Ignoring all of it, Kincaid balances his jack-o’-lantern on the railing and takes a couple slow steps back, his face totally still, studying how it looks against the dusky backdrop. He still has a cold—I can see it in the glassiness of his eyes, hear him sniff now and then; skating around outside all the time probably makes it tough to shake. After a minute, everybody notices him and follows suit, the laughter dying down to a few stray giggles, staggering their jack-o’-lanterns along the railing so that the carved faces stare back at us in a row. I’m aware of Kincaid’s gaze on me, and the humiliating word for a girl part spray-painted just beneath my jack-o’-lantern, which I didn’t notice until right now. My face gets even hotter.
“Make the offering, guys,” Kincaid says quietly. Everybody reaches into their pockets like they knew this was coming, and I think of the candy wrappers hardened into the wax, evidence of other supplicants, other pilgrimages.
Bree produces some Jolly Ranchers, a half-pack of gum; Landon and Ivy have caramel creams, Starlight mints; a girl whose name I don’t know has a travel-size tube of Tylenol, cold sore treatment. It all goes into the pumpkins, stuffed under the lids, pushed in through the mouths so that wrappers poke out through uneven teeth.
Kincaid surveys the scene, says again, softly, “There should be candles.”
I’ve got nothing in my pockets but the dust of some long-ago cough drop. A second of panic, then Kincaid is there, pressing something into my palm without drawing attention. A plastic spider ring, the kind you get from a treat bag at a little kid’s Halloween party. I take it, still warm from his hand, and push it through my pumpkin’s eye socket.
“They’re just going to rot.” Bree hugs herself, sounding a little wistful. “They never last once you carve them.”
“Then you can steal us some more.” Kincaid smiles, and I’m pretty sure her night’s just been made.
Trace and Sage start it, the separating. People pairing off, splitting from the group like gauzy tissue caught in the wind. Footsteps moving over stone; hands slide down arms to link fingers. I see Landon and Ivy slip through the trees at the opposite end of the bridge, a few other shadows moving together in the same direction. Bree and I turn back, the way we came, slow footsteps speeding up, turning to a run.
Tonight, it’s hide-and-seek instead of chase, a silent, creeping game. I think I’ll be okay even when Bree chooses her own path; I can do this myself. Everybody except maybe Kincaid must feel lost out here. I crouch for a while behind a thicket, listening to other sneaking footsteps moving around me, a cry and a wild giggle as somebody gets pounced on.
I hide until I’m stiff and chilled, then turn on my phone flashlight and move on, half hoping Bree will find me even though I think it’s every woman for herself in this. I keep going, following the slope of the forest floor, hiding behind a tree here and there.
When I finally stop, I’m not sure where the path is. I’ve lost track of time. Maybe nobody’s looking for me, or they think I gave up, went back to the park on my own.
It hits me then, wandering alone in these dead-kid woods. My Fireball bravado fades to cold, damp, the feeling of sulfurous mud sucking at my shoes. I’ve strayed too far down the slope—this is turning into salt flats—and I start to run, wishing I could text where r u guys, but it wouldn’t send, and what could they even say? In woods. U?
Shadow trees, brambles, my hair snagging on a branch and ripping loose, sticky with pitch. I see my clueless face in grainy newsprint, maybe sophomore year’s school picture, caught in a permanent blink, A junior at Pender District High School, Morrison was last seen in a nearby salt marsh captioned beneath, just another footnote in the news anchor’s nightly spiel. I could scream for help; the couples who crossed the bridge might hear. Or call Sage’s phone, interrupting her make-out session with Trace so I can whimper about being lost? I’d rather sleep in the mud.
I crash into a clearing so suddenly it scatters all thought.
I’ve reached the banks, the water so close and so wide that all I can do is stare at the tiny ripples threading the surface, the steely color it takes on in the twilight, something so separate and industrious about it, this living thing that doesn’t give a damn about me or my problems. To my left, I can see the bridge, quite a distance away now, three black arches crowned by the silhouettes of our jack-o’-lanterns.
