“What’s the trouble back there, girls?” Mr. Haggard’s voice sounded like it was rumbling out of a foghorn.
“Nothing,” Summer called back sweetly. “We were just saying how cute you look in your new jacket. . . .”
I elbowed her. She rolled her eyes.
“Just giving him some excitement,” she said. “Look at him. He probably can’t even see past his stomach to his dick.”
“Can you not?” Mia made a face. Mia hated every word associated with sex, but dick, pussy, and lube were among her least favorites. I knew because in the fall of seventh grade—back before Summer had turned on us, back when we were all best friends—we made a list during a sleepover and took turns reading them out loud to make Mia squeal.
“Speaking of special occasions.” I was trying to keep things light, like I hadn’t been dying to talk to her, like every time she’d glared at me and looked away hadn’t gouged me full of holes. “Any reason you’re gracing us with your presence?”
“Couldn’t get another ride,” Summer said, shrugging. Gouge. Gouge. “Besides,” she said after a minute, in a different voice. “I wanted to talk about the spring dance. We’re still going together, aren’t we? The three of us and Owen?” She reached for my hand and squeezed, and my heart squeezed too.
Once again, I forgave her. Forgave her for telling everyone I was in love with her. Forgave her for taking my deepest secret, my truest thing, my love for her, and turning it into a joke.
“You still want to go with us?” Mia’s face was suspicious, but also hopeful, happy.
We just didn’t work without Summer.
“Uh-huh.” She unwrapped a piece of gum carefully. Her nails were painted yellow and chipping. “I might need your help with something soon, too. It’s about Lovelorn,” she added casually, almost as an afterthought.
“I thought we weren’t playing anymore,” I said.
She looked up at me, eyes wide and sky-blue, eyes to fall into. “Who said it was a game?”
The problem with the Chasm of Wish wasn’t so much what it contained. Wishes weren’t in themselves dangerous, and many Lovelornians had lost years, decades even, swimming in the river at its bottom, buoyed up by wishes, enfolded in the happy visions of everything they’d ever wanted.
Which, of course, was the problem: not getting in, but getting out.
—From The Way into Lovelorn by Georgia C. Wells
Brynn
Now
We pull Mr. Haggard’s address easily from whitepages.com: he lives on Bones Road in Eastwich, a speck of a town twenty minutes away. While Owen drives, Mia tries googling Mr. Haggard to find out more about him. There are only a handful of results: Mr. Haggard at a church picnic; Mr. Haggard manning a booth at the local Christmas bazaar; Mr. Haggard smiling with his arm around a skinny kid in front of a YMCA, where he apparently coaches basketball.
“That proves it,” I say. “Church and Christmas and coaching. That’s like the trifecta for pedophilia.”
“Or he’s a really nice guy who just likes kids,” Mia says.
“Or he’s pretending to be a nice guy who likes kids sweaty and worked up.”
“That’s gross, Brynn.”
“I’m not the pedophile. Besides, this was your big idea.”
“I know.” Mia turns to face the window. “It’s just . . .”
“Just what?” Owen asks, so quietly I barely hear him over the rush of the AC.
“It feels different, during the day. Harder to believe.”
She’s right. In the middle of the night and amped up on coffee, Haggard seemed inevitable. The nice dumpy bus driver, silently sporting a hard-on for Summer, maybe earning her trust, offering to help her out with homework, turning on her one day when she wouldn’t give him what he wanted.
Now, with houses flashing by behind neat-trimmed hedges and packs of kids riding bikes in the road, wind turbines up on the hill waving slowly, it’s hard to believe that anything bad could ever happen or has ever happened. It strikes me that maybe that’s the reason for it all—the nicely mowed lawns and hedges and houses painted fresh every few years. We build and build to keep the knowledge down that someday it will fall apart.
Bones Road is not what I expected. No old graveyards and headstones like splintered fingernails, no stormy-looking manor houses, no run-down farms with goats glaring at us from behind barbed wire. It looks kind of like my street, actually, with a bunch of pretty ranch houses set on identical tracts of land, lots of American flags and mailboxes in the shapes of animals and lawns littered with plastic kids’ toys. Mr. Haggard’s house is painted a cheerful yellow. There’s a big SUV in the driveway.
