Darling Read online

  “Mom!” she yelled down the stairs. “The window is broken!”

  “Which room?” Mrs. Darling yelled up from the kitchen.

  “Mine,” Wendy yelled back.

  She went into the empty room next to hers and tested all the windows. They all worked perfectly fine. Even the bathroom window locked tight when she tried it.

  “We gotta fix this, Mom!” she yelled down the stairway.

  “Just put something heavy in front of it. Your dad will fix it on Saturday.”

  Wow. Wendy felt super loved and cherished now. She went into her room and picked up her hardcover copies of Les Misérables, Crime and Punishment, and Infinite Jest, the bulkiest books she had, and dropped them in front of the window. For now, that would have to do.

  CHAPTER 2

  Wendy came downstairs the next morning to find her parents making breakfast, and exactly none of the rest of the boxes unpacked.

  “So … are we just going to live this way?” she asked, sliding into a kitchen chair.

  Mrs. Darling glanced at her reproachfully, then went back to scrambling eggs. “We bought unpacking as part of the moving service, but the unpackers aren’t coming until Sunday. Your father got twenty percent off on the deal because of the inconvenience—and it is an inconvenience.”

  Mr. Darling shot Wendy a look over his newspaper and wiggled his eyebrows. Wendy smirked back at him and dug a bagel out of the bag on the kitchen table.

  Mrs. Darling continued to complain. “And aside from all that, we still have to pick up the dog from the airport, and your father is taking the car, so we’ll have to pick Nana up on the train.”

  The train? “Like … Amtrak?”

  “No. The city train, and you have to come with because we can’t have Nana on a leash on the train. She has to be in a gosh darn carrier, which means I need you to help me carry the other side of the kennel.”

  “If you used the CrossFit membership I got you for Christmas last year, you wouldn’t need Wendy’s help with your ‘sick lifts’ because your ‘gains’ would more than cover the weight,” Mr. Darling said, hiding his grin in the curve of his paper coffee cup.

  “You can’t distract me with jokes while I’m frying eggs on a baking sheet that I had to buy this morning at a corner store, George,” Mrs. Darling snapped.

  “We could just unpack the stuff ourselves,” Wendy said nonchalantly. “Then maybe, instead of supervising movers on Sunday, I can go to brunch with my fri—”

  “No. We already paid for it. And you’re not going anywhere with anybody until I get to speak with their parents live and in person.” Mrs. Darling sat down and started spooning eggs onto her bagel. “I’m not going to have you get kidnapped within the first seventy-two hours we’ve been in this city.”

  “But if you do get to speak with Eleanor’s parents … then I can hang out with her?” Wendy asked.

  Mrs. Darling chewed and looked Wendy over. “I suppose.”

  “Okay, great. I’ll work on arranging that. Also, if we’re making efforts to not have me be kidnapped, could we also work on getting my window fixed? Because it would be super ironic if I got kidnapped out of our own home—”

  “Yes, fine,” Mr. Darling interrupted. “Just go upstairs and get ready to pick up Nana.”

  Wendy shoved the last bite of her bagel into her mouth and went to her room. She dialed Eleanor and laid back on her bed.

  “It’s ten a.m. and it’s Friday,” Eleanor said quietly, her face super close to the screen, with one of the edges of her hand blocking most of the light. “I’m literally in homeroom and we aren’t allowed to have our phones out, so make it quick.”

  “Oh crap, I forgot it’s not the weekend. I probably won’t have class until next Tuesday,” Wendy said. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, enjoy it while it lasts. What’s up?”

  “My mom said we can meet up unsupervised if she has some sort of weird conference with your parents. Do you know if they’re free any time in the next couple of days?”

  “Not until Sunday,” Eleanor replied. “My parents are at work right now, then after work we’re going to some Friday night church thing. Then on Saturday we’re going apple picking before it gets too cold. Maybe Saturday night might work? I’ll ask.”

