Hidebehind

Four

I found my sister playing paper dolls in the fancy room. We called it the fancy room because it was full of Great Grandma's nice stuff. It was this long room behind the front room, and it had some couches and chairs in it that looked like they were made out of some rich people's curtain fabric. The carpet was all green and felt good on your bare toes, because it was soft from not being walked on too much. There were several big pieces of furniture—big bookcase-like things—that held so many pieces of glass you couldn't even count them. There were cups and pitchers and trays and they all looked expensive. There were also two organs in there, one big one and one that was kind of small and had all sorts of push-buttons. I remembered trying to play it a long, long time ago, when I was just a kid. But I didn't want to play it anymore.

Penny was sort of hard to spot. The room was dark because these big dark green, velvet drapes and then lace curtains covered the windows. There was a lamp on an end table turned on, though, so I went toward it, and there I found my sister, crouched down, playing with some paper dolls.

I sat down on the sofa and leaned over the arm of it to look down at her. "What're you doing?" I asked.

She wasn't startled in the least. "Nothing," she said, not even looking up at me, still playing with her dolls.

I didn't like this room. It was haunted-feeling. I took a look at all the glass, just sitting there on the shelves and the furniture—even the dining room table was covered in glass things. And they were all so quiet, like they were watching us. Or like they were waiting for us to just try and break one and then we'd see what'd happen. I bet spiders and centipedes were hiding all up inside of them.

"Why are you in here?" I asked Penny, still looking around the room as if I was trying to scout out shadows in the corners.

"I like it," she said distractedly.

"Why?"

"It's like a princess's room."

I glanced around again, unconvinced. It was just a dim, creepy place with lots of junk and cobwebs. "Whatever." I let it go, but I sat and watched Penny play for a little bit, maybe hoping she'd stop and ask me to get out a board game or some cards. I was so bored. But she just kept playing with her paper dolls, moving them back and forth and talking so quietly to herself that I couldn't even hear it.

I shivered involuntarily. Penny noticed.

"You cold?"

"No. So what if I was, anyhow?"

"Just asking."

"I met this kid outside."

"Oh yeah?" She still wouldn't look up at me. Didn't even seem too interested.

"Yeah. Name's Jay. Says he goes to school here." I sniffed, giving her space to say something, but she didn't feel like it, I guess. "Well, I thought he was kind of weird. Wanted to go exploring and everything. We looked all over this whole old farm, in the barn and the silo and the pond—"

"Great Grandma says there's snakes around that pond," she interrupted as if waiting for me to get to that point just so she could nag.

I scowled. Penny was still making motions with her dolls. "Yeah?" I plopped back hard against the couch. "That old raisin doesn't know much of anything. Didn't see a single snake the whole time." And then I got up and left the room, pretty annoyed to be paid so little attention.

We had lunch a little later, and then there was totally nothing to do for the whole rest of the afternoon. I had never been so bored in my entire life. All the books Great Grandma had were so old their pages fell out when I opened them, and she got only three television channels, all of which had periodic bouts of fuzz and static. I almost wished I had some homework to do, which is indicative of just how horrible real boredom can be. Finally, at about four o'clock, I decided to try to find someone to play a board game with me. Penny was still too absorbed in her paper dolls to be convinced, and Great Grandma was doing something out in the yard. That left Grandpa, who had been sitting in the den with me for about two hours, reading the same page of the newspaper the whole time.