UNSURPRISINGLY, ELDER MARIAH WASN’T HOME by curfew, and Brady and Cole left for the quarry unimpeded. And even though they both agreed that there wasn’t much Reynold and Wayne could, or would, do to enforce the curfew (“They’ve got better things to do,” Brady had said), they still took the path through Blackwood Forest. There wouldn’t be any adults there to catch them, and it was a shortcut. The woods were quiet. Cole’s compulsive pill-bottle touching became more obvious, despite the fact that there were only two pills making a shy, rattling sound.
“What’s in your pocket?” Brady tapped the outside of Cole’s hand.
“Huh?” Cole tried coolly to move his hand away, shoving it deeper in his pocket.
“You keep touching your pant pocket, like, all the time,” Brady said.
“Oh.” Cole skipped the ruminations (Thank God, one can only take so much ruminating, am I right?) about whether to tell Brady or not, and pulled out the medication. He handed it to Brady.
Brady held it up and tried to read the label. “You’re running low, my friend.”
“Yeah. Kind of left home in a hurry.”
“What is this? Anxiety meds?”
“Good eye.” Cole took the bottle back, returning it to his pocket.
“You okay?” Brady gave Cole a quick pat on the back.
“Kind of the product of seeing all your friends burned alive.” Cole stared deep into Blackwood Forest as though he was staring at the flames right now.
“I never really considered that you saw all that. Maybe because I didn’t want to consider it,” Brady said.
“It still feels like yesterday,” Cole said.
They kept walking. They made their way down the path that had been beaten by young feet making the same journey they were now on.
“My therapist says, since it’s kind of out in the open now, she says that having anxiety is like having a cold. That you have to treat it with meds sometimes, like when you’re sick,” Cole said.
“Makes sense,” Brady said.
“But I still feel weak. I feel like I should just be strong,” Cole said.
“I mean,” Brady said, “you did lift a wall.”
“Pre anxiety,” Cole pointed out.
“And crushed a doorknob,” Brady said.
“You saw that?”
“I saw that.”
In a way, Cole felt relieved. One less secret to keep from Brady. There was no point in keeping anything from him. He was going to figure it out eventually. But (before Choch interrupts again…) that didn’t mean Cole was actually going to tell Brady about the spirit being. It all just seemed inevitable and, Cole thought, if Brady figured it out on his own, then there would be no rules broken. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“Like you said, I’ve got a good eye,” Brady said.
“Anyway,” Cole said, “as much as I hate taking the meds, it’s funny because it does give me one good memory. Just taking pills, I guess. So, when I was a kid, every morning, my dad made me breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast. Like, lard on the toast, straight-up. He made the best breakfasts ever. I think because he was making the breakfasts.”
“Same. As shitty as my parents were…are…I still remember Mom’s oatmeal. Brown sugar, milk, slivered almonds. Just the simplest thing, but it tasted so good.”
“Right, so I remember that, the breakfast. But what I really remember is that he always gave me vitamins. Every morning. He had them lined up, right beside my orange juice. And he made me eat them all, one by one. I hated them, except the flavoured ones. The Flintstones ones. But when I didn’t get them anymore, when he died, Mom never knew where they were, or that he was even giving them to me at all. I missed them. Even the gross ones.”
“You missed your dad,” Brady said. “Not the vitamins.”
They could see light in the distance—an orange glow. With the trees in front of them beginning to thin out, it looked like picture frames around a sunset.
“It kills me that I never knew what happened to him over there at the research facility, just that they closed it. That’s it. Locked him and that woman in there forever,” Cole said. “Mom never gave me details. Nothing. Maybe she never knew anything anyway. And it’s right there when I got here, still just like it was. It feels like it’s taunting me or something.”
“It’s like the fire, I think,” Brady said. “It’ll always be this cloud hanging over us all.”
“I think we’ve got like a thunderstorm hanging over us, never mind.”
“The thunderstorm to end all thunderstorms.”
