“What’s the plan?” I say.
“Operation Hide the Bug.” Bree puts her hands up at my look. “That’s all he’ll say.”
I sit cross-legged on the ground, making the gummy bags crinkle in my coat pocket. I toss one to Sage, the other to Moon, stealing the moment of shark enthusiasm to drop, briefly, into a flashback of the woods. How I let his tongue in my mouth, something I always secretly thought sounded gross and intrusive, but isn’t at all. With the right person, maybe you can never get too intimate, never go too far. I open my eyes. Kincaid is watching me. I watch back.
He slows, hops off his board, holds it out to me. “Ever done it?” And it’s there between us, all the heat, his hands sliding over my bare skin. A smile plays at his lips. “Try.”
“So you can watch me fall on my ass?”
“Damn, really? No faith.” Kincaid puts his board down, steps up with the spectators. “Put one foot on, push off with the other. Easy.”
I exhale, looking over at Bree, who’s watching with the rest of them. I put one foot on the board, push off on the concrete with the other, rolling along with embarrassing slowness, making me push off again, harder, getting some speed under me, following the edge of the flat bottom so I don’t wobble into the paths of the pros and sabotage somebody’s trick. Kincaid walks with me, calling out, “Goofy leg.” Gestures down. “You ride with your left foot back. Not many people do.”
“Always knew I was special.” Trying to act like this is all impulsive, indicative of nothing, cursing and laughing as I almost run into the rail. “How do you, like, steer?”
That’s when I notice the small, dark figure coming down the sidewalk toward us. As she draws closer, she develops mid-calf boots, a black watch cap, a purposeful gait as she crosses the parking lot, then the dead grass. Landon, her face still and guarded.
She stops at the first group of people she sees, talking low, not lingering long before moving onto the next, then the next.
“—okay? Forget it.” Landon turns away from the girlfriend bench, leaving them whispering, shooting looks in her wake. She stops a few feet back from us—Trace scrapes a fingernail gouge down a shark stomach, saying, “Look. Gummy surfer body parts,” making Sage laugh—and you can feel it: Landon doesn’t really see us as friends. Even though we all hang here almost every day. Maybe Ivy is the buffer, the one whose presence makes this place belong to them, too. Kind of the way Sage and Bree are my passports to . . . well, pretty much anywhere. I step off the board, needing to feel grounded, my nervous stomachache back again.
“Do any of you guys know where she is?” Landon’s voice is a little below normal speaking range, brusque, like she’s making herself do this just to cover all the bases. She’s working the fingers of one hand, concentrating her nervous energy there.
We glance at one another. After a pause, Bree says, “You don’t?”
“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.” Landon’s gaze is fixed beyond us, on the street, fingers ticking, ticking, counting off. “Look, did any of you hear anything? Did she say anything to you? I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”
Trace and Sage look at each other, Trace finally giving a shrug. “She seemed the same as always on Thursday. That’s the last time I saw her—standing with you, in the parking lot. They think she went to see her mom, right?” Landon nods. “Then . . . sounds like you just have to wait. She wouldn’t do anything stupid like hitch with some skeeve, would she?” Landon glances down, shakes her head. Trace sits forward a little. “She’s either riding with a soccer mom, or she took a bus. She’ll call.”
Landon’s quiet a moment. Then she says, “Yeah,” walking past us toward the next group of people hanging out on the playground equipment, not looking back at Sage’s quiet “Sorry, hon.”
She’s so stiff, Landon, so deep inside herself, that I find myself scanning my memory of Thursday for anything I could tell her, but it’s hazy, lost under a blood wash of Fireball and Kincaid butterflies—make that lace-border moths. I remember Ivy’s hands, her fingernails tipped with black polish, carving the pumpkin, protecting it from Trace’s kick. Her words about black cats and Halloween. That’s all.
Bree waits until she’s gone. “Such crap.” Sage raises her brows. “That she doesn’t know where Ivy is. Bet you anything it’s like Clarabelle said.” I look over, surprised. “You know. That they got in a fight and now Landon’s having serious guilt spasms.”
“I didn’t say that.” Only I kind of did. “That’s not what I meant.”
