Wicked Charm

by Amber Hart

  She regards me curiously. “Yes, little brother?”

  I catch a grin before it fully forms.

  “I’m glad you’re here with me.” The words are out before I can second-guess them. “Today. At school. At home. We make a good team.”

  I almost believe she wants to smile. Her pink lips begin to align into something genuine—a reminder of good memories—not backed by a razor-sharp tongue.

  “If you say so.” She turns to the swamp, not allowing me access to her expression.

  I have no idea if my words affect her at all, but I hope they do. I want her to know she can trust me.

  “You’d tell me if you knew something, wouldn’t you?” I ask.

  I can almost touch the stretch of silence between us.

  “Perhaps.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  I don’t understand why she insists on wearing a cloak of elusiveness with me.

  “It’s as good an answer as you’ll get.”

  Since she won’t turn around, since she insists on facing forward, the wind tells me her reply instead.

  “Answer me the right way.” I’ll push her until she caves if I have to, but I can’t keep sitting in the boat wondering if she’s hiding information. “Would you tell me if you knew something more? Do you actually know something more?”

  Finally, she offers me a solid answer.

  “Yes, I’d tell you.” Her voice comes out sounding like bells, but they are the type of bells I’d imagine would signal a warning of something bad to come. “Sadly, I don’t know anything.”

  The thing is, I’m not sure if she’s lying.

  13

  Willow

  “I might have to eat you alive,” Beau says, but I think he means to say, “Good morning.”

  He stares at my dress, yellow as a bursting sunflower. Beau can’t stop looking at me, and it thins the invisible cloud of worry around him. I need him to know I’m here, even when whispers trail him like a ghost, calling forth suspicion. He is connected to the victim, but I don’t believe he’s a murderer. I suppose I want him to know that he can let go of the tension that draws all his muscles tight, the guilt hanging off his shoulders, brought forth simply because he’s an unfortunate link. His smile is sly, but I see it, the uncertainty, as though he expects that any day now, I will cross the dividing line to stand with those who think of him as guilty.

  “Let’s not go to school today,” he says.

  I have every intention of going to school. I decide to tease him a little. Lighten the mood.

  “Fine, I suppose I should let another boy drive me.”

  I swear I hear something similar to a growl escape his lips.

  “Who? Brody?”

  I haven’t had another date with Brody. We went out that one night. Had a good time. Maybe I’ll do it again. Or maybe not. His second date invitation is open-ended, my choice to make.

  “Or maybe I’ll take the bus instead.”

  Beau bites his bottom lip and opens the truck door for me. “Hop in.”

  His hair is a tousled mess. His jeans fit just so, and his shirt is the lightest shade of gray.

  “Not again.” I glance out the truck window and notice Gran hobbling down the steps, a disapproving grimace carved into her expression. “Better go.”

  “Still isn’t fond of me driving you to school, I see.” Beau tries to hide a grin.

  “She’s warming up to the idea,” I reply.

  He arches a brow, gets in, and puts the truck in reverse.

  “That’s considered ‘warming up’ how?” he asks, pointing at Gran.

  “Well, she hasn’t forbidden me to see you yet, has she?” I ask.

  Beau laughs and drives us to school. He tries not to stare at me and fails.

  “Beau.” I smile at the way my lips curve around his name, enjoying the easy shape of each letter. “I’m gonna stitch your eyes to the road.”

  But I don’t actually need to. He trains his stare ahead the whole rest of the way there.

  Two guys approach us as we arrive at school. I recognize them as the ones I sometimes see Beau with in the halls but have never officially been introduced to, mainly because my time spent with Beau is split between the ride to school and the bog.

  “Hey, you must be Willow,” says the smaller of the two, a boy with bright, curly red hair. “I’m Grant, Beau’s friend.”

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Pax,” says the other, bigger one.

  “So when did you and Beau start going out?” Grant asks.

  “We’re not going out,” I correct him.