When Brady and Cole came out of Blackwood Forest close to the quarry, the gathering had already started. From what Ashley had told Cole, this seemed pretty much like a typical bush party (Ashley used to call them “shakers”). At either side of the gathering, there was the community and Blackwood Forest. In front of the kids there was a lake, if you could call it that. Kids skinny-dipped in it at the shakers, and people used it as a beach during the day—with clothes on. Across the water, maybe a hundred metres away, was a cliff. The cliff was about ten metres high. Very brave (or very stupid) kids had been known to climb the slope in Blackwood Forest and jump off. Ashley’s text descriptions of the shakers were of a mountain of teenagers by the water, a huge bonfire, a bunch of booze, music blaring from speakers, the aforementioned skinny-dipping, dancing and, later in the night, kids making out. Tonight, everybody was fully clothed, and it was too early to tell if anybody was going to make out.
“I guess you were right about why kids were going to come tonight,” Cole said.
“Yep. A bush party is a bush party.”
Cole didn’t see Eva or Michael, which was kind of annoying since Eva had told Cole to come. But then again, Michael had lost his sister. Maybe it was too much for him to be there and, well, like it or not, Eva was Michael’s girlfriend. She was going to stay with him. She should stay with him.
Cole thought he saw a bunch of kids throwing around pieces of burning wood, out of the sheer dumbness of youth mixed with alcohol. But, as he got closer, he saw that it was Jayne dancing around the bonfire, and in and out of the crowd. Funny to see a ghost dancing to Kendrick Lamar. She only stopped when she saw Cole and came running over to him with her arms outstretched. Cole recoiled a bit, covering his torso with his arms. Just before she got to him she screeched sadly to a stop.
“Oh,” she said. “Right.”
He mouthed “sorry” to her and smiled. The smile was enough for her. She smiled back broadly, and went off to continue dancing. Cole liked to see her dance. He kept his eyes on her throughout the night, the little dancing flame, a special performance just for him.
Soon after he and Brady had arrived, Cole found himself sitting on a rock, out of the way, and a comfortable distance from the fire. Brady had been drawn away, and was having trouble making his way back over to Cole. Brady had become the subject of the teenagers’ sympathy.
Both Cole and Brady were surprised to learn some people knew about Brady and Ashley. Brady was surprised, too, that those same kids respected them enough not to make a big deal out of it. They just left Brady and Ashley alone.
“I guess it shouldn’t really be a surprise,” Brady said when he was able to get close to Cole and shake off the crowd for a moment. “You can’t really keep a secret in Wounded Sky.”
Except for who caused school fires or lab accidents or killed teenagers, Cole thought. Instead, he nodded, agreeing with Brady.
“Are you okay?” Brady asked.
“Honestly, I kind of like the anonymity right now,” Cole said.
“This might be the first time I’m jealous of you,” Brady said.
“What, are you saying you’d rather not be a social pariah?” Cole said, dripping with sarcasm.
“No, but a hermit? Well then—”
And just like that, Brady was sucked back into the crowd. Cole returned to watching Jayne and, seeing this, she made a point of dancing around Cole in a circle every few minutes. She smiled at him, and tried to make him smile. Even though he didn’t feel like it, he smiled back because he couldn’t stand making her sad. She knew others couldn’t see her, but she pretended like they could. She danced by them, too, smiled at them, and imagined that they smiled back.
Cole watched the reactions Jayne pretended to get out of people. A teenager laughed at just the same time Jayne danced around her. Jayne was overjoyed, believing the illusion that she had made somebody happy. A girl’s long hair swayed slightly when Jayne fingers, moving in dance, came close. The powdery gravel on the ground, like sand, shifted under Jayne’s feet. The odd stone or twig moved if she kicked at it with her steps. Cole swore he saw a beer bottle tip to the side when Jayne’s dress, mid-twirl, whipped against the glass. Cole remembered when he’d first seen her: she’d kicked at a pebble, and it had skipped along the ground.
