Chapter 6: All The Strange Things

The kitchen’s back door let them out behind the cafeteria, into gray daylight and the smell of cut grass. Eliana’s clothes dragged at her with every step, and the asphalt was rough and cold under her bare feet. Lexie walked beside her, barefoot too, with her burned hand tucked into the opposite sleeve, looking straight ahead as if nothing had happened.

They rounded the corner of the gym, and there was the whole school. Hundreds of students stood in loose rows across the football field while teachers moved between them with clipboards. Somebody’s phone was playing music. Two fire trucks sat by the front gate, and the firefighters were walking in and out of the building at a very relaxed pace.

“Ms. Barker. Ms. Calloway.”

Mr. Anderson stood at the edge of the field with a roster in one hand and a pen in the other. His shirt was dry and his tie was straight. He looked at the two of them for a moment, then made two small check marks.

“Glad you’re both all right.”

“I’m going to find my band.” Lexie said it to the grass. She didn’t look at Eliana, and Eliana didn’t ask her to.

“Okay.”

Then she was alone, pushing her wet hair behind her ears, and someone was calling her name.

“Eliana!”

Hannah came across the grass at a half run, with Tessa and Emily behind her and Vivian trailing with her phone up. Hannah stopped a step short. Her eyes went from Eliana’s face to her wet hair to her bare feet.

“Why are you soaked?”

“I got turned around in the smoke and ended up in the pool.” Eliana had the sentence ready. She smiled while she said it. “It’s a long story.”

Hannah glanced at Eliana’s hands. They were trembling a little, and Eliana pressed them flat against her wet skirt. Hannah noticed, and for a moment she looked like she wanted to say something about it. Then she pulled her cardigan off and put it around Eliana’s shoulders without a word.

“The pool?” Hannah frowned, puzzled instead of upset. “I swear I saw you across the field a few minutes ago. You waved. I figured you were with your class.”

“I thought so too,” Tessa said. “Weren’t you laughing with somebody by the flagpole?”

“Everyone was mixed together,” Emily said gently. “It was lowkey chaotic.”

“Yeah, maybe you just saw someone else,” Eliana said. “There’s a lot of blondes in this school, not all of them natural though.”

“Huh. Maybe,” Hannah said, and let it go.

“Ms. Barker.” Mr. Bayer came toward them with his clipboard. “There you are. I lost you in the crowd.”

“Sorry, Mr. Bayer. The drill’s been a mess.”

“It certainly has been.” He ticked something off and moved on.

Eliana kept the cardigan where it was. The smile held, and she decided to think about it later.

Lexie’s band found her before she found them. Rodney saw her first and stopped dead, with the kick pedal still tucked under his arm like he’d forgotten it was there.

“Dude. Where are your boots?”

“Around.”

“You’re barefoot. On asphalt.”

“I noticed.”

Ryan and Meghan came up behind him. Nobody said anything for a second, and Ryan looked away first.

“We tried to go back for you,” he said. “A teacher blocked the hall.”

“Rodney tried to fight him,” Meghan said.

“Hey, anything for our vocalist.”

“I called you like six times,” Meghan added. “It went straight to voicemail.”

“Phone died.” Lexie kept her burned hand in her sleeve and held that arm tight against her ribs. “Pool.”

“You took your phone in a pool?”

“It wasn’t a plan.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to hide the pain in her face. “I went looking for you guys, ran into Eliana, and we got stuck. We ended up in the pool.”

“Eliana.” Meghan raised an eyebrow. “Like Eliana Barker, like the Eliana in Hannah and Eliana?”

“She had the exit plan. I had a boot problem.” Lexie shrugged. “Don’t make it a thing.”

“You know this is exactly why we said leave,” Meghan said. “You could have just walked out with us.”

“I heard you.”

“And?”

“And I wanted to finish the verse.”

“The verse,” Rodney said. “She almost drowned for the second verse.”

“I didn’t almost drown.”

“You’re barefoot, Lexie.”