  “Oh yeah?” Beau says, as though he’s challenging me.

  With a gleam in his eyes, Beau leans toward me. I know his exact intention. I lean away because he’s not getting a first kiss from me like this. It’s not easy to turn him down, but I’ll be damned if our first kiss is based on a challenge, on Beau trying to prove something.

  “Gonna have to do better than that,” I say as we walk to the front doors.

  I hear Grant’s and Pax’s deep laughs, but there’s a more musical one, too. I turn around to see the source and come face-to-face with the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Her hair is blacker than black, rippling in the breeze like a flock of feathers. Her skin is olive like Beau’s, her makeup flawless. Her legs are ten thousand miles long. Maybe ten thousand and one. I recognize her from my first-period class, though I’ve never heard her utter a word until now. Still, I know who she is.

  Beau frowns. “Go away.”

  “Sorry about him,” I say. “He’s allergic to manners.”

  She has a wicked, glinting stare.

  “Stupid girl, I already know that.” She smiles at Beau. “I know much more about my brother than you ever will.”

  She’s the one I’ve heard of but never managed to see around the bog or at his cabin. I wonder how we’ve missed running into each other in the swamp all this time.

  “Charming,” Beau mumbles.

  They look alike. They have similar features now that I see them standing side by side. Not to mention the same confidence, shoulders back. Feisty grins, though hers is painted pink. An air of strangeness, as though they both carry secrets around in their pockets like pennies.

  “I’m Charlotte,” she says.

  I somehow hate her and want to be her at the same time.

  “And you are Willow, of course,” she continues.

  “Hey, Charlotte.” Grant smiles nervously. “You look nice. Haven’t talked to you in a while.”

  She sighs and picks at her nails, as though bored. He waits for a response, but she doesn’t bother.

  “What have you been up to?” Grant shifts from foot to foot, seemingly out of his element.

  “None of your business.” There is no masking the annoyance in her tone. “And the reason you haven’t talked to me in a while is because you are too nervous to get up the guts to ask me what you want to.”

  This time, when she looks up from her nails, she’s smiling something evil.

  “Go ahead.” She motions with her hand for him to hurry. “Ask what it is you want to.”

  Grant fidgets, running a hand through his hair and over the back of his beet-red neck.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do,” she practically purrs. “You want to ask me out.”

  I feel bad for Grant. He swallows roughly, his head bobbing up and down in confirmation.

  Charlotte reaches for Grant’s shirt, running a finger slowly down it.

  “I don’t date my brother’s friends,” she whispers so close to his face that she could kiss him. “And especially not ones who don’t have the courage to ask me themselves.”

  Her eyes dart to mine long enough for me to notice the mischief dancing in them.

  “Maybe if you’d asked me outright, I’d reconsider. But probably not. You should save yourself time and ask out another girl.” Her finger leaves Grant’s shirt. “Word of advice? When you do ask
someone out, make sure she’s meek enough to accept your offer. Someone like…Willow, perhaps. She seems more the type of girl who would go for you.”

  I gasp, too shocked to form a reply. Her obvious insult is unprovoked and unnecessary. What does she have against me? Or Grant, for that matter?

  “Charlotte.” Beau’s tone is edged with a warning.

  She glances at her brother, holding his gaze, and then yawns. “Well, this party has been lovely, but I have better things to do. Later.”

  And I thought Beau was sometimes callous. I guess I now know it could be so much worse.

  …

  A rumored cause of death for seventeen-year-old Nicole Samantha Star is something I didn’t expect to hear while lounging on a Saturday afternoon.

  Heart attack.

  How could a young girl like her have a heart attack in the middle of a bog with bruises stamped into her body?

  Police stick to their guns that something foul happened, especially since the toxicology came back inconclusive. She definitely didn’t pass due to natural causes. According to a source quoted by the anchorwoman, the heart attack stemmed from attempted asphyxiation.

  Otherwise known as murder.

