Читать книгу The Magic Misfits 2 - Neil Patrick Harris - Страница 10

One night, years later, in the apartment over Vernon’s Magic Shop, Leila Vernon stretched out atop her big bed, unable to sleep. Thoughts of dark cupboards kept popping into her head whenever she closed her eyes. A thin patchwork quilt covered Leila’s wiry frame, barely protecting her from the brisk air that crept through the open window of her bedroom.

The window looked out over Main Street and the green park that extended far out in both directions. The orange glow of streetlights shifted on the walls and ceiling as the shadows of leafy branches danced to a quiet music composed by the crickets and peeping tree frogs that called out to each other from the nestled hills surrounding the town of Mineral Wells.

Before bedtime, Leila’s two fathers had tucked the blanket around Leila’s body and kissed her good night, wishing her pleasant dreams. But Leila knew that no wish could protect her from memories of her old life. The dead of night was when they usually came to visit. Sometimes the memories were uninvited guests who stayed long after receiving cues that it was time to go. Sometimes they tried to sneak in, like cloddish cat burglars who had no clue how to finagle a locked door. And sometimes the memories seeped like sulfur smoke through cracks in the walls, threatening to choke and smother Leila, stinging her big brown eyes.

When the other memories became too much to handle, Leila would recall her adoption by the Vernons. She held on to the hand of that memory, as if it could lead her to safety. Sometimes it worked. But sometimes the darkness in those locked cupboards was too difficult to see through.

Especially after everything that had happened with B. B. Bosso and his circus of thieves several weeks before…

Leila blinked at the ceiling, feeling both blessed and cursed – happy to have this home and this family, but annoyed that the past kept knocking to be let in. This won’t do, she thought. She whipped away the quilt, then scurried to her bookshelf, where she’d placed her secret tin box.

The box rattled noisily. She drew it to her chest to quiet it. Next door was the room of her newfound cousin, Carter. She didn’t want the clamour to wake him.

Leila lifted the lid and stared at her key collection, which had grown substantially in the years since she’d moved to Mineral Wells. But her first key, the one tied to the string, the one that had been with her on the night Mother Margaret found her on the orphanage doorstep, sat on the very top. Leila lifted the string and let the key swing back and forth like a mesmerist’s pendulum.

She thought about Bosso and Carter and the other Misfits. She knew that Carter must also suffer from memories of his former life. She wondered if he ever thought of his missing parents, as she sometimes wondered why her own had deserted her on a dark, cold night. Other times, she was happy to not think of them at all. She pressed her hand against the cold key, as if to make an impression against her skin, one that she might use to forge a copy. Her body warmed the key, and the key warmed her body and calmed her mind.

From somewhere beyond her bedroom door, the sound of a commotion stirred: a chair suddenly shifting, a pile of books toppling from a shelf, things crashing to the floor. Next came a sharp and fearful yelp.