Requiem for Locusts

By Wendy Parciak

"I am scattered into a million pieces. Little pieces of sand or glass. Sharp-edged knives or swords, like the ones daddy plays with. They won’t let me but when I close my hands I cut myself anyway. Sharp-edged words and eyes, I try to hide from them but cannot."

These are the words of Marzita Zaferatos, a mentally-ill young woman who wanders into the lives of her neighbors on Locust Street, whether they want her to or not. On the street live a frail spinster, a career-driven couple and their toddler, a neurologist with a constricting shyness of women, a teenager who wishes her life could be as interesting as her daydreams, and Marzita’s father, a circus juggler. These residents are scarcely aware of each other’s existence, guarding their private lives behind doors and fences. But Marzita doesn’t understand that only superficial contact is customary in the close confines of a city. Sometimes unwillingly, her neighbors are caught up in her delusional, fairytale vision of life with princes and princesses, evil dukes, malevolent knives, circus stars and music, as her world spins out of control and the boundary between insanity and reality unravels.

This is the story of how people react when confronted by someone whose life is more out of control than their own. It is a story of love, misunderstanding, suspense and heartbreak. It is one that is familiar to us, as we wonder about our neighbors, experience the painfulness of self-doubt, or witness the confusion and fright of mental illness. It is the story of all who are forced to confront the chaos in their own lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wendy Parciak
• Release date: Sep 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465911438

Wendy Parciak

Wendy Parciak has a PhD in ecology from The University of Montana, and has worked as a wilderness ranger and biologist for numerous state and federal agencies. She also studied cello at the Julliard School of Music. She lives in Missoula, Montana with her husband, young son and three very active border collies. She wrote Requiem for Locusts, her first novel and recipient of the 2008 Montana Honor Book Award, to explore how people react when confronted by a psychotic individual whose life is more out of control than their own. She based much of her knowledge on her own mentally-ill sister, who was diagnosed after years of visual and auditory hallucinations with a genetic disorder called Velocardiofacial syndrome.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter X1

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV

Chapter XXXVI

Chapter XXXVII

Chapter XXXVIII

Chapter XXXIX

Chapter XL

Chapter XLI

Chapter XLII

Chapter XLIII

Chapter XLIV

Chapter XLV

Chapter XLVI

Chapter XLVII

Chapter XLVIII

Chapter XLIX

Chapter L

Chapter LI

Chapter LII

Chapter LIII

Chapter LIV

Chapter LV

Chapter LVI: Locust Street

About the Author

Acknowledgements

This book could not have come about without the knowledge on mental illness shared by my mother, Polly Parson, and the efforts toward finding a cure for Velocardiofacial Syndrome by my father, William W. Parson. These two people are truly an inspiration in how to battle a never-ending storm with patience and grace, without losing themselves in the process.

I am very grateful to Beth Bruno for her insightful editorial comments and enthusiastic support of the book. The publisher of the printed version of the book, C.W. Duncan of Two Canoes Press, was a pleasure to work with, full of his customary fortitude and good humor at all times.

I thank Linda Bailey for help with Spanish translations, Emily Curtis for help with French translations and Decca Music Group Limited and translator Francis Catala for the use of the English translations of Carmina Burana. Any mistakes are my own. Most of all, I thank my husband and first reader, Will Bain, and my son, Julian Bain, for their enthusiasm and unconditional love, without which I’d never be able to form a single coherent thought, much less get it down on paper.

For Christy

Prologue

Consider a street, any street, in a neighborhood. Place this neighborhood in any town in any country in the world, or, for accuracy, place it in an affluent one, where the ties that bind people together have loosened and often broken apart. This could be in the northern hemisphere or the south, the eastern hemisphere or the west, but it is a place with a history so new or so old that it has not been remembered.

Now envision the street itself. It could be narrow, but most likely it is wide, since there is money to spare here to ensure that the street can be traveled in safety and comfort. Bare pavement doesn’t hold our interest for long, so we let our eyes move to the side of the street, where cars, sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks stand at attention like the favored steeds in the first line of a cavalry charge. Some are dusty, but most are shiny, well-tended beasts ready for battle at a moment’s notice. Behind this proud line we might or might not see a sidewalk, and if we do, it is like the street in miniature. A smooth, clean expanse of concrete with more space than necessary, considering the lack of people on this public path.

