Hilltop House

Maeve, Two

Where had all the ants come from? They were suddenly everywhere in her bedroom, and it wasn't as if she had any food in there. The moving black sprinkles were mostly near one particular corner, close to the bedroom door, not even the exterior wall. There must've been about fifty to a hundred of them, all skittering about. Getting down on hands and knees, Maeve tried to ascertain their entrance point, but she couldn't quite seem to catch it--one scuttered from under the baseboard, but then another looked to come up from a teensy crack in the floorboards. Another was climbing down the wall, as if it'd come from an electrical outlet. With ants, it was usually pretty simple: locate the point of origin, set out a trap, throw down some diatomaceous earth or spray a bit outside, and they were done. But if she couldn't figure out where they were coming from, she'd just have to get rid of these and hope they hadn't signaled the ones back home yet.

Sighing, Maeve padded barefoot into the hall and toward the kitchen, where she'd placed a ton of household items she hadn't yet had time to find a place for. She grabbed a bottle of 409 and a handful of paper towels and returned to her bedroom, sprayed the gross little things, smooshed and swiped them up, and, after sitting and waiting in vain for any latecomers to show themselves, figured that was good enough for the time being. Battle, won. Victor--Maeve (for the time being).

The ants were easier to deal with than her daughter, anyway. When Maeve re-entered the kitchen to look for some Tylenol, she found Cora sitting at the kitchen table in her black pajamas and her black knee socks, a black beanie hiding her black hair. The stormcloud-of-a-girl had probably been there the whole time, observing, but Maeve had been so hell-bent on getting rid of those ants that she hadn't noticed. Why did Cora always insist on all that dark stuff? She certainly hadn't been raised that way. If she'd so much as cut her hair short, her mother would've slapped her. The one time Maeve had bought a two-piece swimsuit, she'd had to hide it under her bed, and even then, her mother had found it and literally thrown it away (after forcing Maeve to endure one of her frequent, fire-and-brimstoney come-to-Jesus talks). And that one time the old woman had caught Maeve with a smutty romance novel under her pillow? Oh, there were glares and reprimands and disappointed, shaming words for days.

Not that Cora's problems seemed to stem from sex or immodesty. In fact, Maeve would've liked her daughter to actually go make out with some people, maybe get a swimsuit of any kind, do normal teenaged things. But Cora just sat around and sulked, wrote probably strange poems in her beloved journals and brooded like a large crow in all her black clothes. If there had been anyone at all--any romantic interest or even a friend--in the town they'd left behind, Maeve couldn't have named them. In fact, Cora's lack of any connections had made her feel less guilty about moving the girl again. It'd been one of the factors in Maeve's decision to move.

Amongst other things.

Mostly, Maeve had to get away. It'd been a purely selfish motivation, but that didn't mean she hadn't seen good for her daughter in the change. 

"We have to go to your school, today," Maeve remarked, rifling through a plastic tupperware on the counter where she'd thrown a bunch of medications. She knew the topic would be unwelcome.

And it was. Cora groaned, swore, but Maeve decided to ignore that.

"You start next week; I've got to register you."

"Can't you just go, then?"

"No, Cora. You need to get your schedule, and maybe you'd like to have a look around."

"I wouldn't."

Maeve sighed. "Well, whatever. You still have to go." She perked up a bit. "And, hey! Afterward, we can drive around town a little, see what this place is like, all right? I'm sure we can find some café or restaurant, maybe get some lunch."