Bored*
The next day, the overcast weather did not go away. If anything, it darkened everyone's mood in the house with the threat of more rain. It felt like a week had gone by. The hours turning into days.
In the middle of the endless, dragging afternoon, Powder went over to the kitchen window and watched the endless, droning rain come down. It wasn't the kind of rain you could go out in. It was the other kind. The kind that threw itself down from the sky and splashed where it landed. It was rain that meant business. And currently, its business was turning the garden into a muddy, wet soup.
At the moment, the house was somberly quiet. Vander was outside, working with his tools in the stand-alone garage. The boys were… somewhere, Powder didn't know or particularly care. And Vi was sitting at the kitchen table, typing at the family computer, her earbuds playing music in her ears.
Powder washed her hand in the kitchen sink for the hundredth time. The poison oak rash had spread over her left palm, still stinging like fire under her skin. The expired ointment in the family first aid kit did little to help.
"I almost fell down a well, yesterday, Sis," Powder said loudly into the much too quiet kitchen.
"Uh-huh…" Vi replied as she typed away on the laptop.
"I could've died," Powder emphasized.
Vi shrugged. "That's nice..."
The flash of Powder's teasing smile faded from her face into a frown. She had expected a little more of a reaction than that from her protective, big sister, even if Powder only meant it as a joke. Vi's face was glued behind the laptop screen.
Powder didn't bother asking what Vi was doing. Powder knew Vi was busy getting ready for senior year in high school. It was becoming all her big sister could think about lately. It was honestly the most serious she'd seen Vi care about grades. First semester was only a few weeks away.
It would be the first time Powder wasn't going to be in the same school as Vi. She wasn't looking forward to it.
"So, can I go out?" Powder asked her sister, brightly, "I think it's perfect weather for gardening."
"No, Powder, rain makes mud. Mud makes a mess. I don't want to clean the floor again after you walked in muddy, yesterday," Vi answered without looking up as she typed.
Powder leaned across the kitchen table. "Vi, I want stuff growing before winter is here! Isn't that why we moved here?" she asked.
"Something like that," Vi sighed with a note of disappointment, her shoulders slumping. "But none of us can help the weather right now. So, try to be patient."
When the silence progressed, she went back to typing.
Scratching at her hand, Powder scowled. "I can't believe it. We move all the way out here, get a chance to start our own garden like Mom, and you're worried about dirt?"
Her sister leaned back in her chair and sighed at the ceiling, rubbing her eyes. "Powder, I'm sorry, I don't have time to hang out, right now. But, you know… you still have lots of unpacking to do. Lots of unpacking."
"That sounds exciting," Powder remarked sarcastically, resting her chin in her hand.
Sitting up, Vi glanced at her sister, watching the back of Powder's head as she sighed at the weather outside the window. Vi opened her mouth but didn't know what else to say. Then, with a blink, she remembered something else.
"Oh, I forgot, this was left on the front porch for you," Vi said, reaching behind her and grabbing a bundle the size of a loaf of bread, wrapped in newspaper.
Confused and suspicious, Powder took the hastily made package from her and unwrapped the newspaper carefully. Inside was a quickly written note.
Hey Paula,
Look what I found in my grandma's trunk. Look familiar?
– Ekko
Powder rolled her eyes, groaning as she tossed the note aside. When she opened the crinkly newspaper, she stopped and stared.
It was a doll.
This doll was clearly very old; the fabric was aged, a few shades discolored. But the figure… looked exactly like Powder.
From a dragonfly clip pinning sky-blue yarn hair to a yellow raincoat and rain boots. It even had a purple and pink striped T-shirt and dark blue jeans, all of which were clothes Powder had in her closet. Aside from the black button eyes, the doll looked exactly like her. Even with a short, sky-blue, yarn braid.
Powder arched an eyebrow at the thing in her hand. "A little me? Well, that's not creepy at all."
"What did you get? Something from a secret admirer?" Mylo teased.
She hadn't heard him coming through the kitchen door or leaning over her shoulder. Powder instinctively hugged the doll to her chest, anticipating him trying to steal it from her.
