Forgot where we began? Traipse on back to part 1:
Mia settled in the nook of the couch, plucked out her eyes, and handed the pair and the dolls over.
Lenny froze as she cradled everything in her hands. Mia had always forbidden her to touch any of these things.
Mia kicked her. That spurred Lenny, quick-like. She tried not to think about the squishy surface of Mia’s eyes rolling in her palm as she walked them to their jar. She didn’t even want to look down at them. Mia hated when people watched her for too long. And Lenny wouldn’t be caught staring at her eyes. “Only people who want something from you watch you,” Mia liked to remind Lenny, usually after Mia knocked her upside the head. It was the first thing Mia had said to Lenny when she’d found her alone at the bus station.
Of course, Lenny had been begging for food.
Mia had brought Lenny to her house, and since then, Lenny’s only job was to find others like herself—kids who roamed the city and tried to blend into public spaces like libraries, pretending to do homework. And malls. Sometimes parking garages or the edges of parks after closing. But most of them? She picked them out at train and bus stations, before they could settle into a street family.
They just had a certain look about them.
A solemn face popped into Lenny’s mind, and she tried to push it out. Something about completing the ritual—dooming the doll by throwing it in the fire—felt different from just leading the doll here.
Lenny dropped Mia’s eyes back in the jar and slipped the dolls into her pocket. She couldn’t help but touch them every now and then, make sure they were still there. This could be the only time to fiddle with them freely. Without having to worry about Mia’s ever-watchful eyes. She caressed the wax heads after balling up some sheets of old newspaper, again after arranging small sticks over the crumpled paper that she used to form a small teepee, and finally after placing the logs in the fireplace. She groaned before she lit the paper at the bottom with a struck match. Nobody needed a fire in August. The house was going to be sweating.
As the fire picked up, she thumbed the dolls once more, promising herself that this time would be the last time. They were already starting to melt a bit as her fingers brushed past the fresh doll’s head, right where a knot of hair lodged around its neck.
Alice’s name came to her cleanly, no “maybe” this time, and she shuddered. Had Alice been willing? Or was Lenny simply telling herself that to feel better about scooping up the little girl who’d arrived with a one-way ticket out of a bad home situation?
Lenny turned around to face Mia, intending to weasel out of the task somehow. Mia’s unnatural stillness gave her pause.
“Mia?”
The old bat didn’t answer, so she raised her voice. “Mia!”
Nothing.
“Monster,” she risked whispering.
Lenny crept close to her and placed her head on Mia’s chest, listening to the quiet underneath. When she looked up at her, she saw scales underneath Mia’s chin that she’d never noticed before. She tickled the area, surprised to find the skin smooth and cool to the touch.
Lenny sprang backward, in case Mia woke up swinging.
Mia did not budge. She was dead all right. There was no bargain to get out of because the dead didn’t have a say.
Lenny wondered, just for a second, what thirteen would feel like. Pierced ears, maybe. A record player of her own, even though nobody had those anymore. Then she told herself to stop, because that was how they got you.
As if Mia could see Lenny’s thoughts somehow, Lenny risked a glance back at the eyes she had dumped in the jar. They had become blank orbs, missing irises and pupils like misshapen eggs boiled for too long. A grayish-blue film crept at their edges.
Lenny rose, looking around at the piles of old bags in the corner. More of them than she’d ever let herself count. There were nylon backpacks on top, canvas bags underneath, and at the very bottom, her own cardboard suitcase that had gone soft at the corners. A palmetto bug scuttled out when she forced the latch. Her old bus ticket was right where she’d left it, the ink faded to the color of a weak herbal tea. With that in hand, there was nothing else left for her here. She squeezed Mia’s hand gently—just as smooth and cool to the touch—and trudged toward the cave.
Alice was wedged in the corner, a phone with a cracked screen in her lap. It had been dead since Lenny had plucked her from the station. When Lenny stepped in, Alice burned an angry look at her.
“So, you’re one of them too,” Alice said.
“One of who?”
“The people who let me down.”
“No. I-I mean…Well, I guess I was.” Lenny paused and glanced down the hall. “You’re free to go.”
“Why? Feeling rotten all of a sudden?”
Lenny stepped aside from the doorframe. “The old lady is dead. And there’s nothing I need you for.”
Alice squinted at her, then got up and walked by with a look that said she’d launch herself onto Lenny’s shoulders and tear at her head until it was a bloody pulp if this were yet another entry on her long list of disappointments.
