Mystery Squishmallow
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I woke up this morning, but before I even opened my eyes I knew it was going to be a terrible day. Something in the air told me so: I could feel the weight of the world pressing down on my shoulders like a great big heavy backpack full of rocks and dead leaves and rotten fish guts that were all sticky with poison from having been dipped in venomous spider eggs.
That’s how much pressure there is out there—that’s why people who live for centuries are always smiling: they have seen the dark side of everything, which gives their faces a certain kind of grim cheerfulness you won’t find anywhere else.
But now that I’m back in New York City living with my mom again, where there aren’t any mountains or forests or caves, the pressure is just as bad as ever. It feels like someone put a bowling ball on top of a pile of books and then sat on them until all the pages ripped away and turned into confetti.
It’s too early to open my eyes yet. The room is still dark outside; just an hour has passed since we came home from seeing the play last night. My bed is soft beneath me. I lie very quietly under the covers, trying not to move at all.
Sometimes when I do this, the pressure goes away, and I can pretend I am in one of those dreamy places you see on television shows set in ancient times: the palace gardens of Versailles or something, where everyone wears fancy clothes and sits around drinking tea while servants wait patiently on them hand and foot.
But it never lasts long: soon the pressure comes creeping back into the room and settles over me like a blanket made of cobwebs.
Still lying there, waiting for my heart to stop racing, I try to imagine what I must look like. If you saw me right now, you would think there was no way I could possibly get out of bed and go to school. What you wouldn’t know is that I’ve woken up feeling perfectly fine every morning for months now.
No more nightmares about the time I was eaten by a giant squid, which used to come roaring out of the sea and grab me by the legs, flinging me across the waves toward the shore. No more dreams of the horrible creature I once accidentally summoned from another universe, because now he’s gone back to where he belongs. And most important: I don’t wake up screaming anymore.
There’s something wrong with my brain—something really wrong—but the problem has nothing to do with my head. In fact, it has nothing to do with anything inside my body.
It has to do with a monster. A squishy little purple monster.
My mom says that if we had been born ten thousand years ago instead of two hundred years ago, I would be burned as a witch and thrown into a dungeon somewhere, but since we grew up in New York City (and because she is my mom), I can walk around without looking over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure no one has tied me to a tree in the woods and is watching me burn.
It’s a good thing we’re living here in New York City because if you lived in the middle of nowhere where no one knew you existed, there are things in the world far worse than witches: you would probably be eaten alive by cannibals, or kidnapped by gypsies and taken to some foreign country where people would force you to run errands and clean their toilets while they laughed and jeered at you and called your name in the streets.
At least I’d probably get fed, though…so maybe I wouldn’t mind being a slave so much. But even in New York City, there are dangers because sometimes monsters come out of the ground and eat people who aren’t careful enough to hide.
I have to tell the truth: there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder if today will be the day I die. Or at the very least, that someone close to me might bite the dust. Because there’s a whole mess of dangerous people out there these days. There’s an evil man who wants to be president of the United States.
He’s called Donald Trump, and he doesn’t seem very bright. But he looks pretty smart next to all the other politicians running against him. I mean, I watched a debate the other night, and all the candidates were bickering with each other, and when it got to Trump, everyone just stared at him for a minute or two.
It reminded me of the time my brother told me that he saw a mouse in our kitchen, and then after a while, he said, “No, it’s gone.” And I thought That’s not how you catch mice.
Anyway, I wish they would just cancel the election and pick someone else to run, but it sounds like no one cares what I want anymore. So I’ll just have to vote for whoever seems the smartest at that moment—though the fact that the candidates seem to keep changing suggests to me that I might need more information before making my final choice.
It also tells me that the world might be full of surprises—not that I’m worried about getting eaten by cannibals or anything. Not that there’s a chance of that.
And besides, there are more immediate problems, like the giant squid lurking somewhere underneath my bed. If I could get to sleep fast enough, I could avoid it completely. But lately, the thing won’t let me rest. It keeps crawling around the bottom of the mattress, moving slowly up and down with its tentacles stretched out and wrapped around the corners.
I feel it watching me from beneath my blankets. Sometimes I imagine it’s sucking the marrow from my bones while I try to fall asleep. When this happens, I lie awake until exhaustion finally hits me, and the next morning, even though I didn’t get any sleep, I can still get out of bed and go to school.
Sometimes, when I get home from school, I start thinking that I should move back to Florida and find a new job working on my dad’s fishing boat. Then again, the way things are going around here, the sea would probably swallow me whole.