“We told you it was a drill,” Ryan said. “If you’d just come, you’d have a dry hoodie and both your boots.”

“Next time we’re dragging you out,” Meghan said.

“Try it.”

“What’s wrong with your arm?”

“Pulled it. Swimming.”

Meghan looked at her for a moment longer than was comfortable, then let it go.

Across the field, a girl in a borrowed cardigan was laughing at something Hannah said. Her hands were pulled up into the sleeves, out of sight, and nobody standing around her would have guessed anything was wrong.

Under Lexie’s sleeve, her burned hand throbbed against her ribs, one beat at a time. She watched a little longer than she meant to, until Rodney asked if anyone had seen his sticks.

“Practice room,” Meghan said. “Where you left them.”

“They won’t let anyone back in.”

“Then I’ll find a door.” Lexie was already walking. “I need my boots anyway.”

“Get my sticks!” Rodney called after her.

The kitchen’s back door was where they’d left it, shut but not locked. Lexie checked the parking lot, then hauled a chunk of broken concrete over from the edge of the lot and propped the door open with it. She leaned against the wall with her arm held tight against her ribs and told herself she wasn’t waiting for anyone.

Eliana lasted four more minutes. She nodded through Tessa’s theory about why the sprinklers never went off, which involved the principal and a budget meeting, laughed in the right places, and then said she was going to see if the office had spare shoes. Hannah offered to come. Eliana said she was fine, and the cardigan went with her.

She hadn’t planned to meet anyone. The jar was in a kitchen cabinet, her shoes and bag were under a bench by the pool, and the kitchen’s back door was the only way into the building she knew.

Lexie was already there.

“I told them I was getting my boots,” Lexie said.

“I told them I was getting shoes.”

“Weird. Same.”

The kitchen was dim and smelled like wet smoke. Eliana opened the low cabinet, pushed the baking trays aside, and found the jar where she’d left it, lid on, with the salamander curled up dark and still behind the glass. She wrapped it in a dish towel and held it against her chest.

A white first aid kit hung on the wall by the sink. She took it down and set it on the counter.

“Let me see your hand.”

“It’s fine.”

“Then why are you hiding it?” Eliana turned on the cold tap. “Just let me take a look.”

Lexie came. She held her hand under the water and hissed through her teeth, and Eliana kept it there, counting under her breath. In the light, the mark was clearer. The three rings were red and raised, with the bolt running behind them, thin and jagged. Eliana made herself stop staring at it.

“I learned some first aid when Hannah wanted us to become lifeguards over the summer,” she said, when Lexie looked at her. “Cold water, no ice needed.”

“Is that real, or are you making it up?”

“It’s real, basic burn care.” Eliana kept the hand under the tap. “Until the stinging stops.”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“Then you’ll be here a while.”

When the stinging had faded to a dull ache, she cut a square of gauze, laid it over Lexie’s palm, and wrapped the roll loosely around her hand.

“Not too tight,” Lexie said.

“I know.”

Voices came from the back hall. Lexie shut off the tap, and they crouched behind the steel counter while two sets of footsteps went past the round windows in the kitchen doors.

“Faulty wiring, most likely,” a man said. “What I can’t figure out is why the sprinklers never went.”

“They’ve been off since the renovation,” a second voice said. “Somebody was supposed to switch them back on.”

“Somebody.” The first man sighed. “Well. The report says electrical. The principal’s going to love that.”

“Works for me.”

The footsteps faded. Eliana let out a breath, and Lexie rolled her eyes.

They went down the back hall to the pool deck. Eliana’s sneakers were under the bench with her bag on top, and Lexie’s boots lay beside them with the tangled cable. Eliana put her sneakers on and tucked the jar, still in its towel, into her bag. Lexie pulled her boots on one-handed. Behind them, the pool lay flat and cloudy, with a few thin bubbles still rising.

“Lucky the fire didn’t get our stuff, huh,” Lexie said.

“Lucky. My mom would have had a lot of questions about the shoes.”