I’m surrounded by cattails. They jog the memory of the egret, tall and reed-thin. Something not quite right about those spindly legs, the curved beak tucked to its breast, the eyes like beads of volcanic glass.
I turn slightly, and it’s there: tall, dark egret shape, the head cocked in study of me. I jolt, flashes of thought (egret—Mumbler—run) slamming through me, but my feet are rooted, and I nearly fall.
“It’s okay.” Kincaid’s voice. Couldn’t mistake it for anyone else’s. The egret-thing comes over, long legs, slow steps. Adrenaline won’t quite let me believe it’s really him yet. “Did I jump you?” He doesn’t sound sorry.
“Yeah.” My heartbeat’s still in my ears.
“Everybody else went that way.” He gestures vaguely down shore in the direction of town.
“I kinda figured.” He doesn’t speak for a moment, and I shift my feet, or try to, sunken in the mud up to my shoelaces, wanting to dislodge myself without being obvious. “Did you come looking for me?” Something in me leaps at that, but I hate the thought of him witnessing my crazy lab-rat-in-a-maze route through the trees.
A shrug. “It can get dangerous out here, if you don’t know where you’re going. You know how to swim, right?”
“Doggy paddle.”
“That works. But everything looks the same. You can get turned around pretty easy, and if you panic, and end up in the water . . .” Soft laugh. “Glub, glub.”
I force a laugh, too, managing to get a foot free and step back. “Sounds like the trick is, don’t fall in.” Never mind how close I came to doing that. “I’m surprised a true believer like you even comes out here. Isn’t this tempting the Mumbler? All this kid flesh in one place?” No answer. I tug the other foot free with an embarrassing squelch, saying in a stage whisper, “Do you think he’s watching us right now?”
“He’s out there.” Mildly, like I’d asked him the direction of the sky. “He’s basically nocturnal. You’re probably okay if you come here during the day, but at night, you’re rare steak on two legs. And you left the herd. Went off on your own.” He shakes his head. “Practically culled yourself.”
“Then why aren’t you more scared?”
He stares at the opposite bank. “When you’re scared so much, it gets to be part of you. You know? You wake up, it’s there. You go to sleep, it’s there. Sometimes, it’s better to look it in the face. Know where you’re at.” His voice is like an echo of his kid-self, hiding under the covers, holding his breath, listening for monster sounds, the skitter of clawed feet over his bedroom floor.
I follow his gaze across the water again, to those reeds, the woods beyond. “Do you see something?” My voice is sharp, almost sounding like Ma when she’s mad at me, but it’s freaking me out, his not moving.
“Don’t you?” He points. “There. In that shadowy place, by the fallen-down tree. You look hard enough, you can see him.”
“Look hard enough and you can see anything.” But I hold my phone up higher, trying to shine the light to that distant bank. Too far to make out much.
“Then close your eyes.” His fingers circle my wrist and he draws me to him, tucking my arm under his. I’ve never been held quite like this before. Gentle enough, I could pull away—but I don’t want to lose this sense of being linked together, side by side, his hand on my wrist, my fingers outstretched, as if straining to touch something just out of reach. “You can feel him.” I’m still looking, spotting the fallen tree, the reeds broken and crushed into a hollow around it, where there could be anything, any hidden thing. “Go ahead, close ’em. He’s just standing there.”
I shut my eyes. Kincaid sounds hushed
, close to my ear, words running together like they do when he’s excited. “You can make out his head right there, under those branches, and his shoulders . . . Jesus, he’s huge. It’s like he’s ready to charge us, but he’s not moving.” A pause. “That long, scraggly stuff like moss, or willow leaves? That’s his hair. See it?”
In my mind’s eye, I do. A memory, imprinted seconds ago, of something blowing softly in the wind, barely visible in the darkness. I stiffen slightly.
