Free Glass Shatters by Michelle Meyers Page B

as fast as he can, although he can no longer remember from whom or what. The lenses of his glasses begin to fog up. He pauses for a moment to catch his breath. Suddenly he realizes where he is and who’s watching him.
    “Hello there,” says Mrs. Hollingberry, glancing up at Charles from beneath the wide brim of her gardening hat. She notices Charles staring at the strange vegetable in her left hand, the one she has just pulled from the ground. She smiles. “It’s a root vegetable. Yucca.”
    Charles continues to stare. He has never seen somebody who looks at all like her. His parents own pastel sweaters, khaki slacks, and straight-cut skirts that pinch at the waist. But this woman wears deep violet robes that cover her shoulders, mint green tights that cling to her slim legs, goldenrod slippers turned up at the toe, all of which shimmer in the grinning sunlight. Standing in the midst of the garden, her shoes slightly sunken into the earth, she almost seems to be growing herself, her feet rooted into the soil. Smoke rises from a stone pit behind her, and Charles expects the smell of meat, of hamburgers and hotdogs roasting over hot coals. Instead, it’s something else, an herb, a floral scent, and as he breathes in, he feels himself grow calm.
    “Would you like to come in for a snack?” Mrs. Hollingberry asks. Charles hesitates. His parents have always warned him very strictly not to trust strangers, and some part of him is sure that his mother has a specific dislike for this woman. Mrs. Hollingberry has been mentioned in passing, at dinner, on the way to school. But there’s something compelling about this woman as well, something irresistible about the yucca and the clothing and the strange smell drifting through the air around him.
    “Sure,” he says. Mrs. Hollingberry takes his hand. As Charles walks inside, it’s as if he’s entered a different universe. His feeling of serenity edges away. Marionettes hang down from the ceilings, gazing at him with wide eyes and impish grins. Plastic dolls lie in dismembered piles, hundreds of arms and legs, heads peeking through the gaps to try to gasp for air. The strands of the carpet are crusted over with old paint, clay, and mud.
    Charles and Mrs. Hollingberry pass by a dining room. The table and chairs are much too high for any normal human being, perhaps seven, eight feet tall. A machine sitting on top of the table projects images of food onto the ceiling, turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Another room sits completely empty except for a miniaturist painting all along the bottom edge of the walls, detailing the entirety of human history. There’s a strange pattern to the images, and years later, while looking at the same painting, Charles would realize it was done in a wholly reversible fashion, the images constructed such that moving in either direction from a single point, history would appear to both progress and regress in time.
    In the next room, the floor is made wholly of puzzle pieces composing a gigantic photograph of an eye. A single piece is missing, right over the place where the pupil would have been. Two men dressed in silk pajama pants wander in with bowls of oatmeal and sit down to eat. Each has a long beard trailing down his chest. They stare at Charles as he walks by.
    Charles’s throat closes up. He’s sure that Mrs. Hollingberry has just tightened her grip. He counts silently in his head. He has decided that he will rip away from Mrs. Hollingberry and escape back through the garden. He should have listened to his parents, such a foolish mistake.
    “Julie?” Mrs. Hollingberry says. Charles must have closed his eyes at some point. He opens them to discover a young girl standing before him, her face surrounded by dark ringlets. “Julie, there’s somebody I’d like you to meet.”
    Charles looks at Julie. Julie looks at Charles. Neither one can look away.

    “C HARLES ?” S KYSCRAPERS RISE AROUND US LIKE SENTRIES as we approach