Beyond the sidewalk our eyes travel farther, delighted to find a color other than gray. Green. Long swatches of green. It is lush, soothing and bright. Unnaturally bright, decisively uniform. Carpets of lawn crew-cut at regulation height, individual blades standing at attention. Every now and then a cluster of flowers. Sometimes, daringly, a yard full of landscaped plants interrupts the grassy expanse, but this is rare.

Our eyes are drawn back farther still, to the houses resting on the grass as if they have just been dropped there. Most have the same boxy shape, but when we look closer we are relieved to see variation. Big, small, fancy, ramshackle, the houses on this street have distinct dispositions, perhaps, we think, reflecting the humans they host. Our gaze veers sideways along a continuous line of sorts, a line that travels steadily down or up the street but that varies in height and texture. It might be composed of tightly-grown sharp-needled shrubs, haughty wrought-iron gates with miniature spears pointing skyward, scraggly broadleaf shrubs that are either sickly or recently planted, falling-down grape stick fence or rigid chain link, which lends an air of grave authority to the entire arrangement. The line continues as far down the street as the eye can see. We would like to think that it connects every house to its neighbor, although we suspect that it does not.

For simplicity, we will give the street a name. Let’s call it Locust Street, perhaps in honor of a locust grove that occupied the land before houses were built, but then again perhaps not. Possibly the site was once semi-arid scrubland, riparian woodland or eucalyptus forest, but locust struck the most memorable or marketable chord in someone’s mind. It must have worked, because Locust Street is popular. Many people now live where the sagebrush, the cattails, the thorny wild rose, the pine trees grew. And these people? One of them might be you or me or someone we know. A casual acquaintance, a best friend, a grandmother. A sage, a recluse, a clown, a psycho, or, more than likely, someone who is so ordinary a label does not exist. These are the people that call Locust Street their home, their place in the universe, and whether or not that matters is a question we might want to ask.

I.

Willow Stokes couldn’t remember why she had moved to the house on Locust Street, except that maybe it was because she herself had the name of a tree. Of course, there were neither locusts nor willows around, and she wouldn’t have known which was which anyway. Her secret vision of herself as a lover of nature, however, was her only deviance from a spinsterish existence in her small-windowed, airless abode. No one knew of her wild side, of the fact that she tiptoed outside at ten every Friday night to scatter birdseed beneath the single scrawny tree in her yard, but then, no one knew her as anything other than Miss Stokes, either.

That was fine with Miss Stokes. She pursed her lips in disapproval of the familiar nature young people seemed to display to each other these days, of their slovenly appearance as they slouched down the street past her door. She covered her ears when their cars thumped and squealed by in the evenings, her old Lincoln Town Car collecting mouse droppings in the garage as she sat ramrod straight in her Louis XV wingback armchair. Her slippered feet barely grazed the floor.

Oh, she didn’t mind seeing a person now and then, as long as they kept their visits short. The leaks in the old pedestal sink meant she had seen a plumber three times this winter, his ungrammatical We got us a problem here! grating on her nerves. She was perfectly polite to the latest sullen-eyed boy that delivered her groceries (tapioca pudding, yogurt, lima beans), even though his garlicky breath set her head to reeling and compelled her to go wash her hands as soon as the door shut him out.

Most days, Miss Stokes spent alone, perusing books on music history, ancient Greece or other scholarly interests. On a morning in late May, she adjusted her skirt at her Victorian schoolhouse desk in preparation for a day of exploration through The Iliad Revisited, a dusty tome of questionable origin, but intriguing because of its length. She was beginning to scratch her spidery notes regarding a particularly interesting passage when she felt rather than heard a low, throbbing rumble.

Thunder? she wondered, alarmed. No, it couldn’t be, it wasn’t nearly the right time of year for that. She remembered with reassurance that her windows were shut, as always, and no threatening objects from outside could get in easily, not even dust. But there it was again, audible now, a trembling, bone-cracking crescendo that penetrated her tight little refuge and made her eyelids quiver.