They went back out through the kitchen, and at the back door they split without discussing it. Lexie went left, toward the band. Eliana went right, and at the corner of the gym she stopped, pushed her hair behind her ear, and put the other voice back on.

Eliana walked home, and it took twenty minutes. Her wet skirt clung to her legs with every step, and the cardigan was the only dry thing on her top half.

Her mother’s car was already in the driveway. The front door opened before she reached the steps.

“Where have you been?” Her mother’s voice cracked halfway through it. She still had her work badge clipped to her blouse and her phone in her hand. “The school sent a text that said all students were accounted for. Accounted for. I called you eleven times. Eleven times!”

“My phone died.” Eliana held it up, and the screen stayed black. “I’m okay, Mom.”

“Why are you wet?”

“The fire was in the hall, so I went into the pool.” It was the third time she’d told this story today. “I stayed in the water until it was clear.”

“You were in a pool during a fire.” Her mother pressed two fingers to her forehead. “I thought...” She stopped and pressed her lips together. “Never mind.”

“Renee.” Her father had come up behind her in the hall, with his tie loosened and a dish towel over one shoulder. He never raised his voice, and he never had to. One stern word from him could quiet a room. “She’s home. Let her get dry.”

Her mother let out a shaky breath and hugged her hard enough to soak through her blouse. Then she let go and said, sharply, “You’re dripping on the floor. Give me your bag.”

“I’ve got it.” It came out too fast. Eliana’s hand tightened on the strap. “I’ll take it up with me.”

Her mother looked at her a second longer than she should have. Then her father said, “Let her go, Ren,” and she did.

Upstairs, Eliana locked her bedroom door and sat down on the floor with her back against it. She unwrapped the dish towel and set the jar on the carpet in front of her. The salamander lay curled up behind the glass, dark and small. She watched it until one of the orange cracks along its back pulsed, faintly, and went dark again.

Her hands had started shaking. There was nobody left to hide it from, so she let them.

Later she put the jar on the top shelf of her closet, behind a stack of sweaters. Then she sat back down against the door and looked at it for a long time.

“It was on her hand,” she said quietly. “The exact same thing. He drew it a hundred times, and I thought it was just a doodle.”

The salamander didn’t answer. Her voice had gone thick, and she cleared her throat.

“And it’s going to happen again. Whatever this is.” She wiped her face with the back of her wrist. “I can’t keep standing there next time.”

She got Tommy’s notebook out of the BIRDIE tin, sat back down against the door, and flipped past that first page of symbols.

She turned to the page she’d never been able to read. It was a wall of chicken scratch: arrows, half-words, a column of numbers, a drawing that might have been a door. Between two of the arrows, in smaller handwriting, someone had written a few lines like the start of a song. Next to them he had scribbled “fast, 4/4, no bridge” and circled the last line twice.

hungry little coaleats up all the airscrew the lid on tightand see if it’s still there

Tommy had known about this.

She couldn’t make out anything else on the page. Tommy had always written like this. He’d say the words were for him and the pages were for later, and she’d never asked who later was.

“Okay,” she said to the empty room. “Okay, Tommy. Help me out.”

Nothing helped. Most of it was illegible. She closed the notebook, held the pick in her fist until her fingers stopped shaking, and went down to dinner.

Lexie’s house smelled like garlic and the heater. Her dad was at the stove with a spatula in one hand and a phone wedged against his shoulder, and he looked up when the door opened.

“There she is. You didn’t answer your phone for three hours. Your mom was about to put a trace on you.”

“Phone died. Pool.” She kept the sleeve down and the arm against her side. “Long story.”

“You took your phone for a swim?”

“It wasn’t on purpose.”

“Pool.” He shook his head, the way you do at weather. “Dinner’s in ten.”

Her mom was at the kitchen table with a mug she wasn’t drinking from. She had been like that for two weeks, there in the room but a little behind it. She looked at Lexie for a moment, at the damp hair, the boots, the sleeve. She didn’t ask. She stood up, hugged her, held on a beat too long, and let go.