Could it be that while nobody can see her, Cole wondered, she still has some connection with the physical world?
Interrupting this thought, and quite unexpectedly, Maggie, sans Tristan, sat down in a huff beside Cole. She had a beer in her hand and took a long, angry swig from it before throwing it into the fire. She narrowly missed Tristan’s head.
“Whoa, you guys fighting again?” He remembered the bickering he’d heard from them at The Fish, before Tristan had wanted to beat the shit out of Cole a second time.
“You could say that.” Maggie reached down and grabbed another bottle by her feet.
“We’re either fucking or fighting. It’s goddamn true love,” Maggie said.
“T-M-I, Maggie,” Cole said.
“You kind of brought it up.” Another swig, then she cocked the bottle back, ready to throw it. Cole reached across, grabbed her arm, and lowered it as gently as he could.
“What’re you doing?” Maggie’s words were slurring a bit. Cole kept his hand on hers until her grip loosened and the bottle dropped, then he let go.
“I think we’ve lost enough people for now, don’t you?”
“Oh, he’d just have got concussed is all. He gets concussed like every other month.” Maggie shook her head. “God, you’re so dramatic.”
She slumped down and rested her elbows on her knees. Maggie was older than Cole—grade six, maybe?—but still had been in the same school. Grade six was where all the cool people were. Well, to be fair, anybody a grade above was cool to the grade below. Now, two or three grades above? The coolest of the cool. That was Maggie. If Wounded Sky Elementary were a rom-com Hollywood movie, Maggie Green was the popular girl that everybody liked and looked up to and wanted to be around. Tristan had been the luckiest boy in the school because he was her boyfriend. Evidently, that relationship hadn’t changed. Only, the girl sitting beside Cole on the rock, slumped over, dejected, wasn’t the girl Cole remembered from high school.
“What happened?” Cole asked.
Maggie didn’t answer at first, and Cole wasn’t going anywhere, so he waited. To cheer Maggie up, Jayne danced around Cole and Maggie’s rock. Jayne looked upset when Maggie didn’t smile. Cole whispered, “It’s okay,” to her. Nobody heard him. Jayne stuck both of her thumbs in the air and continued on her way. She did look back at them from time to time, when Maggie raised her head, concerned at how sad she looked.
“Why do you care what happened?” Maggie asked Cole.
Cole shrugged. “Honestly, it’s nice to just talk to somebody about something different. I mean, it’s not nice you’re upset, but…”
“You’re going through shit,” Maggie said.
“Yeah, but we kind of all are, aren’t we?”
“Okay, fine. Here it is, if you really don’t mind.”
“I don’t, for real.”
“Alright, you asked for it.” Maggie motioned over to Tristan. Her long-time boyfriend was sitting on a rock about twenty feet away from them. He was in front of the fire, and intentionally not looking around for her. In Cole’s opinion, Tristan was stewing. “I’ve been with him for years. Probably since we were in grade four. I remember necking with him under the play structure at recess, when the school was still—” she stopped there for a moment, as though she’d said something taboo. Then she continued, skipping over any mention of the word school again “—anyway, or in the closet at the back of our class…do you remember those closets?”
“Yeah, we used to hide from the teacher in there. I never made out with anybody in there, though.”
“Never?” Maggie asked.
“I was seven.”
“Right, yeah. So, those closets…” she said distantly. She looked into the fire, looked at Cole. “He’s all I’ve ever known, know what I mean? And same for him. It’s all been me, Maggie all-the-way. Sometimes I think because of that, he thinks he kind of owns me, like I’m his property. I’m tired of him thinking that. And then we fight…” she sounded tired now, as though talking about it was as exhausting as going through the routine that she was describing. “Then he drinks, then he becomes a total asshat. Then we make up, and do it all over again.”
“And you’re tired of the making-up part of it?”
“Yeah, for sure I’m tired of that, but really I’m tired of all of it,” Maggie said. “I think I’m just ready to move on.”
