The Understory by Elizabeth Leiknes Read Free Book Online

would change her life from ordinary to extraordinary. But when she got to the living room, the Christmas tree lights were off, and the treetop’s bright star was dim and barely hanging on. Story’s mother, with her perfect blonde bob and immaculate makeup, sat in a rocking chair next to the fireplace, not rocking, but instead chomping on Rudolph’s carrot and dismembering a Santa doll with a seam ripper. And as Story watched in horror, her mother continued attacking St. Nick’s seams, focusing on his stubborn groin. Without looking up, she said, “Young lady, you’re supposed to be in bed.”

     
    With a gentle hand, Story placed the snow globe back down on the table, careful to preserve the fragile, innocent world inside, and walked over to an open closet. On the top shelf, Story saw several board games stacked on each other in a teetering pile. Without thinking, she lifted down the ouija board, the first in the stack, took the lid off, and crouched down next to it. As a joke, Story took the three-legged pointer in her hand, and asked it an important question: “Is Elvis really dead?”
    With both hands clutched in a firm grip, she moved the pointer to YES. She laughed to herself, thinking of people who actually believed in this crap, and then asked another question high on her list of curiosities: “Does swallowed gum really take ten years to fully digest?” The pointer “magically” made an immediate move to NO, and she snickered some more, pleased with her little game.
    Just as she was about to put the game away, she looked over at the picture of Cooper and his dad, and with a compulsion stronger than she’d ever felt before, asked a question that seemed to come from someone else: “What will save him?”
    Then the pointer moved on its own. Story, shocked, first stared at the board in complete disbelief, and then turned around to see if she was alone. It appeared that she was, but the silence was unnerving, so she forced the pointer to a stop, cleared her throat, and closed her eyes. Imagination’s haywire today—too much damn sleep, she thought. When I open my eyes, everything will be back to normal. One. Two. Three.
    But when she opened her eyes, the pointer took her hands hostage and began to move on its own again. First it went to “S.”
    “Ah!” Story meant to scream, but it came out a whisper.
    The pointer moved, in order, to “T,” “O,” then “R” and all the while Story repeated the mantra, This isn’t real . . . This isn’t real . . . This isn’t real.
    Finally, the pointer landed on “Y.”
    At first, she took a moment to catch her breath, wondering if it was finished, but shortly after, she had no choice but to try to decipher the message from beyond.
    The rainforest story? she wondered.
    The pointer then moved to “U.” You .
    She shook her head in defiance, trying hard not to look over at the picture that still seemed to be watching her every move. Me?
    “No, no, no,” she said.
    But when Story looked at the coloring-book picture hanging on the bulletin board, she suddenly remembered sitting cross-legged on the shag carpet, coloring Scooby-Doo and sharing jumbo crayons with her dad. He had brought her a small bouquet of yellow daffodils from his garden out back, and tucked a perfect golden one behind her ear. Although she didn’t realize it until that very moment, it was the last memory she had of him before he died. The smell of his aftershave flooded back, and as she recalled the way his gentle smile looked when he said, “It’s okay to go outside the lines,” she felt a pronounced change come over her.
    She missed his voice. She missed his laugh. She missed feeling accepted, as if she had a place in the world. There had been no chance for goodbye, and no chance to finish anything they’d started. Lots of dreams were left blank, uncolored, dead. The rejection and hopelessness she’d felt ever since losing him now announced themselves as something far from okay—the