  “Apple picking with your parents? Your life is so wholesome. I still can’t believe my mom’s making us go through this.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s great,” Eleanor said quickly. “I’ve gotta go. My homeroom teacher is looking directly at me and can clearly tell that I’m on the phone. Call you later.”

  Eleanor hung up.

  “DOES SATURDAY NIGHT WORK FOR YOU?” Wendy shouted out her open bedroom door.

  “Saturday night is your father’s work party,” Mrs. Darling called up the stairs. “How is Sunday?”

  “SHE SAID SHE’LL LET US KNOW,” Wendy shouted back. She chewed her lip for a bit and then continued. “THEY GO APPLE PICKING TOGETHER, YOU KNOW. THIS IS WHO YOU’RE BARRING ME FROM SEEING. A GIRL WHO GETS EXCITED TO PICK APPLES WITH HER PARENTS.”

  “Are you getting ready to pick up Nana?” Mr. Darling asked. “You’ve got ten seconds to get dressed or we’re coming up. One … two…”

  Wendy pushed her door closed and shoved on jeans and a sweater. She got her feet into her shoes just in time for Mr. Darling to knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Mr. Darling headed straight to her window and started jimmying the latch. “This is really broken.”

  “I wouldn’t lie about my window being broken, Dad,” Wendy said dryly.

  “No, I meant this is really, really broken. I don’t know if I can fix this by myself. The latch on the back of the window was pried off from the outside. We might have to replace the whole frame. Do you want to sleep in the other room for a while?”

  Wendy shook her head. “It’s fine. I’ll just … put books in front of it like I did yesterday. We can figure out the window situation when things aren’t so stressful.”

  Mr. Darling huffed and leaned back against the windowsill. He watched her as she pulled on her jacket and hat. “Thanks for being a good sport. I’ll make it a priority.”

  He was lingering, so Wendy turned around to face him.

  “You know,” Mr. Darling continued, “your mom and I just want to make sure you’re safe. Anything can happen out here. It’s not like back home where most people know each other…”

  “I’m seventeen, Dad. I get it,” Wendy said.

  “And there are a lot of things out there that you haven’t experienced,” Mr. Darling finished.

  Wendy scowled. This wasn’t her fault. Maybe if they let her out to experience things more, they wouldn’t have to be worried about her “experiencing things.” But it didn’t seem like the best time to say that so she just stayed quiet.

  Eventually, Mr. Darling nodded at her open bedroom door. “Go on. Mom’s waiting. She’d never admit it, but she’s nervous about riding the trains again. Can you be a darling and help her out?”

  Wendy walked to the top of the stairs, then looked back at him over her shoulder. “Sure. I’m going to college next year; I can handle a train.”

  * * *

  Nana’s kennel fit neatly in the area near the back of the train car, and she was behaving very well. The woman at the train kiosk had eyed the crate warily as Mrs. Darling and Wendy hoisted it over the turnstile. Nana had remained silent the entire time, paws folded primly, so the woman had held her tongue and allowed them to continue.

  Mrs. Darling sat next to Nana, her hand tightly clenching the bar next to her seat. Her eyes were glued to the map above the door with the words PURPLE LINE TRAIN above a list of train stops; she was running over the map with near-religious persistence. Wendy stood by the doors so she could watch the city. Mrs. Darling had been so nervous on the ride over to the airport that Wendy felt responsible to make sure they got off at the right stop and couldn’t really relax and take everything in, so she was using the opportunity to do so now. She
couldn’t really understand why her mom was so antsy; the system was simple enough.

  Each train had approximately eight to ten cars. Each car had a door on each side for traveling between the cars if necessary. The trains ran both ways at about the same pace. That way, if you got off at the wrong stop, you could easily transfer to the other side of the train platform and head right back in the direction you came from. All the stations had people to assist you on the platform itself and where you purchased tickets. You only needed one ticket to get past the turnstile, but once you were through, you could ride the trains all day in any direction, transferring from line to line on the $2.50 it took to get in.

  It was a much better system than the one they’d had to endure on their trip to Europe last year, where you had to pay based on distance. Chicago made it easier to get lost without any real financial consequences.

