You Let Me In - Camilla Bruce Page 0,16

crystal bowl on the ground and put Olivia’s braids in it. Pepper-Man sprinkled the hair with herbs.

“Are you sure this will work?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t scalped my sister for nothing.

“It will,” he assured me.

I struggled to light a match in the damp night. Pepper-Man finally helped me, took the matches from my hands and easily lit one. The match sputtered and spat, then it burned with a steady yellow flame. I don’t know what Pepper-Man sprinkled on the hair, but it all flamed up like old hay, twisting in the fire, emitting an acrid scent. When the fire died and there was nothing in the bowl but ashes, we brought the bowl with us back inside, up the stairs, and into Olivia’s room. She was still sleeping soundly, snoring softly, not knowing that her lovely braids were gone. Following Pepper-Man’s instructions, I scattered the bed with the ashes—a drizzle of gray on the starched white cotton—and let out a heartfelt breath of relief.

I looked to Pepper-Man. “Is she safe now?”

“Yes,” he whispered inside my head.

“She should thank me, then,” I whispered. “But I don’t think that she will.”

“No,” Pepper-Man sounded amused. “I dare say she won’t—not at all.”

* * *

I was confined to my room after that, of course. Imprisoned within those white walls. The door was not locked, but I was strictly forbidden to leave. I didn’t cry and I wasn’t angry, I just sat on my bed and drew pictures of me and Pepper-Man dancing in the woods or swimming in the brook. Sometimes I stood by the window and watched the feathered faerie who was building a nest in our apple tree. She looked very exotic, all green and red. She had been feeding from an escaped parrot, or so Pepper-Man told me.

On my second day in captivity, I heard a soft knocking on my door. When I opened it, there was no one there, but a white cardboard box lay on the floor in the hallway. When I opened it up, there were cupcakes inside; soft and glossy with frosting. Chocolate and caramel, both my favorite kinds.

I heard my father’s heavy steps walking down the stairs. The sharp scent of his cologne lingered.

VIII

Some girls take on a sort of crystalline quality as they near puberty; caught in that in-between place between child and adult. It’s the same quality that so entices the Humbert Humberts of this world. We don’t belong to our bodies—our skins. We either float somewhere high above, or are lost in a passion we don’t know; a stranger shown up at our doorstep, seducing us with fiery steps and unknown possibilities. We would like to dance that dance. We are terrified of it. We are little lambs and wicked lions.

We don’t know what to do with ourselves.

For me, the disconnection from my family had never been more acute. I hated my mother. I hated the children at school. I hated their inability to understand me. I was growing a sense of self that hadn’t been there before.

I think I still hated Olivia a little too, even if I had tried to save her. What had she done that I had not, to deserve it all, to be so blessed? We grew up in the same house, in the shadow of the same woods, but only I was haunted. It is hard for a little girl to grasp that fate can be cruel and unpredictable like that. Olivia danced and played in pretty dresses—I bled beneath my Pepper-Man at night.

Sisters, but not really. She held the sun in her chubby little hands; I was left with the moon—ever changing, sometimes black.

“Why me?” I asked Pepper-Man sometimes. “Why me? Why not Olivia?”

He looked up at me with bloody lips. “You were here first, and I have grown used to the taste of you now. You let me in, and here I am, forever yours till the end.”

They struck me, those words: I let him in. They haunted me for years. How could I possibly have let him in? I couldn’t recall ever having done anything like that. Was it because I was wrong? Was that what allowed him to slip inside?

“And if I told you to leave,” I asked. “What would you do then?”

“You would never do that.” Pepper-Man gifted me a sharp-toothed smile. “What would you be then but an angry little girl? It is too late for you now to be like your sister.”

“Because I let you in?”

“Because you let me