by Lexa Hillyer
But what had it done to the rest of them?
Careful not to wake her mom, she lay down on the sofa beside her. It was narrow, but her mom was small, and she fit, curving around her mom’s body, which felt frailer than it used to be, but also warm and comforting. She wrapped an arm around her mother, and heard her mom give one soft whimper. Eventually, the rise and fall of her breath had allowed Tessa to drift off, too.
When she’d awakened this morning, she was back in her own bed, unsure how she’d gotten there.
After Abigail finished whatever the hell she’d been going on about—futures, grades, potentials, blah blah—she stepped down from the podium, and Mr. Green, the Advanced English teacher, stepped up in her place and cleared his throat. He was wearing a freshly pressed purple button-down and jeans.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said, “to announce the English Department fall semester awards.” He held up what looked like it could be an annoyingly long list, and began reading prize names and the students who’d won them.
“The Michigan State Award for Excellence in American Literature. Pete Semolino,” Mr. Green said.
Mel whispered, “I hear he’s engaged.”
“Who, Pete?” Lilly asked.
“No. Mr. Green.”
“The Michigan State Award for Excellence in Shakespeare Studies. Elizabeth Mary Jorgersen.”
People clapped as Lizzie went up to take the award and shake Mr. Green’s hand. “The Beatrice Howley Award. Krista Kate Smith.” More scattered clapping and another handshake. “The Patricia Goddard Poetry Prize. Katherine Ann Malloy.”
There it was. The reason she’d bothered to show up in the first place.
“Since she can’t be here to collect the award, her sister will come claim it for her at this time,” Mr. Green said, looking over to where Tessa and Lilly sat. There was probably some sort of applause, but it was white noise to Tessa.
She turned to Lilly, frozen. She did not want to get up in front of all these people. The debacle at the funeral had been bad enough.
But Lilly nodded subtly at her, then stood up and went to receive Kit’s award, and Tessa was flooded with temporary relief. Lilly was stronger than she’d given her credit for. Lilly was going to survive this, she could suddenly see, and it set something loose that had been tight and painful in her chest for days now.
When Mr. Green finished the remainder of the list, he lingered at the podium for a minute longer. “We’re very proud of our students so far this year. Now, I’d like to conclude by reading part of an interview with the novelist Vladimir Nabokov about writing and poetry, which some of my students found particularly inspiring this fall.”
A few kids behind Tessa groaned, but Mr. Green pulled a folded sheet of notebook paper out of his pocket and cleared his throat. “Nabokov claims poetry started when a quote ‘cave boy came running back to the cave, through the tall grass, shouting as he ran, Wolf, wolf.’”
Here Mr. Green paused for dramatic effect. “And you see there was no wolf. But poetry had been born—what Nabokov called the tall tale in the tall grass.”
Tessa was only half listening. She was still wondering whether maybe she should have gone to the police after all—she still could. Even though she knew now that it had just been Lilly following her through the woods, she still couldn’t shake the fear . . . the sense of footsteps cracking twigs in her wake, the conviction that at any moment someone could grab her and do whatever they’d done to Kit to her, too.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mel said as soon as the assembly was over. But as Tessa filed into the bustling hallway behind Lilly, Mr. Green somehow ended up in their way. Mel looked over her shoulder, but her face looked stricken—like maybe she felt bad for them. Whatever it was, Tessa blinked, and Mel had gone, dissolving into the crowd. Meanwhile Mr. Green was saying, “Congratulations again to your sister. I truly am . . . proud of her.” It creeped Tessa out, the way he spoke of her in the present tense, like she wasn’t gone. It felt dirty, like an erasure of the biggest, worst thing that had ever happened to her.
“Thanks,” Lilly piped up beside her. “And congratulations to you, too,” she added.
He looked at her funny.
“I hear you’re engaged.”
Mr. Green smiled. “People do talk.”
“I want to be a writer, too,” Lilly said.
