Six

ALONE AGAIN ON the bus ride home.

I look up, waiting for the message under the overpass—Fear Him. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to unsee it, unknow it. Trying not to care that Bree and Sage didn’t wait for me after school. Going to the skate park together once isn’t exactly a blood bond.

Still. Damn it.

Instead, the Terraces wait, slumbering beneath a low, cotton-batting sky, most everyone at work, little kids still at school. I start the hike to our unit—feels like I’m always walking uphill in this town, my quads in a permanent state of lactic acid buildup—when, at the crest ahead, the hoodies pop out between Units Eleven and Twelve on their bikes, swerving toward the center of the street.

I dart to the left, knowing there’s a chance they saw me. Press up against the vinyl siding of Unit Six, straining to hear. Approaching voices, an occasional too-loud laugh, a shout of “Asshole!,” trying to shock some neighbor lady. If they’d seen me, they’d be on me by now.

I peer around the edge of the building and watch Green Hood, wearing a pair of gold shutter shades, lead the pack down the hill, popping an occasional wheelie to the general amazement of no one.

When I’m sure they’re really gone, I cut through the strip of backyards until I reach our stoop, rattling the doorknob before I remember that Mom’s not home. I have my key, but what’s inside—mostly bare walls, boxes of my books still waiting to be unpacked and shelved, nothing good in the fridge because it’s almost shopping day—doesn’t really call to me.

But the woods. They call.

Why can’t I take the trails to the skate park on my own? It doesn’t seem like you need an engraved invitation, and I wasted enough afternoons over the past year in Astley doing homework with the TV on for company, wondering what everybody else is up to. If Bree and Sage want a break from the welcome wagon, maybe I’ll snag myself a bench and start Kincaid surveillance. I leave my bag inside, then walk back down the hill.

I pass the laundry building—a dryer’s whumping around off-balance inside, sneakers in a heavy-duty cycle—and hesitate at the entrance to the trail, remembering Dabney Kirk and her missing head. What it might be like to look down and see a skull, gone gray and porous from years in the elements, jaw unhinged, the molded pearls of some girl’s teeth poised around my foot as if to bite.

I step gingerly after that, following the trail until I lose all sense of how long we walked last night before the girls guided me down the first turn to the park. Five minutes? Ten?

I push on through the disorientation, the growing unease. There are bread crumbs here and there, signs of kids having passed this way—a hair elastic, a cigarette butt. I walk by the first blaze-orange tree marker, then a familiar pile of rusty bedsprings in the weeds, where somebody must’ve ditched an old mattress once upon a time. I’m on the path to the marsh.

Eventually, I step out into the open. The tide is in. Shallow, murky water, islands of reeds and gone-to-seed cattails creating a piecework pattern over to the opposite wooded shore. As I look out, I notice a large, impossibly long-legged white bird on the shore below, still as a spear of birch. I watch it, willing it to move, prove to me it’s alive, but I get the feeling it could outlast an ice age.

The murals are even more impressive in daylight, painted in broad strokes by a sure hand. Other, less talented artists have contributed standard graffiti, coating the granite in bright colors so alien to this muted place. I stop, get eye-to-eye with the jack-o’-lantern, running my fingertips over the razor-toothed smile.

Instinct draws my gaze up to the top of the ledge. I spot him there, among the trees and brambles, hunkered down, his face like some brownie’s or woods elf’s, peering out from a mosaic of branches and leaves. Kincaid.

I jerk back from the mural. He stands, holding a low branch for balance because he’s so close to the edge that bits of moss and earth crumble down to me.

He takes the descent ledge by ledge, and I think of last night, slamming through the woods with Bree, how Kincaid always seemed to slip away from us, evaporate into laughter somewhere down the trail. How we could never seem to get a piece of him like we could the other boys.

He hops the last four feet and walks over to me, hands stuffed in his coat pockets, looking taller than I remember, maybe emphasized by his lankiness and the mid-thigh length of his coat. “Found your way back alone, huh? Not easy to do.” He leans into the jack-o’-lantern’s face. “Makes you wonder about him, doesn’t it? The one who started this. Carrying paint and brushes all the way out here to paint for the trees.”

“What makes you think it was a him?” A little surprised at how confrontational I sound.

He laughs, glancing over, taking a quick study of me with those murky green eyes. “Sounds like you’ve got a theory.”

“Maybe it was you.”

A pause, then he gestures to something at the base of the rock, his arm winglike in the coat, flashing a worn satin lining. Below The Scream is a small date, written in the same green paint as the pot leaves: ’11. Which would’ve made Kincaid about nine years old. Clara Morrison, master of deductive reasoning.

He walks away from me down the path, but his word carries back: “Egret.”

Right. Big white bird. I follow. “I wasn’t sure if he was real at first.”