To keep her wits about her, Miss Stokes knew she had to identify the sound, although this meant climbing off her chair, always a big event for such a tiny, brittle person, and traveling across the room to the solitary window that viewed the street. She made it, eventually, lifted a small corner of the heavy pleated curtain and peered out. And saw, through a dense blue cloud not twenty feet from her own front door, what looked to her like a giant patchwork quilt hanging on its side. Squares of color, surrounding other shapes and colors, were pieced together into a long rectangle in the middle of the street. She gasped, astonished, and nearly decided right then to go lie down under her own quilt and calm her nerves.

Miss Stokes didn’t, though; what she did instead was adjust her bifocals and bravely look again. And what she saw this time was still an extraordinary sight, although a much more ordinary object. It was a bus, belching oily fumes from several places in its nether region, until suddenly the noise stopped and the blue cloud meandered off down the street. She now could see that it was quite a monstrosity of a bus, extending from one side of her view to the other and occupying almost the entire width of Locust Street. It looked like the result of a rear-end collision between perhaps ten large vans of different colors, all in different states of disrepair. Except for the first vehicle, each one had had its front end cut off and had been attached to the one preceding it. The two at the back end were glossy blue and green, but the colors faded and reddened with rust the farther toward the front she looked. Several sections had metal patches tacked on to them, and these were spray-painted in garish colors. Miss Stokes peered closer, so her nose fogged the window, and realized the patch she was currently staring at held a rough representation of a woman, neon-green and very naked. She was sprawled on what looked like a rock surrounded by hot pink blobs. Pigs, perhaps? But what the pink shapes were Miss Stokes did not determine, since she had jumped back in horror and tucked the curtain tight against the window sill.

Oh my, she whispered, trying to catch her breath. Still blinded by the view, she held her hands out in front of her and groped her way to her bedroom at the far end of the house. She was too distraught for even contemplations of The Iliad to have a calming effect.

Miss Stokes heard no more rumblings on that late-May morning. A few odd crashes and squeals did ensue, but she was able to ignore these by spending the remainder of the day in bed, with earplugs in place and only the feeble sound of her own heart for company.

II.

Janice St. Coeur grabbed a couple of aspirin and leaned her head on the window. Damn, she thought, she had forgotten again to call about that piece of crap parked down the street. It was ridiculous how she and Clarence had had to completely alter their driving plans because of someone’s heap of garbage. Probably would lower property values, too. She picked up a pen from the table and jotted a note, Call cops about wreck. Then she turned back to the kitchen, where the grape juice that baby Alicia had spat out was spreading amoeba-like all over her new mauve and white velvet dress.

Clarence, would you get off that couch and help me, she yelled. She marched over to the fridge and stuck the note on it with a satisfying thwack.

Please! she commanded as an afterthought. Not that it mattered. Polite or rude, she routinely had to ask Clarence at least three times before he’d decide to respond. Well, this must have been the magic number, because here he came, striding into the kitchen, all businesslike and efficient. He glowered at her.

For your information, he snapped while pulling the juice-stained dress over Alicia’s head, "I wasn’t on the couch, I was standing next to it reading my mail."

"Well, for your information, I haven’t even had time to read mine because I’m trying to raise a child," Janice said, handing Clarence a bottle of stain remover. She frequently had to remind him who did most of the work. Just today, in fact, she had had to go shopping during her lunch hour for Alicia’s summer clothes.

What were you thinking, giving her that? Clarence asked, ignoring her completely, as usual. "Dammit, you know we agreed, no cherries, no chocolate and no grape juice. It will not come out!"

"It’s not my fault, it’s Aurora’s. She bought it instead of apple, for some stupid reason. Oh no."

He looked up from scrubbing. What?

"I forgot that Aurora won’t be able to come next week at all. Alicia can’t miss her French lesson; she won’t hear the start of The Little Prince. And she’ll get behind in swimming lessons, too." Janice began pulling purple fleece bunny pajamas onto Alicia, who was now howling at the indignity of having her juice and even her dress taken away from her.

