Chapter Six

Dotty’s Market is cold inside and smells like oranges and cheese. It’s a quarter of the size of the grocery store we shop at back home, but I love it because it’s my treat store. Every time we’d visit Villisca when I was little, we’d stop and I’d get to pick out a snack for the car ride back to Minneapolis. Usually something gooey and sugary—the kind of thing I was never allowed to eat at home. Yep, Dotty’s is awesome.

I walk to the candy aisle and grab a king-size cookies ’n cream candy bar.

At the register, a girl a little older than me is leaned against the counter, reading a brochure for the University of California. Her hair is like flattened cotton candy, streaked blue and pink.

I place my candy bar on the checkout counter. The girl raises an eyebrow at me and snort-laughs with a shake of her head. She has a nasty-looking sunburn that’s morphing into a tan.

She grabs the candy bar. “This it?”

“Yes.”

She scans it, then hits two buttons. “Two twenty.”

Dotty’s is awesome except for their prices. I hand over three bucks and collect my change.

“I know you,” says the girl—Samantha, according to her nametag. “Your grandparents live behind me. I remember you from when you were little.”

I study her face, concentrating on her blue eyes and the sprinkle of freckles across her nose.

My eyes go wide. Shit.

She’s one of the bikini girls. She’s the bikini girl. The one who dared me to go on the porch of The Axe Murder House when I was twelve. I would have never recognized her, especially not with her colorful hair. She and her friends had all been blondes back then.

She snorts another laugh, handing me my receipt. “God, you were a chubby little kid. Used to have these big wild, frizzy pigtails.” She motions over her head with her hands, emphasizing the puffy hair of my childhood. “So funny.”

I force a smile. So not funny.

“What brings you around?” she asks, picking at what’s left of her red nail polish.

“Visiting for the summer.”

She raises an eyebrow. “The entire summer? What the hell for? Aren’t you from Chicago or something?”

“Minneapolis and it’s a long story.” My parents hate each other.

“Hmmm,” she says, leaning against the counter again. “Well, good luck.”

“With what?”

“With not dying of boredom.” Her head shakes, and she looks around. “This place is awful. Especially right now. Have you heard about the missing girls?”

“Oh, yeah. That sucks.” Sucks? It’s a lame thing to say about such horrible events, but something about Samantha puts me on my guard. Like I’m twelve again, worried I’ll say the wrong thing and she’ll laugh at me, just like last time.

“I used to babysit one of the missing girls. Laney McCoy.” Samantha blows her bangs from her eyes. “She’s only three. Lives on the edge of town by my aunt and uncle.”

“That’s awful. Do they know who’s taking them?”

She scowls. “Apparently not or they’d have caught the freak by now, right?”

At the sound of her sudden snarky tone I shove the receipt in my pocket and take a step back. She is definitely that same bikini girl from years ago.

I say goodbye to her—I can’t help it, I’m Minnesota-nice—and then leave the store before she can make fun of me for something. On my way out, the picture of Amelia stares down at me, and in my mind, I hear the tearing of her flesh as she reached for me in my dream. I rip off a GHOST911 phone number tab. Just in case.

I exit the sliding doors of Dotty’s and tear into my candy bar.

“Watch out!” a voice calls out from my right.

But it’s too late and I run right into a tall man carrying a large box out of the Higgins Hardware Store.

“Sorry ’bout that,” he says, loading the box into the back of a green pickup. The clinks and clanks tell me the box is full of tools. “Bring the others out,” he shouts into the store. He’s about fifty with shaggy gray hair. He waves for me to quickly walk past the door, but my short legs are not quick enough, and I nearly collide with a second body. This one’s tall like the old guy, except it’s a boy about my age with short brown hair. He grins at me over the top of the box he’s carrying. His eyes are squinted in the sunlight, but I know they’re brown. I’m just not sure how I know that.

“Sorry,” he says.

“No, I’m sorry,” I say with a laugh, moving out of his way.

He watches me as he places his box in the pickup bed. For a split second, I think we’ve met before. Grandma has never let me hang out with boys in town, so that’s a big fat no.

But there’s something about his face. Something familiar. My head starts to ache.

“You here visiting your grandparents?” he asks.

I press a finger into my temple to stop the pain. “You know who I am?”

“Yeah.” He looks down with a sheepish grin. “Guess that sounds kind of creepy, but it’s a small town, ya know?”

I nod. Small towns are weirdly intimate. I prefer the anonymity of the city with its millions of people.

The pain in my head intensifies, causing my eyes to close.

I open my eyes. I’m still standing on the sidewalk, but the brown-haired boy is gone, and so is the sun. It’s cool and cloudy, and 50s doo wop music is playing from somewhere unseen. A young boy with slicked-back hair, jeans, and a white T-shirt walks by with a baseball glove under his arm. Across the street is an old, bulbous Chevy pickup truck.

I close and rub my eyes, and when I reopen them, it’s sunny again and the brown-haired boy is staring at me with confusion on his face.

“You okay?” he asks. “You sort of…blanked out on me.”

“Oh, um, yeah, I’m fine,” I say as my cheeks burn hot. “I just…” My words drift off and never pick back up again. I just had an impromptu daydream, how’s your day going?

The boy awkwardly rubs the back of his neck. He’s thin but not skinny. Definitely capable of lifting heavy boxes of tools.

“You work here?” I ask, trying to salvage whatever dignity I have left.

“Yeah. My family owns it.” He nods at the older guy who’s bringing out more boxes. “That’s my dad.”

“Oh.” I should have something cooler to say about this, but my capacity for small talk diminishes in the presence of boys. I rack my brain to think of things to say. What do normal people ask about? The weather? No, it’s sunny and we’re both squinting, so obviously he knows what the weather is like. I need something safe. Something simple…like, “What’s your name?” Seems like a good place to start.

