“Mom and I cleaned the third floor of Kingshead by ourselves. It took us six hours.” Marion hated the petulant, petty note in her voice. She switched her massaging fingers to the other temple. She needed to call Dr. Wayland. Her head shouldn’t still hurt this severely, eight days later. Should it?
“That place is like twenty thousand square feet.” Marion glared through the sheer curtains, at the dark shape of Kings-head. “My knees are killing me. My head still hurts from my fall.”
“I’m sorry,” said Charlotte, not actually sounding very sorry. “I just needed a night off. You know?”
“You had a night off last night.”
Charlotte sat up with an annoyed sigh. “If you have something to say to me, why don’t you just say it? I’m tired.”
“I’ll bet.” Marion twisted the edge of Charlotte’s downy white comforter in her hands. Charlotte had gotten rid of her old quilt before the move. This new fabric, rich and unfamiliar, scraped Marion’s fingertips like a prickly hide. She wondered darkly if that was a metaphor, there in Charlotte’s bedding. Out with the old and dingy sister, in with the new, rich blonde.
“Marion, what the hell?” Charlotte snapped. “What do you care if I hang out with Val?”
“Nothing.” Marion swung her legs free of the bed. “Never mind.”
“Whatever.” Charlotte turned away, toward the window.
Marion had her hand on the doorknob, her eyes stinging with a rush of tears, when Charlotte said quietly, “It’s all right for me to have fun, you know.”
“I never said it wasn’t.” Marion swayed a little; nausea, her constant companion since the accident, collected in hot pools behind her eyebrows.
“You can come with us next time, if you want.”
“Right.” Marion gestured expansively at herself—her baggy gray T-shirt and unkempt hair, legs that needed shaving. “I’d fit in great with that crowd.”
“You’d like her.” Charlotte sat up, brought her knees to her chest, suddenly beaming. “She listens to me talk about Dad and doesn’t say a word. Just listens in this way that makes me feel like, Jesus. She gets it.”
“Yeah? Is her father dead, too?”
Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “You’re being a dick.”
“I listen to you, too, you know.”
Marion stared at the floor, wishing she hadn’t said anything, wishing she’d stayed in her room and let Charlotte run off into the woods to live forever with Val. Maybe then she could nurse her evil overlord headache in peace.
“Oh, Marion.” There was the familiar Charlotte voice, no longer so nettled. “Is that what—? Of course you do. You listen, starfish, you get it more than anyone. But . . . it’s just nice, you know? To talk to someone who isn’t you or Mom. It makes losing Dad feel smaller. Beatable.”
Charlotte patted the bed, and Marion considered storming off in a huff, but the thought of storming anywhere made her skull feel collapsible. Instead, she allowed Charlotte to pull her close, smooth back her hair. She tried not to gag at Charlotte’s beer breath, considered suggesting they brush their teeth, decided to stay put.
As Charlotte sank into sleep beside her, Marion wondered if Charlotte’s new friendship blossomed, maybe Charlotte wouldn’t need Marion as desperately as she had over the past few months. Would that mean Marion might actually feel some relief? To exist merely as herself, and not as an anchor for her mother and sister—what would that be like?
She might have to then take the time to stitch up the gaping heart-hole her father’s death had left behind.
Might have to take a hard look at the cobwebs her life had gathered over the past murky few months.
Might not like what she saw.
She held Charlotte and squeezed her tired eyes good and shut—a small girl once more, terrified of lightning. Praying someone would keep it from striking.
Zoey
The Underbelly
Well, this was unbearable.
Zoey had been wandering around Val’s party for all of two minutes and couldn’t stop thinking about that stupid book.
She sipped water from her red plastic cup, fiddled with the hem of her deliberately shabby WILD ALASKA! T-shirt with the howling, rhinestone-framed wolves, and wiped her palm on her faded pink skinny jeans.
