Harmony House by Nic Sheff Page B

“Thank you.”
    I eat the donut and drink coffee and my dad starts talking to me about the daily chores. Really, it’s not so bad. Just a lot of dusting and straightening and organizing. No milking the cows or tilling the soil or whatever.
    Worse than the chores are the hours of religious study my dad’s planning to do with me. Homeschooling, he calls it. But my dad’s not a big fan of Darwin. And his concept of history is a little . . . skewed . I’m not sure I’m gonna get through it without him killing me, or maybe the other way around.
    But, for the moment anyway, I don’t really care. The Percocet is doing its thing. The pain in my head is gone, replaced by a feeling of weightlessness, like cotton candy wrapped around my brain—in a good way.
    I mean, very good.
    Even my dad looks a little more . . . pleasant than he normally does.
    Back in Johnstown I went to parties and stuff and would drink a little. But I’ve always been kind of scared of drinking too much. I never wanted to end up like my mom.
    But one Percocet’s not gonna kill me. And it turnsout it’s making this day a whole lot more tolerable. So I finish the donut and coffee and decide I might as well just keep my pajamas on while I’m dusting and straightening around the house. I go upstairs and get my Discman so I can listen to music while I work. Marc Bolan singing “Cosmic Dancer.”
    â€œI danced myself into the tomb.”
    I dust along the railings and bookshelves and every picture frame and light fixture and curtain rod and spare piece of furniture. The dust is like half an inch thick in places—gray and greasy, filling my lungs so I cough and sneeze and my eyes burn. Eventually I have to tie a bandana over my nose and mouth.
    I make my way through the front room and the dining room and the living room and the sitting room and the back study. The sun is warm coming in through the windows. I dust around the fireplace and around the doorframe and along the complicated floral-patterned wallpaper.
    At the back of the house there is another locked room like the one upstairs, but my dad gave me the skeleton key to use, so I fit it in the lock and turn the handle. A cloud of dust envelops me and I cough and sneeze until it clears.
    The room is dark and I smell that smell like moldand decay. I stumble through the clutter and push open the back windows and take big, gasping breaths of the cool morning air. A wind blows through the branches of the dense forest. The stiff brown leaves are falling—carpeting the ground in a thick blanket.
    Inside the room, white sheets are draped over more stored lamps and spare furniture and books and wooden frames and candlesticks.
    I pull back one of the cloths and notice a small wooden box, inlaid with silver crosses, sitting atop a very old-looking table.
    I open the box carefully and take out a man’s gold ring that stands out against the black velvet lining. I hold it up to the light. A golden snake is coiled around a glittering ruby apple. I take the cold metal in my hand and turn it over. With Marc Bolan now singing, “Girl, I’m just a vampire for your love.”
    I drop the ring in my pocket.
    I pull off another of the draped cloths and reveal a dark wood chest of drawers. There’s a black-and-white photograph on top of it, a man and woman dressed in tailored suits and hats—like from the thirties or forties. The woman holds a swaddled infant in her arms and the man holds the hand of what I think is a young boy in awool sweater. I open the top drawer and find a stack of similar photographs.
    Alex’s stories echo through my head. A home for wayward girls. Are these the couples who adopted the children born at Harmony House?
    I don’t know what other explanation there could be.
    I keep on looking through the photographs, but then a sudden movement catches my attention. I turn to the window and see a figure crossing through the