Beware the Wild

by Natalie C. Parker

  And without another word, she walks past me, up the three brick steps to the screen door, and straight into my house.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  MAMA’S CHEEKS ARE ROSY WARM and they carry a smile I haven’t seen all day. She spins between the counter and oven with dishes gripped between hot pads. Darold makes a quick dive into the fridge for a beer, humming an unidentifiable tune. The bruise Phin left him, the one Sheriff Felder called a “fine piece of work” a few hours ago, is glossy and purple. Grinning at me, he takes a quick swig, then breezes down the hallway to pound his way upstairs. From the dining room, I hear the clatter of silverware as someone—the girl—sets the table.

  None of this is as it should be. The rooms should be cold and dark and anxious. Mama should be stuck to her front room rocker, red-rimmed eyes watching for Phin to come walking down the road. Darold should be restless and irritable, glowering through his bloodied eye. All I should hear is the tick-tick-tick of the clock in the den, marking each second Phin is gone.

  My house is too full and too strange.

  “Mama, what’s going on?” I push my hip against the kitchen table to stop the dizzy feeling climbing my limbs.

  “Dinner is going on with or without you, so go wash up.” Mama knocks the oven shut with her knee. It complains the whole way up and she wrinkles her nose. “Darold! I need you to oil this door sometime this year!”

  She pushes two serving spoons into a steaming casserole and carries it into the dining room. For a moment, I’m stuck. Staring down at the faux marble tiles, I take three deep breaths while Mama and the strange girl fuss over dinner in the other room. Whatever Mama said outside, I must have misheard her. There’s no way she said “sister.”

  “Sterling!” Mama stops in the doorway. Behind her, the strange girl stops, too, that same, small smile on her pink lips. “Why are you still standing there?”

  I push off from the table and point at the girl. “Mama, who is that?”

  Mama and the strange girl frown together, but it’s Mama who speaks. “Are you feeling okay? What have you eaten today?”

  Anger muscles through my confusion. How can she be thinking about food? She starts forward again and I circle away, pressing my back against the fridge. Strange Girl blocks the door, looking at me like she knows me well enough to care.

  “I feel fine! I want to know who she is, why she’s here, and why you’re all acting like you know her. I watched her climb over the swamp fence, for crying out loud!”

  “Now you’re worrying me,” Mama says. “Are you telling me you don’t recognize your own sister?”

  “Sister?” The breath I take is shallow and worthless. How can she not see this girl wasn’t here five minutes ago? “What about Phin?”

  Mama opens her mouth and I wait for the sorrow to surface and pull the color from her cheeks, for the dread of impending loss to cloud her blue eyes. She presses her lips together. For a second, her eyes move out of focus and I think she’s remembering, but then she says, “Honey, who’s Phin?”

  There’s a storm in my ears when I look away.

  Behind me, the fridge slips on the floor as I press my back into it as hard as I can. “My brother,” I say and then again, “Phineas Harlan Saucier is my brother and he ran into the swamp early this morning,” but Mama is unblinking.

  Frantic, I search the front of the freezer for the photo I stuck there two years ago. I’d taken it on his sixteenth birthday just after the tow truck unhitched the ’68 Chevelle in our driveway. The car was equal parts rust and disaster, but in the photo, Phin is a smear of happiness on glossy paper. It’s my favorite picture of him.

  What I find instead is an image of the strange girl standing in front of the same car. Her eyes are closed, but she’s smiling with the keys cupped in one hand. I feel my fury rise like the sun.

  When I look for her, she still stands in the doorway. “What have you done?”

  The clock dings seven times in the den. Darold comes tromping down the stairs and the strange girl in the room licks her lips. She unfolds her hands in front of her, offering me nothing.

  “Sass, what are you talking about?” Her voice is a silky thing as she steps forward.

  “Don’t,” I say, throwing a hand between us. “Don’t call me that. Only Phin calls me that, and oh my God. Are y’all serious? All of you? No one remembers Phineas?”

  No one gives me anything but a frown.

