The Missing Season

by Gillian French

  Soft sounds of muffled crying in the bleachers, echoing up to the rafters, festooned with sports balls forever wedged between the steel beams and the ceiling. “And finally.” Crackenback’s translucent gaze rises to our faces. “The theft and defilement of my antique auto is hardly news to any of you, I’m sure. All I’ll say is this. We’re aware of you pranksters. We’re highly anticipating your next move, because it will be your last as students enrolled at Pender District High. Anyone”—his gaze sweeps across the bleachers—“named in connection with what happened on Prefect Street, or to my car, will face expulsion. No appeals. No second chances.”

  I spot Kincaid as we sweep down through the double doors toward the main hallway, the general confusion forming the perfect distraction for his escape. Black coat, light hair, slipping past the office windows—where the secretaries dwell like supreme beings surrounded by frosted glass, Keepers of the Files, their distorted voices filtered through pipes and grates—right out the front doors. I want to stop him, pull him back, make him talk to me. Really talk, not play games and dance around the truth.

  “Trace—” But he isn’t beside me anymore, and I start to hurry, cutting between people, trying to catch up to him. I want some affirmation of Kincaid and me, proof that I haven’t lost Bree for nothing. Him passing off my phone feels like a brush-off, like he didn’t want me to trap him in another conversation. If that’s how I make him feel—caged, smothered—then I sure as hell shouldn’t be the last to know.

  I’m not totally clear on Trace’s schedule, but he headed in the direction of the art room the last time we used the basement entrance to get back in time for seventh period. The bell hasn’t rung yet—he’s probably in there, killing the last few minutes before the class change to eighth period.

  The art room, air thick with pottery dust and paint fumes, is a battlefield. The teacher hasn’t made it back from the gym yet, so bits of broken pastels and colored pencils soar through the air; a lead point bounces off my cheek, making me swear and smack my hand over it. Trace lounges in a chair by the window, paying attention to none of it as I come up to him. “Can I borrow the key to the back door?”

  “What for?”

  “I just need to get out of here.” I hold out my hand, keeping my expression as blank as possible, trying for a Bree face; I don’t want him knowing how scared I am of getting caught, or how worried I am about what Kincaid will say when I catch up to him. “I won’t lose it or anything. Promise.”

  After a second, he takes his key chain from his pocket, pressing the basement key into my palm. “Don’t forget to lock it behind you, going and coming back. Custodians usually don’t come in until two o’clock, so you got time, but if one of them figures out what’s going on, bye-bye Key to the Kingdom. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  The bell rings as I go down the east hallway, trying not to run—I’ll never catch Kincaid at this rate—stopping at the blank door that conceals the steps down to the basement. Take a breath, put the key in, hesitate a moment until traffic’s light, then sweep myself inside, laying my shoulder into the door, waiting just a moment to see if some teacher will try to follow me through. Doesn’t happen.

  I go after him, locking up behind me.

  It plays out one way in my mind: catching up with Kincaid, how happy he’ll be to see me, how he’ll put all my fears to rest, be real with me. Then our kisses right there on the sidewalk in full view of the world.

  But this is how it really goes: I run down the hill, hope sinking fast, seeing no sign of him. Standing despondent on the corner of School Street and Main, lost as to where to go, other than the park. I’m already running the risk of getting busted for skipping last period—being spotted on Main Street could hurt my chances of convincing them I was in the bathroom the whole time, barfing straight through to the bell.

  I’m about to turn around when Kincaid pops out of the shelter of a doorway down the street, the old Strand movie theater, which looks like it’s been closed for decades. A familiar adjustment of his coat, then pushes off on his board. I know what he was doing—using the shadows for a quick sip of Fireball, a fifty-milliliter bought fresh from Trace yesterday before everything happened.

  Kincaid takes off, rolling across the bank parking lot without even glancing over at the sedan that nearly hits him, the driver stomping his brakes, mouthing unheard curses.

  I could call Kincaid’s name; he’d probably hear me from here. But now I don’t want to.

