LAST WEEK: A look into the past, in which Renna’s grandmother removes a young Job from the path of annihilation that she herself can’t avoid. Her only consolation was taking the demon down with her. And yet, twelve years later, the monster has returned and is hot on Renna’s trail.
Read the previous installment here. See all installments here.
“PANCAKE WAR!!”
Kyle ducked his head as a spinning flapjack narrowly missed him. He brandished a batter-covered spatula at Derek. “Cease fire at once! You know that’s against the Breakfast Geneva Code!”
Crowded next to Derek at the table, Solomon snickered. “Yeah, don’t you remember New Year’s when we all signed the Great Treaty of Syrup?”
“Yep. But that was because we managed to waste two bowls of waffle batter as ammunition,” Alis said through her chewing, from Derek’s other side.
“Which,” said Troy, perched on the sawhorse nearby with his plate, “I recall Kyle being one of the main instigators of.”
Kyle scratched at his forehead with the spatula, which left a nasty batter scar. “I do believe we agreed that the trivial matter of who attacked whom out of a simple and understandable need to defend their honor was not a point of importance during the proceedings… and certainly did not need to go on the record.”
“It didn’t,” Derek interjected, returning half of his mouthful to his plate at the same time, “‘cuz you wrote the record.”
Kyle’s reproachful noise was drowned out by the muttering of agreement from the rest of the council crowded round the table.
Kyle turned to Job, who had fit themselves into a small space next to the refrigerator for their meal. “See what I deal with? They call me corrupt.”
Troy was on him again. “Don’t appeal to the visitor, good sir, if you value your so-called honor.”
“Yeah,” added Alis, “J’accuse, dude. J’accuse.”
“French lessons stop now,” grumbled Kyle, returning to his kitchenly duties.
Troy finished his OJ. “More French lessons from now on. Since I’m the one in charge of them.”
There were a couple cheers from the table, and Solomon’s groan harmonized with them.
Renna laughed along with the rest of the crowd. She shared a short bench with Sami, whose intensity in picking apart their food, Renna knew, came from their general discomfort towards any strangers in the house during unusual hours. It was rare to have guests over for breakfast, but Renna felt it hardly mattered anyway, as this was a so-called “special occasion” where all the homers and nearly all the non-homers (who rarely partook in Inglenook breakfasts) were present and squished around the large-yet-still-lacking table.
Most everyone was done eating, and at Troy’s cue the piles of dishes were transferred haphazardly to the sink, with a few clattering into each other along the way. As Renna ducked and weaved through the culinary chaos, Job managed to slip beside her and ask if all of her luggage was ready.
She gave them a quick affirmation, and they made a hasty exit towards the less-populated front porch. Renna had been thinking of heading there as well, but at the moment did not desire a one-on-one with Job, so instead she steered herself towards the living room/parlor.
While a newcomer might not discern the difference, anyone in this household knew that this room was divided into two spaces, with the boundary as strictly drawn as the 38th parallel. The west side was Kyle’s domain, where he ruled over his “numerous beer-bottle and dust-bunny subjects,” as Troydad called them with his nose upturned. Renna could not defend Kyledad in that regard—if cleanliness is indeed next to godliness, he would be sitting at the far end of the proverbial table—but it was obvious Kyle’s mess was proudly his own. Renna shared this quality with him, thinking of her own nest upstairs.
The more respectable side of the room was managed by Troy, where not even a stray sock could linger for long. The space functioned as a kind of gallery for projects of the Inglenook kids. The bay window was filled with the plants they had grown in the past year, now heartily matured and in bad need of repotting. Artwork in frames of all sizes crammed the walls like a lost game of Tetris. Renna knew where to find all of her own contributions, and she was one of the more frequently featured artists. The lofty, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along one wall housed rows of thick binders, one for each person who ever learned or lived at Inglenook. The top shelf of the rightmost bookcase was for current residents. Renna was glad to still see hers up there, although she knew it would only be a matter of time before it was moved over. She had a desire to look inside it again, but before she could reach for it, her solitude in the room was interrupted by Narin, who came rolling in and made a great leap onto the couch. It wasn’t a surprise, though: when living in Inglenook, peace and quiet were scarce resources, nearly impossible to find together.