  Every horrible story I’ve ever heard about the swamp flashes through my mind: the one of the two sisters who followed their dog deep inside only to be pulled beneath the mud by ghostly hands; the one of the woman who tricks you over the fence then eats your feet so you can’t get home; the one of the trees that shriek so loudly your ears bleed, leaving you deaf to the cries of your loved ones; the one of the beast that steals your soul forcing your empty body to wander the swamp for eternity.

  Now there’s this story: the one of the dark-haired girl who crossed the fence and stole a boy’s life. I haven’t heard it before, but I’d recognize a swamp story anywhere.

  “She came from the swamp! I don’t know what she is, but she’s not my sister!”

  “I’m calling Dr. Payola.” Mom digs in her purse for her phone.

  “What’s all this shouting?” Darold’s face appears around the corner, creased with concern. Mama only shakes her head and keeps digging.

  I want to run, but my legs don’t feel attached to my body. I’m trapped in place, in this kitchen that’s my own and yet not mine at all, while the girl, the thief, closes the distance between us. Her fingers are soft and warm against my skin. She wraps them firmly around my arm with a small shake as if to say, Don’t fight me.

  I yank my arm away. “Don’t touch me. Nobody touch me.”

  Without another look at any of them, I leave the kitchen and climb the stairs as fast as my wobbly legs will allow. Then it’s eight steps down the hallway to Phin’s room. Inside are the same yellow walls I’ve seen my entire life, the same short dresser in the corner, the same poster of a ’68 Chevelle tacked up over the bed, a giant copy of the periodic table of elements that matches the one in my room. A thousand memories skitter through my mind: Phineas praying to the god of Chevelles to be kind and grant him enough cash for a new set of shocks; Phineas covering the dresser with every flavor of bumper sticker; Phineas tossing a dart at the periodic table and quizzing me on the element it hit; Phineas singing, Phineas yelling, Phineas laughing.

  It’s all so nearly the same. But it’s not his—no darts stick in the heaviest elements. Instead, the first elements have been decorated with sequins and fake jewels and bottle caps to stand in for electrons and neutrons. I remember laughing with her when she reached silicon and realized her plan to model each element would soon eclipse the entire chart.

  No, I don’t. I can’t remember someone who doesn’t exist. I can’t remember that her favorite color is purple but thinks Chevelles look best in red. I don’t even know her name.

  Except I do.

  Lenora May. May to her friends. Lenora to teachers and Aunt Mina. But Lenora May to me. Always Lenora May.

  Panic grips me. Is this how it happens?

  No. She can’t have me, too. I won’t let her—

  Jewelry clutters the dresser top. I recognize a necklace I gave her two Christmases ago. The whole place reeks of a cloying sweet scent, a tacky, cheap perfume I’ve hated since she bought it last year. Everywhere I look, I see things I shouldn’t recognize. My own mind is betraying me. Memories of Lenora May sit side by side with memories of Phin. I know how she loves to bake, how she’s saved every penny of babysitting money to improve the Chevelle, and that she’s too generous for her own good.

  There’s a whole history of her inside my mind, but it’s flimsy and thin. It’s not real. She’s not real. I know it even if her pale purple bedspread says otherwise.<
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  I stare, gripping the door frame until my nails bend, and then I flee.

  In my own room, I close my eyes and say Phin’s full name aloud six times.

  People don’t just disappear. Not like this. Not from our memories. If they did, we’d have all forgotten Dad. Mama wouldn’t hate the smell of whiskey. I wouldn’t sleep with the window open. And Phineas wouldn’t know how to be angry.

  It’s several minutes before I open my eyes and hit the lights. The floor is comfortably littered with clothes, shoes, hair ties, lip gloss, and magazines. I spot one with a car on the front that’s been painted with fierce stripes to make it look fast. I snatched it from the neat stacks in Phin’s room two weeks ago—Lenora May picked it up on a trip to New Orleans—because Candy was making a collage and needed one of the pictures.

  I shove the magazine beneath the bed.

  The knock on my door is sharp as a tack.

