Wicked Charm

by Amber Hart

  Jorie lies on my bed with the elegance of a person who is completely at ease. Like she’s been here a thousand and one times—throwing her shoes in the corner, sprawled out on her back, watching me pace the small area that houses a twin bed, an aged wooden dresser painted pink, and a desk made from recycled shutters. I circle the distressed hardwood floor, my feet padding across a plum rug before connecting with warm wood again.

  “It’s more that I wish he didn’t have a girlfriend to begin with. I don’t like the idea of him hurting Samantha’s feelings. They were together for however long.”

  “Probably no more than a couple of weeks,” Jorie interjects. “That’s the longest he’ll hold onto a girl.”

  I consider her words, but I don’t know what to make of them. I think of the night he saved the fallen squirrel, showing a soft part of himself that I doubt many see. I want to give Beau a chance, to get to know him better. Reason warns me to be careful. Would he only want me for a couple of weeks?

  But then the reminder of his soft touch on my skin severs all tension in my limbs. Warmth seeps into my cheeks and neck. I’m surprised by the want that worms into my bones. I can’t erase the hope that he touches me again, that he shows me the softer side of himself, and that he locks his meanness away.

  I stop pacing and sink into the mattress next to Jorie to think about how lucky I am to have made a friend quickly. How equally lucky I am that she doesn’t mind my riding with Beau in the mornings and leaving her alone on the bus. How she doesn’t seem to mind my talking things out with her.

  “What do you think he wants from me?” I ask.

  Jorie laughs wildly. When she does, I can’t help but stop to stare at how her mouth stretches wide. It’s contagious. Only I don’t feel like laughing right now.

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” she asks.

  “Of course.”

  “He wants you to fall for his wicked ways and, consequently, him. He’s no good for you, but I understand if you decide to give him a try. I know it’s hard to fight the pull.”

  He does have a pull. What’s with that?

  “Maybe it’s not as straightforward as that. There’s a possibility that he genuinely wants to know me. But it’s hard to tell because he almost never gives me direct answers. I try to learn about him, and he runs circles around me. The truth is that the more I get to know him, the less I know him.”

  “You will never win with him, Willow.”

  “I don’t want to win. I want to know why he’s so difficult to figure out. It’s hard not to think about him.”

  “Think about who?” Gran says, surprising us in the doorway.

  “No one,” I blurt. Which is the wrong thing to say because it only makes Gran suspicious.

  “Not again.” Gran holds tightly to her cane. “I know you are not talking about the boy next door.”

  I sigh. “He’s not that bad.”

  “He is that bad. Now you and your friend come downstairs for cookies and milk and don’t even think about inviting him to join you.”

  I laugh and try to picture it. Beau at our kitchen table, reaching for a cookie while Gran throws a Bible at him, yelling curses at his sinful heart.

  “Got it.” I almost invite him over just to enjoy the show.

  “By the way, Gran, this is my friend Jorie. Jorie, this is my gran,” I say, making introductions.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Jorie,” she says kindly. Then proceeds to go right back to speaking about Beau.

  She gives me one of her warning stares.

  “You shouldn’t be meeting him out there, either, Willow Mae.” She points to the window, toward the dividing path.

  “Mom and Dad said it’s fine for me to hang out with him,” I say.

  “What do they know?” Gran huffs, leaning heavily on the doorframe. “They’re too busy studying vultures.”

  Gran doesn’t let up with her penetrating stare. She may be mostly rounded, but her eyes are sharp as tacks.

  “Herons,” I correct.

  “Who cares?” Gran says. “They think it wouldn’t hurt for you to have a little fun, but they’re wrong.”

  I look at Jorie apologetically. I love Gran. I’m proud to be hers. But sometimes she goes off on fits, and who knows when this one will end. But Jorie doesn’t look freaked out or bored. She looks interested.

  “Just listen to me and keep a wide mile between you, you hear?”

  “Okay,” I answer.

  I don’t mean it.

  She knows I don’t mean it.

  We’re at odds.

  “Did you hear that?” I ask.

  With Gran’s loud downstairs television and her hurling warnings at me upstairs, it’s hard to notice much else, but I pick up on it.

  “There,” I say. “I think someone’s at the door.”

  “Have mercy on his soul if it’s the boy next door.” Gran turns and walks down the hall.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. The sound is louder as we descend the steps. There’s definitely someone at the door. I only hope for Beau’s sake that it isn’t him. He’s got to be smarter than that.

  Gran opens the screen. “What in the hell’s so important that you need to break down my door?” she says over the television volume.

  A police officer stands there, hand on his gun, looking us over. He’s quiet for a heartbeat, long enough for my thoughts to run wild.

  I immediately think of nothing good. Fear freezes my feet to the ground. I can’t move. I can’t breathe.

  “What happened?” I ask. “Where are Mom and Dad? Are they okay?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” the officer replies. “I’m not here about your parents. But if you’d turn down the volume, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Relief courses through me. There is no bad news to deliver. I calm my racing heart.

  Gran hobbles to the television and shuts it off. It’s an old thing, the type with a turn dial and an antenna V-ing at the top. We wanted to buy her a new one, but Gran insists hers works just fine if you can see past the static. My room, thankfully, has a new flat screen.