So we’ll hire someone else, he shrugged, still immersed in his task at the sink. That old bat’s way too incommunicative, anyway.

What? You’re going to have to speak up.

"I said, she’s a nitwit and we’re better off without her."

Yeah, well, have you forgotten how much trouble we had finding her? She was the only one we could afford whose references even checked out, and that was after weeks of interviews. Janice was starting to feel panicky, not a good sign. Breathe deeply, she told herself. Think of something relaxing. Think of how pretty soon they’d get out of this dumpy hole on Locust Street and move to a big house on the south side of town. Whenever they had time, that is. But when would that be? She barely had a moment to get her nails done these days, now that she had been promoted to Director of Aerobics Activities at the Club. Clarence, at least, would be made partner at Wang and Associates soon, and then he could stop busting his—

What about that black kid down the street? She’s got that bozo of a dad but maybe she would do in a pinch.

"What? A child? Taking care of Alicia? Are you nuts? Besides, they’re renters." She knew Clarence would agree that those kind of people were temporary and untrustworthy. The girl was surely disadvantaged and wouldn’t have the resourcefulness it took to amuse a toddler. Of course he’d never admit it now, in the heat of an argument.

Fine. Find someone else then. I don’t have time for this. He stalked out with Alicia in his arms, presumably to put her to bed.

Janice sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the window again. It shone the kitchen lights back at her, like an insolent child sticking out its tongue. She noted with annoyance that Aurora still hadn’t cleaned the sticky fingerprints off the glass. Maybe a replacement wasn’t a bad idea, considering how much money they paid her. And considering how inadequate she made Janet feel, with her formidable Great-Wall-of-China build and her blank, black-eyed gaze. Janice secretly suspected Aurora’s stoic nature was only a front, and that she confided in Spanish to Alicia once they were out of the house. Probably that’s why Alicia wasn’t speaking in French yet. English either, for that matter. She could have sworn she heard Alicia say siesta? last night when she put her to bed.

She sighed, thinking how not one single thing had gone right lately, not since her promotion. Even that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, now that she had to sit in weekly meetings with Mr. Champion Bodybuilder George Findley, Director of Weight Training who had once been a personal trainer for Sylvester Stallone and never let anyone forget it. She knew he had his eye on the Club Manager position, available as soon as the current manager gave in to his third wife’s pleas that they move to L.A. and open a new branch of Fitness in the Fast Lane. Already, George had impressed everyone with the holiday extravaganza at his brand new south-side house, where his beautiful Swedish wife served köttbullar and his bilingual toddlers refused to cry or do anything bad like...well...squeeze cranberries on their clothes.

Janice shook her head. No sense continuing that line of thought. Alicia was every bit as smart as the Findley brats; it was only that she was younger and had been so tired that night. Besides, who cared about being manager of the club; it was a stupid organization with the overly-glorified purpose of taking money from rich women who would never be fit. She pushed herself upright, and was about to see if Clarence needed help when a faint movement outside caught her eye. She pushed her face against the glass and scanned the darkening street. The entire neighborhood was in shadow; was it possible to see darkness against darkness?

There it was again. A figure hurrying past the wreck. A slim build, tangled dark hair and uneven gait, all oddly familiar.

Janice sat down with a thump. Feelings she couldn’t identify were rising from somewhere deep. She shook her head, not wanting to be swallowed by ancient memories, not wanting to think of a time before Alicia, before the new jobs and the move to Locust Street, even before Clarence. Her eyes strayed sideways to the street, but the glare from the window stuck in her eye and the figure was gone. Had she really seen a person there, one who looked uncannily like—

No, that’s not possible, she said out loud. Don’t be stupid.

She got up from the table. It’s some homeless girl, she thought. Yet another reason to move out of this neighborhood as soon as they could. She resolved to look into the matter of the wreck first thing when she got off work tomorrow, before the light that was left in the sky pretended that it was already gone.

III.

So...I’m afraid walking may become difficult in the future. Dr. Roland Norton finished the least favorite part of his job without looking directly at the new patient. A woman, of course. He sighed. Women seemed to find him like cat hair does a bedspread.