“You can’t see his face. You can never see his face. Not until he’s on top of you. The last thing you ever see.” His grip shifts on my wrist, and I feel my fingers move on their own, stroking a texture that isn’t there. “One look would probably drive you crazy, anyhow.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s something that shouldn’t be. What our brains say can’t be real. When you have to believe—when you have no choice because he’s there, in front of you—” He breaks off, and I wait, listening, straining for what comes next. “I can hear him breathing. All the way over here. Listen. All whistle-y and dry, like—”
Cornstalks. Dead leaves over a sidewalk. I suck air through my teeth, then hold my breath, eyes squeezed shut. “It’s the wind.”
“Then open your eyes.”
“I don’t want to.” My arm in the warm hollow under his, the only thing keeping me from running. “I don’t want to see.”
“He sees you. He smells you. Us.” Kincaid’s grip tightens, but his voice is soft. “I wonder what he’s waiting for.”
“Clarabelle!” The call echoes down through the trees, and my eyes snap open, faced with the hollow of darkness across from us—a tree, some reeds, some shadows—then I’m leaving, crunching back through the overgrowth in the direction of the voice, my skin alive with gooseflesh, feeling the nighttime chill all at once now that I’m unlocked from him.
I don’t wait to make sure Kincaid is following, but I hear his footsteps, behind me, to the right, like he’s only there to see that I don’t get lost again. Like he would’ve stayed on that bank alone, staring down his made-up monster in the darkness. A fresh wave of gooseflesh washes over me, and I walk even faster, calling, “Here! Coming!” the next time the searchers shout my name.
Nine
WE DON’T TALK with the others around. I go over to Bree and Sage, and Kincaid fades back in with the rest, the charge built between us on the banks returning to the atmosphere, leaving no proof it ever existed except for a numbness in my left arm, a minor loss of circulation, like he’s still holding it, my senses still full of the marsh and an unseen something that was probably, almost certainly, nothing.
Bree sent everybody out to look for me when I didn’t end up back on the main trail; now they’re all asking me questions as we reach the park, telling their own versions of when and how I must’ve gotten lost, nobody laughing at me like I’d expected.
Trace digs for his keys. “You girls want a ride?” Not making a big deal of the fact that the night is obviously over for me, that the last thing I want to do is set foot on those trails again to walk home.
Sage rides shotgun, Bree and I climb in back. As Trace starts the engine, I look out the windshield and see Kincaid sitting on top of the jungle gym, watching us, arms draped loosely around his bent knees, the center vent of his coat hanging like a pair of folded crow wings. One hand grips his opposite wrist; he’s still holding me.
Everything I’m feeling—guilt, relief, some sense of a lost chance I’m not even sure I wanted to take—hits me at once, and I rest back against the seat, just grateful for the warmth pumping from the heater and the fact that these guys aren’t the type to force small talk.
When we pull into our lot at the Terraces, Sage turns, giving a buh-bye wave. “Sweet dreams, girlies.” She looks at Bree, nods to me. “Keep an eye on her. No more search and rescue tonight.”
As soon as they back out into the street, Bree says, “Did Kincaid find you?” The words burst out in a rush, contents under pressure.
I hesitate—brief, but there—hearing his words again: when you’re scared so much, it gets to be part of you. “Yeah.” Again, time’s eating my chance to tell her about standing with Kincaid on the banks, about seeing the Mumbler with my eyes closed. Even though Bree and I are in this crush together, on this odd-duck boy who makes monsters out of shadows and marsh woods, I feel my fist tightening on this night, this memory, and know that I’m not ready to share. Not until I know what to make of it myself.
“What did Kincaid say? Did he ask if you were okay or anything?”
“Kind of.” She keeps looking and I shrug. “You know. In Kincaid-speak.”
She laughs at that, a relief. “Lucky slag.”
“That’s my name.”
We start down the walkway. “So how did you not fake a sprained ankle or something and make him carry you?”
I watch my feet. “I’m not sure he could. He looks sort of . . . malnourished, I guess?”
“Yeah. His parents must’ve really slacked on the Flintstones vitamins.” She nods to the next unit. “Come over. We’ve got ramen and stuff.”
