Chapter Six

Before

HIS FAVORITE FLIP KNIFE. Boxers. Deodorant. A handful of T-shirts.

People were, inherently, assholes. This was what Patrick Donovan was thinking as he slammed his belongings into the ripping army duffel his uncle Mike had given him, sometime before going on a thirteen-day bender that ended with his jaundiced body found plastered to the floor, half behind the old plaid couch in his work shed. Liver failure.

People just blatantly sucked. They were self-serving, always, even when it seemed like they were doing a nice thing. “Patrick, why don’t you get a break from all this drama?” his mom had said before shipping him off. “It isn’t healthy,” she’d said.

Right, but sending her son away to the home of obscure relatives (because her first husband had split, her parents were dead, now her brother was dead too, and she didn’t even speak to either of her sisters) was totally healthy. Even Uncle Liam (great-uncle, technically) and Aunt Diane had dished out plenty of BS about wanting to “reconnect.” Sure, if by reconnect they’d meant take on a free house servant.

He was sick of it. It wasn’t that mowing the lawn or cleaning out the garage or doing minor car repairs was so horrible in and of itself, it was just the fakery behind it all that pissed him off. It was fine if no one wanted him, but the pretending killed him. And anyway, he was just along for the ride. He hadn’t asked to be taken in. And he’d be fine when he was gone.

It had to be better when you were on your own. No one to disappoint. No one to disappoint you.

Rain fell quietly on the attic roof—tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick. Outside, the leaves, just starting to fall, would be matted down into the grass. Someone would have to rake them after the storm, into sodden, heavy piles, to be bagged and set on the street. It was the first bad weather they’d had in Devil’s Lake since he’d moved here in August.

He sighed, picking up the Cubs hat his dad had given him way, way forever ago. He stared at the faded C. He wasn’t sure whether wearing it would fly in these parts or if he’d get the shit kicked out of him by a bunch of jacked-up Tigers bros.

He scanned the attic room to see if there was anything he’d forgotten—not that he had much stuff to begin with. It was a mistake to even come here. He should’ve taken off on his own before it ever came to this—moving to a new town, trying to start over at a new school, meeting a whole new set of people with their own histories and expectations and assumptions. In the city there were always a million people everywhere and a million things going on, constant lights and honking horns and angry landlords and distractions. But out here in Devil’s Lake, it was dead silent at night, and he hated it. Hated how alone it made him feel, all that quiet. All that haunted, swaying grass on the side of the roads—made him want to flick a lighter to it and set the whole town aflame.

For some reason, this made him think of the Malloy girl.

It was true, he didn’t have to be such a dick to her. She was a redhead, he’d noticed, just like his last girlfriend, Sari, pronounced like “sorry,” which she hadn’t been when she’d taken off, too. He didn’t really know anything about this redhead other than what he’d overheard in gym the other day—some douche lacrosse player saying he wanted to bang all three Malloy sisters and one of his bonehead friends saying he didn’t even have a chance with one. Apparently, the redhead had a couple of older sisters who were just as hot as her. Patrick actually knew that the oldest one came by on her volunteer route, leaving groceries. Supposedly she was super smart, advanced classes and all that. He hadn’t interacted with her, though. He’d been standing in the shower when she drove up the last time, savoring the hot water, which there always seemed to be a shortage of back at his mom’s apartment, so he didn’t even see the supposed beauty in the flesh.

Patrick had pretty much tuned the jocks out after that one conversation, sticking to the corner of the weight-training room where he could focus on push-ups and sit-ups and other workouts that didn’t involve fancy machines covered in other people’s B.O.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about—or think about—girls. He liked them and the things he had occasionally been given the opportunity to do with them behind closed doors and in the back seats of cars, but he wasn’t into the whole culture of conquest bragging. It just reminded him of the crap boyfriends his mom used to bring around, and generally grossed him out.

And maybe he’d been rude earlier, to the Malloy girl, but he had to keep her at bay. She had no idea what she was walking into with him. And her asking him out . . . for a friend? He cracked a small smile. Then he shook his head. That had to be self-serving too, in some way. He wondered what she really wanted from him, who she’d been trying to impress, or make jealous.

Anyway, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be around long enough to find out.

