The Resurrected Compendium Read online

“Maddy, it’s important to do what you’re told. That’s why.”

  “Why?” She sat back in her chair to look at him. He had more gray hairs in his eyebrows than he had a few weeks ago. More glinting in the stubble on his face, too.

  It was because of the man she’d experimented on, the one they’d caught and put in the lab room. Nobody knew it was her for sure, but Mom guessed. She might’ve told Dad. If anyone else in the complex had any idea it had been Maddy, she supposed they’d have said something or at least looked at her funny, but c’mon. Who’d suspect a kid?

  “Because if everyone just did whatever they wanted to, everything would become chaos.” Dad rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and middle finger, not looking at her. He sounded tired. “So do the math problems, Maddy, and stop being such a…so naughty.”

  Both her brows rose. Then her eyes narrowed. She looked at the problems copied onto the beige lined paper. They’d found an entire pallet of these school notepads in one of the storage rooms, the size of a trade paperback book, the paper soft and pulpy. The blue lines were all slanty. She lifted the paper to her nose to breathe in the scent of old paper and fresh ink. The smell of it was much better than Dad’s stale coffee breath or the stink of his sweaty armpits. This paper had been made of living things. Trees had grown in the soil, pushing their branches and leaves to the sky, nourished by the sun and water…She breathed again.

  Again.

  Again.

  “Maddy!”

  She opened her eyes, still a little lost in the perfume of dead trees. “What?”

  Dad tapped the book. “Homework.”

  Maddy smiled. That’s all she did, but Dad frowned. He scooted back in his chair a little bit.

  “Maddy…”

  Maddy smiled some more.

  Dad looked at her for a long time without saying anything. His eyes wouldn’t quite lock on hers, and that wasn’t like Dad at all. He always said making eye contact was super important when you were talking to people because it told them you meant business, and that you could be trusted. People who didn’t make good eye contact were usually liars, that’s what Dad had said to Ev when he caught him sneaking liquor from the cabinet.

  Maddy trusted Dad, though, at least as much as she’d learned to trust anyone over the age of seventeen or so. After that, people started getting shifty, thought they “knew better.” Thought they needed to teach kids stuff “for their own good.” That was a bunch of stinky-poo, as Maddy’s kindergarten teacher would’ve said. The one she’d only had for half a year, because somehow she’d accidentally eaten some bad, poison berries instead of the good kind and she’d had to stay in the hospital for a long time.

  “Maddy. You know you can tell me anything, don’t you?” Dad looked serious all of a sudden. He leaned forward to capture her hand across the table before she could pull it away. His hand was sweaty.

  Gross.

  “I know, Dad.”

  “Anything,” he insisted, not letting go of her hand though she tried to slip free. His other hand came around to grab her wrist. Hold her tight. “No matter if you think you’ll get into trouble, or if you think me or Mom would be mad. If there’s something bothering you —“”

  “Nothing’s bothering me.” Maddy stopped trying to get her hand free and gave him another smile instead.

  It didn’t work the way she thought it would. Dad gripped harder, leaned closer. She could smell the stink of him, and it turned her head. She grimaced.

  Something shifted and twisted inside her skull, close to the top of her spine. Something tickled. Something stretched and grew, and it felt so good, so good, that her head lolled back for a second or two. Her mouth gaped. She blinked rapidly against the pleasure of it.

  “Tire swing,” she muttered.

  A memory.

  Grampa has a tire swing in the backyard. It used to be Mom’s when she was a little girl. It hangs from the low branch of an apple tree, just over a little dip in the yard so if you’re brave enough, strong enough, you can swing out and out, way up high. If you’re a chicken fraidy cat like Maddy’s cousin Lila, you just twist around in a circle.

  But Maddy’s brave enough. Maddy’s strong enough. And, Maddy likes to swing high.

  She’s not supposed to swing by herself all the way down here, so far from the house. There’s a creek down a little further, and beyond that, a set of railroad tracks past a tall chain link fence covered with vines. Hobos and bums hang out down there, Maddy’s not supposed to go down there, ever. Ev says hobos like to do stuff to little kids. She’s not sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound as terrible as she thinks Ev means it to sound.

  For now, though, Lila’s in the house because she fell down and bumped her chin hard enough to make blood, and Gramma sent Maddy outside to “get out of her hair.” Lila might need stitches. She might have a scar. Maddy’s a little jealous about that. It will be right on her face where anyone can see it, and everyone will always ask her what happened. Maddy doesn’t even care if Lila tells them, because she had nothing to do with her cousin’s fall, that was just Lila’s stupid clumsiness.

  So now, Maddy swings. First she puts her sneaker inside the tire and presses down so she stands on one leg. Swings forward, both hands gripping the rough, frayed rope. She pumps her hips to get the swing going farther and faster, out over the dip. Out over empty space.

  Once she has it going, she pushes with her foot again, swinging one leg over the tire until she rides it like a horse. Gripping the tire with her thighs, holding the rope tight, Maddy pumps her hips again to get the swing going as it slows. Higher. Faster. The rope’s knot presses against her.

  Something is happening.

  At first it’s just a little tickle, tickle, but it grows into a warmth. The warmth becomes heat. Maddy swings higher. Higher. If the swing twists and she hits the tree, it’s gonna hurt bad, but she doesn’t stop. She’s not sure she can.

  At the swing’s highest arc, the feeling is so big, so good, all she can do is close her eyes and wait for it to end. When it does, Maddy grips the rope so tight it cuts into her palms and fingers. It leaves her stomach hurting, like riding a roller coaster does, and when she opens her eyes she sees Gramma waiting for her just past the swing’s reach, out of the way so Maddy doesn’t kick her when she swings back.

  “Come inside now,” Gramma says. “I made lunch.”

  Later, with crybaby Lila still inside pouting, Maddy goes to the tree swing again. She wants to swing and swing and swing. But there’s Grampa with the ladder and big pair of garden shears. He cuts the rope way up high. The tire drops to the ground and rolls down the dip, falls on its side.

  “Why?” Maddy cries. “Why?”

  “It’s too dangerous for little girls,” Grampa says with a shake of his head. “Gramma said I had to cut it down.”

  After that, Maddy hates Gramma.

  “No.” The word bubbled out of her, sticky like a mouthful of pancakes and syrup. She blinked rapidly, pushing away the memory, but it wasn’t until she saw the look on Dad’s face that Maddy stared down at her fingers.

  She’d dug grooves in the table’s surface with her fingernails.

  It didn’t hurt. She flexed them, studying the beads of dark blood, not red but more black, along the rim of her broken nails. She licked it. It didn’t taste quite like blood. It smelled like those flowers that had been in the back of the guy’s skull. It tasted like cotton candy and rotten meat.

  Dad made a sick noise. Maddy looked up. She smiled.

  That’s when Dad left the room

  53

  The fourth time the things outside tripped the alarm, Dennis disabled it so they could finally get some sleep. He made no noise about sharing his mother’s bed with her this time, but the truth was Kelsey was way too exhausted to try and get anything out of him but the solidity of his front against her back as she snuggled close. She slept better with someone next to her and always had.

  She dreamed.

  “You don’t min