Any more questions? he hurried on. No? Then I’ll see you in a month. Be sure to stop at the front desk for your prescription.

He collected the brain scan results and retreated from the examination room, watching his feet so he wouldn’t trip over them in his haste. It was after he had actually done so, one week ago, that he had spent an entire afternoon browsing articles published by The American Journal of Psychology. The articles hadn’t provided him with an instant solution to his painful shyness, but they had helped him to analyze it. He had felt as though he were peeling himself out of his skin one layer at a time, enough to make his eyes sting. That very evening, he had written out a series of weekly homework assignments to begin within seven days, no excuses for tardiness. And that was why today, as he was mulling over his new patient file and thinking of how it might fit into his research on multiple sclerosis, he remembered with a sinking feeling that his first assignment would soon be past due.

He wished he could pass the homework, along with the bills and the scheduling, to his secretary. He knew he could not; his problem was embarrassing and furthermore, his secretary was a woman. Dr. Norton didn’t have anything against female colleagues; he had simply never felt quite right around the opposite gender. Ever since third grade, when a trio of giggling girls had cornered him after school and demanded that he kiss them. Horrified, he had scrunched his eyes shut, puckered his lips in their general direction, then ducked between them and run for home, where he made the shameful discovery that he had peed in his pants. He had managed to avoid social interactions with women in the intervening years, helped by the gradual fading of his choirboy good looks to a middle-aged mousiness. The very thought of personal interactions with his secretary or his female patients caused him to become beet red, numb in the tongue and drenched with sweat.

Today was no exception. Dr. Norton blushed as he pulled the notebook from his desk and read his first assignment. He would initiate interactions with a woman and record his feelings about the outcome in a journal. What had possessed him to begin such a formidable undertaking? Surely three months from now was as good a time to start as today. He was relieved when he heard the click of the outer door shutting behind his secretary as she headed for home. Perhaps practicing on a stranger would be easier.

Dr. Norton collected his briefcase and locked the office behind him. He drove slowly, taking comfort from his steel-and-glass cocoon. Thoughts of new developments in his research appeared spontaneously and circled, like excited moths battering a porch light, but he forced himself to push them aside. Where would he find someone with whom he could interact? Would going to a drive-in window count? He imagined himself pulling up and muttering his usual "Grilled chicken sandwich, mayo no mustard, and a large Root Beer, please. He would have to follow this with a cheerful Busy day today?" but it was likely to come out as a croak instead. If he was lucky, the clerk would understand him, smile at his thoughtfulness and tell him something about her day, grateful for a moment of friendly conversation. If he was unlucky...well, best not to think about that.

Dr. Norton had almost decided to try it, even had his left blinker on, when he remembered that the clerks at these places were almost always teenage girls, still in high school. His stomach lurched. Probably his attempt would result in a sneer, or worse, snickers and giggles. Besides, he had leftover pork chops and applesauce at home to finish up, and Mathilde waiting to curl up on his lap for her favorite nap of the day. His homework could be a day late; who would ever know?

Relieved, he stepped on the gas and forged ahead, consumed once again by thoughts of his research. He slowed down only to creep by the odd-looking vehicle that had taken up what appeared to be permanent residence on his street. Although it looked alarmingly unsafe as a means of transportation, he was grateful for its role as a roadblock to large cars. Ever since its arrival, few of the neighbor ladies drove by, and he didn’t have to worry about what to do if he should accidentally catch their eyes while getting in or out of his car.

For that reason, Dr. Norton took his time collecting his briefcase and jacket from the car, and even made a detour to smell the daphne flowers that were wafting a heavy rich scent out over the sidewalk. It was only when he bent over to pluck an aphid off a low-hanging branch that a sudden movement caused him to glance out in the street. Still upside-down, he saw a young sharp-faced woman with a determined look in her eyes. She was marching straight towards him. He felt a strong urge to dive headfirst into his shrubs, but somehow managed to stand upright, reminding himself that this was a fine opportunity for an interaction. As she bore down on him, he frantically searched for a suitable phrase and just in time opened his mouth to utter Good evening. Except all that emerged was a soft squeak.