“Change is good.”
“I mean—” she seemed comfortable to rant about it all now. “Can you imagine being told to do something, when you didn’t want to? To feel like you have no choice in the matter? And you think to yourself, ‘Why am I even doing this? What’s the damn point?’ Can you imagine going through that crap?”
“No,” Cole said. “Not at all. That would totally suck.”
Jayne was dancing close to them. Noticing what she could do when he’d first arrived, and tonight, moving things as though she were physically real, gave Cole an idea.
“Speaking of which, I better get back. He’s pretending not to look for me, but he’s totally looking for me,” Maggie said.
“Sure.” Cole subtly tried to wave Jayne over while Maggie was still there. To Maggie, it must’ve looked like he was shooing away an insect or flecks of ash from the fire.
“You know, you’re okay, city,” Maggie said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.” Maggie left, and Cole watched her shimmy through the crowd to stand with Tristan. She put her hand on his shoulder. Tristan turned around briefly, saw her, and nodded an acknowledgement that she was there. A bunch of beer bottles were placed behind him. Some empty, some half empty. Most kids were placing their drinks there when they were done with them. The collection was rather impressive, and the bottles all shone with their own brand of prettiness in the glow of the bonfire.
With Maggie gone, Cole could act as weird as he wanted. Nobody was watching him, anyway. He waved Jayne down more animatedly, even called her name over the noise of the teens and the music. “Jayney!” Finally, Jayne perked up and looked in his direction, then came running over to him.
“Hey, Coley! You’re talkin’ to me?”
“I’m talking to you,” he said. “Listen, do you want to help me do a magic trick? It’ll make people really happy.”
“Magic!?” Jayne shouted, her flames growing brighter and higher.
“Magic!”
“Do I!?” Jayne jumped up and down.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he whispered, leaning in and reciting the whole plan quiet enough that only she could hear. When he was done, she had a mischievous smile on her face. She covered her mouth with both hands and snickered.
“Coley!” she said with mock disbelief. “No!”
“Yep. Do you think you can do it?” Cole asked.
She nodded vehemently.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I bet you can’t.”
“I so can!” She turned away from him, sneaked up to where Maggie and Tristan were, again as though everybody could see and hear her. She looked back to Cole, hands over her mouth.
“Do it.”
Jayne took a deep breath, and swatted her arm all the way across the discarded bottles. To Cole’s surprise, her arm knocked against all the bottles and they tumbled off the rock, onto Tristan, like bowling pins. Beer and coolers spilled all over Tristan. Cole hadn’t been sure if it would work. He’d half-expected her arm to go straight through the bottles, and that would be all. Tristan stood up. His head darted back and forth. Jayne was standing right beside him, of course, laughing and pointing at the dark splotches on Tristan’s pants. The only person near Tristan was Maggie. He turned to her, and motioned to all the wetness like it wasn’t painfully obvious.
“Mags, what the hell!?”
Maggie couldn’t help but have a smile on her face. “That wasn’t me.”
Tristan looked and motioned around to show her that nobody else was near them. “You’re so full of crap!”
Maggie’s smile vanished. A defiant scowl replaced it. “It wasn’t me! You know, Tristan, not everything is my fault. Like when you forget your phone on my dresser, or you forget your wallet on my bed, or you forget your jock before the game, like you need that anyway.”
The crowd collectively Ooohed at the burn.
Maggie continued the onslaught. “Maybe you’re just forgetful, Tristan! Did you ever think of that? And maybe you just knocked over the bottles with your stupid little pancake ass.”
“Mag Pie…” Tristan’s tone changed in an instant, from angry to pleading. He and everybody else saw what was coming, and nobody could to stop it. Cole, for his part, felt a bit like a real live damn hero for a moment. This was what Maggie had seemed to want anyway, was it not?
“Don’t Mag Pie me. Don’t Mags me. Just don’t,” Maggie said. “We’re done.”