A couple of years ago, Zoey had arrived on Sawkill and realized almost immediately that, by moving to the island, she’d made a terrible mistake. Sawkill crawled with the untroubled, clear-skinned, immaculately groomed offspring of oil tycoons, old-money socialites, hedge fund managers, world-renowned plastic surgeons. They existed within the confines of an intricate and esoteric sociopolitical structure Zoey didn’t understand, and didn’t care to. They never said the wrong thing. They played nice. They didn’t make unsightly scenes. And though they acknowledged that there was a world beyond Sawkill—beyond the insulated bubble of their money and their easy lives and their veneered smiles—they were content to watch that world pass them by, tragedies and injustices and all. Ugliness couldn’t touch them, so why pay it any mind?
Except ugliness had touched them, over and over.
Zoey silently recited the names, mentally pushing past the din of Val’s party to remind herself why she was there: to sniff around, to observe Val in her natural habitat, to keep an eye on Charlotte Althouse.
Evelyn Sinclair, Zoey recited. Fiona Rochester. Avani Mishra. Grace Kang. Natalie Breckenridge.
Thora Keller.
Tragedy had touched Sawkill, again and again and again, but after each girl’s disappearance, once a respectable amount of time had passed, everyone seemed to stop caring.
The world’s a nasty place. But what can you do? We don’t like to think about such things. Not here. Not on these blessed shores.
Living on the Rock was enough to make Zoey physically ill. She existed with a permanent knot of unease wedged in her intestines. But where else could she go? Cali-freaking-fornia? No, thanks. Besides, leaving her father would wound him so deeply Zoey figured she would feel his paternal agony from the other side of the continent.
So she stayed put and counted down the days until graduation. One more year. When she left then—and she would leave, and never look back—her father wouldn’t be able to blame her for it. College, the future, et cetera.
A nondescript, endless, Thora-less future.
Zoey took another long gulp of water, blinking her burning eyes. Maybe she didn’t so much care that leaving would hurt her father. Maybe she didn’t care about a father who kept a secret, freaky book full of scrawled monsters and encoded words in the house and wouldn’t tell her what it meant.
Why did I come here again? she texted to Grayson. Her fingers shook a little as they hovered over her phone.
A few seconds later:
Because you’re determined to give me a nervous breakdown.
I’m being careful.
I trust you. I don’t trust Val, or her minions.
SHE invited ME.
Last time you came to a Val party, what happened?
I got drunk.
And?
I accused Val of killing Thora. In front of everyone. And then threw up.
Right, and then?
Zoey’s lips thinned.
Val broke down crying, and her shit-faced friends threw firecrackers at me.
Can we please go home? We’ll go to my house. We’ll binge 30 Rock. Where are you?
By the Droop.
The Droop was a practically prehistoric oak tree with long, misshapen branches that crawled across the ground like tentacles. If you disappeared into the branches of the Droop at Val’s parties, you were trying to hide—to make out with someone, to try something more hard-core than alcohol.
Or to simply not be found.
This was Zoey: Wandering through the branches, ducking under them, stepping over them. Tossing her empty cup over her shoulder. Going back to find it, cursing under her breath because she was a helpless tree-hugging hippie. Mad at herself, too, because why bot
her coming to show Val she wasn’t scared of her if she was going to spend the whole time hiding?
She found the cup, crushed it, and shoved it in her back pocket.
“So what do you think about the new girl?”
“Which one?”
People were talking nearby—a girl and a boy. Zoey ducked behind a branch, tried to mold her body into a branch shape. Out in the clearing, the party’s light shifted—bonfire, torches, candles to ward off the bugs.
But in the Droop it was dark as death.
“The freak one,” said the girl. Jane Fitzgerald. Zoey recognized the voice, the smooth brown skin, the expensive-as-hell, board-straight weave that fell to the dip of Jane’s back. “Not Charlotte. The one who had a seizure or whatever last week.”
“Oh, right.” Harry Windemeier, wearer of doofy frat-boy expressions and Top-Siders and too much cologne. “God, I hate coming under here. Couldn’t we have just gone to your car?”
“Why? Are you scared?”
“No.”
Jane wiggled her fingers. Val’s party outlined her silhouette in fire. “Scared of the Collector? You are such a pussy. Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep—”
“Yeah. That’s exactly it. I’m scared of a kid’s bedtime story. Fuck off.”
