Part One
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Chapter One: The Introduction of Derecho Campbell
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The day I turned nine years old was important for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is that three Very Great Things were scheduled to happen:
One: Today, Dad has promised me a gift. That's not unusual for a birthday, but Dad's gifts are never usual and they're also never fleeting. Fleeting is a word that Dad uses to describe things that you don't get to keep, like milk, or a cut rose, or the feeling you get the first time you hear a song. "Life is fleeting, knowledge remains," he used to tell me before I learned that there was more to life than books and that I didn't always have to listen to him. But that's an important thing to mention because all of Dad's gifts are knowledge and he gives them out kindly. When I turned six, he taught me how to knit. When I turned seven, his gift was a clock of flowers we planted together that bloom every hour, in theory. Eight was lessons on French, but I got bored with that. I'm very good at knitting now though. Everyone says so and everyone must be right because that's a whole lot of voices being wrong otherwise. Today, being nine and much more grown up, I think I'll probably get something decidedly more adult. But that's for later.
Two: Tonight, we'll set the table for three. This is exciting because ours is a home set for two. If you took all the keys to our front door that exist and line them up in a row, you'd get one—that's Dad's, and it's buffed clean from being carried around in his trouser pocket—and two, which is mine, and kind of filthy from rattling about in the bag I carry everywhere, along with my lunch and knitting and the things I find that I bring home to keep. That's it. Only two people need to come here, which is nice, but not as nice as very sometimes having three. That's not to say only two live here—there's Listen, of course, who is whining right now because he wants to go outside and pee, and the goats, who count because they're the best, and the geese, who count because they're terrifying but in a fantastic way. There used to be walking stick bugs as well, in a neon-green terrarium on Dad's desk in his office, but the less said about them, the better.
Three: I don't know this third thing yet, but I will in a moment. Right now, I'm lying in bed watching the dawn peeking outside my window, and I'm warm and cozy and enjoying my last few minutes of being eight. In four minutes, Dad is going to knock on my door and walk into my room and say, "I've decided to let you go to school."
This is tremendously exciting to me, more so than gifts or a table set for three. After all, life is fleeting and so is school, and I think I want to enjoy it before I turn ten. Eight, after all, is far too young for school, or so Dad told me at the time. Nine is just right.
And so, Listen and I, on the day I turn nine, are going to school.
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There's a backpack on the couch with 'Derecho Campbell' across it in Dad's lovely handwriting, cramped without being scrunchy and with such carefulness that I can just see how he would have looked all hunched over and writing. It's impossible to describe how I feel about seeing that backpack. Oh, I've owned backpacks before, lots of them. So many, in fact, because I'm a bit of what Dad calls a 'hard nut', which means that I get dirty a lot and break my things if they're not as hard as I am. It's not my fault. Backpacks should come with ratings on what they can hold so I know whether this is just a knitting-backpack, or a holding-animals-backpack, or a backpack that I can put all the very best kinds of rocks in without worrying about the bottom busting open. But this is a new kind of backpack and, when I open it, he's filled it with new kinds of things. A pencil case with my name cut out in cardboard and slid into plastic tabs; a bright royal purple binder filled with notepads with nothing in them; and even a lunchbox, a real lunchbox, like what everyone else has got and I've never had before now, because you don't need a lunchbox when your school is your house.
"Oh," I say because I can't really breathe around how excited I am. "Dad, oh!"
He's hovering behind me, smiling and happy and dressed nicely like he's going to work today and with his hands tucked into his pockets. Despite him not really being a hug-person, I throw myself at him anyway. Maybe a little too hard. Against my weight, he steps back a bit, wheezes, and folds himself around me with his big hands warm on my back. He's so tall that I feel impossibly little in his arms, as though he could still probably bounce me on his knee the way he used to not that long ago, even as he sighs against my hair and murmurs, "Why'd you go and get so grown up?"