Tessa turned to her in shock. “You do?” she asked, at the exact same time Mr. Green said, “Well, then, I hope to see you in Advanced English when the time comes.”
After he left, Tessa pulled Lilly aside, near a bank of lockers. “The bell is about to ring. I should go to class,” Lilly said.
“I didn’t know you wanted to be a writer too. Since when?” Tessa demanded. It wasn’t that she begrudged Lilly this aspiration, she was just genuinely surprised by it.
But Lilly just shrugged. “I’ve been writing in my diary a little this year and it’s . . . I don’t know. Refreshing. I like it. I could never be a poet like Kit, but I don’t know, maybe I could write blogs or articles or even books one day. Mom always says I need to have pursuits and stuff.”
“Oh, okay,” Tessa said. “I mean, that’s great. I’m happy for you. Really.”
“I gotta get to class,” Lilly said again.
Tessa nodded and watched her sister move through the dwindling crowd toward her next class.
Once she was gone, Tessa headed the other way.
She felt dizzy as she pushed her way out of the school building. No, not just dizzy. Something else. She felt . . . Kit. Kit telling her something, inhabiting her. That damn chimerism churning in her blood again.
Or was that just Tessa, still trying to cling to the memory of her?
She thought of the anecdote Mr. Green had mentioned. The boy who cried wolf. Maybe that’s all any of this had been. He hurt me. He lied. Maybe that was just a giant crying-wolf, a false alarm. And yet, it still felt like Kit was here, lingering somehow, as if for the sheer purpose of making Tessa feel—as always—like she was one step behind. But maybe she never had been one step behind. Maybe she finally needed to tell Kit’s voice inside her head to shut the hell up.
Maybe it was finally time for this to end.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Before
2/4
Dear Diary,
I really needed this. It’s been a week and a half since Patrick “broke up” with me . . . if that’s even what it was. All I know is school has been supremely awkward and depressing and even though Dar is back from her dad’s house, the halls feel empty and I don’t know who to talk to. Mel has tried to be comforting, but to be honest, I know there’s something going on with her. I saw her swallowing pills in the C hall bathroom a few days ago. She said they’re anti-anxieties from her doctor, that her mom approved. Okayyy, but then I tried to ask why she was having anxiety and she was just like, “It’s normal, Lilly.” When I pushed her on it, she admitted that she’s been really worried that Dusty will break up with her when she’s least expecting it. Then I felt a little bad, like maybe me keeping my thing with Patrick a secret and then dumping on her made her freak out and get anxious about her own relationship. So maybe it’s my fault. I’m honestly not sure.
But tonight I told her in no uncertain terms that we needed a slumber party. It had just been way too long and I honestly was like, “I don’t care if it takes away from your weekend time with Dusty. I need you, and I think we need each other.” She got a little bit teary-eyed and so I think I got through to her, and now, here we are.
So far, it has been not a terrible Saturday, either.
First, the car that her twin brothers share rolled up to pick me up. Her brother (pretty sure it was John) was driving. (I mean, I KNOW the difference . . . but they’ve tricked me so many times before. . . . ) Anyway, his girlfriend, Alicia something, was in the passenger seat, and Mel was in the back waiting for me.
We went to the movie theater that’s out just past the bowling alley in that shitty strip
mall and snuck in a bunch of cheap snacks from the quick mart, hiding them in our puffy coat pockets, just like old times. The first thing Mel did when we got out of the car was hug me and say, “I really am sorry for you. Breakups suck—you’re too pretty for that shit.” I mean, it wasn’t exactly the feminist thing to say, but I still took it as a compliment. That was Mel, trying to be sweet. Alicia Whatever got out of the car and was like, “High school guys suck,” then turned to John with a smile and was like, “Sorry, but it’s true.”
When I’m a senior, I would like to be like Alicia. She’s . . . I can’t explain it, but I like her.
Anyway, it still feels weird talking about it like a breakup when no one even knows we were seeing each other and also . . . were we?
