Mr Assadaya’s son was on the register. He was a quiet man, maybe in his early twenties. Riley had never thought about him much. But she slunk past him now, trying to be unremarkable. She had to give Oliver something that wouldn’t make Cousin realise they were cheating. He palpated their stomachs sometimes. Sometimes he checked the toilet after they went. Riley had thought about it a lot. Milk was the answer.
She slid open the cold door and took the gallon jug out, silent. The store was empty, it was a good time. She had just started to slide the milk into her backpack when she glanced up.
Above her in the corner was the big convex mirror. Mr Assadaya’s quiet son was looking at her, right at her. Riley froze. Their eyes held for what felt like forever. She waited for him to speak, or pick up the phone to the police, or call his dad out from the back. But he just looked. After a long moment he turned away, and started doing something with the cigarettes behind the counter. Riley shoved the milk into her backpack and walked right past him, out the store, not looking left or right. He didn’t look up from the cigarettes.
Riley broke out into the cold air and into a run. No one chased after her. The milk sloshed in her backpack. The world was so full of colour. She felt it, now. She understood. There was a power that ordered the universe. It had told Mr Assadaya’s son to let her leave. She laughed as she ran, panting, filled with a surge of joy, of gratitude, the knowledge of order in the universe. Riley had seen it in Cousin’s eyes – belief. She had seen it in her mother’s face. Why shouldn’t she know it, too?
As she turned the corner, Riley stopped running. Cousin’s house sat squatly at the end of the road. Riley slowed and realised, as she did each day, that she had to sleep there and live there. She remembered the alone place in the basement and that her parents were both dead. Riley fell to her knees on the sidewalk, struggling to breathe. That was when she realised how bad it was, with Cousin. No higher power had helped her steal the milk. It wasn’t a sign of grace. It meant that a grownup could look at her and see right away how bad things were. Bad enough to let her steal from them.
Riley wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a receipt she found in her pocket. She pushed herself up from the sidewalk and jogged on, back towards Oliver. She had to get a gallon of milk into their stomachs before Cousin came home.
The day Riley’s dad spoke to her mom through the board, she killed herself. At that time he had been dead for twelve years. Riley knows that her father never spoke to her mother through the Ouija board. Her mother just wanted to die.
There is only here, this world. Riley knows. There’s nowhere else to go.
Riley is home from school a little late today so Oliver has had lots of time to hide. ‘Wherever can he be?’ she wonders aloud, searching through each room. But Oliver is not in his high-up place. He is not in his low-down place under the sink, either.
She keeps her voice level, calling, ‘Oliver Olive!’ She doesn’t want him to know that she’s starting to get scared. She checks the bedroom and bathroom and living room and then there’s nowhere else to look except the basement.
She tries not to feel anything but each hair on her body stands up as she goes down the stairs.
The basement looks mostly ok. It’s like a den with a dirty beigepile carpet, a broken couch that sinks soft in the middle, covered with an old rug. There’s a TV but it doesn’t work. There’s a record player, records with faded sleeves falling at a slant against it. The walls are dented brown pine, the overhead bulb swings bare from a length of flex. Sometimes they get mice or rats down here, it can’t be helped. It’s Riley’s job to fill the trays in the corners with the bright pink poison, and collect the dead.
So it looks like a regular basement except for the cubicle in the corner. It has a toilet in it, so maybe it was just a toilet once. Riley doesn’t know. The door to the alone room is ajar; someone is crying quietly inside.
‘Hey,’ Riley says, gentle. Oliver is sitting on the punishment stool. She strokes his head. ‘Come upstairs. Let’s read or sing something.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Sure you can, Oliver Olive.’ She pulls him gently but he backs away, wriggling further into the alone room.
‘I said I can’t, Riley!’ She winces at his cracked, shrill tone. ‘The demon is in me so I have to stay here.’
‘Cousin’s not back from work for hours,’ Riley says. ‘He can’t make you do anything.’
‘He’s not making me,’ Oliver says. ‘I have to be punished. I felt it.’ He trembles, arms locked about his legs.
‘Felt what?’
‘The demon.’
The world shifts cold about her. ‘The demon isn’t real, Oliver.’
‘It is,’ he whispers. ‘Why else does Cousin need to help us so much? It’s in my head, telling me things … just like Cousin said. It tells me to eat. To break open the lock on the cupboard.’ Oliver shivers.
‘You’re hungry, Oliver,’ Riley says. ‘There is no demon.’
‘Then why do I feel it?’ Oliver hits himself in the head with a fist. ‘Riley. Why do I hear it?’ He hits himself again, once, twice. She grabs his arm and pulls him out of the alone room. ‘Stop!’ he screams.
‘Oliver,’ Riley tries to soothe him but he writhes away from her.
‘I’m trying to get the demon out like Cousin said and you are bad!’
‘Remember the plan, Oliver?’ Riley holds him tightly, Oliver hits her with his fists. ‘The plan is, we wait until I finish school. Then we go. I get a job. I take care of you. You can go back to school. You liked school.’
‘No!’ Oliver’s back heaves with sobs. ‘I just want to be good. If we had been good, Riley, and not let the demon in them Mom wouldn’t have died.’
‘That’s not true.’ Riley strokes his back, wet with tears and sweat. The centre of things has shifted. She sees that there is no more time. Oliver is breaking. They need a new plan.