This is a curious thing for him to say because I don't really ever feel 'grown up'. Maybe a bit older than I was, definitely, but not grown up like him. After my baths, sometimes I stand in front of the mirror and wonder what I'll look like grown up. Like him, I assume, except a girl, but it hasn't happened yet. He's lanky and narrow with wild brown hair that curls and tumbles around a narrow face, but I'm short and skinny, which isn't like being narrow—it's pokier and with more bones to bump—with long, dark hair that just hangs, always full of knots. And he's got cheekbones. I guess when you're an adult you get nice cheekbones, but I haven't yet. They're still hiding under my puppy fat. Even now that I'm nine, they're still hiding.
I guess it's not so strange that I don't look like him though since he's not the man who made me a person, just the one who raised me to be one. That's not how he says it. He says 'biological father' versus 'adoptive father' but that's so cold. He can be like sometimes, cold instead of human, and I think that's because he's not very good when he gets sad or worried or mad. Talking about the man who made me makes him angry, probably because that man didn't want me and Dad really, really does and that's why he adopted me. Dad also says I need to be 'socialized' like we used to do with Listen when he was more of a puppy than he is now, so he takes me to a book club and a knitting club and a youth group. It was at youth group that I met my friend Nate and his mom, and his mom was the lady who told me that Dad raised me instead of made me. I liked how that sounded, so now I say that instead. It's got feeling behind it.
But instead of saying any of this, I say, "It's not my fault. I'm like a plant. If you keep watering me, I'm gonna keep growing."
He lets me go and sits back on his heels, looking serious. "Ah," he says, eyebrows up and nodding wisely. "I see. Well, we'd better put an embargo on baths then, yes? A 'bathbargo' of sorts."
"We'd better," I agree, quickly kissing his cheek while he's down at my level. "Or else I'll be able to do that, all the time."
"The horror," he says, his voice painfully dry, standing and looking to the kitchen. I look too. There's a neat line down our living room carpet where other houses would have a wall, showing where it becomes kitchen instead of den. Dad put it there after I complained once, a long time ago, that most people didn't live in houses with so few rooms. Now, we pretend the room is two instead of one, and that I can't reach out and smack Dad with a magazine from the couch as he passes to get to the fridge. On the other side of that line, Listen is sitting by his bowl looking very morose. Morose is a word meaning 'painfully sad' but Dad usually uses it to mean 'feed the dog'. And, right on cue, Dad says, "Listen is looking very morose, Derry."
See?
"I'll feed him if you feed the goats," I try, but he's not as easily talked into things anymore, no matter how sweet I am about it. One eyebrow pops up like it's going on an adventure up to his hairline, and I quickly add, "That's what I'd say if I wasn't a good pet owner, which I am, and so I'm gonna feed them all now."
"And the geese," he says, walking the five steps across the masking tape line and into the kitchen, grabbing a frying pan from the hook.
"And the geese," I say, vanishing to do just that. Listen follows, grumbly because he wants his food, but I know there's no point giving him breakfast until I'm sat down eating mine—the big lug will just follow me anyway, like a tan and black shadow.
I almost named him Shadow, back when I got him. I was only six then so, understandably, I wasn't so great at naming things and he had black on him, like a Shadow. It could be worse. I named one of the goats Goat, which is arguably the correct name, and the other one Donkey, which is really not. I was six then too, honest. When I was almost eight, I got the geese and named them Bread, Butter, Custard, and Pickles, and those are objectively better names because I'd clearly matured. The geese cackle when they see me and flap around, greedily grabbing at their feed as I pour it into their pen. I watch them for only a second, because I always love watching them chatter busily to each other with their goosy tails wagging, but the goats are clamouring for attention and I still have to get ready for school.
"Alright, alright, hold your horns," I tell them sternly as Goat tries to head-butt me through the fence. Their pen is a bit more together than the geese's, but only because they keep breaking out. The geese are smarter. They know to stay where the food is at and, besides, they get let out a ton. Dad lets them out at night when we're asleep, which is fine unless I forget about them and get startled when one honks at me through the bathroom window while I'm peeing. The goats are polite. Donkey just wants a scratch behind her ears, bleating happily when I give it to her.
