BY KELLY LINK
Get in Trouble
Pretty Monsters
Magic for Beginners
Stranger Things Happen
Get in Trouble is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,
Edinburgh EHI ITE
This digital edition first published in 2015 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 2015 by Kelly Link
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved.
First published in the United States by Random House,
an imprint and division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company,
New York.
“The Summer People”: Originally published in Tin House (fall 2011). “I Can See Right Through You”: Originally published in McSweeney’s (fall 2014). “Secret Identity”: Originally published in Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd, edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci (Little Brown, 2009). “Valley of the Girls”: Originally published in Subterranean Online (summer 2011). “Origin Story”: Originally published in A Public Space (winter 2006). “The New Boyfriend”: Originally published in A Public Space (fall 2014). “Two Houses”: Originally published in Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of RayBradbury, edited by Mort Castle and Sam Weller (HarperCollins, 2012). “Light”: Originally published in Tin House (fall 2007).
“Year after year” [haiku by Basho: used as an epigraph, also quoted in dialogue] from The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Busson & Issa edited and with an introduction by Robert Hass. Introduction and selection copyright © 1994 by Robert Hass. Unless otherwise noted, all translations copyright © 1994 by Robert Hass. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 383 6
eISBN 978 1 78211 384 3
Book design by Caroline Cunningham
For Henry William Link III
Year after year
On the monkey’s face
A monkey face
—Basho, trans. Robert Hass
Contents
The Summer People
Fran’s daddy woke her up wielding a mister. “Fran,” he said, spritzing her like a wilted houseplant. “Fran, honey. Wakey wakey.”
Fran had the flu, except it was more like the flu had Fran. In consequence of this, she’d laid out of school for three days in a row. The previous night, she’d taken four NyQuil caplets and gone to sleep on the couch while a man on the TV threw knives. Her head was stuffed with boiled wool and snot. Her face was wet with watered-down plant food. “Hold up,” she croaked. “I’m awake!” She began to cough, so hard she had to hold her sides. She sat up.
Her daddy was a dark shape in a room full of dark shapes. The bulk of him augured trouble. The sun wasn’t out from behind the mountain yet, but there was a light in the kitchen. There was a suitcase, too, beside the door, and on the table a plate with a mess of eggs. Fran was starving.
Her daddy went on. “I’ll be gone some time. A week or three. Not more. You’ll take care of the summer people while I’m gone. The Robertses come up this weekend. You’ll need to get their groceries tomorrow or next day. Make sure you check the expiration date on the milk when you buy it, and put fresh sheets on all the beds. I’ve left the house schedule on the counter and there should be enough gas in the car to make the rounds.”
“Wait,” Fran said. Every word hurt. “Where are you going?” He sat down on the couch beside her, then pulled something out from under him. He showed her what he held: one of Fran’s old toys, the monkey egg. “Now, you know I don’t like these. I wish you’d put ’em away.”
“There’s lots of stuff I don’t like,” Fran said. “Where you off to?”
“Prayer meeting in Miami. Found it on the Internet,” her daddy said. He shifted on the couch, put a hand against her forehead, so cool and soothing it made her eyes leak. “You don’t feel near so hot right now.”
“I know you need to stay here and look after me,” Fran said. “You’re my daddy.”
“Now, how can I look after you if I’m not right?” he said. “You don’t know the things I’ve done.”
Fran didn’t know but she could guess. “You went out last night,” she said. “You were drinking.”
“I’m not talking about last night,” he said. “I’m talking about a lifetime.”
“That is—” Fran said, and then began to cough again. She coughed so long and so hard she saw bright stars. Despite the hurt in her ribs, and despite the truth that every time she managed to suck in a good pocket of air, she coughed it right back out again, the NyQuil made it all seem so peaceful, her daddy might as well have been saying a poem. Her eyelids were closing. Later, when she woke up, maybe he would make her breakfast.
“Any come around, you tell ’em I’m gone on ahead. Ary man tells you he knows the hour or the day, Fran, that man’s a liar or a fool. All a man can do is be ready.”
He patted her on the shoulder, tucked the counterpane up around her ears. When she woke again, it was late afternoon and her daddy was long gone. Her temperature was 102.3. All across her cheeks, the plant mister had left a red, raised rash.
On Friday, Fran went back to school. Breakfast was a spoon of peanut butter and dry cereal. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Her cough scared off the crows when she went down to the county road to catch the school bus.
She dozed through three classes, including calculus, before having such a fit of coughing the teacher sent her off to see the nurse. The nurse, she knew, was liable