Owen parks down the street, as if he’s afraid Mr. Haggard might make a run for it if he so much as catches sight of the car. For a few seconds we just sit there after he cuts the engine, letting the heat creep back in. Doubts are still waggling their fingers at me.
“What’s the game plan?” I ask. “We need a cover story. I mean, we can’t just barge in and ask him if he killed Summer.”
“Follow my lead,” Owen says, like he’s the hero in a bad cop movie and we’re about to bust a terrorist ring.
Outside, the sun is doing its best to turn the pavement to butter. In the distance, kids are laughing and splashing, and the air smells like barbecue. I haven’t had anything to eat since we fueled up on gas station chips last night, and I’m starving. For a quick second I wish I lived here, on Bones Road, in one of these tidy houses. I wish a mom and dad were busy grilling up lunch while I went splashing through a sprinkler. But like my mom always said, Wishes are like lotto tickets—they never pay out.
An old, frayed welcome mat on the front stoop reads There’s No Place Like Home. Owen jabs the doorbell, and musical notes echo through the house. Standing there gives me the uncomfortable feeling of being a little kid on Halloween, waiting for someone to swing open the door. Trick or treat. I count four, five, six seconds.
“What if he’s not home?” Mia whispers.
“Someone’s home,” Owen says. “The car’s in the driveway.”
“But—” Mia starts to protest, but quickly falls silent. Footsteps patter toward us. He is home, after all.
But it’s not Mr. Haggard who swings open the door.
It’s a little girl. A girl maybe eleven or twelve, wearing a bathing suit and hot-pink short shorts, with a cloud of blond hair and sky-blue eyes, just like Summer’s.
For a second we all just stand there, gaping at her, three fish hooked through the lip. She rests one foot on the inside of her opposite knee, stork-style.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“Who are you?” I finally manage to say. But before she can answer, more footsteps—a brown-haired woman appears behind her and draws the little girl back. She’s bouncing a blond-haired boy on her hip. His face is coated with what looks like strawberry jam.
“What did I tell you about answering the door?” she says to the girl, and the girl spins away from her, squealing, and disappears down the hall. The woman rolls her eyes and pushes hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Can I help you?”
It hits me: we must have gotten the wrong house. Owen must think so too, because he says, “We were looking for Mr. Haggard. Do you know where—?”
But she cuts him off. “You’re not selling anything, are you? No Bible subscriptions or anything?”
Owen shakes his head. “It’s for . . . a project.” His voice sounds like it’s being squeezed through a tube of toothpaste.
She waves us inside. The boy on her hip is sucking on his fingers, staring. “Come on. Everyone’s out back. Quickest way is through the kitchen.” She’s already heading down the hall and we have no choice now but to follow her. The house is small and messy in the best way. Kids’ toys and fuzzy blankets, TV showing a baseball game and a teenage boy who doesn’t acknowledge us watching it with his elbows crooked to his knees, kitchen exploding with platters of food: potato salad, macaroni salad, hamburge
r meat, hot dog buns. I look at Mia and she shakes her head, as confused as I am.
A sliding glass door leads from the kitchen to the backyard. Kids are running around a wading pool, and the fence is decorated with balloons. There must be forty people out there, adults and kids, and a grill sending thick smoke into the air.
Whatever Mr. Haggard is, he isn’t lonely.
The woman pushes open the sliding door. “Dad!” she calls. “Visitors!” She turns back to us with an apologetic look. “Sorry. It’s nuts today.”
“We can come back.” Owen’s face has gone practically as red as his hair, and I know he must feel just as bad as I do. Mia is staring straight ahead with an expression on her face like she’s just seen her pet bunny electrocuted.
“No, no. It’s no trouble. Here he is now,” she says, and it’s too late: Mr. Haggard is squeezing in sideways through the door, one hand on his stomach, looking like Santa Frigging Claus, and we’re here to assassinate him, and sorry, kids, there goes Christmas.