But life was hard and often sucked. And the sooner Alice figured that out, the better things would be for her. They were all born in a world full of people—and things—that could hurt them. Being hopeful out here was almost delusional.
Hope was for suckers.
It was strange to see Alice walk the hallway without Lenny having to escort her. Lenny had lured in too many dolls, and too many she had led out, holding their wrinkled hands. She would dump them somewhere in the city, their cloudy eyes unable to comprehend how the years had been stolen from them with whatever Mia had set upon them. Or rather, taken away.
What would Alice have looked like had her doll gone in the flames, Lenny wondered. She could see gray hair framing skin that drooped from Alice’s high cheekbones. Alice wouldn’t totter, though. Her gait would still be proud somehow, moving in a way that belied her weakened body if only out of spite.
But the girl in front of Lenny still had brown hair, and she moved like someone late for something.
Ahead of them, something dragged across the living room floorboards, dry as paper.
Lenny heard the scream before she registered what had happened.
A great, big serpent had filled the doorway between the hall and the living room. It lunged for Alice. The girl didn’t even have time to run. The snake’s teeth landed in her shoulder. The natural curve of its body formed its first loop around Alice’s legs. They crashed into the living room.
This was Mia. The old Mia. She had never been dead.
And Lenny had been dumb enough to hope. That was how they got you. She edged toward them and fished the dolls from her pocket. She waved them in front of Mia. Mia unhooked her fangs from Alice’s shoulder and repositioned her head, putting distance between them. Mia’s body was so long that only a quarter of it was needed to keep Alice locked in place, leaving more than enough space to hiss at them.
“Is this what you want?” Lenny jiggled the dolls in the air.
Mia’s eye sockets were empty. She found the dolls with her tongue instead, flicking it toward them in hungry little stabs. Each flick conveyed that she would be happy to devour Alice—Lenny too—outright.
But the dolls made Mia stop hissing at least.
Lenny stepped closer to the mantle while she considered running out the door. It would have been easy. She supposed it had actually always been so simple to leave. It was the staying hidden that would be hard. She always imagined that Mia would find her—some way, somehow. Only now Mia would be this monstrous snake able to swallow her whole.
The dolls were warm and smudgy in Lenny’s hands. All she had to do was what she’d always done, really: let Alice’s hair go into the fire. Then Mia would get her youth back. The snake would go back to being a woman—probably. And Lenny would what? Be twelve going on forever?
Alice struggled against Mia’s body, but she was too insignificant against the constricting scales. Gold, green, and blue. Mia must’ve tightened her grip because Alice cried out in pain.
Lenny said goodbye to thirteen. She was going to skip it. And every year after it. She had traded herself once, for a roof and a hot meal. You have to pay for what you’ve done eventually, she realized, even if you’ve been running a tab for decades.
She worked Alice’s hair loose from the fresh doll.
Then she grabbed a fistful of her own hair and yanked. It came away from her scalp with a sting she felt in the back of her mouth. She wound her hair around the fresh doll’s neck—twice—the way she’d watched Mia do it a hundred times.
Then she knotted it.
Lenny chucked all three dolls in the fire.
The air filled with a strange sound as the fresh doll melted. The other two only charred further. Lenny realized the sound was Mia hissing uncontrollably. Mia released Alice. Her scales started to contort and stretch, and Mia’s body jerked around the room, slamming into the walls and furniture.
Something in Lenny’s knees gave out. She lurched over to Alice, who scrambled back against the wall. Alice kept a hand clamped on her own shoulder.
“Get out of here, you idiot!” Lenny shouted.
Alice stared at her, wide eyes soaking her in.
Lenny pushed Alice toward the door. The girl’s weight made Lenny pant.
The screen door banged shut after Alice. Through the mesh, the palm trees hung limp in the heat as Alice bolt down the street.
Lenny turned and slumped against the door, breathe coming hard. Her back slid down until her butt hit the floor.
In front of her, the last of Mia’s scales dulled and morphed back into human skin. Lenny heard Mia’s bones settle into place, one joint at a time.
Mia rose from the floor.
Lenny watched as her arm, as if by its own will, lifted to be Mia’s crutch. But Mia walked right past her. Her tongue flicked once in the air, and she crossed the room fluidly, found the mantle, and unscrewed the jar herself.
It was then that Lenny saw what Alice had been transfixed by—how wrinkled and loose her skin had become, like every doll’s hand she had ever held.
No one was holding hers.
