Sweetly

by Jackson Pearce

  I finally reach Old 18, a former highway that is identical to almost every other street in this part of Live Oak. The motorcycle is parked off the road, and Samuel is walking away from a small hill that has a target with a gray man shape taped onto it. He reaches down and grabs some sort of rifle off the ground and slings another over his shoulder as he storms toward me—well, not storms, I suppose. That seems to be his normal walk.

  “Okay, this is the gun you’re using today,” Samuel says with such immediacy that I’m startled. I begin to take it from his hands, but he pulls it back. There’s no loneliness in his eyes now—just challenge. Determination.

  “Wait. This is the safety,” he says, pointing to a little lever near the trigger. “Flip it this way, it’s on; the gun can’t fire. This way, it’s off. Unless you’re aiming, keep it on.”

  “Right. Safety,” I repeat. Samuel sends me a contemplative look, green eyes searching mine for something, as if he’s expecting me to make a joke out of this whole thing. I’m not sure why—there’s nothing to joke about when you might find yourself moments away from being eaten.

  “Come on,” he says, tilting his head toward the middle of the field. I walk along beside him until we reach a point not too far away from the target. There are a few small cardboard boxes on the ground, labeled with terms I don’t understand: hollow point, 36 grain, copper plated. Samuel hands me a rifle.

  “Load it like this,” he says, twisting a cylinder near the top. He grabs a handful of bullets from one of the boxes and drops them into the gun, then closes it up.

  “Got it,” I answer, though I could honestly use another demonstration. I follow suit clumsily.

  “Rules,” Samuel says. “Don’t aim it at a person. Ever. Count the number of rounds you put in the gun. Don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you’re ready to fire.” He swings his own rifle back over his shoulder, then pauses. “And don’t ever, ever fire at a Fenris until it transforms. Just in case your instinct is wrong and it’s actually a person.”

  “Right,” I mutter. I notice the rifle he’s holding is far bigger than my own. “Isn’t this a little small to kill a witch?”

  “Fenris. Wolf. Why are you still calling them witches?” Samuel asks, voice exasperated.

  I blush, fight to find words. “That’s what’s always scared me—the witch.”

  “And a Fenris doesn’t scare you?”

  “I know what a Fenris is. Besides, it seems weird to call the witch something different after all this time.”

  Samuel doesn’t seem to understand—he shakes his head as though it’s not worth arguing with me. “It’s not too small to kill a witch or a wolf or a Fenris or a serial killer or whatever else it is you are or are not afraid of. It’s all about your aim,” he answers.

  “How good is your aim?” I ask, eyebrows raised.

  Samuel shrugs. “My father and his father and his father and all my brothers are woodsmen. Some are good at building things, some are good at carving, some are good with an ax… I’ve always been a good hunter. Anyway, lift it like this,” Samuel says, raising his own rifle up to his shoulder.

  I try to mimic him.

  “Push your left elbow in farther, so it’s right under the rifle. Right. Okay, and then the stock of the gun should be right…” He swings his gun back around his shoulder and moves around me to adjust my position. He touches the rifle whenever possible, avoiding my skin as if it might poison him. “There,” he finally says.

  Samuel points to a tiny circle at the end of the rifle. “So to aim, you’re going to line this circle”—he moves to point to a little v-shaped piece of metal that rests on top of the rifle, just a few inches away from my face—“up with this V. Close your left eye; look at everything from your right.”

  “Okay,” I mutter, struggling to line everything up—the moment I get it all in order, I shake or the wind blows or I breathe and everything is out of whack again. Samuel continues to adjust my shoulder and the rifle itself, which doesn’t exactly help. Every time he gets close, he brings with him a strange scent, something bright and forestlike that lingers on his skin, like the smell of fresh leaves.

  “Wait. There—perfect,” Samuel says. He raises his hands and backs away slowly, as though he’s steadying a vase. “Okay, flip the safety off… good. So, you want to squeeze the trigger—not yet! Christ, give me a second to explain. You want to squeeze the trigger, not yank it. Separate your finger from the rest of your hand.”