  Jorie sits in my living room with me, watching the static-broken news across the television. Both of us listen in stunned silence.

  The anchorwoman poses questions:

  Did young Samantha have dangerous enemies?

  Was she involved in something sinister?

  Drugs?

  What kind of monster did this?

  It’s all anybody can talk about. I shut off the TV and stand up fast-like.

  “Let’s go outside,” I say.

  Gran is sleeping. Mom and Dad are at the library writing the dictionary on every single known living and dead variation of bird, or something equally as boring.

  We open the screen door and step into hell. Everything blazes. The beginning of autumn in the swamp sticks to our skin like sap. Sucks the air from our lungs. Makes me want to chop off all my hair, hoping for a breeze.

  Jorie pops her gum and walks beside me.

  “Where should we go?” she asks as I send my parents a quick text to notify them that I’m in the bog with Jorie.

  Marshy ground slurps at our boots. A funnel cloud of white gnats swarms, making me hold my breath and squint until we make it through.

  “We could go for a walk,” I say.

  Twenty steps into our stroll and we both sit down under the shade of a tree, agreeing that a walk will surely kill us now. We can hardly keep our skin from melting off as it is.

  “What about the mall?” I suggest, but I’m not into it.

  I try to think of other places with air-conditioning.

  “Or the movies,” I say. “Or maybe the pizza place?”

  “What about swimming?” Jorie asks.

  Submerging myself in icy waters to cool off?

  “A swim sounds perfect, actually,” I reply.

  It will take thirty minutes to drive to the public pool, but it’s well worth it. We make our way back up the steps. I knock on Gran’s bedroom door. No answer. I write her a note instead.

  Gone to the pool with Jorie.

  The simple truth. I know Gran. She won’t be angry that I took off. She’ll just be glad that Beau wasn’t a part of my plan.

  “Do you need to call your parents?” Jorie asks.

  “No,” I answer. “I’ll probably be back before them. They live for their bird discoveries and the process of recording them. Which means long hours away. I’ll just send a quick text saying that we decided on the pool instead of the swamp.”

  “Do you mind if I call mine, then?”

  I show Jorie to the phone, which, thank the stars, Dad replaced when Gran wasn’t looking. So now we have one piece of modern technology on the bottom floor.

  Jorie calls her parents for approval while I send mine a quick message, get dressed in a suit, and throw a romper over it. I wedge sandal thongs between my toes and pull my hair into a high ponytail. I have my license but not my own car. My only option of transportation lies in swiping Mom’s car keys from the counter, since she rode in Dad’s truck. I check that the tank has enough to get us there. It does.

  Jorie meets me outside. “Ready?”

  I nod and open the car door just as Beau steps onto his porch.

  “My parents are cool with me going, so we can stop by my house to grab my suit and some towels before…” Jorie trails off. “Girl, what are you staring at so hard?”

  She doesn’t have to ask twice. I don’t even have to answer. Because just then, she sees, too.

  “Good Lord. How does that boy get hotter every day?” Jorie fans herself.

  She stares. I stare. The sun and the reptiles and the trees stare.

  “Beats me,” I reply.

  Beau smiles, and I die right there in the grass.

  He crooks a finger and signals for me to join him.

  Something heats in my belly. I attempt to act relaxed, as though I see a thousand Beaus every day. No big deal.

  “Be back in a second,” I tell Jorie.

  I walk to him.

  “Hey,” I say.

  My voice is traitorous. Breathless.

  “Hey.” He winks.

  I shudder. Suck in a breath. Try not to let a pool of heat overflow in my belly.

  When he leans forward, I have an image of him kissing me, though he stops himself just a bit shy of actually doing so. As much as I’ve wished he would, he hasn’t yet. He’s been too distracted looking for a killer. On the few occasions I’ve seen him, we’ve done a lot of things…

  Sailed through the mire.

  Walked through the woods.

  Talked under moss-eaten branches.