Bree shrugs. “Then maybe Landon’s helping her hide out so they can stick it to Ivy’s stepmom. Cops will probably find her in Landon’s attic, like, living off Hot Pockets and bottled water or something.”
Sage focuses on adjusting her gloves. “I believe her.” Her calm, immovable stubbornness hangs in the air, something I’ve never heard before. Bree looks at her, but Sage won’t acknowledge it. Trace watches them, says nothing.
I grab Kincaid’s board before we have a chance to spiral any deeper. “Your turn.” Hold it out to Bree.
She pulls her attention from Sage. “Yeah, right.”
“Hey, I tried it. You can’t be as bad as me.” Plus, I want to share him—God help me, I don’t, but I do—hoping it’ll be enough to smooth that off-chord that’s still reverberating around us.
Bree glances at Kincaid, who smiles, unbothered by any of it, sinking down into a crouch to watch. She takes it from my hand, a little rougher than necessary, applies foot to board, and pushes off, upright, steady as she goes.
Sixteen
WE CAN’T KISS goodbye. We can’t touch. I take one look back at him as I leave with Bree to follow the trails home, freaked over hurting him, not being able to make him understand without words.
But he’s coasting. Gaze on the burning strip of early sunset edging the trees, thoughts a million miles away. So maybe words aren’t something he needs from me.
A hard frost covers everything the next morning, turning the world into one of those panoramic sugar eggs, my leopard-prints crunching over the spiky crust coating the grass at the base of our steps.
A pumpkin is propped against my bedroom window.
An origami jack-o’-lantern, specifically, orange paper folded to create a stem, slanted eyes, zigzag mouth, the features carefully shaded with a black marker. Written on the back is Happy October in an almost unreadable scrawl. So Kincaid.
No frost on the paper—he was just here. I run to the parking lot and look down the hill, but he’s nowhere in sight, nothing but ugly houses all in a row and the usual gaggle of malcontents at the bus stop.
My first impulse is to tape the jack-o’-lantern inside my locker door, but I don’t want anyone asking questions I’m not ready to answer. Instead, I leave it in my coat pocket along with the cookie fortune, the beginnings of my own private Kincaid collection. Private (fortune favors) for now (the brave). Until I figure out how to tell Bree without destroying everything and losing her.
Maybe I won’t have to tell? Maybe it’ll become obvious on its own, that he and I are a thing now, no formal announcement necessary? Maybe she’ll get that it just happened, him liking me back. I launched myself into this yesterday, hurtling down a steep slope, hands in the air, headed for a drop-off, and so far, this is my best plan? To close my eyes and hope for the best? Maybe there’s a reason none of my friendships have lasted. Maybe I was never worthy of the Nica Plecks I’ve known, and somehow, they sensed it.
But I didn’t steal him, did I? We’re not cheaters. How can you cheat on a crush? How do you even navigate around one? I should’ve checked with her first, before Kincaid and I did anything. Bree, are you okay with this? Bree, do you mind? I think of her: bitten lips, pale stare, the vulnerability of her laugh. The shape of her silhouette, solitary and erect against the window shade. My guilt is a bruise-colored flower, unfurling with excruciating slowness. If she said yes, she minded, Please don’t do this, it hurts me, what then? Give it all up, tel
l Kincaid we could never be anything but friends? Friendship, so elusive and precious, all I ever wanted from this place. Until what I experienced with Kincaid in the woods, so intense, something I’ve been waiting to feel my whole life. How can I pretend that I don’t want him?
I slam my locker door and see Kincaid coming through the crowded hallway toward me. He doesn’t just walk up; he stops so close our toes touch, looking down into my face, not caring who sees, and how the hell am I going to keep all this under wraps? “Hello,” he says.
“School two days in a row? Watch out. Somebody’s going to think you’re a student here.”
“I didn’t come for the classes.” His smile is an inch away from mine.
“You know, a Halloween gremlin left something outside my house this morning. I didn’t even have a chance to thank him.” I shouldn’t kiss him here, I know this, but all I want to do is wrap myself in him, breathe in everything. “So, thank you. I love it.”