  “Is it going to kick back?” I ask, keeping my right eye locked on the target. The wind sweeps my hair around my face, but I make no move to brush it away—I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to hit a position that Samuel considers “perfect” again.

  “No. Just squeeze—”

  “Are you sure?” I cut him off, thinking about the way guns always slam back into the shooters’ shoulders in movies. I should have worn something more substantial than a tank top… and what if it kicks and I shoot into the air or into Samuel’s head or something?

  “It won’t kick,” Samuel says testily.

  “Maybe you should do it first—”

  “Squeeze with your finger—no, don’t say anything else. You’re talking yourself out of it. Just shoot the damn gun, Gretchen,” Samuel says.

  I inhale slowly, and as I exhale, I squeeze the trigger so lightly that I’m not sure I’m doing anything at all. I think of my parents. I think of Ansel, I think of my sister. I think of releasing Ansel’s hand in the forest twelve years ago, and how the witch could have chosen me instead of her to make vanish.

  I squeeze a little harder.

  It fires—a sharp, shallow sound that ripples through my ears. One shot, two, three, each separated by long pauses so I can adjust my aim and take another breath.

  Ten total—but I forgot to count. The rifle clicks but doesn’t fire as I try for shot eleven. I exhale.

  “And there you go. Put the safety back on,” Samuel says, his voice lighter than normal.

  I don’t move.

  “Put the safety on,” Samuel repeats.

  I inhale and raise my head, gazing down at the rifle. I shot it—I know how to shoot it. Somewhat, at least. I can aim, I can shoot, I can protect myself from the wolves.

  “Gretchen,” Samuel says sternly. He takes a step toward me.

  “Sorry, sorry.” I snap out of the daze and flip the safety over. Samuel steps in quickly to take the gun out of my hand and set it on the ground. He raises an eyebrow at me, but I ignore him and start toward the target. I want to run, want to spring forward and find I’m victorious, that I’ve hit the gray man square between the eyes. The urge to leap across the field nips at me; I have to breathe slowly to control it.

  As the gray man grows closer, I try to imagine him as a werewolf—as the blond-haired monster from last week. Would I have hit him? Saved myself?

  Actually, no, I realize as I reach the target. I didn’t hit it once.

  “Not bad,” Samuel says, frowning as he pulls a blue marker out of his jeans pocket.

  “Not bad? I didn’t even hit him,” I complain, folding my arms. All ten shots are clustered closely together in the upper right corner of the paper on the white part.

  Samuel shakes his head as he reaches forward with the blue marker and puts a slash through all ten shots. “But you were consistent. Same area all ten times. It just means you need to take the overall aim down and to the left.”

  “But I—”

  “Are you going to pout?” Samuel says, eyeing me, “or are you going to try changing your aim and starting over?”

  I stare at Samuel for a moment—bright eyes looking into me, eyes that make my heart beat faster and mind leap excitedly, a feeling that comes without the scent or taste of candy, and is all the sweeter for it. “I’ll try again,” I answer firmly.

  And, for the first time since I met him, Samuel smiles.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When I get home, Sophia’s car is gone and Ansel is using a hammer inside the sh
op. Luxe is sitting outside, looking profoundly irritated with all the banging going on.

  “How was your walk?” Ansel asks, looking up at me from under a display case when I come in.

  I try to wipe the grin off my face, the one I’ve been wearing ever since I left the lesson. “Fine,” I say with a shrug. Ansel nods, looks down, but doesn’t go back to hammering.

  “I can go with you next time, if you want,” he says.

  I shake my head. “I’m okay,” I answer, and I’m surprised to realize I really mean it.

  Ansel smiles and shakes his head. “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “I just… you were walking. Past the forest. By yourself,” he says.

  I nod, but now that he says it, I’m hyperaware of how odd it is. Does he suspect something? Will I have to tell him that the witch is here?

  “I’m just impressed, that’s all,” he responds to the look on my face. I exhale and he continues. “This sounds weird, I know, but I feel like… I had to mourn our sister, then our parents, and the whole time it felt like I was mourning you too. Even though you’re here.”

