Twenty-Two

WE THOUGHT THE war was over.

As I walk to my first class, a kid opens his locker and is lost in an avalanche of orange and black Ping-Pong balls. They bounce and skitter across the hallway, ricocheting off people’s legs and feet, rolling into open classroom doors. One girl steps on them, goes crashing down onto her armload of books.

Spille’s room reeks of liquor. Like, worse than usual. Everyone’s whispering about it as he harrumphs, gaze glued to his desk as he tries to find his place in Friday’s stream of thoughts about the Civil War. One smart-ass asks to open a window, gets barked at.

It isn’t until five minutes before the bell, when Spille opens his top desk drawer for a paper clip and brown liquid sloshes out onto his arm and the floor, that the prank hits home: somebody’s emptied a bottle of cheap bourbon into each drawer.

Hyde opens her mouth to begin her lecture, hands clasped behind her back—and the fire alarm goes off. We file out and stand around the parking lot in the freezing cold, watching leaves detach themselves from trees while we wait for the fire department to arrive. Nearly a whole class period later, the verdict comes in: false alarm. Somebody pulled it. Prank Number Three. Low points for originality, high marks for honoring tradition.

“Swear.” When Trace just laughs, Sage shakes her head, grinning. “I knew you were full of shit yesterday. What’d you do, recruit people?”

“I swear on a whole crap-ton of Bibles that none of this is me. It’s freakin’ inspirational, though, isn’t it? We grew baby pranksters. They’re like little birds leaving the nest for the first time.” He links his thumbs, winging his hands through the air. “Fly, fly, Starling. Fly, fly.”

Bree shakes her head. “Don’t quote Hannibal Lecter while I’m eating.”

I want to ask if anybody’s seen Kincaid since we talked yesterday, but I don’t. I haven’t seen or heard from him since what we did in his mom’s house, and I spent last night worrying about him, wondering if he was in the woods, in the dark, flirting with hypothermia, hoping he’s smarter than that. I know he stays with the boys most of the time, but if he even thinks he’s a burden to their parents, he’ll bolt. Now, sitting here in the hysteria the prank war hath wrought, I come clean with myself: it bothers me. A lot. I’m officially pissed that he did not come to school today.

“Young Master Savage.” Crackenback, death warmed over, stands at the end of the table, watching as Trace’s bird hands descend to earth. “A word, if I may.”

“Okay. Here’s a good one—ablaqueated.”

Crackenback points in the direction of the main hallway, and his office. “Right this way, please.”

Trace’s glance is disinterested. “What’s over there?”

Sage sucks her lips in, finding something else to look at. Crackenback’s smile forms as slowly as skin on pudding. “Your destiny.”

For a long moment, Trace stares back at him, not moving. Then he jumps up and walks toward the doors, letting Crackenback catch up.

After school, I walk straight to the park, not bothering to wait to catch a ride, since Trace is probably in detention, anyway, or worse.

Kincaid’s not here. Two days is unheard-of—since when doesn’t he live on the half-pipe?

Maybe since me. Since I figured out what’s really going on with him.

Tension settles into my muscles, solidified by the cold, making my stride swift, rigid, as I walk on. Next stop, Lorimer Street.

The little brown house is quiet. Car’s in the drive, meaning he’s definitely not inside. I watch for a couple minutes, anyway, in case he might come out the door at a run, but nothing moves. Picture his mom in there, sitting at the kitchen table. Silence, dust, a cup of weak instant coffee by her hand as she waits for something to change, looking out the window at the woods.

I walk on, taking a guess at how to get over to the old cemetery from here. Cross through the graves to the woods, pushing through dry brambles, taking gullies faster than necessary, making myself breathless.

When I reach the boulder, I stop where I stand. Kincaid’s shelter is gone. He’s taken away the tarp and fencing. Not a hint remains that anyone ever slept here, except for the faint, S-shaped bare patch on the ground where I know his body once lay.

After that, I run. To the ledge, clambering down so fast that I don’t know how I manage it without falling. Find the path, checking for Kincaid’s bag in the weeds—not today—then head down the trail with something like fear fueling me.

Why would he move his shelter, other than to throw me off? Maybe Trace warned him that I was freaking out, that there was a chance I might tell somebody? “Kincaid!” My shout echoes across the flats, and I want to pull it back—too much like Ivy all over again.

The Mumbler mural grows as I close in on it, swelling, stretching across the rock. I make myself stare at it as I pass. You don’t scare me. No face. No eyes. I don’t believe. Hands a snarling nest of snakes. You never were—can’t be. But I’m so small beneath it, lost in the shadow of the cliffside.

