“Got you!” Rafi had called hardly a second later, and Maria had banged her head on the bed frame in surprise.
The next time Maria had come over to Grandma Esme’s house, she’d stolen away under the bed to see if the seashell was still there. She’d opened the compartment quickly, unable to bear the suspense. The seashell was gone, but in its place was a silver pendant necklace with a purple stone at the end. Underneath the necklace was a note that read: Thank you for finding me! It was signed, The Seashelf.
Maria and Grandma Esme had exchanged many presents like that — an origami crane for a spun yarn bracelet, a poem for a mood ring — but not so much in the past two years. Maria still wore the pendant necklace sometimes.
Now Maria turned to her mom, who clearly thought Grandma Esme had been out of her mind when she’d mentioned the seashelf.
“I know where she means,” Maria said, standing up. “I’ll go check it and be right back.” She wanted to see what was there alone. She needed a moment by herself.
Maria got down on her hands and knees and crawled under Grandma Esme’s bed. She was almost too big to fit all the way.
She removed the false piece of the bedpost and found a brown wooden box. It was not a perfect cube, which made it look handmade. Maria opened the top and came face-to-face with the black spider ring her grandmother always wore. The box trembled in her hands. That the ring was here, in a box on the seashelf, meant that Grandma Esme had taken it off sometime before her heart attack. If a heart attack was what she’d had, which Maria was seriously starting to doubt.
Turning the box over, Maria discovered a second hinge on the back — the bottom of the box must open, too. She was just about to check when her mother’s voice beside the bed made her jump. It was the game of hide-and-seek all over again.
“What is it, Maria? What did she leave you?”
“It’s her spider ring. The one she always wore.”
Maria crawled out from under the bed. Mom’s face was stuck somewhere between a smile and a frown, as if she wasn’t sure how she felt about this gift. As a park ranger, Mom didn’t have the same fear of spiders that Maria did, but she had always thought Grandma Esme’s fascination with them bordered on the unhealthy.
“Well, that was … very nice of her,” she managed.
Maria decided she would check the other side of the box later, at home.
“We need to go pick up your brother,” Mom said. “I just called Rob’s dad and told him what happened. I’m sure your brother is going to be very upset.”
Maria imagined her brother reaching the bottom of the waterslide — imagined Rob’s dad telling him to hop out of the pool and come inside for a second. That was always the way with bad news, it seemed: It came out of nowhere, before you were ready for it.
“Oh, mija-oh-my-a,” Mom said, pulling Maria into a hug. Maria couldn’t help it. She’d started crying again.
That night, Maria’s mom ordered a pizza, and she, Maria, and Rafi sat in the living room not saying much. They’d put on a movie — something funny about a family of tractors who could talk and wanted to move from the farm to the big city — but none of them was really watching it. Rafi kept saying things that started with, “Remember that time when Grandma Esme …” But Maria wasn’t in the mood to reminisce with him. Just for tonight, she wanted to keep her memories to herself.
She must have fallen asleep on the couch at some point, and her mother must have carried her back to her room. At least, when she woke up in her bed, she couldn’t think of how else she’d gotten there. Wondering what time it was, Maria reached for her glasses on her bedside table, but instead her hand closed around the box with the ring. She couldn’t feel her glasses anywhere.
Without her glasses, Maria’s vision was terrible. Her eye doctor had said she was legally blind, but Grandma Esme had always argued that Maria could see everything that mattered.
Maria clutched the ring box to her chest, missing Grandma Esme more than ever. She opened the top and removed the spider ring. She had seen it so many times before, she could almost picture it as she slipped it onto her finger. But the ring in her head was inseparable from its place on Grandma Esme’s hand. This ring, surprisingly, fit Maria’s finger exactly. She wanted to get a closer look, but she didn’t dare try to make her way to the living room in the dark without her glasses.
If only my glasses would come to me, she thought.
No sooner had she thought this than a strange rustling sound, like the swish of two hands rubbing together in the cold, reached her ears. She sat up higher in her bed, and after a tense few moments in which she was certain someone was in the room with her, she suddenly felt a small weight on her legs.
She reached out, trembling, and when her fingers closed around her glasses, she wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or terrified.
“Who’s there?” she whispered, scrambling to put on her glasses. She still couldn’t make out much in the darkness, but, blinking, she thought she saw something moving, like a cascade of shadows pouring in from the hall.
She leaned over and turned on her bedside lamp, then let out a sudden yip. A tiny brown spider with long, thin legs was scurrying down the lampshade. It wasn’t alone.
There were brown spiders everywhere, covering her bedspread, her table, her walls. The shock of it paralyzed her. It was as if her mind was too busy taking in the sight to remind her to scream for help.
And yet, even as she watched, the spiders were moving away from her. A small circle of them were skittering from the spot on her lap where her glasses had been.
Her mind came unstuck. She found her voice.
“Did you … did you just bring me my glasses?” she whispered to the room.
The spiders stopped in their tracks. They turned to face her.
“Can you understand me?” she said. She supposed she should have started with that one.
If the spiders could understand her, they couldn’t seem to reply. But they were standing there still, in rapt attention. And really, that was reply enough.
“I’m sorry if the light scared you,” Maria said. “But to be fair, you scared me first.”
The spiders continued to stare at her.
“All right, I did wish for the glasses to come to me. So … what I mean to say is, thank you.”
At this, the spiders seemed — well, pleased. They resumed their march out of Maria’s room, but not before they had formed a proud sort of pattern on Maria’s wall, like two lines dancing in and around each other. And if, like Maria, they were still a little scared, at least they didn’t seem to be hurrying so much.
When the last of the spiders had gone, Maria breathed deeply and willed her heartbeat to slow. Whatever she’d told them, she’d truly been terrified. If these were the spiders her grandmother had warned her about, she may have been lucky to escape with her life. Had the ring protected her?
Maria looked down at her hand. She hadn’t imagined it; the ring really did fit her perfectly.
Hoping for some further clue, Maria reached for the ring box and brought it up to her eyes. The box was a rich brown wood that had been polished unevenly. Four untidy letters had been scratched into the bottom:
Maria had no idea what the letters meant, and she paused, feeling suddenly like she was prying into a secret that wasn’t hers to know. But her grandmother had wanted her to have this ring and this box. Whatever was inside, it belonged to her now.