  He pauses a long time, and I open my mouth to apologize. He waves his hand to stop me. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m just saying—if I’m not mourning you anymore, then… that means we’re both finally out of the woods.”

  I smile automatically at the sincerity of my brother’s words, emotion that’s mirrored in his eyes. We’re both free.

  Even though the witch is closer than ever, we’re both free.

  “Can you do me a favor?” he asks, sliding farther under the glass display case with the hammer and breaking the tenderness filtering between us.

  “Sure.”

  “I left a few wrenches by the door of the shed. Grab them for me?”

  I cut through the kitchen—Sophia has rows and rows of truffle molds laid out, ready to be filled—and out the back screen door. I hurry toward the three wrenches that are resting just outside the shed and swipe them off the ground.

  I drop them instantly—the silver metal is so hot from the late June sun that it’s scalding. I curse at them, make a basket out of the front of my shirt, and toss them into it. I’m about to turn to go back inside when my eye catches something—the shed door is slightly ajar.

  On closer inspection, I realize why: the chain that I assumed locked up the shed is actually just wound loosely around the handles with no padlock whatsoever. I press my face against the gap in the door and try to peer inside—this is the only part of Sophia’s property I haven’t seen. Would Sophia mind that I’m curious? It’s not locked—the chain seems to be more to keep the doors shut than to keep anyone out. I cradle the wrenches with one hand and use the other to unwind the chain. The doors swing open easily.

  There’s not much inside. A lawn mower, some spare pieces of wood, a few boxes labeled “Hanukkah Chocolate Molds.” But then, in the back, below an upper level that spans half the shed, I see something different—something covered in dust and dead leaves, as if it’s been in there a long time. A row of cardboard boxes, each tightly taped up. Beside those, a bed and a lavender dresser that match the furniture in my room exactly. I turn to look up at my bedroom’s window and remember how the room’s design so perfectly reflects itself—no wonder it feels strange. Half of it is missing, stuffed into the shed. I take a step closer, and my foot accidentally hits an open box, spilling its contents onto the floor.

  Seashells. Five of them: beautiful, flawless conch shells wrapped in cloth that’s come loose with the box’s motion. I kneel, rewrapping them and placing them back into the box, only to realize there’s an identical box beside it with three seashells inside. Something about them strikes me as disconcerting, worrisome. They’re just seashells, but I remember the way Sophia reacted when one appeared on her porch a couple of weeks ago, and I can’t help but be curiously wary.

  Sophia’s car pulls up. I jump up and dart to the door, hurriedly relooping the chain around the handles. I rush back inside with the wrenches, trying not to look too out of breath.

  “Thanks,” Ansel says, taking the wrenches from me just as Sophia reaches the screen door. She smiles at me.

  “Wow,” I say, looking at her armful of boxes. “Need help?”

  “If you’re offering,” she says, just as a box topples off the top of her stack. “There are a few more in the car—”

  “I’ll get them,” Ansel says quickly, and before we can stop him, he’s out the door. Sophia and I manage to wait until he’s out of earshot to giggle at each other over his enthusiasm to help her. I grab the box Sophia dropped and take a few others out of her hands.

  I read a mailing label as we move to the kitchen. “From Brazil?”

  Sophia grabs two pairs of scissors from a drawer, and we go to work opening the boxes. “Most of what I put in the truffles has to be ordered. You can’t find it in Live Oak.”

  I tear open the box I was holding—Brazil nuts—and then unpack containers of anise, Madagascar vanilla, pear brandy from Oregon, chilies from Venezuela.

  “I try to make more exotic things for the festival,” Sophia says with a shrug, opening a packet of huckleberries. “Everyone wants to get out of Live Oak… I think they like having things they can’t normally find here.”

  “How…” I shake my head, then look at her. “How do you afford all this, Sophia? No offense,” I say, motioning toward a bottle of raspberry Chambord.

  Sophia frowns. “I admit, I’m kind of draining my inheritance down to zero—I can’t believe how much I’ve burned through in three years. It’s just… it’s just money. There are things that are more important.” She shakes off the sadness I see beginning to creep over her.

