling into the very back of my skull where Tara’s sharp eyes couldn’t see me. When Tara does so many dumb things, it’s easy to forget how smart she is. When she does this to me, all I want to do is hide.

“I hate it when you do that,” said Tara. I never knew it was possible to make your voice sound like you were rolling your eyes at someone. Apparently Tara has perfected the trick.

“Someone says something you can’t cope with and you fold up inside yourself and go all blank. It makes you very frustrating to talk to. I don’t even know if you can still hear what I’m saying.”

I looked out from the little place in the back of my skull where I was cowering. It was like watching the world through a set of binoculars – only looking backwards so that everything looked far, far away. All blank, she said? I pushed forward the version of me that I call Rebecca Louise. It’s not really a split-personality kind of thing like in the movies. It’s more like a mask that I wear sometimes so that the rest of the world has someone to talk to while I sit in the back of my head and watch.

“I’m listening,” said Rebecca Louise.

I think Tara smiled. She put her hand on my shoulder and rubbed it a bit and then left it sitting there.

“So like I was saying, you’re all freaked that maybe your craziness will put all the guys off and you’ll never find your true love. I shouldn’t have teased you about never needing the wedding dress. It obviously upset you so much that you dreamed about it. I’m sorry about that.”

“Oh! Okay,” said Rebecca Louise.

“You’re wrong, you know,” said Tara.

“Huh?”

“Look at Mum. She has the same thing you do. She found Dad. There’s no reason why you can’t find someone like him...”

Rebecca Louise blinked up at her.

“ ... only not related to us ... and younger ... because that would be weird ... well, you know what I mean.”

What’s wrong with me is worse than what Mum has. I didn’t say that. I thought it but I didn’t say it. It’s true though.

“You do know that Dad’s probably more messed up than Mum is, don’t you?” whispered Rebecca Louise.

“If that’s true, then he hides it well,” she muttered.

“Yes, he does,” I said.

Then I retreated again.

I rolled over onto my side – putting my back to Tara.

The bed shook as Tara maneuvered herself under the covers. Then I felt her shifting herself up behind me until she was cuddling me from the back. We lay there quietly for a while.

A little later, there was the quietest whisper – so quiet that I don’t think she meant me to hear it.

“I swear to you, sister of mine, I swear to you that I will look after you. If you don’t find somebody then you will live with me until you’re ninety.”

I breathed three times, but she didn’t say anything more. Her simple promise had squeezed my heart into a tiny ball.

“What happens when I’m ninety?” I whispered.

I heard the tiniest of little gasps. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.” She was quiet for a moment. “I’m kicking you out on the street when you’re ninety. When you’re ninety, I’ll be ninety-two. That’s way too old to be looking after a crazy sister. Maybe, if you’re lucky, Angie will be mature enough by then so that she can look after you.”

“Maybe.”

“I could keep you in my basement, or maybe in my attic. You can be the crazy aunt that my kids use to scare their friends with.”

“Awesome. That sounds like fun. I’ll need a wild hairdo – and a stick to wave. Scary aunts should always have a stick to wave.”

“Hairdo and stick – check.”

We giggled quietly for a bit.

We added little comments about ways I could be a scary aunt and giggled some more. Then, almost between one giggle and the next, Tara was asleep. I stopped giggling and lay there. Even though I’d been laughing, it was kind of depressing to think that we might have been describing my life. It was nice that Tara was prepared to stick with me and look after me but I hated the idea that I would need so much looking after. I lay there, for some unknown amount of time, while my brain pushed that idea around and around. Finally, I went to sleep.

I was woken by Mum, rapping on the open door.

“Wakey, wakey, rise and shine.”

I groaned. Tara snored. I rolled over and glared at Mum through a tangled curtain of hair.

“What time is it?”

“Time to get up,” she replied in a way too cheerful sort of voice. “We have a big day in front of us so nobody gets to lie around this morning. If you want to go to the Y this morning, you’ll have to get up right now. Breakfast is waiting for you and it wants to be eaten.”

I forced myself up into a seated position and poked at Tara’s ribs through the covers.

Tara groaned and rolled over until she was face down in the pillow.

I poked her again and she groaned and thrashed around.

I shrugged at Mum and slid out of bed. Mum smiled at me and disappeared from the doorway, heading towards the kitchen. I claimed the bathroom about thirty seconds before Dan and had a very quick shower – accompanied by the regular thump of Dan banging on the door and telling me to hurry up.

By the time I got back to my bedroom, the only thing Tara had done was to bury her head underneath the pillow. I left her alone and got myself dressed. I listened for the sounds of Dan finishing up in the bathroom. That didn’t happen until I’d finished brushing my hair.

Once the bathroom was clear, I grabbed Tara’s arm and hauled. She moaned and stumbled to her feet – still more asleep than awake. I wrapped my bathrobe around her and steered her out of my room and into the bathroom.

The kitchen was quiet. Mum was poaching eggs and Dad was cooking toast. Neither of them was talking. They both gave me little smiles when I came into the kitchen but then went back to what they were doing without saying anything. I slumped down into my chair and watched them – trying to pick up on what mood they were in.

I finally figured out one of the reasons the kitchen was so quiet.

“Where’s Angie?” I asked.

“She’s still sleeping off the pill and all the excitement from last night,” explained Mum. “I’ll let her lie in for a little while.”

I poured out a glass of milk for myself and a second glass that I put in front of Tara’s place. She slid into her chair and slumped. Mum and Dad started putting plates of toast and poached eggs out on the table. Mum yelled for Dan and he walked into the kitchen before Mum had even finished saying his name.

Tara was sitting slumped over and staring blankly down at the table in front of her – nothing unusual there. I took a plate with egg and toast from Mum and waved it under Tara’s nose before putting it down on the table in front of her. Then I took a second plate for myself and started eating.

Everyone was quiet. The usual chatter around the table was missing. I wasn’t in the mood to break up the quiet, so I focused on eating. Apparently Dan didn’t like the quiet so much because he started talking in the brief gap between finishing his first egg and starting on his second.

“So, did anyone know that our bathroom is haunted?”