  “Go away,” I say, but the door opens on Mama’s alarmed face. Behind her, Darold echoes her concern.

  “Honey, Doc Payola’s here. Okay if he comes in to chat?”

  I feel my jaw go slack and stupid. They got Doc Payola to make a house call on a Sunday night. This is as serious to them as it is to me, except they aren’t worried about Phin. They’re worried I might be crazy.

  Am I?

  Phineas. Ten years old. Bravely fighting tears as Doc Payola set his broken arm.

  I’m not crazy.

  Never deal in secrets of the swamp, the old Clary advice echoes in my thoughts. I’ve never understood it as clearly as I do right now.

  Nodding, I hastily tug the quilt over my bed and perch on the edge with what I hope is a sane expression. Mama steps aside and Doc Payola enters with a smile as broad as his shoulders.

  “Evening, Miss Sterling. How are we feeling tonight?”

  Angry. Confused. Scared. Betrayed. “Fine.”

  “No dizziness? Disorientation?” Setting a leather case on the foot of my bed, he removes a small flashlight and lifts my chin with a soft touch. He smells like barbecue and Tic Tacs.

  I’m careful to avoid Mama’s face as I answer, “Um. A little.” Better to give them something to chew than let them believe I’ve cracked.

  Doc flashes the light in my eyes, watching as my pupils retreat from the assault. “Got a bit of sun on your nose. Spend much time outside today?”

  “Basically the whole day,” I say, taking the opening. “Not the smartest thing, I guess.”

  He asks a few more questions—Did I knock my head today? Do I know what day it is? The year? What’s my birthday? Can I spell my name backward?—then inspects my head for bumps before turning to Mama and Darold. I keep my voice level through it all and focus on him, his long nose, his dark skin, the familiar tenor of his voice, the many memories I have of sitting in his office side by side with Phin.

  “Right as rain,” he says. “I suspect this is a case of mild heat exhaustion, but if you’re worried, I can set up a CT scan sometime this week. You’d have to drive to Alexandria or New Orleans, of course.”

  “That might be b—”

  “No!” I spring to my feet. “Mama, I’m fine. I promise. It was the heat.”

  Mama looks unconvinced. I see a future of hospital visits and overbearing parental attention and no Phineas unspooling before me.

  “I was just confused,” I continue, sick with fear. “I know who Lenora May is. Of course, I know my own sister.” Did she notice the tremble in that last word? The tremor in my lip?

  I force a smile. Mama exhales and says, “Okay.”

  “Keep her out of the sun for a few days, Emma, make sure she hydrates, and gets a good night’s rest. And if anything like this happens again, we’ll set up that scan. Agreed, Sterling?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, offering his bag.

  Satisfied, Darold takes Doc Payola downstairs for a drink. Mama follows more slowly, pausing to fuss with my pillows and plant a kiss on my cheek.

  Finally alone, I flip off the lights and lock my door. The exchange with Doc Payola had an inexplicable calming effect. I no longer feel like a scream, but I don’t know where that leaves me. In the middle of something too maddening for rational action. How do I even begin to think about what’s happened without losing more of myself to this twisted new reality? I can’t. Instead, I sit by the open window with my eyes trained on the swamp, anchoring Phin’s name in my mind.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  MY DREAMS ARE ALL KINDS of haunted and I wake with an image stuck to the inside of my eyelids: Lenora May standing in our yard in some old-fashioned dress, hands resting on the slope of her petticoat, winsome eyes on my house. With the gloaming thick around her, she opens her mouth to speak, spilling murky swamp water and mud all down her pretty white dress.

  I stumble to the bathroom. No matter how hot I make the shower, it does nothing to erase the dream from my mind. Everywhere I look, Lenora May’s presence grows like spotty, black mold. The shower holds a new brand of conditioner, and there’s a set of hair and face products I don’t recognize on the counter. They aren’t new. Each bottle or tube is in a different state of use, as though she’s been here for months applying hair gel and using toothpaste. It’s even Phin’s brand, with the end rolled up to keep all the paste moving forward, just like he would have done. Behind it is a neat little caddy of makeup that doesn’t belong to me.

