I know this because every letter she sent to his address was returned, she kept them…and I read them all.
She begged him to return to care for his son. Begged him to reply. Then demanded he swallow a handful of razor blades.
Evelyn’s relationship with Sybil’s father was a nearly identical pattern. They screwed enough times for Evelyn to conceive, only for him to disappear. In both instances, our fathers took off before they knew Evelyn was pregnant. Unfortunately, neither deemed the responsibility of fatherhood enough of a lure to return.
By then they’d probably realized how batshit crazy Evelyn was.
“Bash?”
Billy’s voice pulls me back to the here and now. She’s at the desk we share, a blank piece of paper in front of her, gnawing on the end of her pencil. The window behind the desk shows thickdrifts of snow dusting down, swirling like a snow globe every time the wind blows.
“I can’t think of anything I’m grateful for,” she says miserably.
I shrug, grabbing my notebook and falling down on my bed, ankle propped on my knee. “So make something up.”
My sister’s pencil scritches for a few minutes, then stops. “Is this a test, or an experiment?”
We have a running theory thateverythingThe Witch tells us to do is some form of test—which we always fail—or an experiment for one of her papers.
I muse over Billy’s question. “This feels like an experiment.”
We prefer experiments to tests because the negative effects are usually delayed.
“Hm.” Sybil tilts her head, then carries on writing.
I do the same, but my mind isn’t on gratitude.
It’s on the smell drifting up from the kitchen.
Roasting turkey. Some kind of herb and butter. Something sweet—pie, maybe?
My stomach cramps until I press my fist against it.
This house is our prison. We aren’t allowed to leave, not even to play outside. Evelyn home schools us, keeps the doors and windows locked, and is so awful to anyone who dares show up unannounced at the door that they never return.
We’ve both learned to survive—mentally and physically—on the scraps she gives us.
I’ve figured out a way to open our bedroom window, but I only risk going out a few hours each night.
I always end my rendezvous with a trip to the corner bakery at the crack of dawn. When I realized their staff arrived at 3am most mornings, I knocked until one of them got annoyed and came to see what I wanted. It’s become a ritual for me to buysome of the previous day’s stale pastries with coins I pilfer from Evelyn’s purse.
So far, Evelyn hasn’t noticed the missing money or my empty bed. Though Sybil always stays awake when I’m out in case our mother does a spot check in the middle of the night.
We shared a brick-hard Danish this morning, but I let Sybil have the powdered donut all to herself because it’s her favorite.
She wolfed it down in three bites.
Our breakfast was a tiny portion of Wheaties with skimmed milk, and half a mushy banana each. Evelyn forgot about lunch and then swept out the door before either of us had scared up the nerve to beg for food.
That’s why this feels like an experiment.
The smells coming from downstairs would have been torturous on a normal day, but to a starving child it feels like hell incarnate.
“I’m drowning in my own spit,” Billy says mournfully from the desk an hour later.
“You can live without food for a week.”
“Can you live without your head?” Billy snaps.