I shrug okay, even though passing the lit windows of my apartment makes me a little lonesome for our sparse living room. Dad’s home, probably checking to see if we’ve got anything worth snacking on.
Bree no sooner kicks the pink Asics against the wall than we see Hazel, sitting on the kitchen floor, a blanket tucked around her legs. Crying.
Phone in hand, she stands, swiping at her nose. “Where were you?”
Bree doesn’t answer right away. “Doing stuff. What’s—?”
“You’re supposed to text! If you’re going to be late, you’re supposed to text, or call, or something!”
“It’s not even seven thirty yet—”
“I don’t care.” Hazel sniffs, eyes wet, accusatory. “She still hasn’t come home. I left a message and she hasn’t called back.”
“So?” Bree shuts the door with a single push, gaze focused on her sneakers as she pulls them off without bending, toe prying heel. “She probably decided to work a double or something. Not like she doesn’t know her way back here.”
Hazel shakes her head, lips pressed together, then turns and goes down the hall, her hair bouncing across her back. Bree stares after, listening to the sounds of drawers opening, things being slammed around; then she follows, with me trailing behind.
Bree goes into Hazel’s room—blindingly pink, spontaneous princess combustion—watching her sister dump clothes into her dance bag. “What’re you doing?”
Hazel keeps packing. “Going to Dad’s.”
“No. You’re not.” Deadly precise diction.
“At least he comes home! And makes supper and does dishes and stuff!”
“Two days a week, Hazel. Saturday and Sunday he can keep his shit together long enough to remember you’re alive, and you want to go running to him?”
“Well, you can come, too!”
“I’m not going there!” Bree’s shout makes my shoulders jump involuntarily; it rips out of her, foreign from those controlled lips.
Hazel keeps her gaze down, reaching back for more clothes. Bree yanks Hazel’s hand from the drawer, pulls the bag away, throws it.
Hazel sobs, shoving at her, and Bree uses her off-balance attempt to force Hazel back onto the bed so hard the springs shriek— “Bree,” I hear myself say, starting forward—
But Bree doesn’t hit her. She pulls Hazel into a sitting position, gripping her upper arms, and gets in her face, speaking low and fast: “You cannot go to Dad’s. Even if you called him for a ride, he probably wouldn’t come. He works nights, and it’s a long drive. So forget it.”
Hazel weeps, her shoulders shaking, hair falling into her face. I step forward, sick with how much I want to help. Bree stares at her, letting seconds tick by, then reaches over and pulls a handful of tissues from the box on the nightstand, holding them under Hazel’s nose, no softening in her expression. “Blow. Before you drown.”
“So hang out at Jasmine’s more. Her mom loves you. She won’t care.”
“I don’t want to be there more! I want to be home.” I get what she’s saying, but Bree sinks onto the bed with deliberate slowness, like she’s barely keeping her frustration in check. “Will you please call Mom, please?” Hazel asks. “Say you’re sorry, and maybe she’ll come back.”
“Hazel, I promise, she’s either working or at one of her friends’ houses. She will be. Home. Later.” Bree exhales through her nose, studying her sister’s slumped posture, her little bird-bone clavicles jutting against the scoop neck of her T-shirt. “Maybe it would be okay if you came with me after school. Sometimes. Not every day.”
Hazel sniffs, glancing over. “I thought you said I’m not old enough.”
“You’re not. But if it’ll keep you from losing your mind over nothing . . .” Bree glances at me. Not sure if I should give a thumbs-up or something; I’m just glad the fighting’s over, that nobody’s on the brink of explosion anymore. “Dad is not an option. I need you to be clear on that.” Hazel nods a little. “Say okay.”
“Okay, okay.” She kicks halfheartedly at a fuzzy slipper poking out from under the bed skirt.
Bree kicks it, too, making it flop over. She presses her shoulder against Hazel’s.
I try to leave without them noticing, reaching the back door before I hear Bree behind me. “You don’t have to go.” She stands at the end of the hallway.
The Missing Season Page 7
