The New House
"Be careful with that! It’s important!" Twelve-year-old Bailey Sullivan danced around the moving man who carried a medium-sized box marked "fragile". "It’s going up to my room." She led the way.
Downstairs, her mother stood in the front hallway, directing the destination of boxes and furniture. Bailey’s brother, Joe, carried a big bag of clothing up to his room. Her sister, Shelley was in her own room already setting up her stereo.
When the mover had set the box down in Bailey’s room, she pushed it carefully out of the way. She wouldn’t unpack it until the rest of her room was ready and her special shelves were attached to the wall. She hoped it wouldn’t be too much longer, but there were still a lot of boxes to come out of the moving van.
Her bedroom window looked out over the back yard, and she couldn’t see the van from here. Music came from Shelley’s room. The stereo was working. Shelley turned the volume up and came out.
"There. Now we have music to unpack to. Go me!" She grinned at her younger sister and headed downstairs. Bailey ducked quickly into Shelley’s room and looked out the window. From here, she could see the movers carrying part of her bed up the front walkway to the door. She ran to supervise.
"Bailey! Leave the movers alone!" Her mother’s voice came from the kitchen. "In fact, come in here. I have a job for you."
Bailey sighed and went into the kitchen. "I just want to make sure they put all my stuff into my room," she said.
"Shelley’s doing that and Joe is helping to carry in the big stuff, so you just come in here with me and make yourself useful." Mrs. Sullivan’s tone was one that meant business. Bailey went into the kitchen.
Mrs. Sullivan’s set her to work unpacking the pots and putting them in the lower cabinets while Mrs. Sullivan herself unpacked the boxes of dishes and groceries. The refrigerated food had already been put away, the freezer compartment empty until the first trip to the nearest grocery store. Before long, the moving boss came into the kitchen.
"We’re all done, Missus," he said. "You want to take a quick look, make sure it’s all here?"
Mrs. Sullivan unwrapped a coffee cup and put it in the cupboard. "Be right there." She turned to Bailey. "If you’re done with the utensils, could you take over here? I’ll be right back."
"Sure, Mum," said Bailey, feeling somewhat Cinderella-ish. It would be nice to see some work out of Joe and Shelley besides the music drifting down the stairs. And no matter what Mum said, Joe was probably in his room already playing on his Game Cube, while she, Bailey, was busy setting up the entire kitchen. She’d probably have to help cook supper, too, the way things were going.
She set the last teaspoon in the drawer, closed it and went to unpack the rest of the cups. One of the boxes held their special seasonal mugs—Christmas, Hallowe’en, Easter and others—one for each member of the family. These usually went on the top shelf out of the way and were taken down for each occasion, kept out for a week or so and then put back until next year. Bailey unwrapped the first one and reached to put it on the shelf.
"Ah, pooey," she said, when she realized she wasn’t quite tall enough to push the mug to the back of the shelf. She climbed up onto the counter, steadied herself by holding onto the upright between the cupboard doors and reached for the mug. She pushed it toward the wall. It moved a short distance and stopped.
"What the--?" She craned her neck and looked into the cupboard. Something was on the shelf behind the mug. She moved the mug out of the way and groped for the something. Her fingers closed around another cup, smaller than the mug and made of plastic. She pulled it out and looked at it. It was a child’s cup with a picture of a popular cartoon character on it—one of her favourites. "Hey! I remember when these came out. Rad!" She put it on the counter, thinking she would have to ask her mother where she had gotten it. Or maybe it had been left behind by the old owners. Mum would probably want to call the real estate agent and find out where they went. Maybe they’d want it back, but maybe their kid had outgrown it. If so, well, finders, keepers.
She had just finished putting away the holiday mugs when her mother came back into the kitchen with Joe and Shelley trailing behind her.
"What are you doing up there?" asked Joe.
Bailey waved the mug shaped like a leprechaun’s face, the handle a shamrock tucked jauntily into the hat band and curving back to touch his shoulder. "What’s it look like?" She put the mug on the shelf, closed the door and jumped down.
"Okay, guys," said Mrs. Sullivan. "Don’t start on each other already, okay? It’s been a long day and I’m not in the mood. So—what’ll we do for supper? Pizza or burgers or what? I’m not cooking anything tonight and I’m too tired to go out anywhere, so we’re going to order in. Who wants what?"
Shelley dug out the phone book they had found earlier in one of the kitchen drawers. She began flipping through the yellow pages.
"Weren’t there some flyers and junk in one of the drawers?" asked Joe. He opened a drawer at random, looked inside and closed it again. He opened another.
"I threw them out," said Mrs. Sullivan. "They looked pretty old."
Joe looked in the recycling bin. "Here they are," he said. "Good thing there’s no wet crud in there yet." He sorted through the flyers. "There’s a Chinese food place, a chicken place, pizza and a Mexican place."