"None of your business!" Powder snapped.
"Jeez! I was only asking!" Mylo said, holding his hands up. He turned to Vi, pointing his thumb over his shoulder, "Could you come and help me with the laundry?"
Vi held back a groan and nodded. "Yeah, let me just save this."
Vi stood from her chair and saved a document – twice to be safe – sent a copy to herself in her email and closed the laptop.
Alone in the kitchen, Powder frowned at the doll and scratched at her itchy palm. She eyed the front door of the house and glanced at the door of the laundry room. Powder shrugged.
Maybe Vander would have a better idea?
…
Bored out of her mind, Powder took an umbrella from the umbrella stand by the front door, pulled on her rainboots and her raincoat.
Tucking the doll under her arm, she opened the front door, closed it behind her, hopped off the porch steps, and walked the short distance to the garage that stood separate from the house. It was wide enough for two car lanes.
The garage door was held open, and a radio played some music in the background. Two vehicles were parked inside. One was the family van. The other was a truck Powder hadn't seen before. It was an old pick-up truck that looked like it had been sitting there since the 60s.
Powder found her foster dad's familiar boots sticking out from under the truck. She stood by the garage door and waited until Vander wheeled out from under the belly of the truck, holding a wrench.
"Hey, kiddo," he greeted, upside down, wiping his brow and leaving a black smudge on his forehead.
"Where are the gardening tools?" Powder asked.
"Why?" Vander asked slowly, raising an eyebrow as he sat up.
"I want to start the gardening," Powder replied.
Her foster dad stood up fully and arched his back, stretching his big belly.
"But we didn't buy flowers yet," he answered, stifling a yawn.
"I can still weed out the old, dead flowers!" she argued.
Vander pursed his lips and nodded to himself. "Fair enough. But it's pouring cats and dogs outside. Why don't you wait until another day?"
Powder tipped her head back and groaned.
Vander glanced at his youngest, smirking. Rubbing his bearded chin, he looked over his tool bench. Half of his things were still packed in boxes. The other half were present but still needed to find a suitable place to belong, and not lost among the usual disorganized mess.
After some rummaging, he stood up. "Hmm… Here," Vander said, handing her a notepad and a pencil.
"What's this for?" she asked.
He scratched his scruffy beard.
"I was thinking about making some renovations in the flat," he said, gesturing to the house. "With the landlady's permission, of course. Why don't you go around and get measurements? Count all the doors and windows. Count everything blue. Note things that might need to be fixed."
He also tossed the measuring tape casually towards Powder, who caught it onehanded before she could really think about whether she wanted it or not. Powder pulled the metal tag out a few inches, frowning.
"Really? Measuring?" she asked, incredulously.
Vander shrugged nonchalantly. "Unless you want to help out with laundry."
Powder made a face.
"No thanks, bye!" she said quickly, scurrying out of the garage with the notepad, pencil, and tape measure, back toward the house.
Vander chuckled to himself as she ran out. Then returned to his work on the truck.
…
Powder went back to the house, shaking the water off her raincoat on the porch. Then she stepped inside the house, set to measuring and counting like Vander said. Thinking back, she wasn't sure he specified what parts of the house he was hoping to renovate, but she didn't bother to go back and ask him.
After Powder put her raincoat and boots back inside the closet, she took a step into the foyer and almost tripped on something. She looked down and frowned at the carpet runner beneath the staircase, a portion of it raised into a fold that posed a tripping hazard. Powder stomped on the fold, trying to flatten it to the floor, but no matter how many times she stomped on it, the fold reappeared again and again, appearing in different parts of the rug, like playing Whack-A-Mole. Just when she thought she had finally fixed it down, the fold split into two.
Frustrated, Powder gave up trying to fix it, continuing to explore the rest of the house. She climbed up the curved staircase.
Vi was in her room, with her door shut, her nose deep into another book she was in a hurry to finish for her summer reading homework. When Powder silently poked her head inside, Vi silently waved for her to get out. Powder rolled her eyes and went down the hall.
Claggor and Mylo were in Claggor's room, using their combined timeslot with the family computer to play a video game together. One that Powder wasn't allowed to watch.