Then she was past him, followed by a confusing wake of daphne intermingled with some sort of department-store perfume. He watched her veer into the street and come to a halt behind the oversized vehicle, and realized with relief that he had never been her intended target. He could creep away unnoticed now...but then he would have failed his assignment, and would probably have failed himself, too. "Interaction, Roland, interaction," he reprimanded himself, and he was off, angling through the street until he was right behind her.

She was now searching in her purse for something. He paused for a moment to snatch an opening line at random from his limited repertoire.

Very nice smell, isn’t it? he inquired, referring to the floral-scented evening. He was pleased, and composed his first journal entry: Managed a small statement on second attempt, although voice was hoarse and first and last words may have been inaudible.

She whirled around. Excuse me? she said.

Dr. Norton fixed his eyes on the pen she held with an angry point in his direction. He hadn’t foreseen having to repeat himself. Now he was so flustered he couldn’t even remember exactly what he had said. He took a breath. It smells nice out here this evening, he said to the pen.

I couldn’t disagree more. It’s a stinky disgrace. She had turned back around during this discourse, and was peering at...the license plate? The area in question was a dirt-covered section of the back of the vehicle that may or may not have had camouflaged numbers sticking up in raised bumps. She seemed satisfied with this, because she scribbled something down on a small piece of paper, jammed the paper and pen back in her purse, and departed, back down the street from where she had come.

Dr. Norton tried not to mind that she had ended their conversation on a somewhat sour note. Two-person interaction successful, he insisted to himself. Need to clarify topic of conversation better next time. With a clear goal in mind, and a lighter heart than he had felt in years, he turned and headed for home.

IV.

Eugenia Walch got three things on her thirteenth birthday: a card with a bouquet of flowers on it and the caption In Sympathy from Heidi Zimmerman, a pair of roller blades from her dad and a phone call.

The card was good because it made her laugh, even though Heidi, who was her best and pretty much only friend, told her that the reason for it was because she had forgotten until that very morning that it was Eugenia’s birthday, and it was all she could find in her mother’s desk drawer. The roller blades were even better because she had been wanting them badly but knew her dad couldn’t afford them and so hadn’t said anything about it to him. But somehow he had figured it out and done something—robbed a bank?—to buy them.

The phone call was weird. It probably didn’t have anything to do with Eugenia’s birthday, except that she liked to think that everything occurred for a reason. She and her dad were wolfing down the thirteen cherry muffins that she had made in honor of herself when the phone rang.

Hi! Eugenia snatched it up, assuming it was Heidi.

"Your name, por favor," said a calm, heavy voice.

You freak! What are you trying to imitate, a Spanish inquisitor?

Nothing but silence ensued, which meant that Heidi was not masquerading on the line. She would already have been cackling. Then "Name, please," the voice said again, without humor.

Well. Eugenia. Walch. That’s like Welch but with an—

Age?

Actually, I’ve been thirteen since one p.m. But who is this, anyway? Eugenia was starting to feel like she was accepting a ride from a stranger.

Experience with children? The voice ignored her.

What? You mean babysitting? Sometimes I look after this little kid. He’s two. Actually, Eugenia had never looked after him by herself, but with Heidi, whose idea of babysitting her brother was to stuff his mouth with marshmallows and then crank up the volume on her mom’s Aaron Neville CD’s so they couldn’t hear him cry. Now that she suspected the call might be about babysitting, she didn’t feel too guilty about elaborating on the truth. Employment was hard to come by when you lived in a remote, unfriendly corner of town, had no bike and couldn’t drive. But she did have roller blades, she remembered. Now maybe she’d...

"You want job, come to 1224 Locust Street in two hour. Buenas noches." A click, and the voice was gone.

