The Magnetic Girl. Jessica Handler

My mattress stank, and I wished for Dale not to smell the sickness in it.

      Momma’s father had lived his last months as an invalid on this mattress. He had died on it. When I became what Momma called a “little girl getting her big girl’s bed,” she pulled out the worn feathers and stuffed the mattress with empty feed sacks. She swaddled the stained mattress in oilcloth, since I was, after all, still a little girl. The mattress never entirely lost the stink of illness. When the sour smell got too bad, I rolled to the farthest edge and lay on my side, putting as much of me off the mattress as I could get.

      Dale’s bedroom wouldn’t smell like old waste and varnish. I imagined her bed as soft and wide, with crisp sheets that smelled like perfume. I inched closer to the window and pushed it up for some fresh air. Blue and white streaks lit the distance. Outside was alive with a heady odor like fading sparks.

      I’d been stabbing at that hard-edged mattress with pins for months, harder than when I slid a needle into my skin. When the sharp pin broke through the cracked fabric, my mouth watered from the anticipation and release. Small rips at the pinholes would expose my deed if anyone saw them, so I held the sheets under the soapy water when I helped with the wash. Wooden clothespins on the line covered the growing rents in the fabric.

      Stabbing a pin through the thick cloth and feeling it pop through to the burlap inside satisfied an itch behind my knees and along the edges of my teeth. The relief in pushing through the mattress’s resistance, probing its depths, and that discrete little sound of completion when I pulled the pin away quelled my craving to scratch, or bite, or scream.

      Dale didn’t seem to feel so mislaid in her life. Everything was dresses and cake to her. She slept beside me. My uncovered feet shone a dim blue with each lightning flare outside. Downstairs, my parents slept, and my brother slept. I rolled onto my stomach. Dale wheezed in her sleep, a deep sucking sound. Lately, what I wanted and what was right weren’t always the same.

      A flash of lightning lit my bedroom walls. When the skittery brightness vanished, my hand crept toward the nest of hairpins on my bedside table. I found the one I liked best: a pin with a little metal fan at the top. That delirious moment when the sharp tip in my hand perforated the blunt mattress was so near. Lightning flashed once more in the heavy air, and thunder rolled as I counted ten. Ten miles away. In my mind, I watched the lightning strike a dead tree in a dry creek bed, starting a fire that would die out harmless and alone.

      The pin made a hollow pop when it ruptured the mattress. I sucked in my breath and held it to calm my racing heart before yanking the pin free. That made another pop, a backwards sound.

      Dale jerked upright.

      “What was that?”

      Caught in a private act, I froze.

      “There must be a bug or some snake in your house,” Dale whispered.

      She slid from the bed. I lay the culprit pin on the table, blessing the dark before I lit the lamp and rose to shake out the quilt. Dale searched beneath the bed and around the curves of the wash basin before she went for the wardrobe.

      “Bugs with horns or claws,” she whispered.

      “Like needles,” I whispered back, grateful for the darkness hiding my hot face.

      Dale poked the walls with my buttonhook. No vermin emerged from the cracks.

      “It was just the storm,” she sighed. Her face was flushed, the collar of her nightgown awry. She seemed disappointed.

      “Well, thank heaven,” I said. “I was thinking a bug would bite my leg.”

      In bed, Dale fell immediately to sleep, but I couldn’t rest. Captivating a fox or a person was an aptitude, certainly, and I’d hidden my secret—human energy stirring, as Mrs. Wolf told me—by letting Dale’s imagination run away with her. She’d figured the sound I’d made was scuttling vermin, and I didn’t say otherwise. I’d stabbed that pin right beside her because I had to, and she wasn’t the wiser. I wanted to throw off the blankets and pace the room, but I didn’t want to have to talk to Dale if she woke. I lay still and shut my eyes, ready to stroll the aisles of a store in my imagination, choosing whatever I liked, peeling bills from a bankroll stuffed into a beaded purse. I bought a string of pearls, a red velvet dress with a bustle, and a matching hat with a white feather that complemented my jewelry.

      A flash of lightning blasted the imaginary store to bits. In the depth of darkness that followed the bright light, my hand moved to my table. A hairpin rolled under my fingertips. Forcing myself to breathe slowly, counting the ins and outs in twos and fours, I slowed my heart’s banging until it was a rhythmic song of comfort. I was going to stab the mattress again, and I couldn’t stop myself.

      My skin felt tight. I crept my hand beside Dale’s head and lifted the pin not two inches from the pink folds of her right ear. I plunged the metal through the mattress’s heavy ticking and lost myself in its disappearance in the packed fabric inside. My heart raced, then slowed again. I eased the metal up and out with a single movement of my wrist.

      In the hills outside, thunder rolled and faded away. Dale tugged on the blanket, and the fabric slid from my legs.

      “Oh, Lord,” she said, sounding small as a child. “Oh, Lord, promise us that we heard the voice of one of your tiniest creations.”

      The Lord didn’t answer.

      I dropped the hairpin beside the bed, swinging my feet hard to the floor at the same time to hide the ping of metal. Dale slid on all fours onto the rug as a door banged below us. My father’s heavy footfalls ascended the stairs. His lamp’s weak light fanned out under my door.

      “It has happened again,” Dale said in a monotone. The pungent scent of her fear made me want to bounce on my toes, but I caught myself. I’d need to act scared with her.

      “What has happened again?” My father’s voice boomed through the closed door.

      Had Dale and I been younger he’d have busted the door down, but we were nearly grown women, too mature for a man to enter a bedroom without permission. I grabbed my dressing gown from the peg and handed it to Dale before I checked my nightdress, making sure everything was buttoned up and pulled down. Dale lit the lamp and checked her reflection in the window glass. I glanced at my hand, still feeling the hairpin between my fingers.

      With that empty hand, I opened my bedroom door.

      Daddy stood in the hallway, a monument in a blue nightshirt. Momma came up behind him with a lamp. Dale wailed as soon as she registered my father’s fury.

      “A bug. Some giant bug or a living thing under the bed scared me out of my skin! And sparks flew around, big as thumbs!”

      What had actually happened meant nothing to Dale. I’d made her believe she’d seen flaming thumbs in a room lit only by distant lightning. I wanted to try again that very moment and watch her face as I pushed and pulled my pin. I wanted to watch myself create the idea of flames where there were none.

      Some kind of train was leaving the station, and I took my chance on that train. Yes, I said, there had been terrible, unnatural, sounds that woke us. I described shoving the furniture aside in search of insects or squirrels going about their vermin business. Dale began to moan like a pipe organ, and Momma charged past us, sniffing my bedroom’s air in all four directions. I quit talking to watch her.

      After a minute, she spoke. “It’s atmospheric,” she said.

      I grabbed Dale’s hand, partly for effect, but more because I was dumbfounded. Momma had plenty of opinions, but I’d never known her to fail to spot deceit.

      Momma sniffed the air again. Daddy’s face was stone.

      “What frightened you wasn’t vermin,” Momma said to Dale. “Particularly if you saw floating lights.”

      “We saw them. Floating lights.” Dale repeated herself, nodding vigorously.

      We’d seen no such thing. She’d conflated the aftermath of lightning into something