Powder shuffled in her socks down the hall to Vander's room. She jumped up to touch the top of the door, curious if she could make it.
She didn't.
Inside Vander's room, the walls were covered in dull, beige wallpaper. Some of his clothes hung on plain coat hangers in a wardrobe. An ironing board stood next to it, iron sitting on top, ready for more clothes.
It was simple and a bit disorganized, like his workbench in the garage.
When Powder entered the master bathroom, she pulled back the shower curtain and jolted back at the bugs crawling on the shower wall, like centipedes. Angry at the invaders, she smashed on the bugs she could get with her hands, missing the ones that retreated into nooks and crannies she couldn't find.
Her hands covered in insect pus, Powder put her hands under the bathtub spigot and turned the knob for the water to come. Except the water didn't come out of the spigot, it came pouring down from the showerhead, wetting the back of Powder's head.
Growling in frustration, Powder turned the knob off and shook out her hair, wringing out her braid. Wet pieces of hair stuck to her face. Looking at the bottom of the tub, Powder saw the water was copper brown.
"Great," she muttered, peeling off her soaked socks.
Powder went back to her bedroom and replaced her socks.
…
Sometime later, Powder hopped back down the staircase, hopping from one foot to the other. Near the bottom, she eyed the carpet in the foyer below her one more time.
Pursing her lips, Powder squared herself on the third step and leapt off, landing squarely on the fold of the rug, spreading it flat with her feet to even it out. She was surprised it worked. In that same instant as her feet hit the floor, the door under the staircase squeaked a little ajar, jostled open by the vibration of her landing.
Powder took a look inside and found the hot water tank. It was bigger than she was tall, and it hummed and clanked, occasionally. Seeing nothing else of interest in the room, Powder turned around and switched off the light switch inside the door.
There was a sudden flash, a pop, and a flicker that took over the circuitry inside the whole house.
"No, no, no, NOOOOO!" she heard Mylo and Claggor yelling upstairs, clamoring in a panic.
Instantly worried she might have done something wrong; Powder looked again at the light switch and found a label above it she hadn't read before. 'WARNING: DON'T PUSH!'
Powder quickly switched the light back on and shut the door with her whole body. The lights of the house stopped flickering and held their steady light again. Holding her breath, Powder vaguely heard Mylo and Claggor walking above her head, coming downstairs into the kitchen, grumbling about losing the progress on their game and deciding to get something to eat, instead.
When Powder was sure they weren't looking, she dusted herself off and casually ducked into the next closest room, trying to act natural in case anyone might catch her in the act. Thankfully, no one saw her.
Sighing to herself, Powder found herself in the drawing room. There were a few cardboard boxes left in a corner, full of knickknacks and vintage kinds of things you weren't supposed to play with. With a shrug, Powder set her doll down on the coffee table and set herself to get a little busy, decorating the drawing room how she thought it should look.
Powder smiled as she opened a box and saw their stack of vinyl records inside, along with the turntable. Pulling them out carefully, Powder stacked the records on top of the mantel piece in a neat row, using snow globes as bookends.
One snow globe had porcelain flowers and a miniature water fountain inside. It was something Vander bought when they went to the Michigan State Arboretum garden show. Powder loved that day, touring all the fields of flowers. It was a good memory when the four siblings were still starting to get to know each other and Vander as their foster dad.
The other snow globe was something Vi had won at a carnival. Inside was a miniature carousel with different animals chasing each other. A rhino chasing a lion. A lion chasing a bear. And so on. Powder remembered the caramel covered popcorn and cotton candy were her favorite.
Another treasure Powder cherished was an American flag, folded into a triangle and set inside a glass case. Beside it, Powder set a bunny toy that Vi had shared with Powder ever since they were very young.
Powder also found the picture frames with Mylo and Claggor's parents in them. Mylo and Claggor sometimes kept in touch with their birth parents, but otherwise, the brothers seemed satisfied with their lives under Vander's roof.
Wiping them clean, she set them carefully on the mantel, stepped back to see them better, then moved them a little closer to the middle until they were perfect.