  We all take a seat at the kitchen table where Gran offers him every meal under the sun. Eggs and bacon? She can whip it up quickly. Lemon chicken and green beans? It should be done in twenty minutes. Why she expects him to stay that long, I don’t know. Maybe leftover lasagna? Would take just a moment to heat. On and on. Each time, the officer declines.

  I look at his badge. Deputy Clarke. I can’t help but wonder why he would venture into the swamp.

  Deputy Clarke flips a page in his notebook and pulls out a pen. “Have you noticed anything strange around the swamp lately?”

  Strange things happen all the time. For instance, just the other day, I saw a gator trying to eat a bobcat. They’ll go after just about anything. Nearly got its eyes clawed out for such an attempt. The officer will have to narrow it down if he means for us to know what he’s talking about.

  “Sure have.” Gran goes to the fridge. “Good-for-nothin’ neighbors next door. That’s what’s strange here.”

  The officer nods. “Why do you say that?”

  “Do you know he thinks he has the right to tell me whether or not I can feed the gators?”

  “Um,” the officer says, taken aback. “You’re not actually supposed to feed the gators, ma’am.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Gran says. “Not you, too.”

  The officer turns to us. “Do you girls live here?”

  “I do,” I reply. “With my parents and my gran. This is my friend Jorie.”

  “I see,” the officer says. “Have you two noticed anything off?”

  “Not really,” I answer.

  Maybe Beau is a little off. Maybe I am, too.

  “Do you know someone named Nicole Star?”

  “No,” Jorie and I say in unison.

  “What school do you go to?”

  We answer each of his questions. Name. Birthdate. Parents’ names. He pauses and looks up at us.

/>   “You sure you don’t know her? You attend the same school. Maybe I could show you a picture?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  His hand emerges from his pocket with a crinkle of paper. He slides a photo across the table to Jorie and me. We both gasp. I would know her face anywhere.

  “Samantha,” I whisper.

  “Samantha?” the officer repeats. “Her name is—” He pauses. “Wait. Let me double-check her middle name.”

  He shuffles through his notebook.

  “Right. Okay.” He looks up. “I suppose you’re correct. Her name is Nicole Samantha Star. Did she go by Samantha? Were you friends?”

  “Were?” I say at the same time that Jorie says, “No.”

  “Do you know anything about her being in the swamp last night?” he asks.

  “No,” we say in unison.

  “But she used to go out with the boy next door,” I offer.

  “I already questioned him on that.” The officer picks the photo back up off the table and returns it to his pocket. “He didn’t see her last night. Any chance you did?”

  “No,” I reply. “Why?”

  “Because,” the officer says, “the swamp was the last place she was known to be heading before—”

  He leaves his sentence half hanging like a broken shutter.

  “Before what?” I ask, curious.

  What does he want with the ex-girlfriend of the boy next door, and what does that have to do with us?

  “You and the Cadwell family are the only people out this deep in the swamp proper,” the officer says. “These are the farthest waters before there’s no more houses. I thought maybe you might have seen her? Known if she was with anyone? Talked to her at all? Her parents say she never ventures to the swamp.”

  I can think of one reason she’d want to come to the swamp. My gut-deep reaction tells me she meant to be here, and that she meant for Beau to know about her visit. Does it have something to do with their breakup? Or maybe they got back together? What I can’t understand is what the officer has to do with anything.

  “Why don’t you ask Samantha these things?” Gran says, shuffling around the kitchen, squirting juices on the chicken she’s preparing so it doesn’t dry out. I hope she doesn’t mean for the officer to stay awhile. She sets a plate of cookies and a pitcher of milk on the table with three glasses.

  “I can’t ask her,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” the officer says, “that’s what I’m trying to investigate.”

  “Her disappearance?” Gran asks, eyeing Mr. Cadwell’s house.

  “Not her disappearance.”

  Gran stops shuffling.

  My eyes snap to his.

  “What I’m investigating is her death.”

  10

  Beau

  Come Monday morning, the entire school is abuzz with the news of one of their own. Slain, the officers are saying. The words “killed,” “murdered,” “dead” don’t belong in our school.

  I can’t help but notice how girls won’t hold my stare, how people shrink away from me. The hall parts swiftly and drastically, making me tense. They suspect me. They must if they fear my very presence. I catch a whisper here, another there.

  He dated her.

  Do you think he hurt her?

  He probably wanted her out of the way so he could go after the new girl.

  Do they honestly believe I’d kill a girl?

  I zone in on Willow, dark-as-sin hair plummeting down her back. I want to go to her. I want to know why she won’t talk to me ever since I called things off with Samantha.

  The school’s eyes are on me, following my every move. I had a feeling this might happen. Samantha was linked to me before she died, after all.

  “Willow’s not looking your way,” Pax says with a small grin. “Must be driving you crazy.”

  It is, if I’m being honest. But I’m not honest often, so I keep my response to myself.

  “When was the last time a girl didn’t say yes to you right away?” Grant holds back a laugh.

  They’re having fun messing with me. For all the times I’ve joked with them, I deserve it.