So instead of worrying about all these things, I try to focus on my life right now. On things, I can control. Like my favorite books or the TV show I watch. My best friend is a girl named Emma, who is nice and always gives me a ride to school in her car—and she likes to listen to me talk about my imaginary monster under my bed.
The only problem is, sometimes when we’re hanging out at her house or mine, Emma starts telling stories about her own family that remind me too much of my real situation. She was adopted by a couple who wanted children desperately but couldn’t have their own, so she’s lucky compared to me.
Still, I’ve heard Emma tell stories of how her parents were fighting over money issues while they waited in line to adopt her, and how hard it must have been for them to decide which child to take home. I never know if to believe Emma’s stories; they sound so silly.
But she tells the same kind of stories about me—stories that suggest my parents had trouble deciding which child to put up for adoption because they were so fond of both of us.
I don’t tell Emma the truth about my parents—about why they gave me away. Mostly because I’m afraid I’d lose my only ally, but also because I don’t like to think about it, so I don’t really feel comfortable discussing it with anyone, except for Mr. Fiske, and he can’t hear me anyway since he’s dead.
But sometimes I do wonder about other families—other situations where kids are being raised by their grandparents or aunts and uncles or siblings. I wonder how that feels, and whether or not those kids ever worry that they might be adopted or sent off to live with some stranger someday.
It’s strange how little I remember my mother talking to me about my birth parents. We never talked much about anything, and then she went missing and died before I started kindergarten, and I guess it wasn’t something I missed. I mean, I’m sure I miss my mother’s presence as a person in my life, but as far as being connected with my past, I don’t have much of a connection at all.
I know I should be grateful for the life I have, and for my friends who love me. So I tell myself to stop thinking about such things and to look forward to tomorrow night when Mr. Fiske will visit my dreams again, and maybe I’ll learn another piece of information that helps me figure out who my birth parents were—and if I can ever meet them someday.
At least it’s better than imagining the world is filled with monsters and giants.
***
I was supposed to go into my room last week and close the door, so I could practice my breathing, but instead, I sat in front of the television and watched an old episode of Star Trek: Next Generation. It was called “The Inner Light,” and Captain Picard was trying to make contact with his brother, who had died twenty years earlier.
But every time Picard tried to reach out through the Force, or whatever it is, the man kept disappearing, so he decided to come up with an alternate theory about the way death works.
He imagined that people don’t actually die, but just become invisible—which makes sense when you think about it. After all, how can a person disappear forever when there’s no one left alive to see him?
Captain Picard had been hoping he would be able to communicate with his deceased brother, but instead ended up communicating with his dead father—who was also dead. He told the captain about a vision he had of the future, and how he and everyone else on the Enterprise would travel into space and visit distant worlds.
He described a city floating above the clouds, and he said that people living in that city would speak with a strange, high-pitched voice. Then he talked about a place on the moon where people lived underground, and how they made glass out of quartz crystal that glowed brightly in the dark.
And he talked about how people used to wear cloaks and carry spears, and how the land itself spoke to them.
“They call themselves the Anasati,” Captain Picard said. “Their language sounds very similar to yours, though I cannot understand it. They live in caves and tunnels in a mountain range near the equator.”
After listening to the captain’s father describe this strange alien society, Captain Picard felt sure he was right—that what his brother was experiencing was a kind of afterlife. And he was pretty sure that if he reached out to touch his brother, or his father, or any of these other people, they could somehow hear him.
The captain even asked his dad if there was any way that his family could get back from the other side and live on the Enterprise again—to live among these new races and learn their ways. His father replied that they could not return to the physical world and that they could only live in the spiritual realm, but still they were his family.
“We’re all connected,” Captain Picard said. “And the more we learn about each other, the closer we get.”
Then the scene faded in and out, like a dream, until finally the captain was standing in front of his dead mother’s coffin, and his father told him that he would live among the Anasati, too.
“So this is your final voyage,” he said.
It got me wondering about the idea of dying and going somewhere else—whether there is such a thing as a real afterworld, and whether we could ever find our way back here again once we were gone. Do you ever think about that stuff? I know it’s hard for me to imagine because I’ve never met anyone from another world, or even anywhere remotely close to another planet.
Maybe my grandfather was right about how the stories are all just nonsense. If so, there’s probably nothing else that exists except the physical world around us, which is made up of stars and planets, and the people and animals that live on Earth. I hope there’s something beyond that, although I don’t want to be disappointed if it turns out that everything ends in death.
But the truth is, none of us really know what happens next, do we? I’d give anything to see what’s waiting for me when I close my eyes tonight!