  “If it helps,” I say, “I’m pretty sure Ansel will work for free forever, if you want him to.”

  Sophia laughs and shakes her head. “He asked if I’d go to a movie with him, earlier today. While you were gone.”

  “There’s a movie theater in Live Oak?” I ask, surprised, thinking of the run-down drive-in.

  “Sort of—there are three screens. And most of the seats are covered in duct tape. But it exists,” she says. “And there are a few in Lake City, anyhow.” She pauses, chews her lip. “Is it okay with you still? That I go out with your brother?”

  “Yes,” I answer, faster than I expected. “As long as you two remember I exist,” I tease.

  Sophia laughs. “I promise. And thank god you said yes—I’ve been living in fear that I’m going to get so desperate, I start dating Live Oak guys again. That’s how it starts—you get a boyfriend here, then one of you can’t or won’t leave, so you get married, and then suddenly you’re fifty and you’ve barely left the state.”

  “But… if you were that scared of getting stuck in Live Oak, why take over the shop? You could just close it, sell it, that kind of thing, right?”

  “It’s what I’m good at. I need the chocolatier, and it needs me.”

  “But it’s not what you want?”

  Sophia shrugs. “I’ll never have what I really want, Gretchen. So I might as well have what I can do well.” She says it with a sense of finality, but I’m too curious to stop there.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hmm?” Sophia says, looking up at me.

  “You can’t have what you really want?”

  Sophia looks at me a long time, and I can almost see her deliberating between giving me a carefree, fake answer and the real one. “I want things back the way they were before my dad died, I guess. Back to when things were easier.”

  My heart pangs and I feel guilty for my question. Of course, I know exactly how she feels. I want my dad back too. I want it back to the way it was not only before he died, but before Mom died, before my sister was taken. When everything was simple and beautiful.

  Or at least, that’s what I used to want. But I can’t go back to that day in the trees; I can’t go back in time and hold on to my sister’s hand tighter, I now realize. And so I want to
fast-forward. To a future where I know how to shoot, how to kill them. How to keep myself and other girls from vanishing.

  What would Sophia fast-forward to?

  I change the subject, ripping open a package loudly to break the heavy silence in the room. “Did you ever date Live Oak guys then? When you were younger?”

  Sophia shrugs, and the happy version of her pops back into place. “A few, I guess. Most of them were actually Lake City boys, though. I’ve mostly lost track of them.”

  I pause, but I have to ask. “Did you ever date a guy named Samuel? Samuel Reynolds?” Maybe that’s why he hates her so much—she broke his heart.

  Sophia’s eyes rocket to mine fast, so fast that I momentarily think she’s going to yell at me. Instead, she shakes her head rapidly. “No, not at all. Why do you ask?”

  “Someone at the grocery store mentioned him,” I say, trying to be casual enough that Sophia will relax. Her face softens a little, but the tension remains.

  “Samuel Reynolds isn’t from Live Oak—he showed up a few years ago and started dating this girl. She left him after my festival. He’s one of the people who thinks it’s my fault—though I guess he isn’t exactly on the side of those old ladies in town either. He kind of has a reputation for being the town lunatic.”

  “Lunatic? Why?” I’m unable to entirely process the idea of Samuel Reynolds in love—that doesn’t exactly seem like an emotion he frequents.

  Sophia shrugs, but her voice sounds odd—nervous, almost? No, that’s not it. Hesitant? “After his girlfriend left him, he stumbled into a bar drunk, started talking crazy. I don’t know. I tried to stay out of it.”

  “What was her name?” I ask, crushing an empty box with my foot.

  “Layla,” Sophia answers with a shrug.

  Layla.

  Layla. Emily. Whitney. Jillian. Danielle. Allie. Rachel. Taylor. Layla was the girl with the dark hair and the Spanish eyes. Chipped nail polish. Last seen on Main Street.

  I swallow. No wonder he’s angry at the world. He knows what really happened to the girl he loved. I can feel my face paling and am immensely grateful when the mail truck pulls up and interrupts the concerned expression on Sophia’s face.