  I follow, my pace determined. He’s not going to lose me this time, like he did the night that Bree and I followed him after our assault on Perfect. I want to know what he does, where he goes, how he manages to spend almost every day doing whatever the hell he wants, no one asking uncomfortable questions. Except me, of course, but he dodges my attempts so easily, clouding the issue with tall tales, every trick he keeps up his sleeve. I should know these things. Because we are not just hooking up. Of that, I’m almost sure.

  For a time, Kincaid seems aimless, just cruising the town, jumping a curb here and there. Business owners must be used to seeing him roam all hours of the day. Halloween decorations are everywhere, wraiths with plastic skulls and ragged shrouds hanging from the street signs on Main, cardboard cutouts in windows, pumpkins on doorsteps.

  He heads up the street we took the day we walked back from D&M, pushing hard uphill. I stay as far back as I dare, rounding the corner as Kincaid passes the halfway point.

  When I reach the crest of the hill, I’m not sure what direction he went in; there’s a four-way intersection of streets, the old cemetery visible with the blazing oak on the left. Then I hear it, plastic wheels grinding over concrete.

  We take Summer, a bolt of excitement passing through me. He’s going home. I force myself to keep the same slow, measured pace, letting him have a big lead, careful not to tip him off to my presence. There’s got to be a reason why he didn’t want Bree and me to see where he lives. Just having a crappy house isn’t enough; we all have crappy houses.

  He cuts through the hedges at the usual place, then continues through the next yard, doubling back down an offshoot called Lorimer, a dead-end sign standing at the foot.

  I’m not sure where to hide myself as he goes to the last possible house, a little brown chalet-style cottage surrounded by dead hedges overwhelmed by bittersweet vine, woods closing in at the back. There’s a car in the driveway, a maroon compact that seems somehow too low to the ground, as if all four tires are losing air in tandem. A mailbox with the name Nevers on it.

  I step back behind an old ash tree in the neighbor’s yard, really hoping that nobody chooses this moment to gaze out the window at the foliage. At this point, though, I almost don’t care if Kincaid catches me. Knowing is all I care about.

  Kincaid goes past the driveway to the wooded turnaround, into the trees. For a long two minutes, I can’t see him.

  Then he crosses the lawn—no board, on foot—moving at a fast clip, skipping a couple steps as he lets himself in the front door, his shape visible through the glass panes of the sunporch for a moment before he moves deeper into the house.

  I wait, but in what feels like no time, he’s back, going briskly down the steps, over to the tree cover where he stashed his board. He doesn’t emerge right away. I look around the other side of the tree, trying to get a better view. I think he’s just standing there, mostly hidden by woods, looking up at the house.

  Then a silhouette moves past the first-floor windows of the house, onto the sunporch, drawn by the sound of the front door closing. It’s a woman, wearing gray—a sweatshirt, faded jeans. As she opens the storm door and screen, looking out, I see her short-cropped hair, pale brown, something that was maybe once a style, since ignored, allowed to lose shape and creep into her collar.

  She stands with the screen door open a few feet, not wide enough for anyone to fit through, should they try. Waiting. From nowhere, I hear an echo of my own words from the other night on the trail—That you?

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nbsp; Finally, she steps back. I watch her progress through the house. Her silhouette appears at a front window—kitchen, probably, standing at the sink—where she continues to look out at the world for a time before receding from view.

  Kincaid will skate back down the street now. There’s no way he could miss me coming from that direction, so I’ll confront him, ask if that’s his mom he did an end run around, and why. But he doesn’t come. That hint of him I could see through the trees is gone now. He left through the woods.

  Nineteen

  THEY’VE GOT DEACON POSEY, the little wannabe skater boy, on the rack this afternoon, stretched on his belly on top of the monkey bars with one guy holding his arms, another his legs. Moon warms up his drumsticks, ratatatat-ing on a seesaw, then runs under the monkey bars, pummeling Deacon from forehead to toes before skidding across the cedar chips on his knees, sticks crossed over his head. “Thank you and good night!”

  Deacon howls, then giggles wildly when the other guys laugh.

