Between the Spark and the Burn

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  “You do look pretty,” Neely said, sitting down on my other side. “Your blue eyes look bluer in the cold. Did you know that?”

  “Freddie’s eyes were like that too,” Luke said. He glanced between Neely and me and looked kind of snappy and smart-alec for a second, like he knew something I didn’t.

  But the hell if I was going to ask him about it.

  “I painted a portrait of Freddie once, outside on a bright day in February.” Luke’s expression went a bit deep and distant. “I was just a kid, but I remember how hard it was to mix the blue for her eyes—it was the color of the ocean and the sky and . . . every color in between, somehow.”

  I smiled at him. “Luke, you get so poetic when you talk about art. It almost makes you likable.”

  Sunshine grinned. She leaned back into my brother, and he tucked a blanket around both of them and then his distant look went away.

  “You know what makes you almost likeable, Vi?” he asked. “When you forget to act smarter than everyone else for half a second. When you stop being eccentric long enough for a person to get a word in edgewise. When you stop wearing our dead grandmother’s clothes and put on something that doesn’t smell like dust and closet.”

  Sunshine laughed her throaty laugh. “I do like your new dress, Vi. We were all sick of seeing you in a dead person’s clothes.”

  My dress was silky and long and black and came with a smooth, pale yellow cardigan that had small pearl buttons. My mother had bought it in NYC during my father’s art show in October and given it to me for Christmas. I ran my hands over the skirt again. I liked the way it slid back and forth against my cold thighs, soft as air. I probably should have been saving it for a special occasion, because I didn’t get new clothes very often, but what the hell.

  I heard the grandfather clock in the library chime—it sounded quiet and gentle from this far away, like it didn’t want to wake anyone up. The clock had been in the house since the beginning. It broke years ago, and stayed that way until Jack went and fixed it with nothing but a wrench, a screwdriver, and a positive attitude. That kid was smart as hell and twice as charming.

  I looked down at his freckled face and his auburn head. He was trying to stay up late like the rest of us, but his eyes were doing that squinting thing that always gave him away—even though Neely had put that streak of espresso in the hot chocolate. Jack yawned, and huddled down farther into the couch, and his long hair stuck out wild and frantic above his head. I figured I should probably try to cut it soon, if he’d let me.

  I sighed, and then squeezed out from between Jack and Neely. Cold attic air hit me and I winced.

  I’d brought the old guesthouse radio up earlier and now I set it on a table by the sofa and looked for a plug-in. I found one of River’s little origami creatures hidden behind the couch as I was digging around back there for an outlet. Another hundred-dollar bill, folded in the shape of a turtle. My fingers closed around it and the River-missing feeling came back, just for a second. It was sharp and strong and unmistakable, like the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

  “What are you doing over there?” Neely was watching me from the sofa, his eyes half closed, sleepy, sleepy. “Come back. It’s cold over here and you’re warm.”

  I put the turtle in my yellow cardigan’s pocket, gave Neely a quick smile, and turned the knobs on the radio.

  Static, static, static . . . and there it was.

  Hello all ye believers of the strange and true. It’s Wide-Eyed Theo. I’m here. You’re here. It’s the witching hour and time for your daily dose of Stranger Than Fiction. I hope you all made merry today and are full of good cheer and well-being. Feel free to curse a scrooge, any of you that are into the bewitching arts . . .

  “What the hell is this, Vi?” Luke talked right over Theo like he didn’t give a damn that I was trying to hear.

  “Shut up and listen, Luke.”

  Luke shut up and we listened to tales of a pack of teenage grave robbers and a woman who thought she was a cat and a boy who claimed he could see the future.

  And then . . .

  . . . the small town in the Appalachian Mountains continues to be plagued by “a boy with flames in his eyes and hooves instead of feet.” I received an update on this today. Apparently this devil-boy commands a flock of ravens, and sneaks into the bedrooms of sleeping adolescent girls to steal their dreams. His birds attack anyone who intervenes. My source wishes to remain anonymous, as the locals are a superstitious sort with, quote, “little trust in each other and even less in the law.”