“Hey Narin.” Renna went over and helped the young boy extricate himself from the furniture, which had a deceptively deep sag to it, eager to capture anyone who dared to relax.
Narin shook the couch crumbs out of his hair. “Gotcha a present Renna. No, not a present, y’know, cuz Troydad said no presents, y’know, so this is … a not-present.”
To avoid overburdening Renna with the heartfelt parting gifts of more than a dozen overly-sentimental people, Troy had assumed his usual role of fun police and dictated that presents to Renna had to be non-material in nature. However, Narin was now presenting Renna with a tiny, dirty pebble.
“This was stuck in my foot for a long time, y’know. It’s that kinda sedmen’try rock that Sami was talkin’ about, back when we’re at the beach, y’know, so I think this is from the time we went to the beach like last summer, y’remember y’know?”
Renna accepted the rock from him. “So you’re saying this has been stuck in your prosthetic for that whole time? Did you just notice it now?”
Narin nodded furiously. “Yeah, well, no, y’see, I knew it was there, y’know, but I didn’t wanna take it out cuz it was stuck, but then you said you’re leaving, so then I took it out and now it’s your present… not-present.”
Renna smiled. “Thanks Narin, this is actually pretty sweet. I’ll take care of it.” Troydad had said no presents, but one small rock couldn’t hurt.
Narin was back on the floor, rolling himself over in a reverse-somersault. “Oh yeah! Troydad said to tell ya that everyone’s meeting out on the porch in five minutes, so’s we can say bye.”
Renna realized her interaction with Narin had taken the majority of those five minutes, and she still needed to grab her last bag upstairs. “Thanks Narin! And thanks again,” she said, waving the rock and striding towards the stairs. She nearly collided with Alis, who had been lurking just behind the doorframe.
“Sorry!” they said in unison.
They paused for an awkward moment, but Alis didn’t seem to have anything prepared to say. “Uh, yeah, sorry, I gotta go grab my bag. I guess I’ll see you outside?” Renna pointed to the stairs and moved around Alis, but she was stopped.
“Ah, hey, hold up a minute.” Alis snatched Renna’s hand, and pressed something small into it.
It was an old, well-used bottle of nail polish, and Renna’s favorite color (“Midnight Sky”). It took a couple moments for a memory to dust itself off and crawl out from a corner of her mind.
“Hey, is this… that nail polish I lost like three years ago?”
Alis shifted about on her feet. “Yeah, ‘lost.’ I’m kinda surprised you didn’t figure it out back then, but after that argument we had, I decided to … borrow it in a not-so-borrowy-way.”
Renna felt a small flush of anger jump on her back, as she recalled the week when she practically tore the whole house apart looking for it, refusing to eat most of her meals and leaving no suspect un-accused, including all the dogs. But imagining that scene play out again as she held the dirty, nearly empty bottle in her hand almost made her laugh out loud now.
Alis noticed the smirk on Renna’s face and felt safe to venture further. “Yeah, I’m really sorry about that. It wasn’t exactly a mature way to handle things. Maybe it’s still not, seeing how I’m sorta only fessing up to it just as you’re leaving …”
Renna shook her head. “It’s fine, I’m glad you did. Honestly I had forgotten all about it. And I sure wasn’t the poster child for maturity back then, either. But now it sort of feels like … the case is closed, y’know?” She pocketed it together with the rock from Narin. “Thanks, Al.”
Renna’s sincere gratitude made Alis squirm even more than her own guilt. “Yeah, totally, of course. I’m gonna go wait out on the porch, I know you’ve got stuff to do.” With that, she rushed past Renna and out the front door, not even stopping to put on shoes.
Despite all the awkwardness, Renna was genuinely glad Alis had decided to do that; she didn’t care about the nail polish, of course, but the gesture was worth a lot to her.
But she could only bask in the good feelings for a second before she realized she had been waylaid again. Renna vaulted up the stairs three at a time, the handrails creaking and groaning, and made it to her room in record time, where she found yet another obstacle: Solomon was waiting outside her door, but she could tell he didn’t want to look like he had been waiting for her. He seemed determined to have her notice him first, so Renna figured she should bite.