***
When I wake up the next day, I’m not surprised to find that the house is cold; it’s been that way since the snow started falling several days ago. But then, that was a sign that winter had come, and Christmas would be here soon.
All the children in the neighborhood were already playing outside and sledding down the hill in the woods behind our house. My brothers had built a bonfire over in the backyard last night, so now we could roast hot dogs while we played hide and seek under the trees, and watch the bright flames dancing in the cold air.
“Hey, look!” my older brother yelled to me when he caught sight of Santa flying low overhead. He pointed to the sky and whispered excitedly, “Did you see that?”
I looked up and saw a bright red glow on top of his sleigh—a fire burning in the shape of a star, glowing in the darkness of space. “How did you catch Santa’s reindeer?” I asked him.
He grinned. “They came home with me last night,” he said. “You’re supposed to feed them carrots!”
The boys from the neighborhood had put out lots of cookies and milk for Santa and the elves, and now he would take the gifts that I had given him to deliver to all the good little girls and boys in the world.
“Where will you go tonight?” I asked him.
He paused for a moment, as though he wasn’t sure how to answer. “To all the kids who believe in Christmas,” he said.
My older brother and I spent a few minutes watching the fire burn before heading back inside. I could smell something delicious cooking on the stove, and I realized that my mom must have been baking all afternoon.
“Mmm . . .” she said when she walked into the room and saw my brothers and me sitting at the table. “Is it lunchtime already?”
She was dressed in her favorite blue velvet dress, and she had added a festive red silk scarf around her neck. She wore long white gloves and an elegant gold necklace. Her hair was tied back in a ribbon, and a pair of round tortoiseshell glasses rested on the end of her nose.
I couldn’t help grinning back at her, but I knew it was no coincidence.
“Santa Claus will be here in a minute,” I told her.
“Well, hurry up and eat your soup,” she said. “Then wash up so we can get dressed. It’s time to leave for church.”
After my brother and I washed our hands, my mom took us both by the hand, and we went upstairs together. We were going to see Father Tom at St. Peter’s Cathedral for Midnight Mass. The entire town would be packed in there tonight, and everyone would hear my mom sing with the choir. Everyone except Dad, that is. He wasn’t very religious.
Father Tom always stood up when he greeted us at the door of his office. “Happy Christmas Eve,” he called out, as we sat down on the benches along the wall. I looked up at the stained-glass windows in the ceiling, each one representing a different saint from the Bible, or from history. They glowed with color in the golden light of the candles that lined the walls.
My dad didn’t say much when we got there. He just listened politely while my mom talked to Father Tom about how many members they should expect to fill the pews tonight.
We left our coats on the bench, then followed the men and women wearing their black cassocks and robes through the front doors of the cathedral, and headed into the nave. My mother stopped in her tracks when we turned the corner and came face to face with Father Tom’s choir, which was practicing nearby.
As I looked out at the group of thirty voices singing hymns, I could tell that my mom was overwhelmed with emotion. Her eyes welled with tears, and she held tightly onto my arm to keep herself steady. She shook her head back and forth as she tried to hold back her cries, and then finally she let loose.
I watched Father Tom walk over to his choir and pat one of the singers on the shoulder. Then he nodded toward me and said loudly, “Your daughter has a beautiful voice, Father!”
That made her laugh. “It’s nice to see you again, Father!” she shouted, wiping her tears away.
He smiled but kept his attention on her as he continued to lead the music. “And you too, Mrs. Darrow.”
Everyone in the congregation began humming the melody together, and I heard a woman say from somewhere behind me, “I wonder what that song is from.”
A short man in a dark suit stepped forward and picked up the book in his hand that was marked with musical notes. “From ‘Gloria,'” he answered quietly. He turned back to Mother and Father Tom and held the book out for them to see. “Here’s a copy of the score for those songs, just like we rehearsed yesterday.”
My mom looked stunned. “You played them exactly right!” she exclaimed. “Amazing!”
Father Tom gave her a smile and winked as he closed the music book with his palm. “Well, we’ll make a great team this week, won’t we?” He walked over to us and handed my mother another book. “This is the Christmas carol you sang last year, in case you want to brush up before tonight.”
As he moved away, my mom turned back to look at him and shake his hand. “Thank you for inviting me,” she whispered, “and for believing in the magic of Christmas.”
Father Tom raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Oh, I think it’s clear by now that it’s not just your family who believes in magic, Mrs. Darrow. That’s why we have so many people here today.”
The End