  “Phineas Harlan Saucier,” I say to the shadow of myself in the foggy mirror. I cover the silver bracelet with my hand. It’s wet from the shower, but there isn’t anything in this world that’ll get me to take it off. One thing, at least, the swamp didn’t take.

  “It’s a charm,” he’d said. “It’ll keep you safe.”

  I hadn’t thought much of his words. At the time, the bracelet was only a symbol of his intention to leave Sticks and me behind when he left for college in August. I’d wanted nothing to do with it, but now I study the florid design more closely. It’s a tangled mess of coiling vines and blooming buds, each one finely sculpted.

  Grandpa called it his “swamp charm.” Holding on to it kept him safe, he’d said. Mama rolled her eyes and told us not to indulge him in nonsense thoughts, but after Dad left, Mama didn’t deny Grandpa anything. Phin and I would sit at the foot of his rocker in the screened porch listening as he told us over and over that the swamp was a cruel, hungry place, full of magic so terrible he’d built the fence to contain it.

  As a kid, I thought Grandpa was spinning stories, but now I wonder what secrets he knew.

  I’m relieved to find Lenora May’s door—Phin’s door—is shut when I leave the bathroom. Mama and Darold’s door, too, is shut tight.

  Beside my own door is a plate of food someone brought me last night. I consider leaving it, but the last thing I need is Mama obsessing over what I have and haven’t eaten. In the kitchen, I scrape the dried food into the trash can, where it sits on top of everything else. Yesterday, Mama wouldn’t have noticed. Today, though? I grab a paper towel and reach into the bowels of the trash can to bury my uneaten meal. Even holding my breath, I can feel the thick scents of day-old broccoli and peaches, oversweet sugars exhaling the scent of death. Moisture seeps through the towel, coating my fingers in old grease and rancid juices from whatever was in that casserole. My stomach lurches when the paper towel breaks and something mushy slips beneath my fingernail.

  This is not a normal thing to do.

  I’m keenly aware of the fact that I’m doing things like sneaking through my house and sticking my arm into days-old trash, all to avoid being seen. But I can’t deal with Mama’s concerns about my weight. Not right now. With my dignity somewhere behind me, I twist my hand and push the evidence of my meal as far into the can as possible.

  It takes three rounds of hot, soapy water before I’m convinced my skin is clean again. By the time I’m done, the house has begun to
shift and creak above me. Soon, they’ll be hunting for coffee and eggs. I’ve got no desire to revisit the events of last night. I need answers, not another fraught conversation. I pull a travel mug from the cabinet, an apple and granola bar from the pantry, and slip through the door unseen.

  The early sun is hidden beneath the tree line, casting light that’s hazy and blue and still. Grass showers my legs with dew. Beyond the fence, those same lights wink quietly from within the fog, creating rings of light like ripples. But it’s the fence that catches my eye.

  Somehow the top plank of one section has been knocked from between its posts. It hangs at an odd angle, supported by the thin, green wire of Mama’s lights. I’ve never seen any bit of the fence broken before. In every part of town, it’s always been tall and steady as the day my grandpa built it, a solid, unbroken warning.

  With the top plank down, the swamp feels closer than it was before. The Wasting Shine moves, weaving together until a clear golden vine runs into the wild. It looks like a promise. I shake my head, but can’t get rid of the feeling that the swamp wants me to follow. The thought is accompanied by a cold sweat haunting the nape of my neck. Quickly, I walk around the side of the house and down the road leading to town: the only place I’m likely to find help.

  Clary General Store is the center point of town. It’s a squatting shack with its back to the swamp, a front porch built of unfinished logs, and might be the oldest building in Sticks.

  Five rocking chairs sit on either side of Clary General’s front door. Each is occupied by the local good ol’ boys. Every morning, the old farmers and working men gather by 4:30 a.m. to have the same conversation they’ve had every other morning before. They rock slow and steady until the sun’s proven itself and the first cars have passed, then they go their separate directions to work until dusk.