“Hey Sol, what’s up?”
Solomon did an overly practiced act of surprise. “Oh hey Renna, I’m glad I ran into you. Listen, since you’re suddenly leaving and all, I figured you’d want to be prepared, right? And, it just so happened that I had this lying around, and y’know, I figured you could use it, ‘cuz you’re going on a trip somewhere.” He thrust out his hand towards Renna, who accepted a small flashlight that had a compass built into the end of it. It looked too new to have done much lying around in this household.
It made Renna smile. A very Solomon gift, to be sure.
“It’s not a gift, though,” said Solomon, contradicting Renna’s thoughts. “Because Troydad said no gifts—this is a tool, something useful that you can use, on your journey, right?”
Renna nodded and put it in the company of the rock and the nail polish. “Right. Losing your way in the dark can be a pretty bad time. This will solve both those problems.”
Solomon nodded fervently. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking when I bou—found it. And like I said, you could use it more than me, ‘cuz I’m not the one leaving the house.”
Neither of them was quite sure what to say to this, so Renna moved towards her door again. “Well thanks, Sol, it’s very kind of you. ‘Scuse me, I just gotta grab my bag and then I’ll be down there with everyone …”
Solomon moved aside, but as Renna entered her room, she heard him say from behind her, “You are coming back, right?”
“I think so … I hope so. I don’t really know.” She packed up the last few articles of clothing and other items into her bag and went to leave the room, and saw that Solomon hadn’t moved. He was staring at the ground intensely, hands shoved into his back pockets. This eleven-year-old, stringy, tawny-haired boy had only been here for a year or so, the newbie among the homers, but Renna easily recognized the pose he took when he got anxious or frustrated.
“I heard Troydad and Kyledad talking last night,” he muttered. “About moving someone else into your room, now that both you and Kayalee aren’t there anymore.”
Renna reached out and groused his hair, badly in need of a shower. “I’ll definitely be back. But I don’t know … if I’ll be back for good. I’ve already had a long talk with the dads about it. In all honesty, no one knows how long I have to be away, not even Job. It’s a really tough thing,” Renna admitted, to both Solomon and herself. “And I guess I’m getting close to the age when most homers leave anyhow.”
The look on Solomon’s face made Renna immediately realize that while the truth was important, it wasn’t the reassurance the boy was looking for.
“But like I said! I’m not just gonna disappear forever, that would be dumb. This place is my home, you know? You don’t have to worry about a thing. You gotta make sure that the dads haven’t filled up this room with some other junk when I come back next time, ‘cuz I want to sleep in a familiar bed.”
Solomon’s face brightened a bit and he promised to be her advocate for her space while she was gone. Hoisting up her backpack and giving her other luggage to him to carry, she told him, “Let’s go down to the porch, they must all be waiting for us by now.”
And so they were.
The front porch was big, to be sure, but nearly twenty bodies crammed onto it made it feel cozy. Nobody seemed to mind, though, if you didn’t count a very space-conscious Job; getting in each other’s way was a state of being at Inglenook. All three dads were present, along with the homers and most of the non-homers too. There were rarely ever non-homers present during school breaks (save for Alec, who spent the majority of his time at Inglenook), but this was a special occasion. Renna and Solomon pushed their way out the door, gathering the attention of the crowd. Renna was being talked at from many directions, but to live at Inglenook, you became fluent at this form of communication, holding multiple conversations like a good friend would hold jackets or purses.
The dads realized after ten minutes of individual goodbyes that they were becoming an impediment to their own purpose. Troy called everyone to order and attempted to give some direction to the gathering. “Now then, as we like to say here at Inglenook: ‘No matter how far you go, the road will always lead back home.”’
“No one’s ever said that!” yelled the peanut gallery.
“I just did!” retorted Troy.
“Hey, this is Renna’s sendoff, why do you get to talk?”
“It’s better than all of you talking!”
“Speech! Speech! Speech!”
“Shut up, Kyle! And for ‘sakes, I said no presents, didn’t I?”