“What? We can’t be done,” Tristan cried. “It’s us, Mag…Maggie. Please!”
By then, Maggie had brushed past Tristan and was walking away. Without turning around, she said, “If you wouldn’t mind forgetting one last thing, try my phone number.”
Cole watched from his solitary rock as Maggie walked through the stunned crowd and made her way home through the shortcut that Brady and Cole had used. She walked across the quarry, up the slight embankment towards Blackwood Forest, then into the woods. Moments later, Tristan stormed off. “What the fuck is everybody looking at!?” He went the opposite way from Maggie, towards the community.
“What’s going on here?”
Eva was standing behind Cole’s rock, Michael at her side.
“Drama.” Cole got up and greeted the couple.
“Holy jeez, right?” Brady joined them. “Tristan totally looked like he pissed himself.”
“That’s the Wounded Sky power couple,” Eva said.
“Not anymore,” Cole said, a little too proudly.
Michael hadn’t said anything. He was just standing there, head down, trying to avoid the kind of attention that Brady had received throughout the night.
“How are you doing, Mike?” Cole asked. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m doing,” Michael said. “That’s all I got right now.”
“Yeah, sorry we’re late. It was…tough getting out,” Eva said.
“You didn’t even have to come, you guys,” Brady said.
“Break it up, everybody!” Employees of Reynold’s security company descended on the crowd of teenagers, surrounding them. It all seemed a bit overdone. The quarry was an enclosed space. There was nowhere to run. There was even a security guard up on the cliff, shining a bright, industrial light down on the teens. To complete the dramatic effect, he also had a megaphone. While other guards were behind the teens on the ground, and within shouting (even talking) distance, it was the security personnel on the cliff overlooking the water who bellowed out: “Attention! You are all in violation of Wounded Sky’s curfew, set at 20:00 hours. You are instructed to return to your homes immediately!”
The security team moved into the crowd, hands on clubs and flashlights, to manually disperse the kids. There wasn’t much resistance. Cole, Brady, Eva, and Michael exchanged looks.
“Guess we shouldn’t have come at all.” Eva took Michael’s hand, ready to lead him out of the quarry.
“I guess it’s camp time?” Brady asked Cole.
“Why don’t you go back home?” Cole put a hand on Brady’s shoulder.
“You don’t want me to…” Brady started.
“Nah. You’ve got a lot going on. I can do it.”
Cole could see the exhaustion in Brady’s face. It was the same look on most everybody’s face.
“Sure, okay.”
Teens started to file out of the area in neat little rows, as directed by security. It was a bit of a pathetic sight, all the kids walking together, step by step, the flashlight still shining down on them, like a scene from a zombie movie. Brady went to join the masses. Eva and Michael left as well. Cole turned to go his own way, towards Blackwood Forest, but he was shoved from behind. He stumbled forward a few steps, and then he turned around.
“City. Fancy seeing you here,” Mark said.
“Hello, Mark,” Cole groaned.
“You’re not going the right way, you know.”
Cole looked Mark over. He was dressed in jeans, a black hoodie, and sneakers. Civilian clothes. He wasn’t part of the security team.
“I’ll go where I want. You don’t even work for Reynold. You were fired, remember? For messing with me.”
“You better be careful, kid. There’s a killer on the loose,” Mark said.
“I’ll be fine.” Cole tried to leave again. Mark shoved him a second time, but Cole didn’t move. “What’s your problem, man?”
“You’re my problem. See, I may have been fired, but I’m still looking out for my community.”
Some teens who were heading out had stopped by now and started gathering around Cole and Mark.
“Yeah? How’s that?” Cole asked.
“How about we start with you telling your buddy, Michael, where you were last night?” Mark said.
“What?” Cole stepped backwards, like a delayed reaction from the second shove.
“I’m sorry, was I not speaking English?” Mark asked. He went over to Michael and led him to the middle of the ever-growing circle.
“You really need to lay off him, Mark,” Michael said.
“Ask Cole where he was last night.”
