Dreaming Darkly

by Caitlin Kittredge

  I set my stuff down and approached. “Hey. This is tryouts, right?”

  Valerie gave me a pitying look that somehow managed to be toxic and condescending at the same time, which was a feat. “Mascot auditions are in the gym. Since I assume you’re looking for something that will save everyone from having to look at you.”

  I took off my jacket and pulled my running shoes out of my bag.

  “No sassy remarks this time?” Valerie pushed. “Am I upsetting you? You going to go home to your freak family and cry about the mean girl?”

  I looked up at her and gave her a wide smile. Smiling confuses people if they’re expecting you to get all upset. “That’s an idea,” I said. “But I’d rather stay here and kick your ass on the track.”

  More girls showed up in civilian running clothes, and Valerie stomped back into the crowd. I followed the other hopefuls into the locker room, changed, and went back out to stretch. I got the feeling of eyes on the back of my neck as I worked on my quads. Turning, I saw Doyle watching me from the shadow of the bleachers. He gave me a little wave and beckoned me over.

  “Are you sure your girlfriend won’t bite your face off for talking to me?” I said when I jogged up.

  He laughed. “I think you’re doing a fine job pissing her off on your own.”

  I heard a whistle blow and shifted my feet. “Did you want something, or . . . ?”

  Doyle handed me a folded piece of paper. “Just wanted to give you this. In case you change your mind about getting out of here.”

  I shoved the paper into the pocket of my shorts. “Thanks, but I’m good.” He still didn’t leave, so I reached for the first reason that sounded halfway plausible. “Unless you want to give me a real, concrete reason, I’m kinda reluctant to run out on the first home without wheels I’ve lived in since grade school.”

  His jaw twitched but he sighed. “Fine. I can’t stop you.”

  “No,” I agreed. “You can’t.” I jogged back to the group on the track, and I felt like I’d swallowed a rock when I saw the track coach was Mr. Armitage. He raised one eyebrow when he saw me.

  “You do know this is a team sport, Ms. Bloodgood? You’re expected to get along and support the other girls.”

  “Is that what this is?” I said. “I thought this was the club where we go into the woods and fight each other Hunger Games–style.”

  A few of the girls snickered, and even Valerie cracked a smile.

  “If you’re so tough, give me your fastest mile,” Mr. Armitage said. “Valerie, since, unlike English literature, this is your arena of expertise, try not to beat her too badly.”

  We lined up, and Valerie streaked ahead of me on the whistle. I caught up by the end of the first lap and felt my heart throb and my blood pound. This wasn’t like waking up on the lighthouse, though. I was warm and alive, and I dug my toes into the damp red clay of the track, letting my longer legs pull me just ahead of Valerie. If I could tire her out, I could shut her down in the finish lap.

  Valerie was faster than I’d expected, though, and more important, she hated me, and she pulled ahead—way ahead. I watched her bright copper ponytail swish away from me, and I pushed myself again. My calf muscles burned, and I could hear my lungs making saw-blade sounds, but I wasn’t letting her beat me. This wasn’t a school I’d stay at for a few months and get to move on. I was here for who knew how long, and I wasn’t going to be dealing with some wannabe Regina George dogging my every step.

  Gray thunderheads piled up as Valerie and I rounded the last turn, close enough to touch. My vision was blurring around the edges, and I saw a bright tongue of lightning flick the underside of the clouds over the bay. Two more steps, that was all I needed to get ahead. There was a flashbulb, and a thunder crack, and then my feet skidded across the chalk line at the end of the lap. Valerie came up a half second later and almost plowed into me. She doubled over, wheezing, and Armitage tossed her a bottle of Gatorade. “Walk it off,” he ordered, and then turned to me. “Seven sixteen. Not terrible.” He fished a jersey—blue with a bright yellow D on the back—from the mesh bag at his feet and tossed it to me. “Welcome.”

  The sky opened and rain poured down on everyone, freezing droplets that washed all the sweat off my skin. Mr. Armitage called off the rest of the tryouts until the next day, and we ran for the gym.

