Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,33
be worth it to think about Sidney sliding across the room when she got back from her date.
* * *
It’s a sweltering hot day, and I spend it on the lake, swimming the shoreline after lunch and lying on the dock through the afternoon.
“Ash!” I’m sitting on our deck reading a book when my mom’s voice rings out of the kitchen. It’s close to dinnertime, and I take my book with me, knowing I’m about to be enlisted for some sort of food prep. But Mom isn’t working on dinner, she’s purging or something. The table is covered with the contents of our fridge as my mom holds a package of some sort of meat up to her nose.
She thrusts the package at me. “Smell this.”
“Um. Okay?” I sniff the package she’s holding out toward me. “It … smells like meat, I think.”
“Like good meat?”
“Yes?” I don’t know if I’ve actually smelled raw meat before. “It sort of smells like nothing?”
She nods at me, like I’ve just confirmed she’s not losing her mind, and turns away from me, pulling another white Styrofoam package out of the refrigerator and giving it an appraising glance before sniffing it. I’m about to ask her what she’s doing when I smell it. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, just that it’s wrong and out of place, and bad.
“Go smell the drains in the bathroom,” Mom says with a sigh. “Maybe something’s backing up?”
I don’t know if that’s how plumbing works, but Mom looks so frustrated sitting on the floor of our kitchen sniffing all of our food that I’m not going to question it.
“Where’s Dad?”
“I sent him to the store for baking soda boxes.”
I nod, even though the longer I stand here, the less I believe baking soda is going to fix this problem.
In the bathroom I smell the sink drain, and the tub, and then the toilet, just to cover all of my bases. But now that this odor has invaded my nose, it’s all I smell.
Smells are weird. On one hand, they’re unmistakable. The smell of pancakes on the griddle can take me back to Saturday mornings at my grandma’s house the second I smell it. I can tell if a pool has too much chlorine without ever getting in the water. But right now, the smell overtaking our house is like a word stuck on the tip of my tongue. Every time I think I can name it, it’s just out of reach.
I go from room to room, pulling up blinds and opening windows as far as they’ll go. First the living room, then my parents’ room, the bathroom next to it, and then my room. I might throw up. There’s nothing different about my room, except for the overwhelming smell. Whatever is in this house, my room is ground zero.
“Mom?” I shout toward my doorway as I start to pull things away from the wall, looking for vents. The only explanation for a smell this bad is that something has died somewhere.
My mom stops a few feet back from the door. “Oh god,” she mutters.
“I think something died in here. Maybe we should have Nadine call somebody?”
“I’ll go up to the house.”
This isn’t going to be fixed quickly, but Mom still sprints out of the house, as if every second she wastes will count.
I’m headed across the room toward the last small window when I see the pile of mayonnaise-coated socks and shorts from last night. There’s a towel, too. But without even smelling it, I know it can’t be the cause of this.
Oh crap.
Out the window I can see Mom crossing Nadine’s yard, closing in on the back porch. I throw myself at the window and yell her name. She stops in her tracks.
“Has Sidney been here?” I’m trying to keep my voice in check, but I can hear the annoyance.
Mom is far enough away that she’s almost yelling for her voice to carry far enough. “What? Why?”
“Mom. Yes or no? Has Sidney been in the house today? While I was gone?”
She nods, and takes a few more steps toward Nadine’s house. I’m out of my room and through the house in a heartbeat, and before I know it, I’m across the yard and practically sprinting down the sidewalk toward the deck. Sidney’s sitting at the little plastic table, rocks spread in front of her, and when my feet pound on the wood planks, her head snaps up. The look on her face when she sees the annoyance