I don't really know why Dad decided on getting goats and geese in our tiny little house with its squashy little garden all crushed in together behind high, wobbly fencing, but I think I'm glad he did. And I guess he had a reason, even if he never tells me. He always has reasons for things, and Nate's mom says that's because he's an overthinker and a worrier and spends too much time in his head or in a book. And, proving my point, when I get back inside he has his smartphone propped up against the maple syrup and there's a news video very sternly telling everyone that a little girl has gone missing in Connecticut. There's a picture of the girl too, in her bright yellow school uniform with her dark hair pulled back and smiling. Dad's face is very, very pale. I don't ask him about it. If I ask, he'll tell me, but he doesn't like talking about things like that.
He worries over breakfast. "I'm walking you to school," he says, which I'd expected and I'm okay with. "Did you pack Listen's vest?"
"Yes, Dad," I say patiently, leaning down to double-check because he won't be happy unless I do. Listen is sitting proper and important by my side. His vest is black and yellow like a bumblebee with big white lettering spelling out 'service dog' over the bags on the side. I stuck a sticker over the tab that says 'Working Animal: Do Not Pet' so now it says 'Do Pet', because Listen loves pets and he's not that much of a hard worker, really. "There's juice and the emergency phone and my ID is in there. Look, see."
He looks, nodding. He takes things a lot more seriously than I do. It's probably gonna be hard for him, me going to school, but it had to happen one day.
"Are you wearing your gloves?" he asks, walking past the bathroom as I'm rubbing the cream on my palm to stop it stiffening and making it hard to hold a pen. I hide it from him. I know it's one of those things that makes him sad to see. "It's cold outside and the wind will irritate the scarring."
"Yeah, I got it," I say, finding the gloves I wear, slipping one on over my hand before turning to him. I shove the other in my pocket. I don't like wearing them, I just do because I have to. The burn is ugly, and I hate people looking at it.
"Come straight to the library after school," he says as we walk out the front door and he sets the alarm and double checks the lock. "I'm working, so I can't come get you."
"With Nate," I remind him, running with my backpack going bump bump bump on my butt to check that all the windows are shut, that the backdoor is locked, and the back gate leading to the river is as well, just like Dad taught me.
"With Nate, yes. And text me on your breaks—your teachers know you have your cell and permission to use it, but do not abuse that. You only have it out to contact me, understand?"
I nod and say, "Yes, Dad," patiently. There's nothing else to do when he's on a worry-mission.
Normally it ends about here, but today Dad stops me by the gate and tugs me back in, under the shade of the big ol' tree that takes up such a chunk of our wild garden, and he's looking more serious than ever. "And what do you do if Listen alerts?" he asks, his fingers tight on the strap of my backpack and his face strained. I look at Listen, who wags his tail a little.
"Tell my teacher, stay near people, and contact you," I recite. "And drink the juice?" I say this last bit a little uncertainly because I think that's what I'm supposed to do, but Dad always seems to forget that bit.
"Once you're inside," he says, letting go. "Okay. Let's go. You're going to school!"
It's just so exciting I can't help but bounce a little, running ahead as Listen barks and Dad yells. But I don't care—I'm going to school!
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Cornish is such a little town that the school's got only one hundred and one students, including me and Nate, and one hundred and two if you count Listen, which you should because he's got his own cubby for his books and everything. Not that he's got books, but I put a bag of dog treats and his leash in there and everyone thinks it's really cool. There's ten teachers and mine, Mrs Lloyd, is the best because she even put a sign up saying 'Welcome Derecho & Listen!' and changed it to Derry when Nate told her that's what I get called. But I think Dad would make a funny face at Mrs Lloyd because she uses a lot of exclamation marks when she gets excited, and he says that's a sign of an unbalanced mind, which I think is a quote but I haven't found from where yet. I'll get a surprise if I find it without googling, so I'm doing my best to keep my eye out. I ask Mrs Lloyd, but she doesn't know, so today isn't the day I solve that puzzle.