Renna had made her way down the porch steps, both arms now cradling a collection of small trinkets, boxes and bags. A chorus of excuses welled up.
“That was a late Christmas present, I wasn’t here to give it to her then!”
“It’s not a gift, it’s a good luck charm!”
“I only said she could borrow it!”
“Happy quarter-birthday, Renna!”
Troy gave his usual sigh and stepped down to help her rearrange the cargo for more convenient carrying. “I only discouraged it because I knew this would happen. Now how are you going to transport all this stuff…”
“Well, this thing’s got a few pockets she could use,” said Kyle, who came up behind Renna and plopped a floppy, well-worn letterman’s jacket across her shoulders. A couple of the patches had come off their original places on the upper arms, one leaving the thready outline of an H. The letter was still present on the jacket, but had been resewn onto the lower left side of the back, in an attempt to cover up a ragged hole. Despite it not being fitted for the frame of a teenage girl, its bigness was comfortable on her, like a casual, friendly embrace.
“Harper’s Monthly! Kyle, is that your old varsity jacket?” Troy’s nose wrinkled nearly back into his skull.
“Yep. Much as I hate to admit it, I seem to be outgrowing my old football victories as of late—can hardly fit around my bulging muscles anymore,” Kyle smirked, patting the squishy folds of his abdomen.
Troy arched an eyebrow. “Kyle, you’ve held onto that thing since high school. And I swear it still smells like the entire varsity team.”
Kyle gave him a bawdy wink. “A couple of them more than the rest.”
Renna felt a bit overawed; everyone at Inglenook knew that this was one of Kyledad’s most prized possessions, despite its recent tendency of growing smaller on him. Of course Troy was exaggerating and Kyle was joking (she hoped); the jacket smelled only like Inglenook, like Kyle (and maybe even a bit like Troy?). She felt honored to have it passed down to her; it would be a while before it felt like it was hers to rightfully wear, though. Like most used clothes, there was a time of transition when it had to get used to its new owner.
Renna turned to see that her third dad, Ray, had quietly shuffled up beside her. He looked tired as usual, and had his hands jammed deep into the pockets of his lab coat. “Given the period of time that’s passed since Kyle’s high-school days, any scents from that long ago would be impossible to trace with the limited capacity of our human olfactory sensors. Also, here Renna, present for you.”
“Are you serious, Ray, you can’t even pretend it’s not a present?”
“You never sent me an email about it. You know I only acknowledge important things through email,” replied Ray, pulling out of his pocket something that looked like a black plastic tongue depressor. “Hold out your wrist, Renna.”
She did so and he swung it gently at her forearm, which it instantly curled around upon contact. He tapped the center of it and it illuminated with the current time and date.
Renna was amazed. “Holy crap, it’s like a slap bracelet watch! I didn’t even know they made these things!”
“They don’t yet,” said Ray. “A friend from the lab sent me a prototype. Consider yourself a beta tester.”
Renna shifted it about on her wrist. “I dunno, isn’t this thing valuable? Are you sure?”
Ray smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “They’ve been producing many more, and like I said, it’s a prototype. There’s likely plenty of bugs and kinks in it; technology can be a useful thing, but remember to always rely on yourself first.”
Renna rogered that and thanked him.
“Well,” Troy grumbled, looking about and fidgeting, “since it seems like everyone forgot the rules we agreed on, I suppose I would be the odd man out if you didn’t leave with something from me as well.” He dashed back into the house and returned shortly with a cloth messenger bag. “Oh how convenient, you can put all this other stuff in here, look at that,” Troy said, hastily stuffing some of the other gifts into it, while trying to ignore the smarmy smile Kyle was aiming at him.
“What a perfect gift, Troy! And one that wouldn’t make much sense if someone hadn’t foreseen Renna getting a bunch of other stuff in the first place …”
Troy deflected Kyle’s mirth with a glower, offering the now-packed bag to Renna. “Big words from a guy who spent a week shopping online for a new jacket when you’ve worn the same one for twenty years.”
Kyle’s eyes widened. “How would you even know that?”
“You don’t clear your internet search history,” Ray put in.