“What’s your deal?” Michael tried to walk away. Mark stopped him. He was getting good at stopping kids from leaving. Hands to shoulders, Mark led him back, positioning him right in front of Cole.
“Go on, ask him,” Mark prompted.
Michael rolled his eyes, looked at Cole. “Sorry, Cole. Where were you last night?” Michael asked.
Cole didn’t say anything. He just stood there, staring at Michael, and picturing Alex.
“Well, go on, city. Tell your friend where you were!” Mark said.
“Cole?” Michael said.
“I…”
“What’s going on, Cole?” Eva asked from the front of the crowd.
“Cat got your tongue?” Mark started to pace around the perimeter of the crowd. “You know, ever since I got fired, thanks to city boy here, I have a lot of time on my hands. I walk around a lot. All around Wounded Sky. It’s amazing what you see, walking all around Wounded Sky.”
“Enough!” Cole said.
“What the hell is he talking about, Cole?” Michael asked.
“I was with—”
“—Alex last night,” Mark finished for Cole. “Bingo! He walked her home, kissed her goodnight.”
“You didn’t…” Michael stepped up even closer to Cole.
“It was dark out. I just wanted her to be safe, I…” Cole said.
“So city boy here,” Mark stood right beside Cole and Michael, “was there when Ashley got killed, and was there when Alex got killed. Who, by the way, also got shot through her bedroom window. Same M.O.”
“Did you kill her?” Michael whispered to Cole.
“Mike, how could you ask that?” Cole asked.
“Where there’s smoke there’s fire, Michael,” Mark said.
“You said we were friends,” Michael said. “I asked if we were…”
“We are!” Cole said. “That’s why you can’t believe this.”
“Cole,” Brady said, stepping in. “Tell me this isn’t why you didn’t want me to come tonight. You didn’t do this, right?”
“Brady, come on. You can’t think I did any of this,” Cole said.
“You sure have a lot of secrets, Cole. I just…I don’t know what to think anymore,” Brady said. “Just tell me you didn’t. Tell me you couldn’t have.”
“But he was there, Brady. He admitted it,” Mark said. “Ashley’s blood was all over him, wasn’t it?”
“Ashley was your boyfriend, Brady,” Michael said. “Alex was my sister.”
“We wouldn’t even be here without him,” Eva said, but it didn’t sound like she was really defending him. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
“But Alex would be here!” Michael charged at Cole and pushed him as hard as he could, both hands against Cole’s chest. Cole didn’t budge. Instead, Michael fell backwards as though he’d been pushed. He slammed his head against the ground.
“Michael!” Eva ran to him. He was out cold. She knelt at his side and propped his head up. She looked up at Cole. “Who are you!?”
“He came at me,” Cole said.
Mark stepped in front of Cole, getting right up in his face. Their noses were almost touching.
“What?” Mark said, “You gonna kill him too, Harper?”
“I didn’t kill anybody!” Cole said.
“Why else would you be here?” Mark asked. “The moment you came back, people started dying.” Mark surveyed the crowd. “Come on, people, do the math! This asshole let how many of us die ten years ago, and now he’s doing it all over again!”
“I came back to save people, not kill them!” Before Cole even knew what he was doing, he thrust forward with one fist and connected with Mark’s stomach. Mark flew through the air and skidded along the ground, knocking a few teenagers over in the process. The teens gasped. Mark tried to get up, but stumbled back to the ground holding his stomach.
“Is this part of the saving?” Mark asked. “Kicking everybody’s ass?”
Cole looked at Michael and Eva on the ground. Eva wouldn’t even look at Cole. Michael was still unconscious. Then, Cole locked eyes with Brady, tried to see something in there—that Brady didn’t really think Cole had killed anybody, but all he saw was confusion, and that was enough.
“I’m sorry,” he said. To Brady. To Eva. To Michael. To everybody.
He turned to leave.
“We’re not done,” Mark said. “Not by a long shot.”
“You may not be, but I am.”