“David.”

“I’m Chessie.”

He nods and it’s clear he already knows my name.

“How do you know who I am?” I ask.

He pauses a while before answering. “You’re Will Carpenter’s daughter”—he smirks a bit—“and his granddaughter.”

I smile. “Yeah, I am.” Both Grandpa and Dad are named Will. As was my great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather.

My family has a long line of Williams: William, Senior; William, Junior; William the Third, and William the Fourth. And then came me. Not a William. A Francesca the First. No wonder Grandpa calls me Sport.

“How do you know my grandpa and dad?” I ask.

“Your grandpa shops here a lot.”

It makes sense—Grandpa likes to fish and is one of those types who is always fiddling with a home project. I wait for an explanation on how David knows my dad, but he doesn’t give one. I assume it’s a family thing. He knows my dad because he knows my grandpa. Or my dad’s old high school buddies with his dad. Small-town connections aren’t hard to make. Everyone knows everyone.

“Well.” David does that awkward neck rub thing again. “I gotta get back to work, so…”

My mouth opens as my brain searches for a way to keep him from disappearing in front of me. I don’t know why I don’t want him to leave though. He’s cute, but there’s something else keeping me from walking away. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. His brown eyes stare down at me, and all I can think is that I need to talk to him more.

A breeze blasts down the street, and a large branch creaks overhead. A ribbon of fear ripples down my spine as I remember the squeak of my closet door from last night, opening on its own—or worse, opening with the help of something unseen. The outstretched arm of a dead girl, perhaps.

“A lock,” I blurt out.

“A what?”

“A lock for my closet door. Do you guys have those…” I pinch my index finger and thumb together and move them back and forth. “…sliding lock things for doors?”

He thinks for a second. “Yeah, like a sliding bolt lock?”

I nod. Sure, whatever. Anything that’ll keep that damn closet door shut. Being stuck in Villisca all summer is torture enough, I’m sure as hell not going to let myself be tormented by some giggly nightmare lurking in my closet.

He motions for me to follow him inside the hardware store. A small bell overhead chimes as the door opens and again as the door closes. The store is narrow with only four aisles, but the aisles are long, running far back from the door. Up front, next to the window, is a single checkout counter with a small fan rotating back and forth. There’s a hint of air conditioning, but it’s nearly as warm in here as it was outside.

I follow David down the far left aisle. It doesn’t take him long to find exactly what I was looking for—a small, metal, sliding lock, like the kind inside a bathroom stall.

“Is it hard to install?” I ask.

“Why don’t you ask your grandpa to do it for you?”

“I, ah…I don’t want them to know I’m locking the closet.”

David smiles and curiosity twinkles in his eyes, but he doesn’t ask why. “Well, if you can find a drill, you can do it yourself. It’s not difficult.”

I nod, chewing my lip. I’ve used a drill before when I installed new curtains in my bedroom in Minneapolis. What I’m hung up on is the notion that I could do any of this without my grandparents finding out. They’re retired, which means they spend most of their time at home, staring out the windows, watching neighbors, well aware of every movement on their block. As their granddaughter living under the same roof as them, sneaking around is going to take an extra keen set of precautionary skills.

“I um…” David stares down at the lock for a moment before finishing his thought. “I could come over and do it for you.”

My face flushes at the thought of him stepping foot into my bedroom. But then another thought invades—Grandma would beat him senseless if she found him in my bedroom.

“No, I’ll do it myself.”

He stares down at his shoes. “Okay. Sure. It was a dumb idea any way.”

“Not at all,” I say with a smile. He meets my gaze and smiles back. “It wasn’t a dumb idea. It’s just that my grandparents are a little…old-fashioned.”

His smile widens. His hair is short and parted to one side. A bit old-fashioned itself and certainly different from the mop-top boys at my high school. I get the feeling that he really does think it was a dumb idea, him going into my bedroom. Like it was somehow improper.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Seventeen.”

“What grade?”

“Just graduated this past weekend,” he says. “I’ll be eighteen next week.”

I huff. “Lucky. I bet you can’t wait to finally be an adult. I have to wait until November.”

David doesn’t react, as if turning eighteen is no big deal. What kind of person doesn’t get a thrill out of the idea of being an independent adult? I’m counting down the days until my November birthday. Only 158 days to go until adulthood. Then it’s so long high school, hello college, and goodbye Mom and Dad.

David continues with his uncomfortable silence, so I point to the lock in his hands. “How much?”

He glances at his dad who’s still outside. “Don’t worry about it.”

My eyes widen, as though he’s telling me to steal it. “No, seriously. How much?”

“No seriously.” He mocks me with a little laugh. “Don’t worry about it. Your grandpa’s in here enough. He’s due a credit. Even if it is for a lock he doesn’t know about, to keep things hidden in a super-secret closet.”

I shake my head. “Not super-secret, it’s…never mind.”

He stares at me for what feels like forever, and I guard myself against him asking nosy follow-up questions. I really don’t want to talk about the giggly ghost child, or the fact that I may be going legit crazy. But he doesn’t pry. Instead, he walks me back to the front of the store and stashes the lock in a white plastic bag. As I take the bag from him, he pulls his hand back, as though not wanting to touch me.

Old-fashioned, indeed.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll let you know how the installation turns out.”

He grins. “Good luck.”

I say goodbye and walk out, making the bell go twice. As my feet shuffle down the sidewalk, my head is still in the hardware store, staring at those brown eyes.

The same brown eyes I’ve seen before. If only I could remember when and where.