“There’s an internet search history?”
“Which leads to a couple other discussions we’ll be having later,” said Troy. “But now then, if Renna has managed to pack up everything but the kitchen sink, I think it’s time to send her off for real.”
This suggestion was met with loud contention from the gallery on the porch, however. While the three dads were doting over Renna, the rest of the kids had been making preparations of their own. Most of them had their fists full of shredded, colored paper, which was already starting to decorate the porch with technicolor snow.
Job had expected to be departing and was now thoroughly unsure of what was going on. They turned to a nearby Alis. “What else is there left to do?”
“Our tradition,” she said. “The last one before one of us leaves Inglenook.”
***
Renna stood in the middle of a circle of kids, each spread a couple feet apart, and each holding their payload of colorful, homemade confetti. The adults were spectating from the porch. Job hadn’t gotten any further explanation beyond, “Just watch.”
Suddenly the general buzz from the dozen kids quieted at once. Renna knew it was time and closed her eyes. Despite having participated in this ritual a few times, she hadn’t realized that being the subject of it could make one this nervous. But happy anticipation bounced along with her nerves.
“Renna!” she heard a voice from her left. “Tell us now, what is … your name?”
Before she could answer, most of the kids had burst out laughing.
“You messed it up already!”
“You idiot, you just said her name!”
“Yeah, but you’re supposed to say that beforehand, right?”
Renna knew to keep her eyes closed and heard Alis whipping everyone back into focus. She cleared her throat once all were quiet again and said, “My name is Renna Porter.”
She felt pieces of paper brush against her face and hair from her left, as someone from her right called out, “Renna Porter, tell us now, how old are you this year?”
“I am sixteen.” More paper from the right.
“Renna Porter, tell us now, with which hand do you write?”
“I write with my left, so I’m left with my right.”
Giggles at her quick wit accompanied the next paper shower.
“Renna Porter, tell us now, the last vacation us homers took.”
“To that beach house on the Cape, for a week last summer.”
“Renna Porter, tell us now, what’s your favorite meal?”
“Troydad’s mushroom and chicken spaghetti.”
This elicited a few groans, but Renna knew Troy was beaming from the porch.
“Renna Porter, tell us now, what hangs upon the second-floor bathroom wall?”
“My art project from last year, the one with all the feathers.”
“Renna Porter, tell us now…”
And so Renna told, answering questions and feeling bits of confetti fly over her. Finally, the circle came to its last question.
“Renna Porter, tell us now.”
“You’ve answered our questions, but we still have one more.”
“Even if all others are lies, tell us the truth.”
The last question was delivered in imperfect unison; Renna heard it coming from every side, every voice of every homer and non-homer, ones she still barely knew, and ones that she would never not know.
“However far you go, what is the one place you can always call home?”
Renna’s smile, straining against the emotions that wanted to come bursting out of her, allowed a weak, but still audible answer to finish the ritual.
“Here, at the home called Inglenook.”
She opened her eyes to a bright blur. First was the light of the bright spring morning, next were the tears that had beaded in her eyelashes, and then came the rest of the colored confetti, all thrown at once by the celebrating kids, who followed immediately after. Everyone converged in the center for a show of skinship that appeared to be a cross between a group hug, a moshpit and a surprisingly giddy mob attack. Renna felt squished, suffocated, bruised, overheated and disoriented—but nothing could be mistaken for the feeling of love that had always existed at Inglenook.
Chapter Four, Appended: We Who Bloom in Early Spring
Renna had gone. Job beside her, bags on her back, down the cobbled front lane, under the trellis and out through the front gate. The children had dispersed as well; most of the non-homers had either gone home themselves or had taken advantage of the gathering to go off and play with the residents of the house. The three adult figures sat in the kitchen, pretending to drink the last inches of their coffee. For a little bit, they had the room to themselves—a group of the noisiest homers (including but not limited to Derek, Boot, Sami, Narin and Solomon) were off on a quest to open a small tin box that had been Renna’s surprise present to them, given just before she left. She claimed that it contained her legacy as an older homer, and that if they followed the clues that she had also provided them, they would find the key and the treasure inside would be theirs. She had also assured them the treasure was actually good and not one of those “friendships we made along the way” things.