Sometimes I wonder if this is really the end. I’ve seen Patrick looking at me at school and his eyes seem so sad and I’m trying to use my latent psychic powers to channel over to him, “Hey, it’s no big deal, let’s just talk about it” or better yet, let’s not even talk about it, let’s just go somewhere and make out and act like nothing happened. Is that really so terrible sounding?
Mel chimed in, “I always thought he was a bit creepy,” which is not really fair since she actually wanted me to ask him out for HER, but I didn’t bother to point that out. At least she’s been really cool about me going behind her back, which is honestly probably nicer than I would have been if it had been the other way around, because as we all know, I super-hate secrets. At least, other people’s.
“I’m just glad we’re hanging out tonight. I’ve missed you,” she added, and I swear I almost started crying but was just like, “Yeah, me too.”
I wanted to talk more about it—to tell her that I’m actually worried about Patrick. That maybe he’s in trouble or something. I mean, whatever he may have done, I KNOW he’s not a bad person. He’s just not. I may be naive, but I know what I felt and I know that he is trying his best and that things are going on that we can’t always see. If I’ve learned anything this winter, it’s that.
But by then we were inside and the movie was starting.
The movie itself? Honestly, it was a dumb gross comedy and I laughed through the whole thing and almost choked on a malted milk ball. It was great. After that we went back to the Knoxes’ house and played a lame game of Monopoly with Mel’s mom and dad in their creepy den, and I say creepy because one entire wall is devoted to where his guns are hanging. Some pistols but mostly hunting rifles, a few of them “historical pieces” that have maybe not been used in a hundred years, but they still creep me out, especially how her dad talks about them like they’re horses or daughters, like, “The walnut Remington’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Besides all that, though, her parents are actually kind of nice to be around, though we get tired of them after a while because they ARE parents, after all.
Then we went to Mel’s room to poke around online. At one point when I tried to dig her spare phone charger out of her nightstand, I noticed the pills from before were in there. I tried to read the label, but I didn’t want her to think I was snooping, and I couldn’t really tell what they were—the name was super long, and the bottle was almost empty.
Anyway, we did our toenails and then fucked them up on the carpet and we spent awhile watching YouTube clips and gossiping and it was a great night and the only thing that was slightly annoying was that Mel kept checking her phone and she was clearly texting Dusty the whole time and it just made me feel *slightly* like she would rather have been spending time with him. But I had to remember she chose me this time, not him. Things were going to get better between us, starting tonight.
And the only other weird thing was that she said she was really tired around eleven and that we should go to bed. It seemed super early but I figured maybe all that anxiety (or all those anxiety pills) were making her tired.
So she went to bed and I turned on my phone flashlight to write this all down, just so I don’t forget that, at the end of it all, Mel is my best friend, and she has my back and I have hers, and everything is going to be okay.
And it is. It is going to be okay. I think.
Good night, Diary.
And the thing was, Lilly really had thought she was going to fall asleep and stay asleep.
She really thought that that was going to be the end of the night, and that everything really was, if not back to normal, then at least headed that way.
It wasn’t until about 12:36 a.m. that she woke up again, and discovered just how wrong she’d been.
Mel was no longer in her bed. The pills from her bedside drawer were still there, but now Lilly could see the bottle was empty.
And, though Lilly didn’t know it yet, the Mossberg Patriot Synthetic Kryptek Highlander from her father’s gun collection was missing, too.
Part Three
Chapter Thirty
Now
FEBRUARY 13
THIRD TIME’S A CHARM. That’s what they say.
They’re wrong.
Three strikes: you’re out. That was more like it.
You’re out, he kept thinking. You’re out.
Except he wasn’t. Because no one knew and maybe no one ever would—and that’s what was keeping Drew Green awake late that Monday night. Not grading papers or watching reruns of his favorite historical miniseries, but the haunting vision, on repeat in his mind, of Katherine Malloy, so young and so smart and so fiercely determined, snow falling around her in the light of the street lamps, making her appear more angelic than ever, even while she was mouthing, “Three strikes: you’re out.”