Everyone knows me already, from clubs and around town even though Dad is what people call a 'recluse', so the day isn't super exciting, especially because my school is too little to have a proper library and instead we get our books from the public one that Dad works at. That's a little disappointing, but not a deal-breaker. I think I'll put it on my list for things I want at my high school when I'm grown up, because by then I'll be old and boring and ready to 'broaden my mind', as Dad puts it, so I'll need them. I sit next to Nate in class and at lunch, because he's my best friend always, and show him the pattern I'm making. It's a hat with a bear on it—well, it will hopefully one day be a hat with a bear on it—that I'm knitting for him because he loves bears and he's got sticky out ears he doesn't like people looking at, just like me with my hand. In math, I help him out because I'm better at it than he is, despite this being my first day of school ever, and when school is over, we leave together. I'm manic with excitement.
"I can show you my room!" I tell him excitedly. Nate's quiet, like a mouse who got born as a boy accidentally, and he just nods and puts his hand on Listen. I hand him Listen's leash—he loves walking him, and Listen's easy to walk, even though he's a German Shepherd and a total lump—and keep babbling. "And you can see the goats and the geese and our flower clock—"
"Flower clock?"
I'm impatient. "It's a clock made of flowers, don't interrupt. And Dad's gonna give me my present tonight as well, but it might not be a present like what you're used to, and my room is up some stairs that are narrow so it's spooky, you'll love it, and Dad might let us watch a movie after dinner—"
By the time we reach the library, I'm buzzing. Listen is buzzing too, as excited as I am even though he's better at hiding it, his whole back end waggling along with his tail. "He's got the wiggles," Nate points out, laughing shyly with his hair all in his face, and I take the leash back so Dad doesn't scold me for letting someone else walk him. "Do you think your Dad will let us go out on the river?"
I pause. "Maybe," I say carefully. "But don't mention it, just in case, okay? You know that's a secret."
Nate nods, eyes wide. We've got secrets, me and Nate. Me more than him.
I've got a lot of secrets that I can't tell anyone but Listen, but Nate's canoe isn't one of them. Listen knows about that, but so does Nate. Dad doesn't. Sort of. He knows Nate has a canoe that's red and sleek and shiny, and he knows I've been out in it because he sits with Listen on the bank and watches us to make sure we're safe. But he doesn't know that sometimes when he's working late and I'm supposed to be home with all the doors and windows locked and the alarm on, I sneak out and go out on the river. Dad can't ever know. It's perfectly safe, he just worries.
Promise.
"Happy Birthday, Derry," Isabelle says when we walk in the library. She's sitting behind the front desk, very straight and neat, dressed prettily in a sweater with rabbits on it—proper rabbits, not cutesy ones—and her hair in a nice ponytail. I touch my hair self-consciously; it's a mess. Maybe I should start wearing it in a ponytail. "How old are you now?"
"Nine, you know that," I tell her, slipping behind the counter and putting my bag in the nook they keep for me. "I was eight yesterday, so I have to be nine now. That's how numbers work."
"Not always," Nate pipes up. "Numbers can go backwards."
"Not age-numbers," I counter.
"Either way, your daddy told me it was your birthday today, so I found you this." Isabelle reaches under the counter and 'this' is a rectangular-wrapped present with a lovely, perfect bow. I'm envious. Dad taught me knots, but not anything as nice as this, and I'd hate to undo it. But she says, "Quickly, open it! I didn't add air holes."
Nate gasps but I say, "It's a book—you always give me books." But I add quickly, "I love books," because I do, and I don't want her to think I'm ungrateful. I like Isabelle. She's pretty and always dressed nicely with a really nice nose that's not at all like my massive one. Sometimes, when I was little, I used to wish Dad would marry her. I don't wish that anymore, but I don't really know why he doesn't at least kiss her. She's always sighing after him and going all moon-eyed and I know he sometimes stays late when the library is shut to eat dinner with her and talk about books. He says they're work meetings, but he always takes wine and dresses nice with cologne, so I really doubt that.
