“Okay. But you’d tell me if your dad was a werewolf, right?”
“No, probably not. It’s not a full moon, though, so I think we’re okay.”
BREAKFAST WAS JUST the two of them. Annie wasn’t sure what part of the house Susan and Todd slept in—there were only a couple of options, really—but wherever it was, they hadn’t emerged yet. That was provided Todd wasn’t out wandering somewhere.
Annie wasn’t sure Susan’s diet even involved food. It certainly didn’t involve condiments.
After breakfast, they returned to the Super to pick up more things, and then back to the house. It was late afternoon when Violet asked Annie if she wanted to help in the garden that Annie realized her best friend in the world was impossibly boring in her natural habitat.
“Sure, I’d love to garden,” Annie lied.
She did a lot of the gardening at her own house because her mother wasn’t strong enough to do everything, but they only grew one crop. She was admittedly curious about what a garden that grew something other than marijuana might look like, but not curious enough to get her hands dirty.
Nonetheless, that was what she ended up doing. It was that or try and find a book to read in the library, but that would have meant getting past Susan, who’d taken the time while they were out shopping to decamp in there once more.
First, Annie tried getting on the Internet. She brought a laptop from home, and knew Violet had one as well, yet when Annie tried connecting to the Wi-Fi, the computer kept failing. So did her phone. Yet with the same password, Vi’s worked fine.
When she asked Violet to help her figure out what was wrong, she said she’d talk to Todd the next time she saw him. When Annie followed that up by asking if she could use Vi’s computer instead, she said, “I’d rather you didn’t,” without elaboration.
Annie wasn’t sure what the big deal was.
Like most Sorrow Falls kids, Annie had only a limited social media presence as herself. (Many of them, she was sure, had pseudonymous identities, although she didn’t.) From the day the ship landed onward, pretty much anyone online who could be identified as a denizen of space invasion ground zero was a target.
Annie kept her public profile low and her interactions few, and gossiped face-to-face instead. But that didn’t mean the Internet wasn’t an excellent way to keep track of the rest of the world, especially from her tiny corner of it. She knew Violet treated the Internet much the same way, albeit with an even lower profile. She couldn’t imagine doing anything on her friend’s computer that Violet would disapprove of.
By late Sunday, then, Annie had literally nothing better to do than work in the garden.
Violet’s garden was a lot larger. It took up enough of the plot in the back of the house to nearly qualify as a proper farm, Annie decided. It was a gross exaggeration, but she was sticking with it, especially after an hour into the weeding. She and Vi did this mostly in silence, broken by periodic “is this a weed or are you growing this intentionally?” conversations brought about by Annie’s general unfamiliarity with vegetable plants.
Todd walked by about eighty minutes in. He came from the woods and headed right through the center of the garden, not apparently noticing either of them.
“Hi, Todd,” Violet said.
“Hello,” he answered, without turning. He went inside.
Annie decided yes, he was exactly as creepy-weird as he seemed the night before.
“Hey, do you remember a lot about your birth dad?” Annie asked.
Vi seemed taken aback by the question. Maybe it was the timing of it—Todd having just walked past—or that it hadn’t been a subject of discussion for a long time. Mostly, Annie was just looking for something to talk about.
She and Vi had been friends for six years. They were perhaps two years into that friendship when Annie became aware of something that would have been obvious sooner to someone with an adult-level grasp of genetics: Violet didn’t look anything like Susan or Todd. It was another two months before she brought it up.
The short version of the explanation was that Violet was adopted. The longer version was that her birth father was a scary man. It wasn’t something twelve-year old Annie ever thought to ask, but there were times when she wondered if the Joneses weren’t living in isolation entirely by choice.
“Objection,” Violet said.
“Grounds?”
“Irrelevance.”
“The court recognizes your objection but asks that the witness respond to the line of inquiry.”
“Annie, you can’t be the attorney and the judge at the same time.”
“Overruled.”
Violet sighed, but was unwilling to face a contempt of court charge.
“I remember a lot about him. Why do you ask?”
“I dunno. Part of me always imagined you were secretly in witness protection up here. And your dad was some mobster and you testified against him.”
“That’s a good story.”
“Thanks, I’ve been working on it for a while.”
“It’s not true, but it’s still a good story.”
Annie threw a chunk of dirt at Vi.
“C’mon, it makes so much sense!”
“You think that’s the answer to why we live up here? The home-schooling, the macro diets, all that?”
“Yes!”
“Sorry. Todd and Susan wanted a certain kind of life and built that life, and I happened to agree with their choices. I like it out here.”
“All right, fine, if he’s not in the mafia, what’s his deal? Is he the president? Is your dad the president?”
“Like Grover Cleveland’s love child? Yes, that’s exactly it.”
“I’m gonna throw more dirt.”
“You make everything so complicated. He isn’t anybody. He just wanted me to have a different kind of life than this. That’s all.”
“And you aren’t hiding from him.”
“I’m not hiding from him. That doesn’t mean I ever want to see him again, either. He had a temper… Annie, I really don’t want to talk about him. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I was just looking for something more interesting than gardening to talk about.”
“There is nothing more important than gardening.”
“I object.”
“Overruled.”
SUNDAY NIGHT WAS SPENT SOMEWHAT NORMALLY, in terms of their friendship: movie night, featuring The Wizard of Oz. There were a hundred plus films from which to choose sitting in Annie’s living room at home, but they all required a VCR, which Violet didn’t have. They agreed that going over to Annie’s to watch something else would end up with them being tempted to just stay overnight there and return in the morning.
Perhaps Ed’s somewhat paranoid concern was rubbing off on Annie, but she decided even if Susan gave them a pass it still wasn’t okay. In case something happened. Nothing was going to happen, but once it was in her head she couldn’t get rid of the idea.
Violet had a copy of her favorite film in a format even older than VCR: she had an honest-to-God 8mm movie theater copy of it, and a movie projector to watch it on. It meant projecting it on the wall of Vi’s bedroom, and changing the reel halfway through, and dealing with the crappy speakers on the projector—so actually, every aspect of the experience was inferior to every other way they’d watched it—but it was fun. It was a new experience, and even though she’d seen the movie a hundred times by now, the technology gave her a chance to pretend it was a new adventure.
Monday was the worst day. There was no more shopping to do, and no more gardening to get done, and Violet couldn’t get the Wi-Fi to let Annie’s devices in. After two hour-long conversations with Carol, Annie gave up and wandered into the library—ignoring Susan—for long enough to grab whatever book she thought might be worth an hour or two of her time. It ended up being a collection of Lovecraft stories.