Seven

IT’S LATE. AND there’s a sound in my room.

It starts—a tiny tick-tick—when I’m in bed reading A Clockwork Orange. The book’s insane, told in some made-up language, one you can almost understand but not quite, and it’s all just so damned Kincaid that I won’t let myself put it down, as if it could be some kind of instruction manual for him, complete with diagrams.

Tick-tickatick. Coming from my closet, where the door stands partially open. Mouse in the wall; wouldn’t be the first place we’ve lived that had them. Why do these things only happen at night? I bear down on every sentence, ignoring the words I don’t know and grabbing on to the ones I do until meaning rises to the top, the whole thing weirdly like deciphering Shakespeare. An image forms: guys hanging out in a milk bar—I guess people drink milk for fun in this world. Droogs looking for a fight, hoodies who wear bowlers.

A flurry of ticks; the thing is in here, with me, not in the wall. I set the book down, go to the closet doorway, turn on the light, and peer inside.

Nothing. Some clothes on hangers, a high shelf, empty except for a single shoebox with my leopard-prints inside. A stain on the carpet in the back corner that I hadn’t noticed before, like some kid stashed their science project on mold in here a little too long.

I catch it from the corner of my eye as I turn. From this angle, it looks like dead skin, a big flake peeling from the wall.

I stare, and it takes shape. A pair of wings, antennae. A sepia-toned moth, lying flat against white paint, basking in the glow of the bulb.

Its frothy wings have two dark dots on them, like slightly off-kilter eyes. A disguise, I’ve read, to fool predators, make them think they’re looking at the face of a bigger animal. A scrap of face on my wall, staring back, waiting to see what I’ll do.

I’m not above asking Dad to get rid of a bug for me—not proud, either—but they’re asleep, turned in to watch a movie on the laptop over an hour ago, which means Ma was probably dead to the world by nine thirty, rolled over on her side with her pillow stuffed between her arm and head. She wasn’t in a great mood tonight; I think hope’s fading fast that her job might not be too awful, that the same old stuff—jerk coworkers, mind-numbing tasks, managers who are never around—might not have followed her here.

I grab a notebook and reach out toward the moth, not sure if I’m offering a ride to freedom or preparing to smack. It slides on without resistance, paper on paper. Those pantomime eyes never waver.

Dark trek through the hallway and kitchen, lit only by occasional swaths of streetlight spilling across our linoleum. Some neighbor has their music up loud, and there are muffled voices out there, probably a party.

Slide the chain lock, lean out the back door to shake the moth free. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it loop-the-loop and it’s gone, part of the night. I stand for a moment, trying to make out the dark scribble of treetops against the sky, imagining the marsh. I wonder if somebody else is trying to catch Kincaid on the trails tonight. I had to leave early to get home in time for supper with Dad, Bree walking through the woods with me, the two of us talking Kincaid rapid-fire, my memory of finding him alone in the marsh glowing like an ember inside me, flickering, buried deep. Telling her now would be impossible, would make it look like I was hoarding secrets and afraid of getting caught. Bree would smell betrayal. I can’t risk that, not with her.

Bang. I flinch back, pulling the door shut. Nothing more. I peer out the window that faces on the next unit, seeing a light burning behind Bree’s window shade. Their back door hangs open, swaying. The music is coming from their place.

More voices. Raised in laughter or anger—funny how they sound the same through the thickness of a single wall. Silhouettes move past Bree’s shade. The bass is pounding, pounding, and not Hazel’s dance music, either. Something heavier, older. Metallica, maybe Pantera.

The back door is shoved wide open again, bouncing off the side of the house. A woman’s voice—“What do you want from me?” Tense, charged silence. “Well?”

Bree says something in her quiet, cutting tone. I can’t make out what.

Then her mom comes down the steps, jacket in hand, boots clopping sharply as she passes by our windows on the way to the parking lot.

After her Jeep pulls away, I stand a moment longer, looking at Bree’s window. The music shuts off. In time, a silhouette forms, passing the shade once or twice before sinking to half height, motionless. Bree is sitting on the edge of her bed the way we did the other night, in her room of cream and slate blue, maybe with a book in front of her, unread.

“Tell me about Gavin Cotswold.”

It’s the first thing I say to Bree at the bus stop Thursday morning. She and Hazel weren’t in school yesterday; taking a mental health day, maybe. Bree doesn’t look destroyed or anything—actually, not a trace of Tuesday night’s argument shows on her face—and I want to cover my own guilt over watching, listening, doing nothing. I lay in bed for a long time after her mom left, torn between going next door to make sure Bree was okay and respecting her five-mile perimeter of personal space. But the next morning, I knew: if it were me, I would’ve appreciated the pop-in. Guess I’m out of practice with this friendship thing. Before I left for the bus stop this morning, I did a quick search for Nica Pleck on my followers lists. She has a different profile pic now, different haircut. Same smile. I tried to remember exactly how it felt, having somebody I spent almost every day with, when being a bestie was once second nature for me.

