ASTRID

Chapter 2 Spooky Stories

When I thought Dad has gone forever, Astrid appears as if out of nowhere. We all started; even Billy lost her mask of indifference.

"You scared us to death!" says Mom; she's a little bit uptight.

"Sorry guys. I'm late!" Astrid is rubbing (just like Dad) the back of her head with an apologetic smile.

Slender, dark-haired, suntanned with a crooked smile she resembles me a pirate queen. Her hair is loose with some red and mauve coloured locks. Astrid is wearing black skinny jeans and a white lose blouse. Wrists, fingers, and neck are covered with lots of different silver rings, bracelets, and chainlets with charms of various figures and glossy gems. In one ear she has a big crescent earring another one is decorated with a sun that has a smiling face like in some old pictures.

"Come here and hug your Auntie!" she runs up to me and Dad, who has safely returned, and gives us a bear hug; Astrid smells like an apple pie and sweets. Mom is brushing a hurry kiss on her cheek. Billy is unmoving on her trunk; she nods and utters a dry "hi": all attention is focused on her smartphone (she has, probably, found her personal Holy Grail: WiFi).

"Come in the house!" Astrid jumps on the porch like a kid and pushes the door that leads into a spacious hall.

"I thought it was locked," says Dad in surprise.

"You are just as weak as a chick. Getting older, man. Ah?" Astrid is pranking him. Dad only smiles in turn and grabs his lower back jokingly as if he is really an old man.

"What about the luggage, Andrew?" Mom is never into jokes.

"Leave it here on the porch," says Astrid carelessly. "I made some arrangements with garden gnomes. They'll get the stuff upstairs later," she winks at me. Billy rolls her eyes: "I've told you so. Weirdooo" says her expression.

"Tell your gnomes to be careful with things," my Mom is always businesslike even talking about gnomes.

We are in a spacious living room. Grandma has already walked in through the back door. Mom often calls her mother-in-law "the last hippie standing" when she's in the company of her high fashion lady-friends. Like her daughter's, grandmother's hair is long but touched with silver threads. She's very kind with such peace on her face.

"Time flies! I didn't even hear you come in," she is kissing Dad and Mom.

"We thought you'd changed your mind to have girls in the house and escaped before our arrival," chuckles Dad.

I don't even have to look at Billy to feel her reaction to Dad's joke.

While grandma is talking joyfully to her son, jingling her beautiful Indian bracelets, Mom is talking seriously to her daughter, explaining her how she should behave during the summer. She promises to text and videocall us every single day and, God forbid, Billy get into trouble... The last words of her lecture sound like a real threat.

I'm sitting in my favorite rocking chair and watching Astrid setting the table. She is whistling and humming a melody. The song is so contiguous, so I start singing along without hitting the right note, of course. But she doesn't mind and holds two tea cups pretending they are dancing on the tablecloth among a pudgy teapot and lily-white sugar basin, and an old bowl with jam.

When the parents finally left us, Billy goes demonstratively upstairs to the room we usually occupy when here; grandma follows her. But I stay with Astrid. She's sitting in front of me with her elbows on the table, holding a slightly pointed chin in her palms, and I'm drowning in an avalanche of her questions about my school and friends.

That is actually the situation I was scared to face when at her house. I'm very shy to admit that during this year I've lost two of my school friends and one step away from my class nerd Ted. Everybody calls him Teddy Bear, because he had the misfortune to be called "Teddy Bear" by his mother in front of everybody. EVERYBODY!

Anton and Rina were my friends since the first day at school. We used to sit next to each other, make group projects together, and play during the brake. But then Rina and her family moved. We promised to keep in touch and call each other every day. But soon she made a lot of friends at new school and didn't even invite me to her birthday party.

Firstly, Anton and I kept together for a while, somehow "habitually" (as Mom explains it), but then he started talking and playing with other boys from the class, pretending that I have never been his friend. What a big deal! I don't need any nasty boys in my life.

Instead of complaining about Anton and Rina, I just start babbling about my favorite art teacher at school, and how I hate math, and my last trip in a water park with James and Denise. Mom's parents hate to be called "grandma" and "grandpa".  They think it makes them older. Billy loves spending time with James and Denise, for she knows they are rich, and she can be given tons of cute, expensive presents if she follows their rules and pretends to be a good girl. But I'm not a huge fan of their company. They act as if cool and trendy teens, but it looks strange. Usually I'm timid in their presence and don't play along, always forgetting to call them as they want to, in turn, they find me boring and inevitably inform my Mom about my "unnatural shyness and antisocial behaviour".

Astrid laughs to a good cry when I tell her about my "not-grandparents" and all my misfortunes with them; or nodding in agreement when I say she and my art teacher could become good friends: they are the same age and have a lot in common.

In golden hour everything seems so magical. I don't want to leave the kitchen and go upstairs to bad mood Billy. And I ask Astrid to tell me stories about her and Dad when they were kids. She is the best storyteller I've ever known; Billy used to be a good one, but she never tells any interesting stories now (only gossiping with her friends about boys from high school or girls who are not lucky to be in her company).

When I was younger, I genuinely believed in magical things that happened to Astrid and Dad, but now I just want to feel that very feeling when she told me her "true" stories for the first time.

She's not complaining that it's already late or she's tired though the day was long. But Instead she sits on the windowsill so I can see only her dark figure in soft rays of the setting sun and starts one of her stories. She never repeats any of them as if her and Dad's childhood took place not in a boring, quite countryside but in a magical kingdom.

It's getting darker outside like it is a mountain area. The kitchen is gloomy and sinister. Astrid, like a mysterious dark fairy with long hair, keeps telling me how she and Dad were chasing a black stray cat in the garden when saw a ghost sitting on one of the thickest brunches of grandma's favorite apple tree.

I can hear Billy creeping downstairs and sneaking into a big armchair in the living room. She wants to listen to the story, but too proud to admit it. I would like her to join me and Astrid in the kitchen, but she is like a mouse tit that happened to fly into an open window: I pretend not to notice my sister, lest I scare her off.

The story is getting spookier: Auntie and Dad are following ghost's instructions and find a magical portal that leads into the Dark Forest full of dangers and fantastic creatures.

I'm sitting with my mouth open. I try to convince myself that it's Astrid's mere fantasy. Dad never tells us anything about it. It seems sometimes that he and Astrid had absolutely different childhood, and she is telling me not about Dad but some other boy. But I'm so engulfed by the events she is talking about, and feel like I'm going through the deep dark forest together with Dad and Astrid, imagining them as Hansel and Gretel walking hand in hand to evil man-eater witch.

Suddenly, I hear distinctly one of the floorboard creeks. I slowly turn my head: just against a black background a tall figure in white shroud is seen. It looks so terrifying with the wind in its long hair.

Billy screams even louder than I; while Astrid almost falls from the windowsill her merry laughter is turning into a good cackle.

"Oh...I can't even!" Astrid is wiping away the tears.

Grandma switches on the light in a living room and closes the window. She stands in a long white nightgown and ready to go to bed, "Do you want the whole banshee neighborhood to come out and join your yelling?"

"I thought Melissa and April are visiting their parents," Astrid's answer doesn't make any sense.

The "ghost" is looking at her daughter with her eyebrow cocked, casting a meaningful glance. Then she claps her hands:

"It's time to go to bed, my fairy ladies!"