  If any of my listeners has an itch for adventure, I would like to direct you to Inn’s End, Virginia. If you can find it. It’s not listed on any maps, being “too out of the way and too full of misanthropes,” according to my source.

  A devil-boy with fiery eyes and goat feet, stealing dreams. If you can believe that, people. And you should, because you’re believers.

  It’s Wide-Eyed Theo, signing off for the night.

  Go forth and find the strange.

  “That’s it,” I said, looking straight at Neely just as he looked straight at me. “Theo mentioned it three times now. It’s got to mean something. This is the one.”

  Luke raised his eyebrows, cocky and scornful, and Sunshine looked at the opposite wall and wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  But Neely just grinned, and shrugged.

  ≈≈≈

  Neely didn’t go off to the guesthouse afterward, and neither did I. He crashed on the faded art deco sofa in my bedroom, and I didn’t say boo, because I was fired up about the devil-boy story and didn’t feel like being alone, and besides, who cared anyway.

  Before Neely fell asleep, he came and sat on the end of my bed. He pulled something from his pocket and then opened his hand. A necklace of small jade beads sat on his palm. He lifted my hair, slid the chain underneath, and clasped it shut.

  “Merry Christmas, Vi.”

  I touched the warm green stones. Jade green. Freddie’s favorite color.

  “Don’t even try to give it back. It’s yours and you will keep it.” Neely’s eyes were gleaming with high spirits and a late-night shot of hot buttered rum and not-taking-no-for-an-answer.

  A minute or so passed with neither of us talking, and me just running my fingers over the necklace and smiling, and Neely just sitting there looking at the necklace and me behind it, like it pleased him in some deep way.

  “I found Freddie’s diary,” I said then, since I had to tell someone.

  “Where was it?”

  “Buried in the stack of books on the library floor. Probably been there since she died. I would have found it years ago if I’d ever bothered to put those books away.”

  Neely laughed. “That’ll teach you.” He reached for my hand and then turned it over and started rubbing his thumb over the center of my palm, softly, slowly, as if he wasn’t sure he should be doing it.

  “I haven’t read it yet,” I said. “The diary, I mean. I couldn’t bring myself to get past the first line.”

  “You will,” he answered. Quiet.

  “Neely,” I said, after a moment. “If I keep sitting here in Citizen Kane, staring at the sea and doing nothing about anything, I’ll go mad. A devil-boy with fiery eyes, stealing dreams . . . That sounds like as good a lead as any. I say we take it. And this time I want to come with.”

  Neely was quiet for a bit. Then: “You have, what, a week before school starts again?” he asked, not looking at me, still rubbing my palm.

  I nodded. I listened to his breathing until his eyes met mine. “Violet, do you ever wish that you’d never met my brother? That he’d never come here, that he’d never glowed you up in the first place and started this whole thing?”

  “All the time. All the damn time, Neely.” I paused. “But I’m still going with. I want to find River. And Brodie. Both. I want to do something. Anything. I miss R
iver. I worry about him. Sometimes I think about—I remember . . .”

  I didn’t finish my sentence and Neely didn’t make me. He just dropped my hand, went over to the sofa, slipped off his shoes, and tucked himself in.

  “Neely?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think River ever told the truth? Like when he said my sleeping next to him kept his nightmares away? Or when I held him in the attic, and he told me about your mother dying? It wasn’t all just lies and glow, right?”

  Neely laughed, a whispery, nighttime laugh. “Not even a liar lies all the time, Vi.”

  A few minutes passed.

  “Night, Neely.”

  “Night, Violet.”

  I didn’t fall asleep, though. My mind raced with thoughts of devil-boys and heroes and River and not-River. I picked up Freddie’s diary and started to read. My new necklace kissed the skin of my neck, and Neely’s soft breaths whispered to me from across the room.

  This time I got a whole lot further than the first sentence.

  September

  Can still feel Will’s lips on me. On my neck, stomach, back, hips, thighs.

  If his burn is bad, if he is bad, then why does he feel so good?