Now, at my words, Sage stops eating her Pop-Tart and glances at Hazel, who’s being allowed closer to us than usual. Hazel’s zipped into a pink insulated jacket, completely absorbed in Toy Blast on her phone. She’s the proof of Tuesday night’s argument: tired eyes, no attempt at her usual starter makeup.

“It’s all online,” Bree says, watching a chip bag blow around the posts of the Affordable Family Housing sign like a half-blind dog looking for a place to lift its leg.

“I’d rather hear it from you. That way I know it’s not bullshit.”

Bree glances at her sister. “Hazel, cover your ears.”

“But I already—”

“Cover.” Hazel sighs, puts her phone away, and obeys, glancing around to see who’s staring. “Did you look him up?”

“I watched, like, half a video.”

“He lived here,” Sage says musingly. “Unit Three. Right across the street from me.” She wears a navy-blue peacoat in the morning chill, with a snowflake-patterned trapper cap, scarf, and mitten set that would make me look like a preschooler; Sage rocks it like a model in an Abercrombie ad. “Pretty sure if you look up ‘hot mess,’ there’s a pic of Gavin. Sad.”

“I can’t believe he was dead that whole time. Rotting out there.” Bree’s expression is cool, no change. “Everybody kept saying it was the Mumbler, cleaning house. I figured the cops would drag him out of a meth bust down in Portland or something. Remember how he had his stomach pumped twice freshman year because they caught him popping pills?”

From the corner of my eye, I see green, blue, white, and yellow, cruising downhill: the hoodies. Green Hood is doing some white-boy rapping, the latest song you can’t get away from, freestyling here and there, stupid stuff to make his crew laugh. He drags his heels, doing a slow drive-by past the enclosure, pointing to each girl, including Hazel, and a few of the boys, “What up, bitch—bitch—bitch—bitch—”

Bree’s sneaker meets his back wheel, hard. He swivels, almost spills. Planting his feet, he whips around to face us, just in time to see me laugh. Loud.

Bree stares back at him, her mouth a hard line that doesn’t quite qualify as a smile. “Aidan.” His name is a quiet, condescending dare, all of us waiting to see what he’ll do. “Be good. Or I’ll drive a stick so far in your spokes you’ll never get it out.”

Everybody’s seeing this, even middle schoolers. Eager eyes, laughter barely held behind bitten lips. Green Hood’s sophomore status, manhood, everything’s on the line. He’ll retaliate, has to, but instead, some intense, Jupiter-like gravity drags him back into the saddle. One final, inadequate, “Bitch,” and then he pedals off, low over the handlebars, his boys following at a distance, like maybe if they hang back, nobody will think they’re together.

Cloudburst of giggles and whispers. Sage watches the hoodies go. “Damn. He’s not going to do wheelies outside your house anymore.”

“I’ll live.” Bree looks at me, shrugs. “Aidan knows Sage goes out with Trace.”

“And he knows Trace will stomp his ass if he messes with us.” Sage finishes her breakfast, brushes off her mittens as the bus turns into the drive. “So. Think he killed himself? Gavin?”

Bree watches as the doors accordion open, the driver a stolid, humped shape swathed in a PDHS purple sateen baseball jacket. “I think he was killing himself for a long time.”

I have the closest thing to an in-school Kincaid sighting yet. I’m using the old bathroom in the math-science wing, a place that feels left over from some 1950s incarnation of PDHS: metal trough sink with rust stains; a long mirror flecked with corrosion. I study my reflection as I wash my hands; after days of rinse-and-repeat shampooing, my hair looks less Christmas Barf and more My Little Pony. In a month, I may reach Cotton Candy in a Drainage Ditch.

A teacher raises her voice in the hallway, followed by the unmistakable clack-rollll of a skateboard’s hard plastic wheels hitting the floor, heading in the direction of the steps down to the English wing and east exit. As I look over, a colorful distortion streams across the pebbled glass pane in the bathroom door; maybe the black, red, green, and yellow of a Baja backpack. Kincaid.

I’m there in an instant, staring out into a now empty hallway, dappled with echoes like rings on a pond. Moments later, there comes the distant sound of a door closing.

Old-man car is idling in the student lot as I’m swept outside in the rush after the final bell. A shave-and-a-haircut honk, flashing brights, wipers scraping over a dry windshield: Trace’s version of a subtle come-hither.

I glance over at my bus, where kids are piling on fast—there won’t be any empty seats left soon—then jog over to the car. Trace hangs his arm out the window, beating a rhythm against the door with his hand, saluting in the side-view as other upperclassmen honk their horns and pull around us, yelling insults. Sage leans across Trace’s lap, waving me in.

Giving Trace a suspicious look, I climb into the backseat, finding Bree, sitting with her feet pulled up to keep them clear of the fast-food takeout bags and soda bottles covering the floor. I fasten the heavy lap belt and settle back, looking at her across yards of tan upholstery. “You seem really far away.”

We laugh as Trace cuts off a Prius and guns out of the lot before we get stuck behind the buses. His eyes find me in the rearview mirror. “What’s it gonna be, Clarabelle? Ass, gas, or grass? Nobody rides for free.”

“I do,” says Bree.

