The truth was, I was pretty pleased with my costume. I felt authentic. Totally more awesome than anyone walking around in a mass-produced, tie-dyed hippie costume bought from the drug store. My outfit came from real hippies after all. But what did it matter that I had a cool costume if only Vernon saw it? He didn’t really notice it anyway.
I pouted and drank coffee, and the theme from The Exorcist was playing, and that’s when the chime on the door rang. I looked up to see who’d come in. It was Enzo.
He wasn’t wearing a costume. He was just dressed as himself, looking nervous, carrying a large, flat package wrapped in newspaper under one arm.
“Hey,” he said, pushing his hair from his eyes with his free hand. “I called your house, and your dad said you were working.”
“He was right. Here I am.”
“I can see that.”
We stood awkwardly on opposite sides of the diner like there was a line drawn on the ground that neither of us could step over. The horror movie music wasn’t helping the tension between us. I wanted to know what Enzo was doing there. I wanted him to leave. I wanted him to know I wanted him to leave. But I also wanted him to stay.
“So, uh, I like your costume,” he said, walking over to me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Lizzie used to wear a headband like that all the time.”
The headband, a scarf really, had been my own touch, not an accessory from my mom or Sundog or the rest of the hippie crew. I wondered if I’d become so connected with Lizzie in the recent months that I instinctively made the same choices she did and if that would bring me closer to her, maybe close enough to find her.
“Look,” Enzo said after another long pause. “I know I shouldn’t have left you hanging the other night. It’s not because I don’t care about you. I do. More than anyone else in my life right now, if you want to know the truth.”
He was saying all the right things. And I really didn’t want to go home after my shift and sit alone in my room. Not on Halloween, when it felt like magic could be willed into existence. The one night of the year witches and goblins and ghosts come to life. You could practically feel the air crackling with magic, with everyone’s desire for something extraordinary to happen—not just me.
So that’s why I forgave Enzo. I didn’t push him to the back of my mind until he disappeared. He apologized, and I accepted, and just like that, everything was OK again.
“I have something for you,” Enzo said. He slid the package he was holding onto the nearest table.
“What is it?”
“Well, kid, the way this usually works is you unwrap the gift and find out.”
I laughed, and Enzo smiled, and we made peace, the way other people might signal a truce with a handshake.
Then my curiosity got the best of me, and I moved over to the table to open the present. Enzo hovered anxiously behind me as I peeled back layers of paper, one after another. The gift seemed to be fragile.
Eventually, I got to the final layer of paper and carefully pulled it away.
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of more to say. A million thoughts and feelings crashed around inside my head, and I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“Do you like it?” Enzo asked, looking over my shoulder.
It was a painting. His painting, the one he’d been working on for weeks, the one he told me I couldn’t see until it was finished. And it was perfect. As good as the painting of Lizzie that hung by his bed, maybe better, because this one was so intricate and detailed, like a puzzle. No matter where I looked, I saw something new.
The painting showed Griffin Mills almost like it was in real life. But the perspective was distorted. A building leaned slightly to the left. The road was bumpier than it should have been. The colors were wrong, bright and cheerful in some places, washed out in others, the way the horizon looks when you’ve been out in the sun too long and all the shapes start to bleed together. Enzo’s painting made me question if I was really seeing the canvas right, if the issue was with the painting or with my eyes.
The main street meandered out of the town and into the woods, up to a hill with a tiny version of the Griffin Mansion. Only it wasn’t Griffin Mansion exactly. It also resembled the farmhouse that Enzo and I found in the woods. The door of the mansion was open, and I could just make out a shadowy figure in the doorway, looking out over the town below him.
The more I looked, the more other details jumped out at me. Two ghost suns flanked the real sun, a sundog, just like Edward the IV supposedly saw on the battlefield. A hand, humanoid except for the hair and claws, reached out of a coffee shop.
There was something dreamlike about the painting but the sort of dream that can quickly turn to a nightmare.
“It’s, ah, about you. How you see the world,” Enzo said.
I didn’t know what to say, so I kept staring at the painting. There were references to all sorts of things I’d told Enzo, never really thinking he was listening to me. For the first time in my life, someone really understood me.
“It’s meant as a compliment,” Enzo said. “I’d climb in your head if I could. Painting the way you talk about the world was as close as I could get though. I wanted you to have it so, you know, if you’re feeling down about being different, you can look at this and remember that being different is good. My whole life, all I ever wanted was to be unique, but you never had to try.”
I finally tore my gaze away from the painting and looked into Enzo’s dark-blue eyes, eyes that really saw me. Not because he missed his girlfriend and needed a distraction but because of who I was. Just the thought made me feel like I could float away.
“This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”
Enzo’s grin lit up his face. We stood there like that, looking at each other all dopey, until Vernon cleared his throat and spoke up from his place at the counter.
“Can yinz turn off this jaggin’ music?”
The spell was broken. I laughed and rolled my eyes.