“Eat something,” she said, and sat back down.

It was easier than Lexie expected, but it was also worse. She expected her mom to have hundreds of questions for her, but it was like she was barely even there.

Upstairs, she shut the door and turned on the desk lamp instead of the ceiling light. She peeled back the gauze. The bracelet had been hot enough to brand the back of her hand, and the charms lay perfectly clean against her wrist. In the lamplight, the mark looked deeper than it had in the kitchen: three rings and the bolt behind them, red at the edges, as if someone had pressed a stamp into her.

She had drawn that same symbol on her own wrist in Sharpie, the way Cece used to. It had washed off in the shower. This one wasn’t going anywhere.

The notebook was where she’d left it, on the shelf behind her old yearbooks, with Cece’s index card still tucked in the back. She had told herself for two weeks that she would read it when she was ready. What she’d meant was that she was afraid of opening it and finding nothing. Two sentences about groceries. A dead woman’s doodles.

She’d been chased through a burning school today. A thing made of fire had come at her friend’s face. She had nothing left to be afraid of.

Lexie sat on the bed with the notebook in her lap and held it closed for a moment longer. Then she opened it.

Cece’s handwriting was small and neat, the way it was on birthday cards. Page after page, in careful columns, with the same symbol in the corners. She read the first line, then the second, and by the fifth she had stopped breathing.

In the margin, in a smaller hand:

Lexie read it twice. T. Cece had known someone who wrote songs about fire monsters, and she had never said a word.

She turned the page. Then the next one. Supernatural creature after supernatural creature. She would’ve thought it was all just make-believe, if she hadn’t seen that salamander curl up in a jar a few hours ago.

Under the lamp, the clock on her desk turned over to midnight, and she didn’t notice.

The school opened on Friday as if nothing had happened. The stairwell door by the gym had a strip of yellow tape across it, and a janitor was scrubbing something off the baseboard in the east hall. There was a laminated sign taped to the front office window: ELECTRICAL FAULT. CLASSES AS NORMAL.

Eliana got to her locker forty minutes early. She checked down the hall both ways, then slid the jar out of her bag, wrapped it in her gym hoodie, and pushed it to the back of the top shelf behind her chemistry binder. The salamander didn’t move. She shut the door, spun the dial twice, and stood there with her hand flat against the metal for a moment.

“Thanks for yesterday.”

Emily was standing a few feet away with her books against her chest and a small, shy smile.

“What?”

“During the drill. When I was crying by the fence, and you came over and talked to me for a bit.” Emily’s smile widened. “I didn’t think anyone noticed. It really helped.”

Eliana opened her mouth and heard her own voice say, “Of course. Anytime.”

“I knew you’d say that.” Emily squeezed her arm and left.

Eliana stayed where she was, with her hand still on the locker. She had not talked to Emily by any fence. She had been in a kitchen, watching a burn, wrapping a roll of gauze.

“You look like you saw a ghost.”

Lexie was leaning on the lockers two doors down, dark circles under her eyes and her left hand shoved deep into her hoodie pocket. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all.

“I feel like I’m looking at one now,” Eliana said, too quickly. “How’s the hand?”

“It stings.” Lexie glanced down the hall. Her voice dropped. “I didn’t sleep. I found something that describes it. The thing from yesterday, exactly like it was.”

Eliana’s stomach tightened. “Where?”

“Some notes I got. They’re full of that kind of thing.” Lexie shrugged, like it was nothing. “I don’t know if more will show up, but I got a notebook full of them.”

“I have some too.” It came out before she could decide whether to say it. “My uncle’s. Most of it doesn’t make sense, but one line did.”

“Yeah?” For the first time, Lexie looked straight at her. “Then we should compare. I’m guessing there’s stuff in yours I need, and the other way around.”

“After school, then.” Eliana tucked her hair behind her ear. “Somewhere quiet.”

“My place. Behind the music wing.”

“Somewhere less visible.” It came out before Eliana could stop it, and Lexie’s face closed like a door.