She may have thought her brothers were super annoying, but she did respect their space.
Satisfied with the mantel piece, Powder took out her notepad again. Over time, Powder made less notes about measurements and more notes about what should be changed around the house.
She had discovered the hot water tank. She counted everything blue, 153. She counted the windows, 21, also noting 12 of which leaked. She counted the doors, 14. One tall mirror at the end of the hallway. And a shower in the master bedroom that needed clean water.
"One boring blue boy in a painfully boring painting," she said blandly as she scribbled, frowning at the strange art piece hanging above the mantel in the drawing room.
It depicted a boy wearing a sailor suit, weeping as he dropped his ice cream on the ground. Very weird and depressing.
Powder turned on the spot, glancing around the room, scribbling with her pencil.
"Three incredibly boring windows, and no more doors…"
With a sigh, she put down the note pad and reached out to the coffee table. Then Powder blinked as she reached out her hand but didn't feel the fabric arm she was grabbing for.
Where did her doll go?
Powder thought she had put it down on the coffee table, but it wasn't there. She looked under the table, but it wasn't there. She turned in a circle, scanning around the room.
"All right, little me. Where are you hiding?" Powder asked aloud.
Then her eyes fell in the corner of the room by a stack of cardboard boxes. She found the doll, laying on the floor, several feet away, peeking around one of the moving boxes, up against the wall.
Powder cocked her head to the side as she walked toward it.
"How did you get over… here?"
Kneeling to the floor to get it, Powder narrowed her eyes when something else got her attention. Behind the cardboard box, there was something on the wall, an impression of some kind. Powder pushed the box aside to get a clearer view.
What she found was even more bizarre.
It was square in shape, large enough for a child. Hidden behind the wallpaper… was a door which Powder had missed.
"Hey, guys? Where does this door go?" Powder called out to the house.
"Huh? What door?" she heard Claggor call back from the kitchen.
"The one in the drawing room," she answered, frowning as she traced her finger around the impression of the keyhole. "I think it's locked!" she added.
She could hear Mylo and Claggor talking in the kitchen.
"What's she going on about?" Mylo asked Claggor.
"The door behind the wallpaper!" Powder yelled louder, getting annoyed.
Soon, the two boys came around the corner. Their eyebrows raised when they saw her sitting in front of it.
"What is that?" Claggor asked, coming closer to kneel beside her.
"Maybe it was some kind of secret servant's entrance!" Mylo said in a scary tone. "This house is, like, what? A hundred-fifty years old? Bound to be some servant's living in this house."
"Then why would the door be so small?" asked Claggor.
"Because they don't want to draw attention to themselves. Duh."
"I don't think that's –" Powder tried to interject.
"You crazy?" Claggor accused. "How would a servant come in and out of the room holding trays of food through that tiny door?"
"Guys," said Powder.
Claggor waved his hand at Mylo. "It's probably a chimney, or a food storage, or a dumbwaiter."
Rubbing his chin, Mylo gasped and snapped his fingers. "Or! This was where they kept the safe! I bet there is a safe back there with treasure inside! We could be rich!"
"Guys!" Powder groaned.
"What is everyone yelling about?!"
Their heads all turned and saw Vi at the top of the staircase. Her big sister 'shut up' face did not look happy.
"Some of us are trying to write their paper before it's due next week!" she exclaimed, briskly coming down the stairs.
"Yeah, for stupid summer credits," Mylo mumbled. Claggor elbowed him with a frown.
"I heard that!" Vi snapped, "And yes, in case you forgot, our first due date is next week! So, I don't have a lot of time to finish it!"
Claggor waved his hand. "Relax! You're gonna do great and nail the class."
At the bottom of the stairs, Vi ran a hand through her pink hair, somewhat reassured by his encouraging words. She gave him a look of thanks, then, seeing her siblings gathered, she looked between each of them.
"So, what's all this?" she asked with an exhale, her tone calmer, more curious.
"Powder found a door in the wall," Claggor answered, pointing with his thumb.
Vi blinked, looking from her little sister to the wall.