“Can we hang out when you get off work?” Enzo asked. “It’s been weird not seeing you this week.”
I told him we could. Of course we could.
• • •
An hour later, Vernon wandered out of the diner without saying good-bye. I didn’t know where he went when he left the Sunshine Café or whether he went by car or bus or on foot. For all I knew, he stepped out the door at ten thirty every night and simply disappeared into thin air. If I’d learned anything in the past few months, it was that disappearing is very possible.
With Vernon gone, I quickly closed up the diner, even though we were supposed to stay open for another half an hour. We wouldn’t be getting any other customers. It was Halloween. And if I had to listen to “Monster Mash” one more time, my head would explode.
“Where do you want to go?” Enzo asked while I carefully secured his painting in my trunk.
“It doesn’t matter. Anywhere.”
For a while, we just drove around. I turned on the heat as high as my beat-up little car could pump it out, and we rolled down the windows. I wanted to feel the air on my face, wanted to feel like I was part of the night around me. Angsty British rock music, Enzo’s favorite kind, blasted from the stereo. Enzo rolled cigarette after cigarette, occasionally passing them to me so I could fill my lungs with smoke. Every drag burned more than the last but made me feel free, like rules had stopped applying to my life.
We passed a few straggling groups of trick-or-treaters, their costumes in disarray, lugging overstuffed sacks of candy home to inventory their loot. On other Halloweens, I would have envied them, soaking up the last bit of magic before the world went back to normal. But not that night. That night, I was with Enzo, exactly where I wanted to be. Our night had a magic of its own.
“What was your best costume?” I asked Enzo, shouting over the music.
“Seventh grade. Edgar Allan Poe. I don’t think anyone knew who I was supposed to be. But I loved that costume so much that it didn’t matter.”
“I was Hester Prynne once. I don’t even like The Scarlet Letter that much. I just felt like I should, since everyone always thought I was named for Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
With the music so loud, Enzo probably wasn’t getting every word I said. It didn’t matter though, because after seeing his painting, I was sure he could read my mind. We understood each other without ever having to speak. We were in sync; we wanted all the same things. When I was hit with the urge to stop driving and go into the woods, I knew without asking that Enzo felt the same way.
I drove to Wolf Creek Road, to where it all started, where Lizzie disappeared and our lives started spinning in new directions, hers and mine and Enzo’s. I thought about the first time Enzo and I had gone to the campsite together, the night I told him Lizzie was a werewolf. That night was normal, ordinary, but it actually meant everything. And that made me think, do you ever know a moment is important as it’s happening, or is it only when you look back that you can see your life changed?
We got out of the car and walked around the old campsite again, stumbling until our eyes adjusted to the dark. I knew that Lizzie and Enzo had memories there. But I had memories of being there with Enzo too, and mine were more recent. I sat down on the flat rock by the edge of the clearing, shivering a bit from the chill. After a minute, Enzo joined me. We were close but not touching. I imagined leaning against him, grabbing his hand, stealing his warmth.
“Do you remember the first time we came here?” I asked.
Enzo smiled. “I thought you were crazy.”
“Not too crazy, I guess. You came back.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe I’m crazy too.”
We looked at each other, and it made me dizzy, like I was looking over the edge of a cliff. My heart pounded, my stomach did flips, and I thought the excitement and anxiety would make me explode.
“Hawthorn,” Enzo said softly. “What are we doing?”
“Sitting in the woods.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I knew that; I just didn’t know how to answer. “What do you want us to be doing?”
Enzo stood up and walked away from me, blending into the dark trees on the other side of the clearing. “I don’t know, Hawthorn. I really don’t.”
I stood too, because I had too much nervous energy to keep still for a moment longer. I stepped toward Enzo and watched him roll a cigarette, his hands shaky. For the first time since we’d met, he didn’t get it right on the first try.
Still, I pushed for an answer. “Because of Lizzie, you mean?”
“Yeah. But not just that.” He lit the cigarette, the flame from his lighter momentarily illuminating the clearing, and looked at me. “You’re so young.”
“I’m not that young.”
“You are. Jesus. You’re not even eighteen yet. You still care about things like prom.”
“It was homecoming,” I said, not bothering to hide my annoyance.
“Whatever. That’s not the point.”
“What is?” I pressed.
Enzo crushed out his cigarette after just two drags. He stepped closer to me, then caught himself and pulled back. “The point is that it’s fucked up to feel this way about you.”
“What way?”
“You going to make me spell it out?”
A long moment passed, and we simply stared at each other. The shadowy woods surrounding us made me feel like we were in a void. Nothing existed but us. I looked at Enzo, waiting. I needed to hear him say it. I needed to know that I wasn’t making something out of nothing, misunderstanding the situation.
“Well?”
“Come on, Hawthorn,” he said.
I frowned. “You know, you can be a real coward sometimes.”
I started back toward my car, pushing past him, close enough for our arms to brush.