“Hello,” he says. His eyes are twinkling. Actually twinkling. Between the twinkle and the long beard, he really does look like Father Christmas. “What can I do you for?”
The woman—his daughter—has slipped back into the yard. I see a picnic table stacked with birthday presents, a little girl wearing a princess tiara.
“This obviously isn’t a good time,” Owen says quickly. Mia lets out a whistling sound, like a punctured balloon.
Mr. Haggard waves a hand. “My youngest grandkid turns six today. Wanted to dress me up as a princess and been running me ragged all day. I’m glad for a little break.” He fumbles a pair of glasses out of his front pocket. Great. Now he looks exactly like Santa. Then again, Old St. Nick has all those elves running around doing work for no pay, so he’s got some dirty little secrets of his own. “Now let me see. You all are too old for Girl Scout cookies. Not to mention I don’t think this one fits the bill. Specially not with that shiner. Ouch.” He jerks his head at Owen and grins. “So let me think. You all raising money for the school debate team or something?”
There’s a long, horrible beat of silence. I picture the roof collapsing, the kitchen exploding, an earthquake tossing us all into the air.
“Actually”—Owen’s voice cracks and he clears his throat—“we’re volunteers from the Vermont Transportation Authority—”
Mr. Haggard plugs a finger in his ear and rubs. “The what now?”
But Owen just keeps talking, raising his voice a little, as if he can drown out any of Haggard’s objections. “To administer a quick survey about the public school bus systems as compared to private systems—”
“Oh boy.” He heaves himself onto one of the kitchen stools, still smiling. “Sounds heavy.”
Owen finally runs out of breath and stands there, half gasping. “Just a few questions,” he adds. “About your experience, and your bus route, and what the kids are like.”
“Were,” Haggard says. “I retired last year.”
“Okay,” Owen says. “What the kids were like.”
Haggard turns his smile on me. I feel like an ant underneath a magnifying glass. “Well, why don’t you just ask these girls? Bet you remember the old bus route just fine.”
“You—you remember us,” I stutter.
His smile finally goes dim. “’Course I do. You were my three musketeers. You two and the other girl, Summer. Terrible what happened to her.” It’s clear from the way he says it that he doesn’t think we had anything to do with it.
I try to beam to Owen and Mia that we should get the hell out of here and leave Haggard and his grandkids in peace.
Apparently Mia doesn’t get the message, because she blurts out, “Mr. Haggard, we’re sorry. We haven’t been honest. We’re not here for a survey. We’re here about Summer. We’re trying to find out what really happened to her.”
Forget the earthquake. Here’s to hoping a renegade tiara whizzes in through the doors to decapitate all three of us.
“I see.” Haggard scratches his head through the thinning slick of his hair. “Well, I’m not sure whether I can be much help. . . .”
“You—you remember her, though?” If I’m going to hell anyway, I might as well make sure I’ve good and earned it.
“Sure. I remember all my kids. Drove a bus for forty years and knew that route like the back of my hand.”
“Did you grow up in Vermont?” Owen asks, and I know he must be thinking of St. Louis.
“Born and bred,” Haggard says. He gives his stomach a thwack. “They make us bigger out here, huh?” But his smile fades again. “She was trouble, that one. Tell you that. Had a mean streak.” Then, as though he remembers who he’s talking to, he stands up. “But you probably knew that, huh? I felt sorry for her.”
Mia shoots Owen a look I don’t have time to puzzle out. “How come?” I say.
“She seemed lonely,” he says. “Even when she was with her friends, with you two, she seemed lonely. Lost, you know?”
Lonely. Lost. The words remind me of the passages we pulled about the Shadow. Was Summer the Shadow all along? I never thought of Summer as lonely, not once. But then I remember the night she climbed in through my window, the way her ribs looked, standing out in the moonlight, her tears running into my mouth even as we kissed.
Nobody loves me, she said, over and over again. Her chest spasmed against my palms, like she was dying. Nobody, nobody, nobody.