“They’re good at that.” Kincaid stops beside his board and a woven Baja backpack left in the weeds. “Hold so still that the fish think they’re safe, swimming around a couple of tall reeds, not a pair of predator legs. They’re going, ‘Doo-doo-doo, it’s a normal day, eating shit smaller than we are,’ then”—with a snarl, whips his fingers down, cupped into a beak—“instant death. Nature’s cruel balancing act.” He gives this little laugh in the back of his throat.

I watch as he takes a box of cold meds and a nearly empty bottle of soda from his bag, washing a couple capsules down. There’s more than congestion affecting the way he talks, though. It’s like he had a speech impediment as a kid, one he had to go to therapy for, one they could never quite break him of. A tendency to cluster words together, cram them into a space where they scarcely fit. “What’re you doing out here?” All laughter is gone from my voice.

He shrugs. “Good a place as any.”

“Plenty better.”

“Not if you want some space. This whole marsh is a preserve. Over three hundred acres.”

“Just you, the egrets, and Dabney Kirk’s severed head.” I’m not imagining how his eyes light up, smile creeping back.

“You know about that?”

“Your buddy—El Chupapudding—made sure I found out today.”

Kincaid laughs, rocking back on his heels. “Damn, I missed pudding day? They didn’t have the Friday French bread pizza, too, did they? That’s, like, all wet?”

“Today’s Tuesday.”

He considers this, thoughtful again. “They brought dogs in. Nobody could find her. How far could a head really roll?”

“Now there’s a PSAT question. If a logging truck is traveling southeast at forty-five miles per hour, and a head is traveling northwest . . .” He looks back, maybe amused, maybe tolerant, not giving me much. Not letting me in on the joke. Again. “You don’t think it was an accident.”

“I think he took her with him. I think Dabney Kirk is hanging in the Mumbler’s trophy room right now. He’s got armchair, fireplace, Dabney’s head.”

I watch him, biting the inside of my cheek, fists tucked inside my sleeves. “You can stop now. Okay? I’m sufficiently pranked.” Nothing. “I’m new, so you guys think you need to break me in or something, right? But you’re never going to sell me on this boogeyman stuff.”

He straightens, shoulders his bag, hooks his fingers under his board’s truck. “That’s what you think? That I’m being, like, mean to you?” He considers the concept before shaking his head, totally unoffended. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Then . . . ?” I lift my shoulders.

“Did you google them? Ricky, Dabney, Gavin?”

“Gavin OD’d.”

“Nobody knows that. He’d disappeared last October. They just found his body two weeks ago. There wasn’t much left.” He watches as I reach for my phone. “Won’t work out here. It’s a dead spot.”

“Of course it is.”

“Later. Look it up. You’ll see.”

“I’ll be reading later.” I was thinking out loud, but Kincaid looks a question. “A Clockwork Orange. For Hyde’s class.”

“Nice. ‘Duality is the ultimate reality.’”

“What?”

“Anthony Burgess. He said that. Man’s a visionary.” I nod, hoping it doesn’t show that I didn’t recognize the author’s name. Better dig myself a hole and turn some serious pages before Hyde drops the next quiz. “I can take you to the railroad bridge sometime.”

I grab on to that I—not we—and don’t let go. “What’s out there?”

He smiles, slings his hand back to hang the board over his shoulder. “Make a believer out of you.” He ambles down the trail in the direction of town, passing beneath the tree canopy, his coat becoming shadow, his hair birch bark. I don’t move, thinking this is the end, he’ll fade into nonexistence again, but his voice carries: “You coming?”

We don’t walk together, but fall just short of it, Kincaid knowing the way, me moving at my own pace, not sure what this is, us together. Trying to gauge if he’s at all nervous to be alone with me, if he even remembers that I’m here.

As he walks, he slides his hand over tree trunks, touchstones somehow confirming that we’re following his invisible path. We’ve lost the trail, or so it seems. Even when we come out on a footpath, we don’t stay on it, instead crunching off into brush and brambles, my clothes snagging on branches heavy with berries so shiny and red they must be poisonous. A small maple leaf, burnished half-gold, half-green, falls into his hair and snags. I like how it looks, so I leave it.

Skate park.

No Sage or Bree. I watch Kincaid hit the concrete on his board and coast over to run the circuit with the others. Not as big a crowd as last night, but something tells me it’ll grow as darkness falls and parents come home from work, flushing kids out into the neighborhood for breathing room.

I snag an empty bench, pulling out my phone to see if I’ve got bars. Over at the playground, a weird whining sound comes from the play tunnel, where a few stoners block either end, leaning and smoking and giving each other shit.

Ricky, Dabney, Gavin. Their names googled with “Pender” bring up a flurry of articles, photos hinting at horror: a roadside ditch with rescue vehicles parked up and down it, first responders’ faces bleached paper white in camera flash. The most recent update on Gavin Cotswold is from last week, a brief squib from the local paper accompanied by a selfie of a skinny dark-haired boy, smirking, eyes heavy-lidded. After a year of family and police believing he’d run away from home, his skeleton was discovered by a partridge hunter in the woods just over the Derby town line. Skeletal trauma tests are currently being run to determine cause of death.