“He’ll follow you home and won’t let you sleep.” Jane made a cheesy ghost sound, her voice full of laughter.
Zoey didn’t laugh. Grayson thought the old island tales about the Collector were silly, like any ghost story about boogeymen and dark creatures lurking in the trees, hungry for a meal of children. Grayson had family in New Jersey, and he often reminded Zoey that every place around the world had its urban legends, its kiddie-nightmare fuel. In New Jersey, it was the Jersey Devil. On Sawkill Rock, it was the Collector.
But even before Thora died, even before Thora had left her for Val, Zoey had decided it was unwise to completely dismiss such stories, no matter how often Grayson rolled his eyes. Maybe it was the writer in her, who believed even the tallest tales were rooted in truth.
Or maybe, Zoey thought darkly, legends about monsters weren’t so funny when girls were actually dying.
“If you don’t cut it out with that Collector bullshit,” Harry was scolding Jane, “I’m gonna leave you high and dry, Fitzgerald.”
Jane sighed. “You are no fun whatsoever.”
“And yet here you are,” Harry teased.
The slight crunch of damp leaves marked Jane and Harry’s approach. Zoey was still, still, still. She hugged her hiding branch with one arm.
“Nightingale’s okay, right?” asked Harry. “After the accident?”
Typical. Of course a horse’s life was worth more than a human’s to someone like him—if the human didn’t shit diamonds, that is. Poor Marion. She probably didn’t even realize yet just how insignificant a flea she would seem to these humorless rich wankers.
Zoey felt her chest constrict, remembering how many nights she and Thora had stayed up late talking crap about the Sawkill elite. Humorless rich wankers had been Thora’s phrase, uttered in the most obnoxious English accent she could manage.
Zoey leaned harder against the Droop, stroked its rough bark. Nice tree. You don’t care about money, do you?
“Yeah, Nightingale’s fine.” Jane sighed, stretching in an obvious fashion. Her sweater rode up her torso, leaving a large stretch of stomach bare. “Just a little spooked.”
“I can’t believe Chief Harlow let some random stranger ride his horse,” said Harry. “I mean, really? Come on. Asking for trouble.”
Harry sat on one of the branches, not ten feet from Zoey’s, and tugged Jane onto his lap. She giggled, shook back her hair.
“What do you expect?” Jane gasped. Harry had his hands up her shirt. “Harlow’s useless. He never found Natalie, and he’ll never find Thora. The incompetence is staggering. Mayor Harding should fire his ass. Oh, Harry.” Jane performed an obscene, breathy groan. “That feels so good.”
Zoey didn’t move from her hiding spot, but nevertheless she felt all the pieces of herself shift into formation. Gears grinding, claws sharpening. The hissing branches of the Droop touched their leaves to her shoulders.
“I still can’t believe Zoey and Grayson dated.” Jane was still talking, between kisses and half-hearted porn sounds. Harry sighed, annoyed. Zoey could relate.
“Look, what’s the big mystery?” Harry snapped. “Grayson wanted to screw her, and he did. He got what he wanted, then he left. Now, stop talking. All right? You’re wasting my time.”
Jane murmured something and sank slowly to her knees.
The cool, damp world under the Droop wasn’t so cool anymore. The bonfire’s heat pressed against Zoey’s skin, pooled under her feet, pulled tears from her eyes that left her breathless.
It wasn’t that she believed what they were saying.
It’s that she almost wished it were true.
It would be strangely easier that way: Grayson wanted to get laid, and then he cut and run.
But the truth of why she and Grayson had broken up was almost too embarrassing for Zoey to think about without wanting to puke.
After they’d finally had sex, Zoey had decided she never wanted to do that again. Not with him, not with anyone. She would never forget the sight of Grayson sitting forlorn and defeated on his bed, tears trailing down his pale cheeks, as she told him, hollow-voiced, that it just wasn’t going to work.
Zoey wiped her eyes, her fingers carving hot trails across her skin, and stepped out of her hiding spot. Jane gasped, jumped up from the ground. Harry hopped around, zipping up his pants.
