Unlikely Animals

Emma goes to the elementary school for her interview and is immediately sent into the classroom. Her pupils question her about her return to Everton, and she tells them about her lost healing gift. The children make it a “class project” to try to restore her powers (105). During recess, she reads the students’ files, detailing their traumatic family backgrounds. She sees that one of their classmates died the previous year. Looking at the photo of the beautiful Claire Wish, she feels inadequate.

This chapter provides some background on Leanne Hatfield. Leanne’s parents died in a murder-suicide when she was a baby. Leanne was the best friend of Isabella Eakin, the girl who died of what appeared to be a rare form of leukemia. Leanne now lives with her grandfather. She regularly leaves plastic poison dart frogs on her friend’s grave. She is a favorite with the dead narrators.

Clive asks Emma about her first day teaching and says that she will be a better teacher if she does not try too hard. Emma recalls watching the humiliating video of her father’s last day in the classroom, when his hallucinations took hold. They discuss Crystal, and Emma refuses to let her father hire a private investigator, although he has secretly already done so. They agree that Crystal “could be anywhere” (115).

In class the next day, the children bring Emma a dead sparrow in a shoe box. She places her hands on it, trying to heal it, but nothing happens. One of the pupils, Michael B., puts the box away in his cubby overnight.

Emma goes to the police station to take a drug test and undergo a background check. She is irritated by the officer’s dismissive attitude toward Crystal and her father’s search for her. She meets Lottie Evans, a former client, who is now taking prescribed painkillers.

At home, she finds her father with Moses, who has taken to guarding him. She asks him about Crystal and learns that she was saving money to leave town. She often asked Emma’s parents, to whom she had become “another daughter” (120) about Emma. Emma realizes how much she misses and loves her friend and resolves to do what she can to find her.

Emma visits The Blueberry Hill Pub, where Crystal used to work as a bartender and Clive performed regularly with his band. She learns from Brayden, who works in the kitchen, that Crystal began buying drugs from Kade, the line cook, who died in a car accident the previous spring. She also learns that her father has been kicked out of the band because, during their last performance, he started shouting about rats and got the pub into trouble with the Health Department.

Ingrid disapproves of Emma encouraging Clive’s detective work. They visit the local supermarket and the trailer park where Crystal was living, but they are met with hostility, as it becomes clear that Clive has already visited both locations.

Emma grabs a bottle of bourbon and walks over to Corbin Mansion with Moses. She walks past Ralph Kelsey’s collection of taxidermy before sitting at her mother’s desk and looking through her papers. She finds a letter from Crystal, dating back to her parents’ brief separation, encouraging Ingrid to forgive Clive. She hears footsteps and expects to see Crystal’s ghost.

Emma is joined by Mack Durkee, whom Ingrid has hired as a night watchman. He has been alerted to Emma’s presence by motion sensors. The two finish the bottle of bourbon and discuss their teaching positions; Mack underlines the important role Emma can play as a stable point of reference for the children. He tells her that Sid Wish was supplying Crystal with drugs. Cheered on by the observing ghosts, Emma and Mack make love.

Suffering from a hangover the next morning at school, Emma is touched at her pupils’ concern for her well-being. She tries to telephone Claire Wish, but the call goes straight to voicemail.

Clive wakes from his afternoon nap to look for the ghost of Harold. He is frustrated that he has only once seen Harold’s favorite creature, The Sprite, which he saw standing on the edge of the woods the day Emma came home. Inspired by Harold, Clive feeds a tame deer he finds in the garden and coaxes it into his house. The deer has been shot with a paintball gun, and Clive attempts to clean its skin with nail polish remover containing acetone. Recognizing the smell of the substance, which is often used to clean guns, the deer suddenly goes “berserk” (144).

Ingrid and Emma arrive home to find the fire department there and their house wrecked. Emma feels guilty for failing in her role as guardian, whereas Ingrid is increasingly frustrated with and resentful of her husband. The deer is sedated and removed by Auggie’s former best friend, Peter Foot, of Animal Control. Clive is heartbroken when he sees his shelves of poetry books wrecked. Emma accompanies Ingrid to explain the damage to Ralph.

Ingrid and Emma rush to the assisted living facility, hoping that they can be the first to tell Ralph. When they arrive, they see an ambulance parked outside with its lights off, suggesting that it is collecting a body.

The father of one of the firefighters, Angus Dagit, is a resident at Sundown Acres. When his son calls him to explain why he cannot visit, Dagit mishears him and believes that he is being called on to help shoot the deer. When he excitedly tells Ralph that he has been called on to shoot a deer at Corbin anion, Ralph laughs to hard he has to lie down. Dagit is angry and humiliated. He goes upstairs to his room, where the gun accidentally goes off in his hand, the bullet passing through the floor and into the chest of Ralph as he lies in bed.