The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone

So when Maureen found us the house with the white picket fence, I rolled easy with it. Got a job working over at RoterMeril, in general accounting. The hours were tolerable, and the benefits weren’t bad. At the time, Allison was just about five years old. That was when we called her Allison—you know she changed her name on her own? We named her after my mother. She got Allison from my side, and Grace is Maureen’s mother. Allison Grace Stone. But I guess that wasn’t good enough for her. Sure, it disappoints me. Addison—that’s nobody’s name!

Peacedale was a decent living. Bramble Circle, where we lived, had friendly neighbors and clean lawns. First afternoon we moved in, you want to know what I did? I strung up a hammock. Like I said, I’m a casual man, I can settle in anywhere.

KARL TAEKO: My wife Ele and I lived across the street from Roy and Maureen Stone. They don’t live here now, but the day they moved in, must have been fifteen years ago, my Ele starts stalking our yard like a gladiator. “Ole wale, pupule, pupule!” That’s Hawaiian for, basically, “this shit ain’t right.”

“Aw, they’re a nice family,” I kept saying. “You’ve got your hackles up for nothing.”

Ele wasn’t fooled. Right off, Ele decided that Maureen Stone was a sorrowful woman. That Roy was too reckless. And the daughter was the worst combination: the dark spirit of them both. Ele even asked our shaman to perform a la’au kahea on our house, and she hung chimes on our porch to distract her mind from their crazy—the pupule, she calls it. Those chimes are still right out front.

Since Addison died, Bramble Circle’s turned into a tourist attraction. Kids converge all hours to lay down flowers and votives, or they purple-spray-paint on the doorstep. July—that’s the month Addison died—was when we got most of ’em. Sleeping out on the lawn. They’ll leave boxes of Marlboros and drawings and cards and vodka. Me and Ele collect it, and we put it in the garbage.

Roy and Maureen packed up and left 28 Bramble almost a year ago now. I know Maureen’s living with her sister in New Jersey. I hear Roy’s shacked up with some lady friend in a houseboat in Woonsocket. Ele and me, we’re thinking of moving off somewhere different, too. The spirit here’s been troubled for a real long time.

CHARLIE STONE: Peacedale was supposed to be the Stone family’s fresh start. Addison said even before I was born, she knew that Dad and Mom’s marriage was shattered, and she worried about me. She said she’d babble at me during Mom’s pregnancy. Press her mouth against Mom’s belly and make funny noises to let me know I’d be okay. I don’t doubt any of that. She was a real sweet sister.

I was four when we moved in, but Addison was going on six and remembered things. Like how Mom had a shit-fit because Dad had sent our stuff too cheap from Bristol. A mess of her wedding china was smashed. She was in tears, chucking the junk out on the back porch. Later Addison sneaked outside for the boxes, found a tube of rubber cement, and glued the fragments up on her wall in a mosaic. Took her all day, and she sliced her hand to pieces. Nobody watching, ’cause nobody ever was. Nine stitches. Addison told me she’d just wanted to make something beautiful out of something broken.

LUCY LIM: I’ll never forget when my eyes clapped on Allison Grace Stone, out on the South Road School playground. The Friday before, our teacher, Miss Katie, had told us a new girl was coming to join our class. I was batshit excited. I was only in kindergarten, and I had already figured out that nothing new ever happens at South Road.

That next Monday morning, she was the first thing I saw, galloping around on a pretend horse, making loud neighing noises, not caring that everyone was watching. She was called Allison back then, and she was obsessed with horses and unicorns—two things she never liked me to remind her about, ha ha. Allison Stone was skinny as a rail post, long legs and a chop of bangs just like me. But even then she had an eerie way of looking straight at and deeply through a person—and that wasn’t like me at all.

Addison Stone, age five, courtesy of Maureen Stone.

She was so smart you could feel it come off her like heat, and I needed to be her friend so hard it hurt. In the end I guess it got tiresome for her, to have everyone always wanting her so bad. But she picked me that first day. She called me Lulu, and I called her Ally—and that was it. And later, when she changed it, I called her Addy. I never even asked why. It fit her better, anyway.

KATE ORTEGA: I was Addison’s first-grade teacher, “Miss Katie,” as the kids said, at South Road School. We were a month into fall semester, and suddenly we get word that a child is transferring in. She’d been homeschooled, but on the phone, her mother assures me her daughter’s the brightest penny I’ll ever meet. All parents say those things. I just prayed she wasn’t too far behind, or delayed. But that first morning, I saw the daring in that little girl’s face. Her presence was older than her years. She moved through our classroom as if she were on a stage. She was already destined for bigger things.

I can’t remember when, exactly, we did our classroom unit on favorite animals. But that was when she first drew something. It was a unicorn. She let me keep it, because she knew I loved it so much.

“How did you make this?” I asked her.

“It’s from behind my eyelids, Miss Katie,” Addison told me.

“What do you see behind your eyelids?” I asked her.

“The whole world. Only more of it,” she answered. “There’s a lot more behind my eyes than whatever’s in front of them.”

She won me over that day. She reminded me of a line from Keats: “I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair.”

I tried not to see the other side of Addison—a darker word than dark. But if you were to ask me if darkness was in her, too, I’d have to say yes. Even as a little girl, yes. I saw the black opposite of bright.

Believe by Addison Stone, age seven, courtesy of Kate Ortega.

LUCY LIM: From early days, kids were calling her Artist Girl. Her talent made her known. I wouldn’t say popular—she was too freaky-deek for that word. But known. Plenty of kids were turned off by Addy’s dominating energy. The way she told other kids their paintings weren’t any good, or how she stole all the best chalks and paint-boxes, or her hair-trigger temper if “cleanup time” surprised her in the middle of a project.

But she’d give her art away like it was nothing. She had a flip side, always, that was generous to a fault. “Here, this one’s for you, Tatum, because I know you love dolphins.” And she wasn’t even friends with Tatum. I remember how we’d all stand over Addy’s shoulder and watch her draw. Me always closest because she’d picked me out for special. Have you seen any of her art from when she was in grade school? Holy smokes, am I right?