  “I didn’t technically ask her anything, so she can’t actually say yes.”

  I try to dig myself out of the hole, but it’s no use.

  “Have you taken her out yet?”

  “You already know the answer,” I reply.

  Pax actually laughs out loud, turning heads.

  “You guys are assholes,” I mutter, but I’m grinning, too.

  I grab books from my locker and take off toward Willow. Pax and Grant follow.

  She spots me, but the flood of students delays my approach. I push through, thanks mostly to Pax’s size muscling a path. When I get near, I see a guy has stopped to talk to her. She smiles at something he says. He extends a cup to her, and I notice the logo of the local tea company.

  “He brought her tea?” Grant asks.

  I wait for her reaction. She takes it like he’s handing her gold and drinks immediately. So she likes tea. I’ll keep that in mind. I wonder what else she likes besides boat rides in the mire, cursing, and tea from strangers.

  “Want to go out sometime?” I catch the guy saying.

  “Sure,” Willow replies.

  A bell rings, warning that we have a minute to get to class.

  “Ouch.” Pax watches the exchange, offering me a look that says he’s sorry I have to see it.

  “Man, I can’t look anymore. It’s too painful,” Grant jokes as he slaps me on the back.

  “I can’t be late again.” Pax eyes the other end of the building where he and Grant have class.

  I couldn’t care less about being late.

  “Don’t worry about it, man. It’s just one date. Doesn’t mean anything,” Pax says. “See you at lunch.”

  He heads off with Grant.

  Willow pulls a cell phone from her pocket to quickly program his number. It lights up with a text. Around us, students hurry to class, me standing snap-still like a pillar in the middle of the crowd, watching Willow.

  “She said yes to someone else,” comes a whisper.

  I turn toward the voice.

  Charlotte.

  She’s looking her usual self.

  “Never thought I’d see the day,” she says quietly, “when my little brother stands around watching another guy ask out the girl he’s interested in. Sure you’re not losing your touch?”

  “I’m older than you, remember?”

  She laughs, and the noise is something like what I’d imagine sea sirens would sound like moments before they drown their victims.

  My attention returns to Willow and the guy who has short, dark dreadlocks. Willow looks right at me as she takes a big swallow of her tea from the guy who now has her number and the promise of a date.

  He turns to leave just as the final bell screeches like a banshee through the corridor.

  “We’ll talk later,” Charlotte says, making for her class.

  I wait only a moment, enough for Charlotte and the guy to be gone, before I approach Willow.

  “I didn’t realize caffeine was the way to get a date.” I flash a grin.

  “Maybe I don’t want to go out with you, Beau,” she says. “Maybe I want to go out with Brody.”

  “Is that his name?”

  “Or maybe I want to go out with the other guy who invited me on Friday for pizza. I happen to like pizza.”

  Two guys now? Maybe Charlotte’s right. Perhaps I am losing my edge. No, on second thought, that can’t be it.

  “Or maybe I want to walk away from you and never speak to you again,” she says.

  “How does it feel, Beau? To hear nothing but riddles? Do you like it? Maybe one of those is true. Or maybe none at all. You figure it out.”

  Maybe it’s the fact that no one challenges me, perhaps that’s why I’m completely stuck, my words gone. I think, though, that I do like her riddles. I think I appreciate that she has a b
ackbone and that she stands up to me. But it’s hard to tell because nothing like this has happened before.

  “I will meet you on the path today,” Willow says as the late bell rings. “And you will answer every question I have about Samantha and how all this happened.”

  So that’s why she seems upset.

  She walks away.

  “Wait,” I say.

  But she’s already gone.

  …

  “I had nothing to do with Samantha’s death,” I say as Willow stands next to me under a weeping tree.

  The fact is that I have no idea what happened to Samantha, not that Willow believes me. I wonder if she would if I told her that Samantha’s death haunted me all last night, woke me from my dreams, drenched in a sweat so thick it felt as though I’d brought the bog inside with me. I’m the reason she visited the swamp, even though I’m not the reason she never left. I try to speak my feelings to Willow, but the words stick to my tongue, mixing with nausea. I can’t help but feel guilty.

  Samantha died on her way to see me. I didn’t want her to come. Told her so myself. It seems Pax was right in what he’d overheard. Samantha did leave school early because she was upset. She sent a text that night, wanting to stop by to tell me how much our breakup hurt her, hoping I might change my mind and give it another shot. My response was a firm no. She even called to try to talk about it, wanting to visit me in person. I didn’t see how her coming to my house would change anything. We were still two very different people. Done and over.

  She never did make it to my property, and as far as I knew then, she wasn’t coming in the first place. I thought my no was enough of a response. How was I to know that she’d take it upon herself to come anyway? I never imagined she’d drive to the swamp even though I told her not to come. She’d only ever been to my house once. Had she gotten lost, took a wrong turn, couldn’t remember the exact way, and instead ended up somewhere she didn’t mean to be, where someone evil took advantage?

  “I’m telling the truth,” I say.

  I throw a quick glance at Willow’s house. So far, so good. Old Lady Bell hasn’t come out.

  Her eyes slant. “Are not.”