  Wendy glanced back at her mother, who was clutching the bar behind the seat so hard her brown knuckles were beginning to go yellow from stress.

  Really.

  “Can you tell me about what it was like when you were living here?” Wendy asked. Hopefully a distraction would help.

  “Well,” Mrs. Darling started. “We didn’t live in as nice of a neighborhood as we do now. We were in this part of the city called Logan Square, over here on the blue line by the California stop. There were a lot of families there, which was good. But the city didn’t take much care of the infrastructure, so there were a lot of crumbling buildings and crumbling roads … I’m a lot more familiar with that area than the neighborhood we’re in now.”

  “What did you do for fun?”

  Mrs. Darling’s mouth twitched into a small grin. “We mainly got into trouble. It was the early 2000s; it was much more common for everyone to be out running in the street until the sun set.”

  Wendy threw out her arms. “AND YET—”

  “And yet,” Mrs. Darling said with incredible finality.

  Wendy sighed and reached into the cage to give Nana a few pets before returning to the window.

  “We know you’re a good girl and your friend probably is, too,” Mrs. Darling said. “It won’t be forever, just until everyone gets settled and you get a bit more familiar with the city.”

  “I know, I know,” Wendy said, defeated.

  “Besides,” Mrs. Darling continued, “it’s harder to tell if something could be dangerous when you’re not as familiar with your surroundings. You’re smart and creative, but even smart and creative people can get caught off guard. Your father and I trust you—we just don’t trust this situation. You understand that, right?”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” Wendy said with a smirk, hoping to lighten the mood.

  Instead, Mrs. Darling looked pensive. “When—when I was fourteen, a couple of friends and I went out to a party with some older teenagers and things got really out of hand.”

  “Is this another ‘teen mom warning’ story?” Wendy asked.

  Mrs. Darling scowled. “I had you at sixteen, not fourteen, and no, it is not. Anyway, we went to a roller rink in a part of town that I had never been to before, and everything started out normally. One of my best friends met a cute boy who bought us sodas and fries. He was really glamorous in this … Billy Idol way: kind of punk rock but with a really sweet face. His friends were with him and they were also very cool and really nice to us. They paid for our arcade games, and the main guy even won my friend a stuffed animal. I remember thinking that he was amazing at Skee-Ball, could have gone pro if there was a market for that. Very light-fingered…”

  Mrs. Darling looked out the window for a minute, then she gazed at the train car floor.

  “After the roller rink closed, we were going to head home, but the boys wanted to hang out at this cemetery across the street. One of them had a bottle of wine and wanted to share it with the group. I remember thinking it was so funny because none of them were old enough to have gotten it from the store, but it just sort of appeared. It made me a little nervous. But mostly, I thought they were cool, and I’d never drank before, so we decided to follow them.”

  Wendy sat down across from her mom and leaned her head against the window as she listened.

  “He took us all the way to the center of the cemetery,” Mrs. Darling continued. “It was windy and dark, but they lit a small fire with some twigs, and we began passing the bottle around. I didn’t drink much; I didn’t want your grandfather to smell anything on me when I came back home.

  “It wasn’t late enough for him to get really mad; it was only around ten thirty. Up until that point I wasn’t really doing anything I wasn’t allowed to do yet, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  “Eventually, someone suggested that we tell scary stories. I remember … listening to stories told by some of the other boys, but losing track of where the leader was for a while. We were having such a good time that I didn’t really notice he was gone until my best friend complained that she was cold without him next to her. One of the boys shrugged and said that the leader liked to wander off and that maybe he’d gone to the bathroom or something. It sounded feasible, so we accepted the explanation and kept going. The story we had been listening to was building to a crescendo and we were all really invested.

  “Suddenly, right before the story was going to end, one of the boys threw dirt over the fire and the entire cemetery went dark.”

  “What happened?” Wendy asked quietly.