He nods slowly, says, “How’re you liking the book?” I realize he’s looking at A Clockwork Orange, which I’d forgotten I was even holding.
“It’s good. Disturbing, obviously, but I’m guessing that’s the point.”
Kincaid leans against the lockers, banging the back of his head lightly, deliberately, off the steel sheeting as he studies the ceiling. “Holds all the truths.”
“Such as?”
“How free will separates us from the animals. How a person having the choice to steal, rape, kill, whatever, is more important than whether they commit the crime. How every day, we all make the choice.” He pauses, meeting my gaze. “Be moral, or be a monster.”
I let his words settle around me before pointing toward the English wing. “Can you come teach my class now? Because you made that sound way better than Hyde ever could.”
“You don’t have to go.” Straightens. “Come with me. I just walk out. Nobody cares.”
Tempting doesn’t begin to cover it, but I’m carrying around enough guilt and worry for one day without adding skipping school to the mix. “Interesting approach to senior year. Just disappear, and hope they print out a diploma for you on graduation day?”
He smiles, only fifteen watts, and I wonder if I’ve failed some test, if he was expecting more from me. Or maybe less. “Okay.” Lifts off from the lockers. “See you after.”
After class? After school? But he’s leaving, a head taller than most of the other kids he moves through, everybody hurrying to get where they’re expected to be, where routine demands. And I guess I’m one of them, part of the hive mind, an ant with a bread crumb. “Hey,” I call after him, because I don’t want to leave it like this, “how’d you know where I live, anyway?”
He doesn’t turn. “I asked Trace.”
I can’t help but laugh, remembering Sage’s advice on the bus that day while Bree and I schemed together. But that means the guys have talked about me. Which means Trace knows more about Kincaid’s feelings than I do.
Trace’s text is waiting for me at morning break: Tomorrow. 6:30 p.m. Behind the teachers’ lot.
It’s the next evening. Dusk. I know I shouldn’t be here, that this can’t be leading anywhere good. But Kincaid’s meeting us behind the school, and my need to see him trumps all. Trace has the princess mask tucked into his back pocket. Not a good sign.
Trace leaves the old-man car in the athletic field lot; then we hurry down the footpath leading behind the middle school, through the smokers’ woods, and out behind the high school teachers’ parking area. I’m telling myself that if Trace has anything too crazy planned, I’m out. They’ll have to fill me in on how it went at the flotsam table tomorrow.
Kincaid is already there, sitting on a log dragged up alongside the path. His head is down, hands in his coat pockets; he looks huddled, deep in some internal process, until he hears our approach and looks up. I saw him at the park yesterday afternoon as usual, but we haven’t been alone since Monday. After I failed the skipping school test yesterday, I wonder what he’s thinking, if he sees me differently now, as some Goody Two-shoes. I’ve been wondering about the girlfriends at the park, too; if they jump whenever their boyfriends snap their fingers. Because you know what? I’ve decided that’s not me. Not even close. And maybe that’s not what Kincaid expects, either—impossible to find out, since we don’t seem to be able to steal a second to ourselves. “About damn time.” His eyes are on me, but he speaks to Trace. “You were right. Crack’s still here.”
“Every night, man, every night. I’ve driven by and seen his car parked out here at, like, ten.” Trace grins. “This is what he gets for being an eager little beaver.”
I glance over at Bree, chewing gum, her breath mingling with Kincaid’s in the chill air. Still don’t know how to tell her what’s going on. If she hates me, Sage might hate me, too, and then what would stop everybody else from piling on? No more friends. No more park. A leper wearing a big scarlet S pinned to my chest; S for slut, S for stealer, the boyfriend variety. I fell asleep in knots over it last night, gazing back at the origami jack-o’-lantern sitting propped up against my bedside lamp, the paper aglow with light.
Now, Bree glances over at the school. “Can you tell us what the hell we’re doing here?”
Trace and Moon trade looks, laugh like a couple of eight-year-olds. Bree glances at Sage, who shrugs, but I get the feeling she already knows all the details. Interesting, how info finds its way into these little inlets and eddies among a group of friends. Never know who knows what, who told who when. Who’s being left out of the loop.