Then Enzo’s hand was on my shoulder, and he was spinning me around, and the next thing I knew, his lips were on mine, pressing hard, hungry. It was a better answer to my question than I’d hoped for.
My body relaxed. He pulled me closer, held me tight against his body, the two of us radiating heat in the cold October night.
I had kissed boys before, but not like that. I’d never been on autopilot, my body doing things without checking with my brain first to see if it was OK. My entire body was buzzing, and I was sure Enzo could feel it, an electric current passing from me to him. The tension had been building up, and finally, there was a release. We were melting into each other.
Enzo suddenly pulled back, leaving me cold and vulnerable where he’d been pressed up against me.
“Goddammit, Hawthorn.” He ran his hands through his hair and looked up at the sky. “This is fucked up. What are people going to say?”
“Since when do you care what people say?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his tobacco and rolling papers. After a moment, he spoke. “Maybe you should take me home.”
So I did. When we got to his apartment, he climbed out of his car and told me good night as if nothing unusual had happened. Neither of us mentioned the kiss or what it meant. But I knew we were both thinking about it.
It wasn’t something we could erase. We couldn’t pretend the kiss hadn’t happened—nor did I want to. As I drove home, my heart rate still hadn’t returned to its normal speed. I ached to kiss Enzo again. I wanted to live in our moment in the woods forever.
Chapter 28
Terrible Everything
I needed to tell someone. I needed to find someone I could be a hundred percent honest with, someone who would listen to the whole story—from the day I met Enzo in the diner until the previous night’s kiss. But I was pretty short on friends.
I spent all of Saturday wandering aimlessly. I picked up the phone to call Emily, then realized how absurd I was being, because Emily and I weren’t friends anymore. So I hung up and walked to the backyard to see Sundog, since he’d listen to anything I had to tell him. But talking to him about werewolves was one thing. I couldn’t gush to him about a kiss and what it might mean. Our relationship wasn’t that personal. I wished I could tell my mom or even Rush, but I’d never even talked about my crushes with them, and it seemed weird to suddenly start. So I stayed quiet and shrugged when anyone asked me why I was acting so weird.
I didn’t call Enzo, and he didn’t call me. I wondered if he was sitting in his crappy little apartment, thinking of me and our kiss. I wanted to know if he’d replayed it in his head about eight billion times like I had. I felt weak when I thought about it, like those girls in Victorian novels who are always swooning. One kiss had turned me into a stereotype I’d always despised. I was losing my mind.
I hung Enzo’s painting on the wall next to my bed. He’d put so much work into it. He’d spent hours fixated on the painting and nothing else. Which meant he’d spent those hours thinking of me. The same way he’d once spent hours painting a picture of Lizzie. She was gone though, and maybe she wasn’t coming back. Now I was Enzo’s muse. Maybe I wasn’t as beautiful or charming as Lizzie, but Enzo wanted me. I affected him so deeply that he had to put his emotions on canvas, and that made me feel as if I’d drift away if I didn’t tether myself to the earth.
There was a knock on my door Saturday evening. I was lying in bed, looking at Enzo’s painting, wishing I was scheduled to work so I could babble to Christa.
“What?” I shouted.
Rush swung open the door without waiting for me to say it was OK. “Mom wants to know if you’re eating dinner here.”
“What’s she making?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of Tofurky wraps or something.”
“Gross.”
“I know.”
Rush looked around my
room, not meeting my eyes, like he wanted to say something but didn’t know where to start.
“What’s your problem?” I asked.
“No problem. I was just thinking—” He cut off his sentence when he saw the painting. “What’s that?”
“Surely, you’ve seen paintings before. You know, often found in museums or as decorations in homes?”
Rush ignored my sarcasm and walked into the room, uninvited, to get a closer look. “Where’d it come from?”
“Enzo did it.”
My brother’s jaw tightened.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” I asked.
“I guess so. It’s weird.”
“It’s supposed to be weird.”
“You don’t need to get upset.”
“I’m not.”
Rush shrugged, then sat down on my bed, again uninvited.
“What?” I asked.
“I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but Enzo isn’t the only guy out there, you know. He’s not the best you can do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The guy’s a loser, Hawthorn. And you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
“You’re three years older than me, Rush. Since when does that make you the expert on relationships and life?”
“I’m just telling you how I see it.”
I scowled. “Well, no one asked for your opinion. You don’t know anything about the situation.”
“Maybe you should tell me then.”
“So, what, we’re going to start having heart-to-hearts now? Why don’t you tell me about your life? Who’s the new mystery girl?”
“Mystery girl?”
“I’m not stupid,” I said. “You slink out of here at odd hours and never say where you’re going. You’re so eager to comment on my love life, but you’re keeping your own a secret.”
Rush didn’t say anything for a long time, so long that I expected him to get up and leave the room. Instead, he cleared his throat. “She has a kid. She doesn’t want him to know that we’re dating until we’re sure it’s serious.”
The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett Page 21