I keep thinking I’ll follow a curve, and Kincaid will be there, ahead of me, getting his breathing room way out here where few of our friends dare to go. My backpack feels heavy over my shoulder, full of homework and reading I’m behind on, but I can’t turn back, not until I make it all the way there, to the bridge.

Once I reach the railroad tracks, I can see he isn’t out there on the platform, waiting for me to figure out that this is the only place he’d come. Our place. But there’s no one. Just our jack-o’-lanterns, facing east.

I walk all the way to the far end of the platform, where my steam runs out. Squeeze my eyes shut against stupid tears, frustration, the creeping knowledge that I’ve messed everything up, crushed our fragile beginning like a dried aspen leaf.

Open my eyes and stare without seeing for a time, the jack-o’-lanterns not really coming into focus until the wind sends another blast through my clothes, jolting me. I’m directly across from Moon’s creation, an oblong-shaped pumpkin carved with giant, joyful features. There’s more rot showing now, black mold stealing like a rash across the orange shells, each pumpkin beginning a slow collapse into itself.

My gaze travels past the gap where Ivy’s once sat, to Kincaid’s, like a neat, rounded skull, shaped by decay and the elements.

But the next space is empty. My jack-o’-lantern is gone.

I head home, not really feeling safe until I pass the usual dump sites and know that I’m only minutes from the trailhead. I keep seeing the place where my jack-o’-lantern used to be, hearing Kincaid’s words, that some partyers must’ve knocked Ivy’s off the bridge, that other people go out there all the time, do their own share of vandalizing.

Slog, slog, up the hill of the Terraces. I’m envisioning our futon, TV, whatever’s left of the ice cream in the freezer, being a completely selfish waste who doesn’t worry about anybody, when my senses give me one second’s warning. The sound of metal chains working through gears, the zing of air through spokes. I look up. The hoodies, coming at me.

“Christmas Barf. All alone.” Green Hood, doing a half-standing pedal, letting the incline bring him toward me. “No friends.” Behind him, Blue Hood drops against his handlebars, fake-weeping. “Where’s the bitch and the hottie today?”

I fix Green with a flat stare, keep walking toward our unit.

He snorts. “What’re you looking at, you shitty-haired freak?”

“A douchebag on a little girl’s bike.” I don’t slow down.

Green Hood’s expression darkens, reminding me of when Bree slammed his wheel with her foot—oh, right; bruised ego, score to settle, all that—but the words are out. No time to do anything but flinch back as he drops to the seat, blowing by me, snagging my backpack as he goes.

I curse, spinning before he pulls me over, yanking free of the strap even though my whole everything’s in that bag—then Blue Hood slams into me from behind, forearm like a crowbar across my shoulder blades, sending me down.

Pain. Above me, laughter, more of those metallic, bladelike bicycle sounds as they circle above me on the slope so they can charge again. I get up at a run. They swoop after me—one glimpse of them standing on pedals, suddenly huge, grizzlies on their hind legs.

I try to dart across a yard. Green Hood cuts me off—“Nope, sorry”—and I throw my elbow into him, hitting bone. More pain shoots up into my shoulder, and he swears, almost pitching over.

I break into a sprint, knowing the paved hill is like a cattle chute: nowhere for me to go but right where they’re driving me. Somebody’s got to be seeing this out their window and not doing anything about it, not stepping in. Not like Bree would.

Yellow and White burn by me on either side, one ripping a handful of my hair, making me shriek and swear at them as they crisscross into my path at the base of the hill.

I go left, head for the open doorway of the laundry building, one glance showing me that nobody’s inside before I reach back and drag the door shut behind me, the cinder-block doorstop thudding over onto the dirt.

I dig my heels in and hold the door shut, engaging in a short battle as one of them tries to get in, can’t; leverage is on my side. A hail of rocks batters the door and wall, gradually petering off to the sound of silence.

A scrape, then a thud against the door. More laughter.

Shit. I think that was the cinder block. They must’ve wedged it between the door and the ground. I stay where I am, listening, fingers aching against the handle. “Have fun,” one of them calls.

Slowly, I straighten, giving the door a tentative push. Won’t move. Go to the window, standing on tiptoes to watch as they pedal back up the hill, stopping to dump my backpack out in the middle of the road, books and notebooks tumbling everywhere. Green Hood kicks my phone across the asphalt.

I hit the glass. “Asshole!” But they’re at the crest of the hill now, then out of view.