“Yeah, but I’m scared of you.” He honks again, throwing his hand out the window as we pass a group of kids walking home. “Okay. Quickie mart first to pick up ‘the goods.’” He lets go of the wheel to do air quotes.

Sage snorts. “You are such a dork.”

“Yeah, but I’m the ‘only one’ who ‘has connections’ to ‘get the merchandise’—”

“Will you steer?” Bree waits until his hands are back at ten and two, then turns to me. “Sorry if we were downers this morning. With Gavin and everything.”

“Hey, I asked. Not like I was expecting warm fuzzies.”

“Damn it, you told her already?” Trace spins the search button on the radio, settles on some spit-spraying talk-show host having an aneurysm over tax hikes and the minimum wage. “I wanted to tell her.”

I watch the town flow by like a strip of drab ribbon as we turn onto a side street: brick post office; a Chinese restaurant called Song’s Banquet, with sagging green awnings and a gold dragon over the door; a gas station with old-school pumps that scroll gallons and cents past you like a one-armed bandit. Lots of empty shop windows, apartment buildings papered with For Rent signs. When a mill goes under, it takes everything: jobs, money for schools, community stuff. What you’re left with is this, a slow evacuation, people moving on, looking for anything better.

Trace pulls into the side lot of a run-down little convenience store on the far end of Main Street called D&M, parking beside a mud-splattered Blazer and saying under his breath, “Yesss. Owen. I heart you, bro.”

You can see the mill from here, a gigantic battleship-gray complex sprawling along the Penobscot, only a few telltale signs to hint that it’s closed: no smoke from the stacks, parking lot a quarter full. Dad’s in there somewhere, piling steel and rebar to be carried upriver by barge to a scrapyard. Not breathing asbestos. They wouldn’t let that happen. Somebody must check.

Trace gets into the Blazer’s backseat, emerging with a heavy paper bag. Catches us watching and does a Grinch tiptoe that gets even Bree laughing.

He stashes the bag in the trunk before thumping back into the driver’s seat, texting somebody as he says, “We get pulled over, they can’t search the vehicle without cause. So don’t flash your piece at ’em, Bree-Bree.”

She looks out the window. “As long as you hide the crack you’re obviously on.”

We pull back onto Main Street and hang a right. Sage glances at him. “Uh, babe? Where are we going?”

Trace starts whistling: loud, exactly on pitch, like somebody’s grandpa. The tune might even be “Moon River.”

“Perfect Street. Am I right?” When he slides Sage a sidelong look, she sighs, folding her arms. “There’s no point.”

“What? I want to take a nice drive through a nice neighborhood. Don’t you think that sounds nice?” But he’s distracted, focusing on our destination, what turns out to be a simple left onto an average street.

The sign actually reads Prefect Street—but it is perfect, a slice of small-town Americana, oozing white clapboards and lemonade porches and two-car garages. Everybody has real curtains—no bedsheets or towels tacked up to block the light like you sometimes see in the Terraces. We’re all hushed as Trace rolls along at five miles per. No reason to hurry; the street’s dead. A few mom-mobiles in driveways, most everybody else at their nine-to-fiver, I guess, their kids at football or soccer practice.

Sage presses the tip of her nose to the window. “I bet everybody here has a washer and dryer. No hauling laundry bags around.” Pause. “Bastards.”

“You know who lives on this street?” Trace, suddenly incensed. “That toolbox Spicer. Assface Spicer.”

“Good name,” I say. “‘I dub thee Assface.’”

“Freakin’ chumbait turned me in for putting plastic wrap over the locker room toilets and making Nick Humboldt piss on his new Jordans. Goddamn it.”

“Did you do it?” I say.

“Obviously. But he didn’t have to say anything.” A long silence, broken again by Trace: “See, now, that is wrong.”

We’ve come to a full stop in front of a house like the others, a small porch with rocking chairs, pots of mums. “You can’t put them out there naked.” He’s staring at the pumpkins on the steps, scraping his thumbnail musingly across his chin. “The whole point of pumpkins is making jack-o’-lanterns. The whole point of making jack-o’-lanterns is smashing them. What the hell’s the matter with these people?” He releases a pent-up breath. “I really want to steal one now.”

Sage glances over, checks his expression, looks back at the houses with a soft laugh. “Mumbler’s gonna get ya.”

“I’ll do it,” Bree says.

“The Mumbler”—Trace cups the back of Sage’s neck, rubs the muscles there—“would pin a medal on me.”

“I said, I’ll do it,” Bree says.

Trace locks eyes with her in the rearview. Bree unbuckles her seat belt, shoves the straps aside. Drawing six guns.

His gaze goes to the driveway: no car, but the garage door is closed. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s see it.”

Bree shoves her door open, sprints around the tailgate, up the steps, and grabs the first pumpkin she sees. A second’s hesitation, then she bundles the other four into her arms, a huge load she can barely see over, almost dropping them as she runs for the car.

I make room so she can spill into the backseat, pumpkins tumbling all over the floor as Trace stomps the gas and we sail off down the street, cab full of our disbelieving laughter. Bree’s pretty like I’ve never seen her, laughing so hard she can’t breathe, released.