Hey, that’s down the street. Eugenia hung up the phone feeling puzzled. She had had no idea that a baby lived there. They must keep it under tight wraps, she thought, because she knew this neighborhood better than anyone else. That’s what came of having no means of transportation—she was constantly having to walk up and down the street to catch the bus. Whereas everyone else simply got into their cars and drove away. Or stayed in completely, like those new people in the middle of the block and the witchy little old lady across the street from them. Eugenia remembered once waiting in agony outside her house, while Heidi ran up to her doorstep and deposited one of Eugenia’s cherry muffins; a muffin inside of which Heidi had deliberately and gleefully inserted an entire clove of garlic. Well, whatever the deal was with this baby, Eugenia certainly wasn’t going to turn down a free job offer.

At 7:55 p.m., when the spring sun was recumbent on the horizon and the air was heady with cut grass, she buckled on her roller blades and sailed two doors down the street. She already knew that 1224 was by far the biggest house on the block—large second story, back yard completely sealed off by a wall of shrubbery, and even a giant double door that looked like it was made out of an ancient oak tree. Eugenia raised her hand to knock, and then remembered she hadn’t taken her skates off. She also realized, horrified, that she had forgotten to bring extra shoes. But here it was, 7:58 p.m., and she decided she’d rather be sock-footed than late. Maybe they wouldn’t look down there, anyway. She chucked the skates under a shrub and clambered back up the porch steps. She knocked, enjoying the hollow "thwock!" of the shiny brass knocker so much that she let it fall five times.

Only a magic rhythm would open this door, the entrance to a fantastic cave in which rainbow-colored stalactites and stalagmites grew so rapidly that they had ensnared a young spelunker. It was her job, of course, to rescue him, but to find him she would have to decipher the secret wingbeat language of the bats....

The door swung open. A slender woman with frantic eyes looked down at Eugenia.

You must be...Eugenia Walsh, the woman said, consulting a piece of paper, which Eugenia could see through. It only had four words on it.

Walch. Like Welch’s grape juice but with an ‘a’.

The woman flinched. Come in, please, she said. She smiled, a teeth-only display, turned and walked down the hall.

Eugenia scurried to keep up. They emerged in a large living room, which was astoundingly bright considering that the curtains were all drawn. Hospital-white walls, white velvet couch, chairs with ivory cushions, tables in tones of white and beige, and at least five floor lamps emitting photons in such an exuberant fashion that they seemed almost dangerous. It looked like Eugenia’s idea of a mental asylum for very wealthy patients. The woman directed her to a small velour-covered bench that faced the couch from the other side of a lake-sized glass coffee table.

Wait, please, the woman instructed and was gone. Eugenia pressed her hands on the bench, marveling at how pitch black her fingers looked next to the white of the fabric. She spent a few minutes using her feet to slide a small hole in one sock to a refuge between two toes. She watched a tiny brown spider navigate slowly towards her foot across the white wool carpet.

A Haitian refugee, lost from her family when she fell out of the boat, had to battle 50-foot waves in her quest for land, any land, even an island with barren soil and no water....

The woman returned, holding a tall, thin man by the wrist. They both sat on the couch, crossed their legs and looked at her.

We have a few questions for you, Eugenia, the woman said in a bright voice, looking at her piece of paper again. You recently turned 13 and finished seventh grade—

Just got done with ninth, Eugenia interrupted. Actually, classes weren’t over for another week, but she figured she could miss most of them at this point. She’d rather have a job than A’s anyway.

Oh, you’re gifted. The man nodded his approval.

Well...sure. Eugenia almost launched into the full story of how she had had to go to summer school until she was big enough to stay home alone, on account of having no mother, and how the teachers got sick of her knowing all the answers so they kept pushing her up a level. But the man seemed happy with his analysis, so why not let him think what he wanted?

And you’ve had experience with young children? the woman asked.

Definitely, Eugenia said in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. The woman seemed so anxious. I’ve taken care of numerous children. Infants, in fact, just a few days old. Heidi’s little brother was only about 750 days old, and was so energetic that he must be the equivalent of at least three normal babies. And I’d like to be a foster mother once I’m old enough. Eugenia had no real desire to be more or less permanently in charge of someone else’s undisciplined offspring, but she didn’t feel too bad about stretching the truth. She certainly had had experience on the receiving end of foster care.

The couple looked relieved, and