“I love how smart you are, Candace Pickens.” Her smile is admiring. “Yes. It’s a cycle: when one dies, another is born.”
“What?”
I didn’t actually need her to repeat it, but she does anyway.
“When one dies, another is born. Always on the same day, sometimes down to the minute. It’s like the passing of the torch.”
A chill slips down the entire length of my body.
“Or a curse.”
18
I LEAVE. I MUMBLE AN excuse and run down the long corridor of oaks. I don’t feel the wind on my skin, the gravel beneath my feet, I don’t even see my way clearly, I just run.
The curse is real. The Craven Curse I’ve mocked my entire life as the worst sort of family nonsense is real.
Maybe more real than I am.
My head spins. My breath stumbles. I have to stop running and press the meat of my fake hands into my fake eyes until some semblance of stability returns.
Wild thoughts flood my mind. I don’t know what I did to my junior year to make it come at me with such a vengeance, but I wish with every fiber of my being I could take it back. I wish with every fiber of my being the Kings had never come to town, that Sterling had never opened my eyes to the reality of the swamp, that I hadn’t been born to such a small, odious place as Sticks. Odious. The word feels good.
If I’d been born anywhere else, maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about things like fertility and Shine. Instead, I’ve won the lottery. I’m a thing with a name and the ability to heal faster than normal people do. All it cost me was what? My sanity? My fertility? Was I lucky enough to win two trade-offs, as Nova called them?
What possible prize could be worth either of those things? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I kick at the large gravel on the side of the road. The Mississippi River snakes by, dragging sunset on its back. I stoop, gather rocks in my hand, and hurl them into the water. Sunset fractures and it’s satisfying to destroy something so beautiful, even temporarily. That means I can destroy it again and again. And I do.
Ahead, I hear the low growl of an engine. A modern Mustang—the sort so popular you can’t go a mile without spotting one on the highway—rolls into view at the curve of the road. It’s dark, gunmetal gray, and absorbing the light of the setting sun.
Gage.
I back into the grass, waiting to see if he’ll pause or smile or in some way acknowledge my presence.
He doesn’t.
Though his window’s down and he passes near enough that I can see the time on his dash, he doesn’t even do me the courtesy of the one-handed wave. He passes and continues as though I’m not standing here.
All my frustration takes shape inside my chest.
I rip off my shoe and hurl it as hard as I can. It smacks against the rear windshield and the brake lights flare angry red.
The door opens and Gage emerges, deliberate and stalking toward me. Sunset cuts him in half. He is half light, half dark, walking like a tempest. He stoops to retrieve my shoe without breaking his stride. His eyes pin me.
I lift my chin.
“You dropped this.” He thrusts the shoe between us. His words are controlled.
“No,” I say. Chin up, chin up, chin up. “I threw it. At you.”
His eyes narrow before they explode. “Why?”
The shout is welcome. “Because you were rude!”
“Rude? I was rude? And what’s throwing your shoe at someone’s car?”
“Necessary.”
“Which brings me back to why?” He’s not shouting anymore. But his anger is in the flush of his skin.
“Because you ignored me just now and you won’t talk to me. Neither of those is acceptable in my book.”
His laugh is humorless. “Acceptable.” He repeats the word.
That saps some of my backbone. I feel it drain right down to my toes, leaving my stomach vaguely sick. “I know you like me. You said it. So talk to me.”
This time when he pauses, he lifts his eyes and takes a slow, deep breath. “I’m . . . That was all a mistake,” he says, then starts to retreat.
My toes tingle and my gut churns. There is nothing else. I’ll stand here until the sun has set on this fretful day. I’ll wake in the morning to my mother’s cry of “The crows are in the corn!” still watching Gage’s taillights burn a path down the road.
He’s nearly to his car before I feel my legs again.
“The hell it was.”
I rush to him. Press my hands to his chest, push him against the car, and lift my lips to his. His mouth is hot and resistant, but only for a second. I pull his bottom lip between mine, his hands fall to my waist, then his arms crush me.
Our kisses aren’t shy but furious and hurried.
He lifts me and turns my back against the car, kissing me until my lips burn and I don’t remember ever touching the ground.
I don’t know which of us takes a breath first, but finally we part and my toes remember what they’re for.
It’s dusk. The sun has abandoned every part of the sky and the cliffs of Gage’s face are painted in watercolor. I run my fingers through his hair, over his forehead, down his neck. He lets me explore, until I’m ready for another kiss. He catches my hands with his, putting a little more distance between us.
“Okay,” he says, his voice on unsteady legs. “I lied.”
“I know,” I say, stepping forward, but he holds out his hands.
“But it doesn’t change anything.”
At some point, his car got tired of the door hanging open. The air pings repeatedly with its irritation. I know how it feels.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means—” He stops, but this time he doesn’t look down or up or away at the running river; he looks right at me. “We can’t do this.”
“Why?” My anger starts boiling again. “Stop being such a coward and tell me why!”
“No!”
“I know what I am! You know why? Because your sister told me. What I don’t understand is why you all care so damn much. So I’m this Bone, so what?!”