  Never kissed.

  But since I’m a lying liar, that’s not entirely true. He has tried to kiss me. Twice. Both times, I’ve turned away. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps I’m crazy. Or maybe I’m waiting for the right moment. Which doesn’t happen to be in front of his house with no privacy. While his sister watches out the window and Jorie stands at my back.

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  I look into his depthless eyes.

  “The pool.”

  He knows which one. There’s only one public pool. Everyone is bound to be there on this muggy Saturday.

  Beau waits like he expects an invite. But he’ll be waiting until he’s nothing but bones because I’m not the type of girl who ditches her friend for a guy, no matter how hot he is. Or the type who makes her friend feel like a third wheel.

  “Well,” I say, placing a hand against the thin fabric of Beau’s shirt, directly over his hard stomach, “guess I’ll be going.”

  His sister smiles in the window.

  “See you later, Beau.”

  “Maybe sooner than you think,” he replies.

  He saunters into the house like the bobcats that saunter through the swamp, giving me one last departing look.

  “Come on.” Jorie hops in the car. “I’ll show you the way.”

  There are too many bends in the road—too many turns and streets with no names—for me to ever remember how to get to Jorie’s house by heart. Her description includes “turn at the knobby tree, another left at the bush that looks like an arrow, over the creek, ten streets past the red house with a green roof.” The directions only get more obscure the farther out of the woods we go.

  We’ve long been off the main road—there’s only one here, all others are dirt or pebbled—when we come to an especially bumpy road. The car knocks along stones and broken rocks. The shoulder is soft, and I worry about getting the tires stuck in mud, but we make it.

  Jorie’s property could never be considered anything but rural. Even though it’s not quite as deep into the swamp as Gran’s house, it’s not in the city, either.

  The first thing I notice about Jorie’s house is the driveway. Mostly because she doesn’t have one. Where a driveway should be is an archway cut out of
the trees—a path scraped through the forest.

  I bend to angle my head so that I can peer up and out of the windshield at the curling branches above us, thick with moss and leaves.

  “Jorie, this is beautiful,” I say.

  And, if I’m being honest, a little terrifying. The light has trouble breaking through here, as though the trees have forbidden it to shine. I drive along slowly, taking in the scene around us. It’s quiet here. The woods seem to know we’re coming. The leaves have stopped chattering. There’s only the slight whisper of the wind, and even that’s hard to make out.

  The path opens into a quaint clearing—nothing short of enchanting.

  A stone cottage rests lazily in the shade, its roof slanted to the left side like a slouching shoulder. The bones of the structure are cracking, sending fractures through the stones, and the windows are shrouded in curtains, making it impossible to see inside.

  “You want to come in?” Jorie asks.

  Well, I certainly don’t want to wait in unfamiliar woods alone. My mind plays tricks on me, making me think the smears of mud are moving, that the vines have come to life, that something sinister could be waiting around the next sickly tree. Usually, I’m comfortable in the swamp, but Jorie’s house is far removed, and I don’t know these woods.

  “Sure.” I follow her through the overgrown grass up to the front door, which swings open before we reach it.

  “You must be Willow,” a woman says.

  She’s Jorie’s mother, I’m sure of it. Her skin is much darker than Jorie’s, but her hair is similar. Behind her stands a man in an unassuming shirt and khaki shorts. Jorie’s father. His skin is the shade of mine, and his hair is deep blond. He has kind blue eyes that smile at me from the doorway.

  “I am,” I reply.

  “I’m Veronica,” Jorie’s mom says. “And my better half is Jameson. It’s great to meet you. Your name is the usual around here. Nice to put a face to it.”

  “It’s great to meet you, too.”

  Over the front door hangs a sign with their last name painted on it in block letters: langston. Around these parts, people tend to label their houses with personal information, like they want everyone to know just who the property belongs to.

  Jorie gives her parents a wide smile as she brushes past and beckons me to follow.