"Chinese!" said Bailey. "We haven’t had Chinese in ages."
Joe shrugged. "Chinese is okay with me. Food is food." He flipped the menu open. "Hmmmm. Uh, Shelley, look this one up, okay? This is hardcore old. Look at the prices." He passed it to Mrs. Sullivan.
She looked at the price list and laughed out loud. "Holy cow! No kidding. I don’t think you can even get an egg roll for this anymore. Shel? Is it still in business?"
Shelley’s finger wandered down the page of restaurants. "Honey Bee. Yup. Looks like it."
"Do they take credit cards on delivery?" Mrs. Sullivan took her wallet out of her purse and looked inside. "I’m kind of low on cash at the moment."
"Yup. What’ll we get?" They read over the menu, hoping that all the selections they wanted were still available. Mrs. Sullivan gave her cell phone to Shelley to place the order, while the rest of them got out plates and utensils. Joe picked up the cartoon character mug on the counter.
"Hey, Bailey, where’d you get this?"
"I found it in the top cupboard. Mum, do you know where it came from?"
Mrs. Sullivan looked over. "Probably got left here by the Jamiesons," she said. Her face clouded over.
"Can I keep it?" Bailey asked. "I mean, if they don’t want it back or anything."
"They’d’a’ taken it with them if they’d’a’ wanted it," said Joe.
"But it was way in the back," said Bailey. "Maybe they missed it when they were packing. Maybe their kid really wants it back." She saw her mother exchanging looks with Shelley and Joe. "Okay, what am I missing? Who’s holding out on me? What’s going on? You guys are being weird, even for you."
Mrs. Sullivan came across the room and took the cup from Joe. She turned it in her hands and stared at the bright yellow sponge on the side. A pink starfish stood beside the sponge. "Maybe we should just throw it out," she said.
"But Mu-u-u-u-u-u-um," Bailey whined. "It’s collectible. It’ll be worth money some day. You can’t throw it out. I really want it. Pleeeeease?"
"I don’t know. It’s--" Mrs. Sullivan’s voice trailed away. She looked at her sixteen-year-old son.
"It’s creepy," he said.
"Why is it creepy?" Bailey was determined to find out what was making her family act so strange.
"Because the kid who used to live here disappeared a couple of years ago, that’s why," said Shelley. She put the cell phone on the counter.
"Shelley!" Mrs. Sullivan sounded more than a little annoyed.
"What? She’s going to find out sooner or later. I mean, you know the kids at school are going to talk about it. Do you want her to hear about it from them or us? Oh, and the food will be here in about 45 minutes." Shelley stared at her mother.
Bailey looked from Shelley to Mrs. Sullivan to Joe and back to Mrs. Sullivan. "A kid disappeared? From this house? So, like, how?"
"Can we talk about this later?" Mrs. Sullivan looked definitely upset. Bailey considered her options. She could press her mother on the point, and probably end up being sent to her room to work on setting it up until supper arrived, or she could shut up now and then pump Shelley for all she’d spill later on. Shelley would blab it all; she could tell. Shelley was eighteen and in her last year of high school. Mostly, she ignored Bailey and her friends, but now, what with the new house and all, and all of them being new to the town, Shelley would be more likely to spend time with Bailey until they had made their own friends.
"Fine, okay. We’ll talk later," said Bailey in her best martyr tone. "I mean, it’s okay. Move me into a house where people are abducted and don’t warn me, or anything. It’s fine."
"Bailey!" Mrs. Sullivan glared for a minute, then turned to her other children. "Let’s at least get the TV and DVD player set up. We can eat in the living room and watch a movie or something. Might as well get as comfortable as we can."
They trooped into the living room, and with the four of them working together, soon had the furniture arranged and all the important entertainment items hooked up and ready to go. Bailey pulled movies out of a box and passed them to Joe, who passed them to Shelley, who put them away on the shelving units. Mrs. Sullivan unpacked the hardcover books and arranged them on other shelves. When supper arrived, the living room was looking more like home and less like a disaster area. They served up their meals at the kitchen table, then took their plates into the living room to sit and eat, the movie largely unwatched as it unfolded on the screen.
After supper, they cleaned up and went upstairs to work on the bedrooms. Food was good, but they all needed a place to sleep as well. Joe and Shelley had set up all the beds while Bailey had been putting away dishes, and all that remained to be done was to pick the right spot for her bed and to put on sheets and blankets. She brushed her teeth, put on her pyjamas and crawled into bed. Just before she fell asleep, she remembered that she had meant to ask Shelley about the kid who had disappeared. Tomorrow would be soon enough. She slipped into sleep, and as she slept, she dreamed.