It’s nearly dark, but I’m pretty sure the expression on his face is what you would call stunned. Instead of answering, he scoops up my shoe and pushes it into my hands.
“I told you not to tell her anything. You need to stay away from us. All of us. Please, Candace, for your own good.”
The sting is sharper than I expect. I fire back, “You want to know what pisses me off? People who think they know what’s good for me. What is it about boys and parents that makes them think they can tell me what’s good for me without offering evidence? I know what it is, piss and arrogance.” My anger has momentum now; there’s no stopping the storm that is me. “Girls can’t possibly keep sense in their pretty heads, right? We need authority figures to guide us along the safe path. Well, you know what I say to that? I say f—”
Gage rushes forward, stopping my mouth with his. It’s as fierce as I’ve ever wanted any kiss to be, fierce and desperate and fraught.
I push him away. “That’s not the way this goes.”
He nods like he knows. Again, there’s a gulf between us, a span of space that both holds me back and tempts me forward. Between us are questions and answers that would change everything if only we’d uncover them.
“Keeping people in the dark never goes well. You say I should stay away from some vague threat. Well, that’s not how I deal with threats.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“Well, you suck at it.”
He flings himself back and, raising his hands, shouts, “I know!”
Night has become as dark as this conversation. There’s no clarity here other than the light streaming from Gage’s headlights, and they only illuminate what he chooses.
“I’m not going to play this game with you anymore,” I promise.
“You shouldn’t,” he says heavily.
I deny my watering eyes. With a curt good night, I jog
out of his taillights and as far as I can possibly go. I’m halfway home when I remember I drove to the Kings’ and have to return for my damn car.
There’s no traffic in this part of town. It’s just me and all the dying summer bugs as I jog along the river. The oak tunnel feels especially cavernous tonight, oppressively cavernous. I miss the closed-in warmth of my bed. There is too much room for madness here.
My car is parked to the side of the house. Right next to Gage’s Mustang. Nice of him to come give me a ride back to the house. If he had, I might have made good on my promise to throw my second shoe.
Which is probably why he didn’t come.
I walk softly across the gravel, mindful of any noise that might give me away. I hear nothing but the gentle grating of stone beneath my feet, the chirp of crickets, and the distant shushing of the river.
But then, above all of that, a cry that raises the hair along my arms.
It drifts along a single pitch then stutters into a sob and I realize it’s a female voice keening from somewhere within the Lillard House.
With a shiver, I dive into my car and peel away.
19
NANNY LIKES ABIGAIL. NO IDEA why, but ever since I first introduced them, they’ve been fast friends. Honestly, I think it makes Nanny feel cosmopolitan to tell people her granddaughter has black friends. It doesn’t usually come so in handy, until I need to distract Nanny.
First thing after church I call Abigail and Sterling. I explain what happened with Nova as concisely as possible and end by shamelessly begging them to help with my biweekly internment as Nanny’s Sunday-afternoon minion. Why? Because she’s the keeper of the family tome and I need to know more about the Craven Curse and the Blind Bone.
We dust and vacuum and scrub for the better part of three hours.
“Tea!” Nanny calls, inviting us to pause in our toil. She has a pitcher of sweet tea and a basket of fried cheese sticks on the front porch.
Abigail protests that she’d rather keep cleaning and get the work done, but Nanny’s having none of it. We’ll take our tea or risk offending her down to her hard-as-opal bones.
The tea is Nanny’s signature perfect sweet tea—just the right ratio of tea to sweet with a sprig of mint to cool it off. We only get the sprig of mint when we aren’t filching it. Add the spice of her cheese straws and not one of us bothers to make conversation.
This, it turns out, is a tactical error.
“Girls,” Nanny sings. “Won’t you convince Candace, here, that it’s a good idea to see a doctor about her . . . troubles? She won’t listen to her mother.”
Years of bracing for Nanny’s subtle attacks is the only reason my jaw doesn’t drop. I do nothing to indicate surprise or hurt. I sit and I sip my tea, letting Nanny’s words wash over me like a cold shower.
Sterling is the one to give me away. Always, always Sterling. While Abigail is a statue, Sterling reveals everything with the shape of her eyes.
“Don’t tell me she didn’t tell you two?” Nanny feigns surprise but is clearly delighted to be stirring the pot. “I thought for sure she’d have told her best friends.”
“I didn’t because it’s not a big deal,” I say, unable to resist this bait.
“Not a big deal? But of course it is, hon; you’re just too young to recognize it. Mark my words, it won’t be long before you care and then you’ll sincerely regret not seeking treatment.”
I grind my teeth. I know what she wants. She wants to goad me into a public argument with her in which my friends will be guilted into taking her side because she’s old.
“Thanks for the tea,” I say. “It’s exactly what I needed to keep going.”
Sterling and Abigail follow my lead and we return to the living room, where Grandpa Craven’s picture sits above the taxidermied head of the one and only gator he ever killed. The story is that he was duck hunting with friends when they spotted a gator in the tall swamp grass. He’d never hunted a gator before, but he was full of gumption that day and somehow convinced his friends it’d be a great idea. Sometimes I think it’s my favorite thing about Nanny’s house.