  It wasn’t the first time. I can’t talk about the first time yet. Because it all happened, everything all at once—the burn, the pain, the pleasure, the fear—and it’s still jumbled up inside of me. I was a fairy-tale girl locked in a tower, waiting for the white knight to save her, but taking the first burned-up boy that came along.

  Glenship Manor. The library. The smell of books mixing with the smell of Will. His brown-sugar-scented slicking-back pomade. The citrus-smelling cologne he slapped on his beautiful face. The sea salt deep in his skin.

  Lucas’s steps. While we were behind the green curtains. I knew it was him. I knew it by the way he walked. Soft, but determined. If he’d guessed where we were, and what we were doing, he was smart enough to leave it alone. He was smart enough to know he didn’t want to know.

  Lucas.

  Lucas.

  Your love is gentle. Gentle as cool night breezes on hot skin. I wish I could absorb your gentle love and send it right back to you. But I can’t.

  I knew Will Redding would be beautiful. He was pretty at fifteen, prettier than me. But then he grew, and his soft angles sharpened. And now looking at him . . . I almost hate him, he’s so damn breathtaking.

  He’s using the burn more and more. It’s stealing his mind, his wits, his sanity, bit by bit. I feel the loss of them, small but tangible, like a missing button in the middle of a shirt.

  What will happen if he doesn’t stop? If we don’t stop?

  But then he kisses me, and I stop caring.

  Even when he’s done kissing me, sometimes I still don’t care, not for hours.

  Or days.

  I’d do it again. I’d do it this minute if he asked me. With or without his burn.

  I don’t even care.

  October

  Chase never knew, about Will, and the burn. Not for certain. Though if he’d been observant, like Lucas, he would have guessed that All Was Not Right. But paying close attention had never been Chase Glenship’s strong point.

  One brisk, clear night, Chase and Will had some of their friends up from New York City—other Bright Young Things. They came up on the train and we threw an All Hallows’ Eve party. The moon was big and fat and full and orange-er than pumpkins. Its bright glow made the night midnight blue, instead of boring old black. We ignored the Glenship’s electricity and lit hundreds of candles until the swanky ole place was singing with light, all the long, tall windows glowing like the harvest moon above.

  We dressed in costumes and painted the subterranean walls of the Glenship. In the lower levels, off the stone tunnels that led to the swimming pool and the bowling alley, there was a nothing room with no purpose. We splashed paint and filled up every last corner with green, blue, white, yellow, red, orange, black. Chase set up his Ouija board and gave us all the heebie-jeebies when he called up the spirits and they answered. Everyone went mad with fear and ran around howling with it. I gave myself up to three Aviations before the gin took hold and I fell into the pool. Lucas rescued me, but it was Will who helped me out of my wet clothes and into bed.

  I loved him. God help me, I loved him more than a girl has ever loved a boy. More than anyone has ever loved anyone.

  I slid out of bed. I grabbed a flashlight from my dresser, climbed the stairs to the third floor, went past Luke’s bedroom, and entered the former-ballroom-now-an-art-gallery. I went first to the painting of my grandfather, and switched on the flashlight. It was the flower-lapel-cigar portrait. Once upon a time I thought I looked like Lucas White. Just a little bit. I’d go to the ballroom and stare at him and the proud way he tilted his chin . . . I tilted my chin up just like that. Didn’t I? I had that same noble gaze. Didn’t I?

  But then I found some letters last summer, letters to Freddie, and learned some things about my grandmother, about her affair with an auburn-haired painter, and I guess those similarities between Lucas White and me were just the imaginings of an ex-wealthy, ex-grandmothered girl hoping to find blood and clan and kinship where none actually existed.

  It took me a few minutes to find the other painting. A Freddie nude, an early one. She sat on the floor, one leg up and one elbow on her bent knee, looking directly at the viewer. I hadn’t been able to place the background before—it wasn’t the Citizen, or the guesthouse.

  Two men stood near her, fully clothed. I’d never known who they were, until now. I stood on tiptoe and grasped at the bottom of the frame with my fingertips until I got it off the wall. Then I sat down on the ballroom floor and held the square, fifteen-by-fifteen-inch frame in my lap.