  I watch from the sidelines, sitting closest to Hazel, my phone balanced on my knee. As if Bree hasn’t banished me, I’m just deeply engaged in a rousing game of Toy Blast.

  Maybe not banished. But whenever I look up, Bree’s giving me her sharp shoulder or her profile or her back, and there’s so much unacknowledged tension among all of us that I’m surprised the park isn’t crackling like a power station. Everybody obviously knows about me and Kincaid and Bree; nobody’s letting on what they think. Nobody’s talked directly to me yet since I showed up at the park after school—except for Trace’s “Sweet,” when I returned the key—and it’s ridiculous, how much it matters, how I’m dissecting every movement and word for meaning, wondering if people will start taking sides. He’s here, Kincaid, following the circuit, off in his own world again.

  I didn’t go back to school for eighth period. Instead, I killed time wandering the side streets until school let out, lost in thought, sitting on the curb for a while, watching fallen leaves blow around yards and storm drains. I used to fantasize about cutting class all the time, wondering what it would be like, spending all day out in the world, free. But maybe there’s a point where freedom just becomes loneliness, living without a compass, lost in your own life. That’s what I saw today, watching Kincaid. It haunts me, the way that gray woman on Lorimer peered out her door at the world, maybe waiting for him, maybe not. Never once calling his name.

  “Makes no sense.” Sage shakes her head as she watches the torture of Deacon Posey without really seeing it, her eyes swollen from tears. “I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I just kept thinking about it. Why would she have gone back out there?” Ivy’s on everybody’s mind, and I’m ashamed of worrying about my stupid drama, particularly the nagging thought that, thanks to skipping, my backpack is now trapped in my locker all weekend, my homework with it.

  “She wouldn’t.” Bree stands with arms folded, obviously avoiding looking at Kincaid. I never meant to make her feel like she couldn’t look. It’s crazy how much I want to tell her what I learned today, about the little brown chalet house, how Kincaid snuck in and out like a thief. “I guess . . . when they find her, they can test her blood and everything, see how drunk she was. But even then.”

  “She only bought one little bottle from me.” Trace, his tone sharp. “Same as always. Nobody’s getting drunk off that. And if she was acting wasted, wouldn’t her parents have told the cops that?”

  “People think the Mumbler got her.”

  Everyone turns to Hazel. She looks frankly back at us, shifting her laptop, hair blowing around her earmuffs. “It’s just like the song says. He buried her where the milkweed grows. Like those other kids who got killed. Like Gavin Cotswold.” She’s starting to show signs of wavering under Bree’s stare. “They’ll probably never find her because he took her deep down into the mud.”

  “Who thinks that? Your friends?” Bree waits until Hazel nods. “Yeah, well. Your friends are also, like, two years out of light-up sneakers.”

  Kincaid slows to a stop, and it’s strange, seeing him through this new filter, a mortal with a mother, a home. I probably have as much personal knowledge about him as anyone now, and there are about ten different things I wish he’d say to me, none of which start with, “We saw him that night. Didn’t we?”

  “Saw who?” Bree says.

  “The Mumbler.” Kincaid. “He was out there.”

  “What? When and where did this happen?” Sage’s attention is focused on me.

  “When I got lost, and Kincaid found me.” I shake my head, holding his gaze. I see it now, how he uses these stories to keep me at arm’s length, to cast everything in a distorted light. “He pretended he saw something on the bank across from us.”

  “I never pretend.”

  “Yes, you do.” I raise my voice. “You were messing with me. Again.”

  “What exactly didn’t you see?” Trace is waiting.

  “I don’t know. Kind of like . . . a head. Some shoulders. But it was just bushes and trees and stuff.” I point at Kincaid. “He’s the one who made it something else. To scare me.” Wish I hadn’t tacked that on; sounds petulant and little-girlish. “Okay. New subject.”

  “Do you think it really was somebody?” Sage looks between us. “I don’t mean the Mumbler, but a real guy? Somebody who got Ivy?”