  Valerie caught me after I’d showered and headed for the bus. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” I said, eyeing her warily.

  She sighed. “Look, you’re really good. We need more strong distance runners. Can we just call off the Game of Thrones?”

  I shrugged. “I’m willing to stop being a bitch if you stop calling me a witch.”

  Her mouth lifted at the corners. “Fair enough. Where did you go to school before Darkhaven? Not many people can just walk on the team with a seven-sixteen mile.”

  “All over,” I said honestly. “Track is the one sport almost every school has, so it was easy to keep up even if we moved.” And running didn’t cost more than shoes and sweat, whether it was on the rainy, spongy ground of Portland or concrete-hard New Mexico high desert. It also gave me a ready-made excuse to get out and away from Mom, who would only run if the cops were chasing her.

  “I’m jealous,” Valerie said. “I had to train all summer with a coach to shave my time down to under seven thirty.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “You have a long stride for somebody your height. I bet you kick ass cross-country.” I guessed I was serious with this olive branch extending, because I felt almost happy when Valerie held up her phone.

  “Add me on Instagram and I’ll add you back, and I’m usually on Google chat. I’m Valirun98.”

  “Cool,” I said, because “I don’t own a smartphone and live on a island where wireless signals go to die” would have made me look very much like some kind of boring time traveler from the past.

  Valerie started to walk over to a red SUV idling at the curb and then turned back. “One more thing—stay away from my boyfriend. I know you guys are neighbors, but he’s mine, and we’re serious.”

  “Yeah, I’m not his type,” I said. I wanted to roll my eyes at Valerie virtually peeing a circle around Doyle, but he was the best-looking guy I’d seen in this shallow gene pool of a town, and she was probably counting on the two of them moving someplace where restaurants stayed open past eight when high school was over. She could do her doctor thing, like Betty had said, and he could sit around being attractive. They’d be a perfect couple.

  She could have her fantasy. Aside from the superstitious crap, I’d met a dozen guys just like Doyle. None of them had a clue what the real world was like. The first time being an upper-middle-class male didn’t get them what they wanted, they melted down.

  The note he’d passed me crinkled inside my shorts pocket when I pawed through my bag for my water bottle, and I pulled it out and unfolded it while the bus rumbled down the hill to the pier.

  I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy.

  I smirked. Somebody was lying about never having read Rebecca.

  Doyle’s number was scribbled below it, with a note.

  Call me if you change your mind.

  I crumpled up the note and shoved it into the bottom of my bag. I couldn’t figure Doyle out. One second he was all into me, the next he was practically dragging me to the town line and shoving me over it to get me away from him.

  Rain lashed the bus window and lightning lit up the harbor, light then dark then light again. I wrapped my coat around me and ran for the boat. I never thought I’d be glad to be going back to the island, but cursed family lineage, mystery illness or not, it was better than high school.

  Chapter 13

  Simon and Mrs. MacLeod were both out when I got back to the house, so I showered and spent an hour or so padding through the various rooms. Most on the upper floor were guest rooms, shut up and chilly, their radiators as silent and sheet-shrouded as the rest of the
furniture. Some were entirely empty, deep drag marks in the wood floors where heavy objects had been taken away. I hoped they’d gotten to go somewhere a little less moldy and dank.

  Only one room, one that looked out over the top of the greenhouse to the ocean, wasn’t a total tomb. It was dusty, but still full of stuff, as if the owner had just stepped out and forgotten to come back for twenty years. Old makeup and perfume were dried to dust on the vanity. Dresses and shoes spilled out of a closet, and I’d left the same mess behind myself enough times to recognize the signs of someone taking off with only what they could carry. I opened and closed drawers, coming across some jeans and tees that smelled like they’d spent the last decade marinating in a damp cave and a small leather book with the cover falling away. Most of it was blank, but yellowing Polaroids were pasted into the first twenty pages or so.