It is a book. Silverhorse by a name I can't read properly because it's different than what I'm used to, and I'm gonna have to ask Dad for help. But I love it, and I kiss her cheek too and thank her and wish, just for a second, that she and Dad weren't so shy. Mostly because her nails are a really nice coral pink and the last time I tried to paint my nails, I spilt it on Listen and then touched my face and made everything sunset orange. If they were kissing or married, she could teach me to do things Dad and Nate don't know about, like ponytails and nice sweaters and nail polish.
And then, finally, it's time for Dad's present. We find his office, cramped and bulging with stacks and stacks of papers and books—Dad does a lot of research as well as working as a librarian, so he gets rare books and things shipped to him from all over and does video-conferencing with people from around the world—and he's sitting in there watching his smartphone again instead of working. He turns the video off when we walk in, but I see the little missing girl's face again on the screen before he does. I guess they haven't found her yet.
"I suppose you'll be expecting a gift of some kind," Dad says, smiling and bringing one knee up to his chest so he can rest his chin on it. "Well, then. Here it is. The knowledge of the year."
I lunge for the box he points to. It's full of a jumble of things, all of them old and torn at the edges—but I expect that because we don't have much money and, besides, they're cooler because someone other than me has touched them. And there's a box on top—Mastermind, a board game—and under that a ton of books and strange looking notepads filled with Dad's strange handwriting. The notepads look impossible to work out right now, so I go for the books, and the top one is Learn Binary for Beginners. The one under that: Codes and Ciphers: A History of Cryptography. I work it out fast: he's filled the notebooks with codes for me to break, written by him just for me!
"Codes!" I yell because this is way more exciting than French.
"Happy birthday, honey," he says, but his voice is muffled because I'm hugging him as hard as I can and my hair is in his face. He's probably going to get me back for this; he hates being hugged and now I've gotten him twice in one day. And, indeed, when I let go he has a wicked look on his face and says, "Hey, Nate, did we ever tell you about the phasmids I bought Derry when she was little?"
"Oh, no," I breathe, because, Dad, no. "Not the walking sticks, Dad—"
"Well, as it turns out, Derry is utterly, absolutely, unforgivably petrified of them."
My dad is the worst.
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There's one last thing that happened today.
It's been kind of bothering me, that news report. How can a little girl just go missing? I guess it bothers me most because it doesn't seem to bother anyone else. Nate didn't care and no one at school even knew to talk about it. I know Dad doesn't like it but, that night as he puts me to bed, I ask him anyway. "They'll find her, won't they?" He's sitting on the side of my bed. Listen is laying against my back, his ears perked. Above us, the window in the slopey bit of my ceiling is shut tight and bolted, but not covered, just how I like it. I don't like being closed in, not at all. It scares me more than walking sticks. I hope the little girl isn't closed in, wherever she is.
He reaches his hand out and brushes his finger against the covers of my new books, stacked neatly on my bedside cupboard with my knitting needles and the notebook I write patterns in on top. Behind that stack is a framed picture of my mom, a little ragged down the middle. It's the only one I have, and Dad looks at it sometimes like he's thoughtful, despite him not knowing her. I poke his hand, to get his attention, and he catches mine and turns it over, looking down at the scar with his face so deadly serious that my stomach hurts and I want to pull away. Dad never lies. I wish he would, sometimes. I'm careful about what I ask him because I know every so often he answers me even though he wishes he didn't have to.
His fingers are tracing the scar burned deep into my palm before he was my dad and back when he couldn't keep me safe, and he says, "It's unlikely. After twenty-four hours, the chances of an abducted child being recovered are slim. She's been gone for days."
"Oh," I say.
I dream of her that night. She's in a room, closed in tight. There's a man with a hand made of fire. He hurts her, and I wake up crying.