  The setting was the Glenship attic. I was sure of it. I’d been inside Glenship Manor since I’d last taken a good look at this picture. The abandoned mansion was full of dust and dirt and cobwebs, but you could still see it, see its grandness, like the Citizen’s. The way it stood arrogantly at the other edge of town, near the sea, like it had been cast off by Echo but couldn’t have cared less, hadn’t even noticed, in fact.

  Yes . . . I was sure. That was the attic. The pointed roof. The heavy wooden beams. The air of architectural confidence.

  One of the boys in the painting was Chase Glenship. Tall. Delicate, aristocratic features. An unruly look in his eyes. He was the boy that River and Neely’s grandfather Will Redding had wanted Freddie to marry . . . even though Will Redding had been in love with Freddie himself.

  Chase was also the bright-eyed eldest son who had killed a girl in the Glenship cellar with a knife. That girl had been Rose Redding, Will’s sister. River and Neely’s great-aunt. She was only sixteen when she died.

  Rose was buried in my family’s mausoleum in the Echo cemetery. That had been Freddie’s doing.

  My grandmother’s life had more twists and turns and tangles than even I’d guessed. And I’d known her better than anybody.

  Hadn’t I?

  I leaned over the painting, so close that my nose almost touched Freddie’s bare torso. A lean boy with wavy brown hair and brown eyes stood next to Chase. Will Redding. He had a straight nose and a crooked smile and he looked so much like River that it made me feel melancholy.

  It had all happened before. And it would all happen again.

  Where had I heard that line before?

  Some fairy tale, maybe.

  Chapter 5

  THE NEXT MORNING I told Luke and Sunshine that Neely and me were going Devil hunting in Virginia.

  “Devil hunting. Right.” Luke smirked at me and sipped at his cup of steaming espresso. “As if that devil-boy story is true, sister. You just want to go on a road trip with Neely. Well, I want to go on a road trip too. Don’t you, Sunshine?”

  Sunshine’s eyes went from Luke, to me, to N
eely. And then she . . . fidgeted. Sunshine never fidgeted. But here she was, shifting from one foot to the other. “A winter road trip sounds fun. But I . . . I don’t want to hunt any devils.”

  Luke set his cup down, reached forward, and pulled Sunshine into him. “There aren’t any devils. Vi is being melodramatic and paranoid and we are all humoring her because that’s what you do to crazy people.”

  I opened my mouth—

  But Neely put his hand on my arm, and shook his head.

  Sunshine was looking up at my brother, her eyes wide instead of hooded and sleepy like usual. Then she smiled her old, lazy smile. “All right,” she said. “A road trip does sound like fun. And I’ll do anything to help out my poor, mad friend Violet.”

  And even though Sunshine was smiling, I still saw it. The flicker behind her eyes.

  I had a feeling Sunshine would regret her decision to come with, down the road. But it was her choice, and I let her make it.

  It was fourteen hours to Virginia and we would take Neely’s car. We would avoid the cities and spend one night on the road in the cold wilds of southeastern New York.

  I wasn’t even worried.

  About what we would find, I mean.

  I just wanted to do something. Go somewhere. Anywhere.

  That’s the kind of person I’d become.

  ≈≈≈

  I stood outside in the snow as Luke and Sunshine loaded Neely’s new BMW with gear cobbled together from the Citizen’s cellar and Sunshine’s house. I slipped in my brown suitcase—an old one of Freddie’s—and a snow shovel, and a filled-to-the-brim picnic basket. We were going to camp. Yes, camp. Neely’s father had frozen his credit cards and checking account in a failed attempt to get him to come home, and all I had was the origami money River had left me for a rainy day. There would be no four-star hotels for us.

  Not that they had those where we were headed, anyway.

  My parents came out to tell us good-bye. Luke said we were going to Virginia to inspire the muse, and they asked no follow-up questions, which was typical. Sunshine’s parents put up more of a fight, one with quotes and big words and bookish hues, which was also typical.