Kyle watched the heads of the kids fly past the window outside, making for the deeper parts of the backyard. “Y’know, with one of them gone, I’d like to say it’s going to be quieter around here … but honestly she was one of the ones who helped keep the chaos in check.”
“She’s especially responsible for her age,” agreed Troy. “I’d like to think any adult out there would be surprised at the maturity she can muster.”
“I’m not sure that aspect of her persona is all that uncommon amongst youths her age,” Ray put in. “I’d say that we’re all suffering from confirmation bias, based on the fact that we’re the only ones who have been able to observe the radical change that has taken place in her over the past twelve years.”
Kyle made a noise of disagreement, but Troy sided with Ray. “No, it makes sense. Surely you can remember the child that was first dropped off with us? I still can’t quite believe any of us survived that year.”
Ray nodded. “On top of all the trauma and emotional distress we had to deal with, her peculiarities nearly drove us all mad.”
“You more than us,” Kyle objected. “It took you years to finally admit that science couldn’t explain all the crazy-weird stuff that happened around Renna.”
“I never claimed that it was beyond the scope of science,” replied Ray huffily, stacking his empty coffee cup on the tower of breakfast dishes (and earning a chastising glare from Troy), “Simply that it was beyond my scope of reason and understanding to explain it in terms of the physical laws that govern our reality. For the sake of all our consciences, the recurring phenomena centered around her were anomalies that had to be accepted as real, but incomprehensible even by enlightened scientific minds—”
“Yeah, for the sake of your conscience, science-guy. Troy and I gave up and accepted it as freaky supernatural stuff way before that.”
“Like it or not,” replied Troy, ignoring Ray’s attempted rebuttal, “we somehow managed to get used to it over the years. But it really died down recently, don’t you think?”
Kyle nodded. “Yeah, come to think of it, I honestly don’t recall a single incident since Renna’s last birthday, and hardly any in the year before that, even. I think it has something to do with how happy she’s become here.”
Ray jumped in again. “Conversely, I would think that the anomalies were connected to her unstable emotional state at a younger age. As she’s grown in the years and some of her worse traumas have healed over, the outbursts that were connected with her sadness or frustration have decreased correlatively.”
“That’s … a very sound theory,” Troy admitted. “It reminds me of when she disappeared after a bad episode, and she was still young … We’d always be able to find her out in the front garden, curled up amongst the hyacinths. I don’t know why, but it seemed like that calmed her down—she’d be out there for hours and wouldn’t come in, even if the weather was bad.”
Kyle frowned, trying to piece the memory together in his head. “Which flowers again? I can’t remember what they look like, you plant enough to run a store out there.”
Troy scoffed. “Please. Only the ones that take over the place this time of year. You can hardly see anything else but purple petals. Go take a look for yourself.”
Kyle got up and went out to the porch, and Troy talked after him. “Of course, you won’t see much now. They haven’t quite bloomed yet, maybe only a week or two away. It’s a shame, I had sort of hoped that Renna could see them again before she left, you know? If she really loved them that much.”
“I don’t think that’s a problem,” came Kyle’s reply. “There’s no way she could have missed this.”
Troy and Ray shared a befuddled look and stood up to join Kyle. They only made it to the open front door when Troy stopped short and gaped.
Two thick lines of purple stretched out before them on either side of the pathway. Not an hour before, each of these flowers had been closed and green from stalk to stem, but now they stood open and tall, wearing proudly their violet coats in a show of solidarity. And even further out of the ordinary, the bloom of each flower was turned toward the garden gate, which Renna had disappeared through earlier. Even the breeze did little to sway the floral regiment from its standing salute, showing clearly that while the maker of the magic had left, the effects would linger for a long time with the dust and memories in every corner of Inglenook.
Hear the author read this week’s installment in the video below:
MetaStellar fiction editor Geordie Morse works primarily as a personal language coach, developing curricula and working with clients remotely. His first book, Renna's Crossing, is out now. His various other projects are cataloged on his site Arnamantle.