Trace points to the two remaining teacher vehicles still in the lot, an SUV and a light-colored VW Beetle, the old kind. “Crack’s going for a little ride. He just doesn’t know it yet.” He points to us. “This time, you guys are lookouts. That’s all. We get caught, this could mean serious shit, so just be glad Moon’s willing to take one for the team.”
Moon digs in his coat, brings out a flathead screwdriver, a metal slim jim, and his phone. He’s sporting a bruise on his cheekbone today, thanks to his older brother, who caught him trying to replace the paintball gear and figured out what happened. Moon says not to worry, his brother’s basically cool, would never tell anybody what we did, but I still wish a few less people knew our secret. “Okay,” Moon says, “I’ve never done this before. Like, any of it. But old cars are supposed to be way easier to hot-wire, and I got the WikiHow pulled up. If it doesn’t work in, like, ten minutes, we get out of here.”
“Good man.” Trace claps Moon’s shoulder, shaking him down to his shoes. “I’ll see you get a commendation for this, soldier.” Moon’s salute ends with the middle finger.
I stand silently, chewing my lip as the rest of us get our assignments—I’m posted along the drive that winds around the school to the teachers’ lot—but we wait until we’re sure Moon can get into the VW, watching from the trees as he fiddles with the slim jim, wobbling and flexing it and trying to peer down between the rubber window seal and the door to find a way to work it in. Hesitates, frustrated, then tries the handle. Unlocked. Tosses a grin at us and climbs inside.
I catch Bree’s sleeve before she splits off with Sage. “Maybe we shouldn’t.” She stares at me. “Isn’t this, like, grand theft auto?” Another pause. “As in a felony?”
“That’s the general idea, yeah.” She pulls loose, smiling a little. “Hey. We’re only lookouts, right? Nobody can give us the chair for that.”
Then she goes, heading around the opposite side of the school with Sage, while Kincaid ducks low, running beneath the windows in front. I’m the last one left standing, rooted to the spot, and I finally race for my post. Whether I’m loving this or not, I don’t want to be the one Crackenback sees first if he decides to step outside for some night air.
I’m wearing gloves and a hat, still freezing right through my jeans as I press myself back against the fence that marks school property, glad nobody on staff cares enough to tame the climbing vine that’s grown wild through the chain link, p
roviding me with cover.
I dance a little from foot to foot, straining my ears for the sound of an outraged teacher or a shrieking car alarm. Do cars that old even come with alarms? Debating what I’ll do if all this goes to hell, who I’d text first with the news that we’re all about to get busted. Makes me realize that I’ve never seen Kincaid with a phone in his hand, never heard him say he’ll text somebody later, nothing like that.
Time crawls. I check my phone. Ten minutes gone by.
I google Ivy’s name. No news. School’s buzzing about how it’s been almost a week, and nobody’s heard from her. If she were headed to West Virginia by any normal means, she would’ve been there by now. The doom creature on my shoulder sinks its talons in deeper, and I lower my head, shutting my eyes, remembering Ivy, her fearlessly short haircut, how she loved her cat enough to knit him a present. It doesn’t feel right that she would leave a pet she was that crazy about, especially if her stepmom and dad might give him away to the Humane Society or something.
Tires crunch over asphalt. I jerk up, ready to text, when I realize it’s coming from the wrong direction, back by the teachers’ lot.
They’re driving without headlights, maybe ten miles an hour. It’s Crackenback’s VW, looking like some fugly little insect on a set of narrow tires. As I watch them pass, I see the princess mask smiling at me from the shadows behind the steering wheel, Moon ducked so low in the passenger seat that I can only make out the top of his cap.
Can’t believe step two of plan A is happening—meeting back up at Trace’s car, victorious instead of shitting bricks, ready for further instructions. I race through the dark smokers’ woods and follow the footpath alone, glad when I come out on the sloping green behind the middle school, where moonlight can reach. A pair of dark shapes appear at the crest of the hill—Bree and Sage, running all out. I run to join them.
The Missing Season Page 12
