Klickitat by Peter Rock

would know that they needed me.
    Lying there, waiting for Henry and Audra to return, reading
Journey to the Center of the Earth
, I could hear the woman who lived in the house above us. Her footsteps, in bare feet and then shoes, crossing rooms, back and forth. The clatter of pans, the sound of water in the sink, the water then rushing away, down through the pipes near my head. Henry and Audra kept track of her schedule, too, so we could guess when she would be home and when she would not, when we could come and go.
    Journey to the Center of the Earth
is a story that happens in Iceland. A boy and his uncle go down through the mouth of an old volcano that is named Snæfell. All the way under there they find lakes of black water, where they see animals caught back in prehistoric times. There are winds in the darkness. All the plants and flowers and trees are there, only they are gray and brown and faded because they never feel the warmth and light of the sun. The ferns are like black hands. The flowers, none of them smell like anything at all.

FOURTEEN
    Henry and Audra, they came and went, and I was trapped underneath the house, waiting and wondering. When it rained it wasn’t so bad, cuddling in my blanket and reading. In the corner of our space, down by my feet, water seeped in and puddled, muddy, but I kept my legs curled up, just listening to the rain against the wooden fence outside. When the sun shone was the worst, because I wanted to be out in it. Audra brought me vitamin D pills, and I didn’t want to take them. How come some pills were okay, but not others? And how can you tell if you’re feeling better, if you stop something that made you feel one way but every day you’re waiting,hiding somewhere where no one knows where you are, when you want to be out in the sun?
    Left alone, I would try to figure out what would happen, to imagine it. I went through Henry’s things. He had almost no belongings, not many clothes. Just two pairs of pants that were exactly the same, and two white shirts, two pairs of socks. A black jacket. His work uniform.
    One day in that first week, Henry came back early. He nodded to me, where I was reading; he spit-polished his black shoes, then set them aside. Next, he bent one leg up and twisted around to look behind him. He rested on his shoulders and pushed up with his feet, made his body bow upward, his stomach almost touching where the egg cartons were attached. He balanced on his hands, his knees on his elbows, his pale face turning red and his arms shaking.
    I could hear him breathing as I read
The Foxfire Book
, looking at the pictures of the old women churning butter and weaving baskets, the toothless old men skinning rabbits, calling crows by blowing through special sticks. In one picture, a man and a black dog with a white chestwere standing in front of an old shack. On the wooden wall of the shack a bear skin was nailed, and a fox skin, and four raccoon skins. I leaned in close, imagining that the raccoons were alive, only very flat, because the way they were hung there made it look like they were climbing.
    I heard the scratch of a pen, Henry writing, but it took a moment to see that he was holding a folded piece of paper, a note, out to me. I felt him watching as I unfolded, as I read it.
    EYES CAN TURN OUTWARD OR
    INWARD
    THERE IS A WORLD BEYOND THAT
    OF THE FIVE SENSES
    I folded the paper again and looked up at him.
    â€œHow do you know this?” I said.
    â€œBe quieter.”
    â€œDid you write that?” I said. “Not that, I mean. The messages, in the notebook?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œI read the writing,” he said. “In the notebook, in your room…”
    We were whispering, a loud kind of whispering.
    â€œWhen?” I said.
    â€œYou were asleep. We sneaked into your house, so I could see you, so I could decide.”
    â€œDecide what?”
    â€œWhen I found the notebook, when I read those