“Neither of you know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Zoey declared, then turned on her heel, ignoring the sound of their half-embarrassed, half-gleeful laughter, and stalked away. A prickly glove of shame wrapped itself around her throat. She imagined each slap of her checkered high-tops against the ground would help split it open. The earth would swallow Jane and Harry whole. Just for a little while. Just to scare them.
She only made it three strides before she heard Jane scream, and whirled back around.
Harry cursed, slapping at his skin, his clothes.
Jane shrieked, spat, and staggered away from him.
A dozen dark coins dropped from the trees, gathering on Jane’s and Harry’s arms, scalps, sleeves.
Zoey squinted, then cursed and jumped away.
Black spiders, fat and thin-legged, scuttled up Jane’s cheeks and into her hair. They crawled down Jane’s collar beneath her top, and they skittered across Harry’s lips. They gathered there in clumps, seeking entrance.
Jane, gagging, fell to her knees.
Zoey ran.
Zoey
The Wolf Pup
Zoey headed for the bonfire, her body pumping bright red electricity.
Then she slammed into Grayson, and clung to him to keep from falling over.
“Zoey, what—? Shit, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“I’ve gotta get out of here.” Zoey glanced back over her shoulder. Jane and Harry weren’t emerging from the Droop. She’d prefer them to come charging out with accusations, howling for Val. But the Droop stood still, black, silent.
Grayson wasn’t budging. “Did someone hurt you?” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll call your father.”
“Stop it.” Zoey shoved him away, stumbling. He looked wounded, dark brows crinkling over those gentle blue eyes, and Zoey did not give a single fuck. “Just . . . something weird’s going on, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, we just need to leave.”
The music blasting from Harry Windemeier’s silver Mercedes changed from one song to the next. A crowd of girls by the bonfire cheered, undulating. Zoey caught a flash of golden hair—Val.
Val’s voice was a bell: “Charlotte, come dance with me!”
Suddenly, it was eight months ago. Junior year had just started, and Zoey was waiting by Thora’s car in the Sawkill Day School parki
ng lot, when behind her Val called out, “Oh, hey, Thora! Your story for Mr. Everett’s class was awesome. Holy shit, girl. You can write.”
Zoey had squinted through the sun to find them, just in time to see Val, with that beaming Hollywood-starlet smile, pull a dazed, blushing Thora in for a hug. (To be hugged by Valerie Mortimer! And, lo, the clouds did part on that day!)
Then Val had looked over Thora’s shoulder, right at Zoey, and her smile had widened, just a little, and she’d wiggled four fingers at Zoey. A wave hello? Or some kind of taunt?
Thinking back, Zoey figured she knew exactly what that wave had meant: Farewell, mortal. She’s my Thora now.
And Zoey had been too jealous of their new, inexplicable friendship, too shell-shocked, too proud to step in and stop it.
And now Thora was dead.
But Zoey wouldn’t stand idly by this time.
She pushed past Grayson and into the knot of Val’s dancing wolves, turned around and around in the pumping bass and the snapping fire until she found Charlotte. Charlotte, dancing beside Collin Hawthorne, arms thrown up over her head, radiant smile on her face. Charlotte’s light-brown hair was piled on top of her head. She wore dark skinny jeans and a sheer plunging top that tied behind her neck—a top Zoey recognized instantly as Val’s.
Jesus. Less than two weeks after Charlotte had arrived, and they were already sharing clothes. Thora and Val had done that, too. They’d shared clothes; lip gloss; a quiet, genteel indifference toward all things Zoey.
A tiny silver shape on a chain glinted between Charlotte’s collarbones.
“Charlotte, we’ve gotta go,” said Zoey, shoving her way in. She realized the silver thing was a starfish charm and remembered where she’d seen that same charm before. “Marion needs you.”
“What?” Charlotte brushed a sweaty strand of hair off her cheek. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, she just . . . she had a nightmare. Something about . . . you know, about her accident.” Zoey swallowed hard, shifting from one leg to another. Since Thora vanished, a tiny pocket-Thora had lived inside Zoey’s brain. Sometimes she showed up at the most annoying times, flashing smiles at Zoey, whispering old inside jokes to Zoey. She was a hard ghost to shake.
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