“You want to tell us what that was about?” Sterling asks, inquisitive without prodding.
Abigail doesn’t say a word. Of course, Abigail already knows.
“No,” I say, but I do. “You know how I never got my period? Well, the doctors say I’m not . . . fertile. And in my mother’s eyes and in Nanny’s eyes, that makes me less than a woman, but it’s no big deal.”
Pity can be so quiet and so needling. I feel it from both sides and it makes my skin itch.
“Oh, Candy,” Sterling breathes. “I don’t even know what to say.”
Abigail surprises us all by pulling me into the biggest, most amazing hug I’ve ever experienced. Sterling joins, wrapping her thin arms as far as they’ll go around both of us, and I start to feel an uncomfortable pinching in the back of my throat.
I had no idea how sad I was until this moment. Until my friends hugged me instead of trying to fix me. Until I didn’t feel like it was a matter of being broken, but a matter of being different.
“It’s no big deal,” I repeat, struggling to keep my voice steady. It’s never okay to cry at Nanny’s house, so I push them away. “Let’s finish and get out of here.”
They’re reluctant to let go. Sterling steps back and awkwardly twists her hands together, fretting. Abigail slides her palms down my arms to squeeze my hands in hers.
She looks me dead in the eye and says, “There ain’t nothing about you that makes you less.”
I feel the well of my eyes start to fill. “I love you, Abigail Beale, but Lord help me, I will never forgive you if I spill a tear right now.”
She cracks a grin. “Then nut up, Pickens.”
“Would you just guard the door?”
I find the tome Uncle Jack uses to torture us every year on the shelf by Nanny’s bed. She keeps it in a locked box but leaves the key lying on top. Uncle Jack gets after her for leaving valuables out in the open like that, but she always argues that if someone wanted in a locked box badly enough, the lack of a key wouldn’t stop them.
It’s ancient, leather bound with crispy pages and a smell like history. Sterling crouches behind me, her chin on my shoulder.
An elaborate drawing of the family tree spans the first pages. Someone with a careful hand did this in the days before ballpoint pens. Curling cursive letters tumble out of the leaves one after another, growing more fruitful the closer they get to the bottom. There’s something very affirming about this tree. I may not carry the line forward, but this past seems very, very alive.
I finger the blue satin ribbon tucked between pages and flip to it. Here is where the Craven Curse gets going. The words The Peculiar Case of the Cravens are elegantly carved in black ink. In all the years of Uncle Jack’s readings, I’ve never once laid eyes on the actual text. It feels forbidden.
I flip the page.
It begins with a narrative about who first noticed the trend of synchronized birth and death among family members all the way back when our family first settled in these parts. The stories were passed down orally for a time until Sarah Sissy Craven thought they deserved ink and paper. She began the chronicle and passed the book down to whoever was the next link in this “curious chain.”
“What are we looking for?” Sterling whispers. She’s known about the curse for as long as I have, but neither of us thought it was worth believing in until Nova unwittingly connected it to Shine.
“Anything odd,” I suggest. “Anything that confirms what Nova is saying.”
I have no idea what that will look like. I suppose we’ll know it when we see it and not a minute before.
We stay hunched and unmoving, flipping pages as quickly as we can read them, making torturously slow progress. Cursive truly is a dying art and it’s one neither of us is fluent in. Every time Nanny Craven makes a noise, I’m certain she’s coming through her bedroom door ready to smite me for snooping in her thin
gs. Never mind the fact that I’m supposedly next in line to inherit this thing. And when that happens, the scanner will be my best friend.
The stories all start with the name of the curse bearer, the person’s spouse, parents, children, and who the curse landed on next. It’s a tight little lineage, but rarely a straight one. I search for a pattern and find none: it has no loyalty to either gender, it doesn’t have a special preference for the children or grandchildren of the current bearer, and it doesn’t follow a set number of years. For all intents and purposes, it appears to be completely random.
The only thing I do notice is how many of the female curse bearers were as childless as I’ll be. Every so often, there’s a couple with no child. Their branch of the tree stunts while others flourish around them. I feel a kinship to these women already.
“Go back!” Sterling flaps her hand. “There. Read this one.”
I follow her finger to an entry that barely takes up half a page. It’s such a familiar story I didn’t even have to read it. Poor, sweet Annemarie Craven who went mad and died in the swamp.
“What about it?”
Sterling’s expression suggests I’ve missed something major. I follow her finger to a faint notation made off to the side. “Mary,” she says. “Mad Mary . . .”
“Sweet,” I breathe, astonished.
I’m a direct descendent of the very ghost I confronted the night of the gala.
20
I’VE COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THE PARTY at my cousins’ by the time school starts on Monday. If I needed a measure for how twisted my priorities have become, that’s it.
No one else forgot about it, though. Everyone who did go is talking about it with smug smiles, and everyone who didn’t go is trying to figure out how to get themselves invited next time. But the glory of the moment is tainted by what accompanies those stories—ghosts encountered by lovers in the woods, ghosts following people home from the party, ghosts in the streets and fields and trees.
My name is rarely spoken without the word ghost or spirit or haint hanging in the surrounding sentences.
Behold the Bones Page 17