  Mrs. Darling shook her head and pressed her lips into a tight line. “We were kids and we were scared, so we started running. Not just us, the boys, too, and they were yelling for—I’m sorry, Wendy, it was years ago, and I don’t remember his name anymore. I’m sure you’re probably tired of hearing me call him the leader, but that’s what it seemed like he was. Anyway, we were running, and I spotted the cemetery gate. All I had left to do was jump over it and head for the bus stop, when suddenly there was a bunch of screaming. Not yelling like we had all been doing, but horrible, frightened screaming. Shrill, like you only hear in movies. Then it was quiet.”

  Mrs. Darling put her hand in Nana’s cage and smoothed it over the dog’s fur gently for a second before continuing.

  “I didn’t look back. I jumped over that fence and ran so hard and fast. I ran past the bus stop and got on the train instead because I didn’t want to wait on the sidewalk. When I got home, I went straight to bed and didn’t talk to anyone until the next day.

  “When I went to school, I found out that the rest of my friends had made it home safely, so I started to relax. Then two weeks later, Grandpa was watching the news while I was in the kitchen finishing dinner. There was this story on about a body having been found in the cemetery in an open grave. It said there were bruises shaped like fingers around the neck and that one of the victim’s thigh bones had been broken like someone had kicked it with all their might. When they showed a picture of the deceased, it was one of the boys we’d been with that night. One of the quieter ones, who had held my hand as we skated for a whole song when he’d noticed that I wasn’t as steady on my feet.”

  “Did Grandpa know?”

  “I refused to talk to him about it, but he could tell that I was getting depressed and was a bit jumpy. I got over it after some time, of course. But when Grandpa got an opportunity to work in the suburbs, he leaped at the chance and moved us all out of the city.”

  Wendy tapped her foot on the ground. “Whatever happened to the leader? Do you think maybe whoever killed that boy killed him, too?”

  Mrs. Darling shook her head. “I don’t know, Wendy; we didn’t even know them. We’d only met them that night at the roller rink. We never saw any of those boys again.”

  “Oh.”

  Mrs. Darling sighed. “Our stop is next, so get ready to carry.”

  Nana woofed softly and sniffed at the cage door, then settled primly with her giant head on her paws, waiting for Wendy and Mrs. Darling to pick her up.

  Wendy watched the back of her mother’s
head as they carried Nana down the stairs and out of the train station. She couldn’t imagine her mother being fourteen at all, much less a part of the chaotic story she’d just heard. But it was rare that Mrs. Darling lied to her. The entire concept of her mother being defenseless and running in the night filled her with dread.

  As soon as they made it out of the train station, they put Nana’s crate on the ground and opened its little door. Nana shook herself all over and walked delicately out of the kennel. The Saint Bernard looked back at Wendy—who was struggling to pick up the giant kennel in her thin arms—as if to say, You could try being more dignified, and waited patiently for Mrs. Darling to attach her leash.

  The walk back to their new house was quiet and tense.

  Wendy could tell Mrs. Darling was lost in thought and not quite in the mood to talk anymore, so she trailed unhappily behind her in silence.

  When they reached the front door, Mr. Darling threw it open before Mrs. Darling even managed to get her key in the lock. “I see the duchess has come to grace our home with her presence!” He hurled himself to his knees before Nana, who sprung up with delight and lavished his face with slobber. “How have you been, you old girl?”

  “I see you’re home early. Well, she was as poised as ever on the train, decadent being carried in her kennel, and lovely as we strolled down the block,” Wendy said, dumping the kennel in the front hallway.

  “Of course she was! Of course she was!” Mr. Darling cooed. “Let’s get Nana some lunch.”

  “And us some lunch?” Mrs. Darling asked, hanging up Nana’s leash on the hook by the front door.

  “There’s pizza on the counter.” Mr. Darling practically carried the ecstatic Nana to the kitchen and poured her a bowl of dog food.

  “So you unpacked the dog supplies, but not the pots and pans,” Mrs. Darling said, sitting down at the table and opening up a box.

  “Only the best for Nana,” Mr. Darling replied chipperly. “So how was the ride over?”