Powder felt a flutter in her chest when her name was called out, but she didn't know if it was good or bad yet.
Vi's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "I didn't even realize that was there," she said, bending down slightly with her hands on top of her knees.
"Can we open it?" Powder asked, hopeful.
Vi stood up and bit her lip, uneasily. "I don't know. We should ask Vander first. We don't want to mess with the wallpaper."
"Oh, come on! Pleeeease? There could be untold treasure!" Mylo argued.
Their big sister put her hands on her hips. "Guys? Seriously? I think you're getting a bit old for a Goonies adventure. And especially for puppy eyes."
"Pleeeeeease?" the three of them insisted in unison.
They waited as Vi eyed the door again and pursed her lips in thought. Then her pupils seemed to dilate as she stared at it.
"You know, I thought I saw…" she mumbled to herself, frowning, then quietly turned and went into the kitchen.
Her three siblings looked to each other, a bit confused, then followed her, wondering where she was going. They stopped and watched Vi's back from the kitchen doorway as she opened and closed all the drawers in the kitchen counter, stopping at the junk drawer. They listened to metallic rattling as she rummaged through bolts, screws, and dead batteries, odd metal bits and ends, pushing aside a pile of random silver and brass keys.
Then Vi found what she was looking for at the bottom of the pile.
She held up to the light the oldest, biggest, blackest, rustiest key Powder had ever seen. It looked ancient. The teeth were jagged like a puzzle piece, and the handle was a flat circle with four little holes punched through it. Almost like a button.
Vi held the key in her hand and hesitated, pressing her lips in a flat line, a shadow crossing her face as though she didn't know why. But she had a bad feeling about that key…
In the silence, Powder bit her lip and spoke up, tentatively, "Vander said he was going to do renovations on the house… Maybe we should take a look? So we know what's behind it?"
The boys held their breaths, standing behind Powder, waiting anxiously.
Finally, Vi sighed. "You guys are impossible!"
"Yes!" Mylo cheered, high-fiving Claggor, doing a celebratory dance, and, in his excitement, appreciatively shaking Powder by the shoulders.
Powder was surprised at him but smiled all the same, a balloon of pride filling her chest. It wasn't often Mylo praised her.
Coming back into the drawing room, Vi shooed the others out of the way and knelt by the wall. She took a breath, then used the key blade to cut through the wallpaper, tracing around the square door frame.
They all leaned closer in anticipation. With little force, Vi punched the key blade through the wallpaper into the keyhole. She glanced at them with a look of mild surprise.
The key seemed to fit.
All four of them leaned even closer, some leaning on each other. The key turned with a satisfying clunk. They gasped with excitement.
It fit!
The siblings practically pressed their faces together to see what they'd found. The door creaked open… ancient dust fell…
But inside was a blank brick wall.
The kids stared in disbelief, then their collectively held breath was broken with a deep collective sigh as they hung their heads.
"Man, you got me excited for nothing!" Mylo grumbled, pushing past Powder to back away.
Claggor touched his hands to the bricks, feeling the roughness with his fingers. He knocked his knuckles experimentally against a few but came back shaking his head.
"Nothing hollow. Just a normal wall," he said.
"Bricks?! I don't get it!" Powder exclaimed, sighing in disappointment.
"They probably closed this off when they divided up the house," Vi said with a shrug.
"A money safe would've been nice though…" mumbled Claggor.
A heaviness hung in the air over all the siblings' heads, like a dark cloud. They all frowned at the floor, individual islands, all thinking the same thing.
They knew their most recent family incidences had put a lot of… strain on their financial situation, despite what Vander would lead them to believe. For the first time the siblings had ever seen, Vander would be working two jobs. They silently worried about their dad.
Vi glanced at her watch and squeezed Claggor's large arm. "Hey, it's almost time for dinner," she said with a small smile, trying to lighten the mood.
With a heavy-hearted nod to her, Claggor stood up and joined her in the kitchen. Mylo grumbled, shooting a glare at Powder before following them, helping to set the table.
Alone, heavy, and sad, Powder sulked back to the little door and kicked it closed.