He sat up in bed and turned on his reading lamp, shaking off the image, careful not to wake his fiancée, Claire, who had begun the gradual process of moving in with him, for which Green felt both grateful and, maybe predictably, undeserving, not least because of the sorts of alterations she had already made, not just to his home, but to his life, which were simply incalculable, though they included such basics as the constantly replenished stash of toilet paper in the hall and the ability to find all three television remotes at any given time. Even his shirts seemed to hang straighter than they used to in his closet.
He shivered; Claire had rolled over and taken the covers with her.
Three strikes: you’re out.
He shook his head, trying to dispel the persistent phrase. Of course the real Katherine never would have uttered anything so basic as a baseball metaphor, except in the interest of irony, and that was only one of the many things he admired about her, about her poetry anyway, which was, of course, full of youth and blunder and overwrought sentimentality in its own way, as the work of any young writer ought to be, and yet it contained a grace, a fragility, an otherworldliness somehow grounded in reality, “a sort of human sadness essential to the heart of great works of literature,” as he once wrote in a margin comment on one of her drafts.
In a paper about The Scarlet Letter, she’d written of Hester Prynne—and he’d never forget this—“What people don’t seem to understand about good girls is that most of them are not good by choice—they have simply never had the opportunity to be anything other than good. Without even knowing it, they are waiting.”
A deep chill had settled into Drew’s bones. His bedroom, its shelves lined with texts and first editions and stacks of study guides, pamphlets, curriculum notes, syllabi, and the like, appeared smaller and shabbier at night, the wind in the trees outside the three-family house he rented the top floor of louder or at least more blatantly mournful. He was experiencing a bone-level cold that wouldn’t dissipate, he knew . . . even when the weather outside warmed to spring, luring hordes of carefree students and teachers alike out to the arboretum, filling the river that passes through with fresh fishing lines and peopling its parks and pathways with bikers and picnickers, each in their own bubble of apparent immaculacy.
But would the woods in Devil’s Lake really, in Green’s thesis, if he were to write one on the subject, represent that early pastoral view of incorruptibility, of natural phenomena b
lessed by an ancient or perhaps even Edenic innocence, or instead the more puritanical connotations of a post-Hawthorne narrative in which its inherent wildness suggests a release of one’s own inner passions and consequently, one’s potential to wander down a bad path, to get lost, to do wrong?
Yet—had Drew Green done wrong, really?
He got out of bed and stood facing the window, thinking not just of Kit Malloy’s eyes, but of other faces that had come before hers. All of them too young, too new, too . . .
At last a kind of heat shuddered through him, but was it the warmth of desire or guilt?
He’d hoped settling down with Claire would . . . what? Absolve him of all that—both the desire and the guilt.
He fingered the pale curtain that draped the edge of the window, like a diaphanous skirt, one forbidden in the school handbook. Even as a kid, he’d always been drawn to what was forbidden.
Had Drew Green done anything wrong? That was one answer he knew.
Yes, yes, of course he had.
Chapter Thirty-One
Before
FEBRUARY 4
SECRETS, SECRETS. EVERYONE HAD THEM. Everyone kept them from Lilly; kept her out.
This is what comes of curiosity, the wind whispered hard and cold in her ear, swishing up into her skull. She shuddered. Snow soaked her boots.
This was the story of her life, she realized now: this winter coldness, this left-out-ness, this butt-out-and-don’t-complain-or-you’ll-sound-like-a-whiny-baby-ness.
But here they were: two glowing yellow headlights through the swirl of falling snow, through the blur of fading streetlights, through the dark of Route 28. Twin golden keys to the fucking treasure.
And she had to have it, she thought, her hands shaking—had to know the secret. The warmth of the golden orbs called to her with some kind of dark, irrepressible magic, and there was so little magic in this world. Lilly only wanted her share.