Were we wrong about everything? Maybe there was no mysterious Shadow in real life, no one who got close to her and started feeding her stories. Maybe she did write the pages herself. Maybe some psycho met her in the woods and just seized his chance.
A little boy comes tumbling into the kitchen, knees grass-stained and face all scrunched up and red, wailing. He holds out his arms.
“Grandpa,” he says. “Grandpa, Grandpa.”
“What’s the matter, Gregg?” Haggard places a wrinkled hand on the kid’s head. I give it a last shot and try to picture that hand wrapped around a knife, bringing a blade down into Summer’s chest and neck, over and over. But my brain just burps and goes quiet.
The woman who let us into the house is a second behind Gregg, drawing him away. “Oh, you’re fine. Gregg, honestly. It was just a little tumble. And you know Grandpa can’t pick you up.” But she picks him up and plants a kiss on his forehead before rolling her eyes at us and hauling him back outside.
“Slipped disc,” Haggard says to us, placing a hand on his back and making an oh boy, that’s age face. “Used to volunteer with the EMT. Had a bad fall when my own kids were barely out of diapers. Can’t barely lift a shovel in wintertime.” He shakes his head.
That’s that. Whoever killed Summer also had to drag her. Mr. Haggard can’t even pick up a toddler.
“We’re sorry for barging in on you like this, Mr. Haggard.” Owen’s still glowing red as a hot pepper. He’s put two and two together, too. “We’re sorry for wasting your time.”
“It’s no trouble.” For a second, he looks like he’s about to say more. Then I find a name for his expression: pity. He feels sorry for us. “I hope you all find what you’re looking for.”
But as we make our way back into the heat, leaving the noise of shouting kids and laughter behind, just another summer Wednesday, trees bursting like the joy is coming out through their branches, I know that we won’t.
Firth had one special skill besides thievery, and that was this: people listened to him. He rode from town to town, from vale to glen, from hermit hovel to the princesses’ towers, and everywhere he stopped and delivered the same message:
“We’ve had it wrong, my friends. We’ve said one must die so that others might live. But everyone must die. It is the natural way. The only way. Age comes and takes us. Sickness knocks on our door. Death is blind and picks at random. Everyone must die. Only then can everyone live, too. Only then can we banish the Shadow from these lands.”
—From The Way into Lovelorn by Georgia C. Wells
Mia
Now
We don’t speak on the drive back to Twin Lakes. Owen’s knuckles stand out on the steering wheel, as if he’s afraid it might spin out from his grip. Brynn sits, head back, staring at nothing.
Once, when I was five or six, my mom drove an hour and a half to Burlington to take me to a local production of The Nutcracker. I was wearing my best dress—green velvet, with a crinoline skirt and lace at the collar—thick wool stockings, shiny leather boots that laced to my ankle. On the way there, it started to snow, light flakes that winked on the way down and melted side by side against the window.
When we arrived, there were no women in long silk dresses, no ushers in flat caps passing out brochures, no crush of perfume and conversation. Just some teens out of uniform sweeping up crumbs from the aisles, and the stage naked and bare under the lights. My mom had gotten the start time wrong. The show was a matinee. The worst part of the whole thing wasn’t even the disappointment but how angry I was at my mom. We went across the street to a little diner and she bought me a tuna melt and a chocolate sundae and I refused to eat them. Driving home while the headlights sucked snow into the grille, I imagined setting out into the woods all alone until the silence took me.
That’s just how I feel now: we came too late. It’s been too long.
Summer should have spoken to us sooner. She should have led us.
I’m furious at her all over again.
Owen has to wheel up on the lawn to avoid hitting the Dumpster in my driveway. Even before he’s fully stopped, Brynn rockets out of the car without saying thank you.
“Construction?” Owen asks.
“What?” Suddenly, Owen and I are alone. Except I can no longer remember why I thought, even for a second, that we might repair something, stitch it back together. Owen, too, was probably fiction.
“The Dumpster. You guys doing construction?” He leans forward, squinting up at the house.
“Yes,” I lie quickly. I let myself imagine it’s true: that we’re building instead of taking things apart.
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