  “No,” I say, even though the idea of it makes my stomach churn, the thought of someone standing there, so unnaturally still, watching Kincaid and me together.

  “A kid in my class saw the Mumbler once.” Hazel sounds thoughtful. “Outside in the trees behind his house. Just watching. He said his eyes glowed white.”

  “Ew, Hazel,” Bree says distractedly, but Hazel goes on.

  “And I know a couple kids who think he came into their rooms, back when they were little.”

  “Came in? How?” I ask.

  Hazel shrugs. “Under the bed. Through the closet. You know. The monster tunnels.” I jerk slightly, touched by a cold finger, seeing my closet door; first open, then shut, a movement ever so slight. “Everybody says you should leave your jack-o’-lantern burning all night on Halloween, until the candle’s gone. He likes that.”

  “Should we tell the cops? About there maybe being somebody in the marsh that night?” Sage asks.

  “Not somebody. Him.” Kincaid sounds unperturbed, reaching down to smooth the peeling corner of duct tape wrapped around his board. “I know the signs. He was checking us out. Trying to tell if we were ripe.”

  “That’s bad, Clarabelle. Really bad.” Hazel shakes her head. “The Mumbler knows who you are now. Maybe he put his mark on you. You’d better stay home on Halloween. And be super nice to the trick-or-treaters, too—don’t give out anything sucky like root beer barrels, or he’ll probably kill you.”

  Kincaid laughs, and the fact that I could strangle him right now kind of blurs behind how clean the lines of his jaw and throat are when he tips his head back like that. “I like you, helper elf. You can stay.”

  Hazel smiles hesitantly. I aim a kick at him but don’t follow through, letting him skate off because I’m afraid it’ll look like cutesy couple fighting. Because Bree. Of course.

  I don’t know which comes first, the dream or the sounds. Maybe they grow together. One moment I’m on the verge of sleep, then I’m standing at the foot of my bed, feeling very much awake, very here, the carpet beneath my bare feet and the closet door before me. The light is on inside.

  Faint sounds—tickaticktick. Better make sure nothing’s in there. Because closets are not to be trusted.

  Behind the door stands Kincaid. He takes up the doorway, silhouetted by light, head tilted at a slight angle, looking down at me, gaze steady, no smile, which isn’t like him. “Hi,” I say, vaguely registering the muffled, distant quality of my voice. Anxiety begins to constrict my chest. Something’s wrong about all this. “What were you doing in there?”

  He keeps looking, staring so deeply into my eyes that I’m compelled to look back. I’m
missing it, whatever it is, whatever he’s imploring me to see. A rush of emotion, the warm tangle of everything I feel for him all at once, and, “Come here,” I whisper, reaching out, just wanting to heal it, whatever it is. He stoops to me, letting me slide my arms around him.

  Tick. Tickaticktick. Those sounds, right by my ear. Moth. The word’s in my head, on my lips. His back is hot and moving, not the rise and fall of breathing, but squirming. Alive. I pull back, disbelief rendering me slow, stupid, as his coat slides open.

  I see them, hundreds of them, lace-border moths, crawling and twitching and fluttering, nothing inside but moths.

  I scream, and they explode, a whirlwind of moths pounding through me, my hair, my clothes, battering my eyes and mouth with papery fury, my ears full of the roar of their wind until—

  —my brain throws some internal overload switch, and I’m out of it, awake, the storm of moths fading, trickling to the faintest tickticktick. Ticka-tick.

  I stare at my closet door. The space beneath the door is dark. The clock face glows red: 2:37 a.m.

  Tickatick. The sounds are real enough, the rest of the dream some rancid, shameful cloud that I try to clear from my mind as I sit up. God. Kincaid, as some thing. Some creature.

  Turn on the lamp, stare hard at the closet, then grab A Clockwork Orange from the nightstand—my best protection, some skinny little paperback. Go to the closet door, test the knob, compelled to repeat the dream’s pattern.

  The light from my bedside lamp casts a dim glow inside the closet. Nothing but the stain. The shoebox. But I hear another tickatick. I pull the chain to the closet bulb.