He tossed in the cap and started zipping the bag closed. The piece-of-shit zipper got jammed and he had to fuss with it, which was when he heard the creak on the attic steps, stopped what he was doing, and shoved the duffel bag beneath the bed. He stood up quickly, banging his head against a low rafter just as Diane entered the room.

He rubbed his head and plopped down on the bed. Already he felt bad, seeing his great-aunt, frail and bent over like that, winded just from climbing the stairs. She’d probably called up to him and he hadn’t heard over the sound of the rain.

“How was school?” she asked, brushing wispy white hair away from her temple and carefully tucking it in to some invisible hairpin. The stray lock flopped down again as soon as she let go.

He shrugged.

“Well, I guess that’s better than awful, isn’t it,” she said, more a statement than a question.

Either way, he didn’t have a response. He hated the shame that sweltered him like a sweaty sheet in summertime whenever his great-aunt tried to converse with him. She’d never had any kids of her own. Why would she want to start dealing with a teenager now, especially one with “behavioral problems”? Which, by the way, was a highly hyperbolic term for having gotten into a total of one ill-advised fight. It wasn’t like he’d gone out looking for it even.

“So,” she said. “I’m making pierogi.” She paused, then added, “It would be nice if you’d help with the potatoes.”

She waited there until he followed her back down the stairs, the packed duffel sagging in the back of his mind like an unkept promise.

Later on, with the steam from boiling dumplings rising around their heads, carrying the warm smell of leek and starch, and Uncle Liam in a cheerful, semilucid mood, and the rain falling steadily outside, Patrick almost regretted his plans to leave here. He thought again of the sodden leaves filling up the yard. Who would clear them up when he was gone?

They were sitting around the dining room table and his great-uncle was talking about a paper he was working on for the university—something about cannibalistic ogres. He recalled his uncle used to teach a course or two on folklore and fairy tales, but he’d never really thought about how gruesome the stories could be.

“What do you think, Tom?” he asked suddenly.

Patrick did a double take, but Diane gave him a quick look he didn’t quite get. “Sorry, what?”

“I could really use help organizing them, Tom. The notes are all over the place,” Liam said.

Diane folded her napkin and got up to clear the dishes. “That’s all right, dear. We’ll discuss the paper tomorrow.”

In the kitchen, she told Patrick not to mind. “He’ll forget what he said.”

“Who’s Tom?”

“I have no idea,” Diane replied. “Probably a former student.” Her arm shook as she wiped down one of the plates.

“Let me do that,” Patrick said, taking the plate and dish towel.

Diane beamed at him. “We’re so happy to have you with us, Patrick. You’ve grown into such a good young man.”

“It’s no problem,” he said, trying to avoid looking into her eyes.

“Don’t let Liam’s ramblings bother you,” she went on. “He used to be quite successful, you know. His second book sold in six different countries.”

Patrick nodded.

“He used to buy me presents—mostly jewelry, sometimes other artifacts, vases, that sort of thing—from every city he visited on tour,” she added, a hazy look passing over her face. She laughed a little and shrugged. “Thousands of dollars’ worth of mementos, probably. Ironic, a little bit, don’t you think?”

Patrick didn’t answer. He was thinking about the expensive objects she mentioned. The jewelry and vases. Thousands of dollars could get a person far. A lot farther than empty pockets. He squirted more soap than necessary into a glass and let it fill with water from the faucet, watching it foam over.

“Anyway,” Diane continued, “he knows he’s doing it. Sometimes. He’ll realize it. Calls it dream chasing. I thought that was a nice way of putting it, don’t you,” she said—another statement question.

“Ogres who eat human flesh? Some dreams.” Patrick shut off the faucet.

Diane looked at him funny, and it took him a moment to understand her surprise—it was more than he’d said the entire time he’d lived with them. He too felt surprised. He never thought of himself as a quiet person. Just seemed like lately he was the one who was caught in a series of bad dreams. No ogres, maybe. But other sorts of monsters.

“Not all the stories are bad. There are good fairies who grant wishes,” Diane said, almost to herself, as though she didn’t mean for him to hear.

But he had. And once again, his mind turned to the Malloy girl, with hair like pale fire.