  I saw Simon as a teenager, wearing swim trunks, sitting on a rock in the sun and glaring at whoever was taking the picture. He was pale as ever, but with a lot more hair and a lot fewer lines on his face. Same dorky glasses, though. I flipped through the rest of the photos. Most of them were random shots of the beach, the house, and Darkhaven, all featuring peeps in bitchin’ nineties fashion that dated things a few years before I was born. I looked around the room again, at the curious emptiness, even though it had more stuff in it than most. The unmade bed had black sheets, and the faded gilt wallpaper was covered with posters and tear sheets from concerts, rusted thumbtacks spreading brown stains across the plaster. Siouxsie, the Clash, the Pixies, and Nirvana, just to start.

  I closed my fist around the book. I never saw the photographer, but it had to be my mother. This was her room, her stuff. Before she got pregnant and decided to run away. And whoever had been left behind—Simon, I guessed—had just left this room like a tiny museum to her deserting the place. I doubted it was sentimentality, but maybe a tiny part of him missed her. They sure seemed happy in the photos. Mom had that effect on people—you couldn’t stand to be around her, but you missed her when she was gone, and she’d bolted on Simon just like every other close relationship she’d had since I’d been around. That kind of behavior could lead to the exact mix of resentment and regret Simon seemed to hold toward his sister.

  He hadn’t even bothered to erase the chalkboard hanging on the wall above her desk. The writing reminded my twenty-years-ago mother to BE EXCELLENT TODAY.

  All at once, even though it was freezing, the room was too hot and too small. I ran out and slammed the door behind me. I couldn’t reconcile the happy, messy, teenage girl whose bedroom that was with the hateful, bitter, selfish woman I’d known. The fact that I’d never gotten to meet this facet of Mom made me angry, but something else choked the anger out, something heavier and harder to deal with.

  It wasn’t just Mom’s room—the whole manor house suddenly felt too small. I needed sound, something to distract me, but there was no TV and my music player’s battery was dead. I’d left my charger in Omaha.

  I went to the kitchen and used the ancient wall phone, punching in Doyle’s number. Rain pattered like cat feet against the glass, leaving streaks that gleamed in the last rays of daylight. The phone hummed and buzzed for a good ten seconds before it deigned to actually ring, and I sighed impatiently. Landlines didn’t work any better than anything else on Darkhaven, apparently.

  “Yeah?” Doyle said.

  I gripped the receiver. I felt stupid for calling him. If there had been anyone else to talk to, I wouldn’t even be doing this. But it was too late now. What would I say—seeing my dead mother’s room had made me not want to be alone in the place where she’d grown up, the last place she’d been happy?

  “Ivy, is that you?” Doyle said. “Are you okay?”

  “Can, uh . . .” I swallowed and got a hold on myself. Whatever my flaws, I could talk to people. That was one of my few good qualities, even though I’d mostly used it to scam unsuspecting social workers, cops, and anyone else who had something I wanted. “Want to hang out or something? A few days away made me forget how boring this place is.” I held my breath after I said that. Reminded myself he had a girlfriend, and now that I knew that, I had to remember his flirting wasn’t going anywhere.

  But I hadn’t called to feel him out romantically, I’d called because he was the only person I’d remotely connected with, or trusted, since I came to Darkhaven. Even if he was off-limits dating-wise, having an actual friend close by would be a big relief. So what if I had liked him a little? I could keep that to myself. I wasn’t interested in stealing anyone’s boyfriend.

  There was a second of silence, and I got the feeling it wasn’t because of me. Doyle’s voice was lower when he spoke again, like he was trying not to be overheard. “Meet me on the beach.”

  After he hung up, I got my jacket and a heavy wool scarf I’d found in the closet of my bedroom. There was a big steel flashlight hanging by the kitchen door, and I grabbed that too before stepping into the rain.

  Doyle was waiting when I finally fell-climbed my way down the rotting steps, wearing a green canvas coat and hiking boots like he was taking a break from a freakin’ L.L.Bean ad. His hair was wet and blown across his forehead in inky streaks, a stark contrast to his skin, which had a faint blue-silver glow in the near night. “Took you long enough,” he called above the muted roar of the waves.

  “The stairs from the manor are a compound fracture waiting to happen. You want me breaking my damn ankle?” I said.