I’m doubled over, staring at an endlessly buffering WABI-TV video clip when Landon and Ivy come up, arm in arm.

We nod. They part, Landon taking off for the ramps on a Santa Cruz board, Ivy sitting cross-legged on the pavement with a leather tote bag that turns out to hold her knitting. She withdraws a lethal-looking pair of stainless-steel needles, saying without turning, “The benches are for girlfriends. Just so you know.”

“Oh. Okay.” I glance around, expecting to see a flock of them standing around, looking huffy.

“It’s stupid. But if you’re still there when they show up later, they’ll hate you forever. Word to the wise and all.”

“Gotcha. Thanks.” Not interested in having a pissing contest with the girlfriends, I sit on the ground near Ivy, prime location by a trash barrel and a streetlight. A metal sign stands nearby, reading Warning! Neighborhood Watch—We Look Out for Each Other! Doubtful; the house across the street has a For Sale sign in the overgrown yard. Ditto for the yards on either side. “Anything else I should know about this place?”

“Hmm.” She touches her needles to her chin. “Don’t forget anything here that you don’t want to lose. Pretty strict finders, keepers rule.” Her hair’s only a couple inches long, fitted snugly around her ears, a slight fringe across her brow; I’ve never worn mine that short. Takes guts to leave yourself nothing to hide behind. “And the cops don’t drive by much, but it happens. So, anything you don’t want an audience for, take it into the woods.”

Another whine from the play tunnel, and now it’s obvious they have someone trapped in there; the skaters lean down now and then to peer at their prisoner, and I hear a scratchy little voice say, “You guys? Come on.”

My video has started in jerky movements, a somber-faced news anchor shuffling her notes. Ivy’s needles click rhythmically on her project. “What’re you making?” I tap my knuckles against the pavement, ready to chuck my phone.

“A cat cozy.” She holds it up, three-quarters of a cable-knit sack, unsurprisingly black. “For Mr. Crowley. When it’s done, I can wear him.”

She hands me her phone. The wallpaper is a photo of a massive tabby cat sprawled on its back in a comma shape, eyes wide and mesmerizing. “Wow. That’ll be a workout.”

She smiles. “He’s such a snuggle-muffin. He’ll probably fall asleep in there and be, like, drooling.”

A horn sounds, and a long, brown, old-man car pulls into the nearly empty parking lot, shocks squeaking, flashing its brights a few times to yells and wolf whistles. Trace gets out of the driver’s seat, followed by Sage and Bree. I get up to meet them, looking over at Kincaid, who’s coasting the boundary of the flat bottom, gaze focused but turned inward.

Bree doesn’t seem surprised to see me as she splits off from Sage and Trace. “We would’ve been here sooner, but we had to check in with his mom first.” Her eye roll has layers and meanings I can’t decipher before Sage’s fist lands on my shoulder, her light steps crunching over dried leaves as she moves around me.

“Clarabelle! You came.” She hands me her phone. “Put your number in. We couldn’t text or anything to let you know what was up.”

So they weren’t blowing me off on purpose. Here’s my cue to speak, tell them about Kincaid, our run-in at the marsh—but for some reason, I don’t. I’m still sorting it out myself, that weird conversation, our walk through the woods that should’ve been awkward but wasn’t. The moment is passing, gone, and all I do is save my info in her contacts and follow Bree’s methodical steps through the cedar chips scattering the playground, my smile fading to consternation, gaze on my shoes. I should’ve said something. Now my silence feels next door to a lie.

The boy with the drumsticks, who everybody calls Moon, is performing machine-gun bursts on top of the tunnel, the others practically falling over laughing. Trace goes to them and leans way, way down to look inside. From where we stand, I see a face appear like a smudgy orb; a boy, on his hands and knees. “Deacon.” Trace, all patience and gravity. “Got one question for you. What’s black, white, and red all over?”

“Um . . .” The boy bites his lip, then brightens. “A newspaper?”

Trace holds his gaze for a long moment. “Bahhhh!” Wrong-buzzer sound; Trace throws his finger in Deacon’s face. “You shall not pass!”

“You shall not pass!” The others take it up. “You shall not pass!” They close over the tunnel opening again and Deacon wails.

I look at Bree. “Um . . . should we do something?”

She pulls her gaze away from the tunnel. “Nah. He loves it.”

“Kid’s gotta learn.” Trace shakes his head as he comes back to us. Sage makes a sad face at him. “Hey, when I was his age, if I’d come down here with my little baby board? Skaters would’ve kicked the shit out of me and dropped my ass in the river with a couple bricks in my Underoos. We’re going easy on him.” He drives each word home with his forefinger: “Little kids. Skate. In. Their driveways. Everybody knows that.” He literally throws his board and jumps on it. “Probably the most attention he’ll get all day, anyway.”