“Right. Wouldn’t want anyone to see you with the punk.” She pushed off the lockers. “Fine. Your pick. Text me.”

“Our phones are dead.”

“Then tell me now.”

Eliana looked at her, then at the hall filling with people who were all looking, not at them, but at her, the way they always did. She hated that she was calculating.

“The bike racks behind the gym,” she said. “After the last bell.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know yet. Somewhere we can talk.”

“Fine.” Lexie turned away. “Strictly business.”

“Strictly business,” Eliana said to her back.

The bike racks behind the gym were nearly empty by the last bell. Eliana got there first. She’d stopped at her locker on the way, and the jar, still wrapped in her gym hoodie, sat heavy at the bottom of her bag. A minute later Lexie came around the corner of the building with her hood up and her good hand in her pocket.

“So,” Lexie said. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t really know.” Eliana looked at the empty lot. “Anywhere with a door, I guess.”

“My band’s basement is free until six. Nobody goes down there but us.”

“Rodney lives there.”

“Rodney lives upstairs.”

“Rodney lives in the same house.” Eliana tried to keep her voice even. “Whatever’s after us found us in a school full of people. I don’t want it finding him.”

Lexie opened her mouth, then closed it. Her shoulders came down a little.

“Okay. Fair.” She scuffed her boot against the curb. “This morning I figured you just didn’t want anyone seeing you with me.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” It came out too quickly, and Eliana made herself slow down. “I’m sorry. It came out wrong.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” Lexie unzipped her bag and took out a small, battered notebook. She didn’t hand it over. She held it against her chest with the cover toward herself. “Show me yours first.”

Eliana got out Tommy’s notebook and opened it to the wall of chicken scratch. Lexie leaned in, read the song fragment, and went very still.

“Hungry little coal.” She said it flatly. “That’s the same thing. That’s the same creature.”

“Yours says what it is?”

“Mine says what it is. Nothing about how to stop it.” Lexie turned a few pages in her own notebook, found one, and held it where Eliana could see only the margins. “There’s a place in here. Not an address. A neighborhood. East of the rail yard, by the river, where all the old warehouses are. Somebody kept a room there. That’s all it says.”

“Somebody? Who?”

“It just says T.”

Eliana looked up. “T,” she said again, quieter. “Like Tommy. That’s my uncle.”

Lexie stared at her. “Then they knew each other.”

“Looks like it.”

Neither of them said anything for a second. Then Eliana looked back down and started flipping through Tommy’s pages, past the arrows and the half-words, and her eye caught on a column of numbers she had assumed was a phone number. It wasn’t. Beside it, in the same cramped hand, were two lines:

key lives on the sixth stringthe fat one. birdie knows

“Lexie. It’s a street number.” She turned the notebook around. “And that’s where he hid the key.”

Lexie read the two lines twice. “Sixth string. Like a guitar?”

“The low E. The thick one.”

“So the key’s in a guitar.”

“I don’t think there’s a guitar.” Eliana frowned at the page. “‘Birdie knows.’” She said it slowly. “I don’t know anything.”

Lexie glanced at her. “Birdie?”

“That’s what he called me.”

“Okay, so what do you know?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem.”

Lexie looked at the page, then at her. “You can read this? I can barely tell the 7s from the Ls.”

“Some of it.”

Something stirred at the back of her mind. A green door. The smell of machine oil. A man crouching in front of her, a hand on her shoulder. Birdie, wanna see something?

“I’ve been there,” she said. “I think I’ve been there. When I was really small.”

“With him?”

“He told me it was a secret. He said nobody else in the family would understand it.” Her voice caught, and she cleared her throat. “He said it proved something.”

Lexie was quiet for a second. Then she shoved her notebook back into her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

“It’s three-thirty,” she said. “We could be there by four.”

“We don’t have bus fare. Our phones are dead.”

“I’ve got my wallet.” Lexie pulled out a handful of crumpled bills. “Strictly business. Come on.”

Eliana picked up her bag, felt the jar shift against her ribs, and followed.