  “Shouldn’t worry you.” Doyle grinned. “You can just fly down here on your broomstick, right?”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. “Screw you.”

  Doyle shoved his hands into his pockets, hunching against the wind. “So what’s up?”

  I looked down, kicking a trough in the rocky beach with my feet. “I don’t know. Nobody’s home and I just . . . I’m not used to living somewhere that big. Back in Nebraska or wherever, I was lucky if I got my own bed.”

  Doyle glanced up at the house, then at me. “Come here,” he said, stretching out his hand. I took it, finding his grip still callused and strong. It surprised me again. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d be into manual labor.

  He led me back toward the small cave I’d visited. I felt my stomach flip in panic as I glimpsed the spot where I’d buried the shirt, but we moved past it, deeper into the dark. The tide was low now, and Doyle ducked and took a sharp left. I saw what I hadn’t before—a set of steps carved into the rock, covered in seaweed and clusters of mussel shells, waiting for the tide to return.

  “Bootlegger cave,” Doyle said. “We just have to make sure we go back before the tide comes in.” I followed him up the steps, using his hand for balance, and found myself on a dry rock shelf in the shape of a half shell, evidence of some ancient lava flow that had carved through the rock. A sort of arch, braced up with railroad ties so rotted they were green with algae, led away into blackness.

  “Supposedly the tunnels go all the way to the other side of the island,” Doyle said. “Drop the booze off on the ocean side, roll it over to a lobster boat moored on the bay side, take it to the mainland.”

  “Was that your family or mine?” I said. Doyle felt around in the dark and came up with a pack of matches.

  “Mine, of course,” he said with a grin. “The Bloodgoods were way too prissy to be criminals.”

  “Yeah, I think my uncle would literally faint if he knew some of the stuff I’ve done,” I muttered.

  Doyle lit an old Coleman lantern, the squat red body pitted with rust from the salt in the air, and frowned. “He’s not as wimpy as he looks.”

  I saw a couple of old footlockers stacked to one side in the light of the lantern, and Doyle flipped one open. “My brother and my cousins stored some stuff here. They used to sneak onto the beach and go drinking and partying. We’re not supposed to be on this side, but that never stopped them.”

  He spread out a sleeping bag that was mildewed around the edges and patted the spot next to him. I sat cross-legge
d, watching Doyle’s profile in the harsh silver light of the lantern.

  “This is so bizarre,” I murmured. “I spend my entire life thinking it’s just me and Mom, and now there’s all of this . . .” I held out my arms to encompass the cave, my uncle, everything. Doyle cracked a half smile.

  “Honestly, if I were in your position, I’d be losing my head. I don’t know how you’re so calm.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “Almost taking the plunge off that lighthouse was not the worst moment of my life. Far from it.”

  The waves hissed on the rocks, and I tried to leave everything else outside the mouth of the cave. I wanted to just let it be Doyle and me for a while. I didn’t want to think about how before I came here, spending any time near the ocean made me sick to my stomach. How I could hear the water rushing into my ears and the slow, ebbing throb of my own heartbeat getting slower and slower if I watched the waves for too long.

  Doyle sighed. “I’m glad I met you, but I wish to hell you hadn’t come here.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Come on, Doyle. You keep harassing me about it, I’m gonna find it creepy.”

  He snorted, stretching his arms above his head and lying back on his elbows. “You want creepy, talk to that uncle of yours.”

  “Simon isn’t any creepier than your relatives,” I said. “I saw your dad talking to him out in the woods. He didn’t seem all that happy.”

  Doyle went quiet for a minute, and I wondered if I’d ticked him off. Then he sighed. “He’s upset and on edge. We all are. My cousin was killed a few nights ago. Dad spent most of today planning his funeral.”

  “Killed like murdered?” I already knew the answer, but figured playing dumb wouldn’t hurt for now. Did Doyle think Simon was somehow responsible? My uncle had made the feud sound like a simmering, passive thing just below the surface of his relations with the Ramseys, but maybe it wasn’t.