MOM IS BUSY THE REST OF THE DAY HELPING TO GET the newcomers settled, and I am left to my own devices. Normally, this is the way I like things. But I have this jingling, jangling feeling that keeps me pacing the front porch, while I wait for her and Wills to come strolling up the street hand in hand.
If they were to appear right now, I could grab Wills and start tickling him, which he loves. He’d fall to the floor, begging me to tickle him more, until suddenly it would be too much and he’d start to cry. Sometimes I don’t notice at first. Screams of delight sound a lot like screams of discomfort. Mom and I would get in a fight. She’d say I’m too rough with him. I’d say she babies him. We’d scream at each other because sometimes it just feels good to scream, and Wills would watch us the whole time with eyes that are big and round and worried. Eventually, we’d forget what we were even fighting about—or I would anyway—and both stomp off to our respective corners, making sure to slam doors behind us. With any luck, I’d be exhausted and fall asleep quickly. It’s an ugly but efficient way to use up the last scraps of an endless day.
But Mom and Wills do not appear, and I am stuck with the cassette recorder in my hand. I stare at the thing, wanting to hurl it at the big oak in the center of our front yard. Instead, I pull out the tape. I RAN (SO FAR AWAY) is written in round script on the sticker across the front of the tape. It’s one of Mom’s old mix tapes from before she came to Gardnerville. When we were kids, Piper and I used to record over them, filling them with tales of our daily adventures.
The last few months, though, I’ve been coming to after a forgotten day to find the recorder in my hand. The few times I’ve been brave enough to rewind and play it, I hear my own voice. Not my little kid voice. My current, teenage voice—gravelly and sleepy sounding from too many forget-me-nots.
I never listen for more than a few minutes because I am afraid of what I will say. What I will reveal. I keep putting the recorder back into Piper’s room—beside the piles of tapes on her dresser that should be dusty from sitting there untouched for so many years. No matter how many times I put it back, it keeps turning up again. Today I found it between the couch cushions.
Popping the tape back into the recorder, I take a deep breath and press Play.
The tape hisses and there is a snippet of song, but that cuts out and is replaced by my own voice speaking slowly, yet sincerely. “I can’t forget you, Piper. But sometimes, I can’t really remember you either.”
The recorder falls from my hand and goes silent. My whole body is shaking and I’m not even sure why. I don’t want to know.
I have a terrible suspicion that this is the fourth-year madness finding me. It strikes those between ten and nineteen years of age, but fourteen through eighteen is the sweet spot—we’re the ones who seem to feel it the most.
It’s an itch. An energy. Even the most obedient children can’t stop from sneaking out of their locked-up houses, looking for trouble. Every hurt, every slight, every heartache, and every defeat is magnified by twenty during a first year. By the time you get to the fourth year, it’s magnified by a million. Something that might have been shrugged off, instead festers. During a first year you might stop talking to your best friend; during a fourth year you might kill him or her. And for no real reason at all. In a fourth year people kill themselves and each other based on gut feelings, which the next day turn out to be nothing but a bad bowl of soup they’d had for dinner.
Of course, they always regret it. Almost immediately, even though it’s too late by then. Killing your peers is frowned upon in Gardnerville, the same way it is everywhere else. And so crime is followed by punishment—or reform, as we like to call it. That sounds more altruistic, and hides the truth by letting us pretend that the reformatory is healing the people it holds. It’s a lie every person in this town tells themselves. If the people of Gardner-ville didn’t believe this, then they’d have to admit they’ve made a deal with the devil. No sickness, no disease, none of the usual deterioration of the mind and body that usually comes with advanced age. These are the perks of living in Gardnerville, but they do not come for free.
When Dad was feeling big and effusive and proud he would tell us, “The good health we share all springs from the good earth of Gardnerville. The very dirt we walk upon fuels us.” Dad was a one-half-of-the-story type of person, so he never mentioned why it was that no matter how many people drew strength from the land, it never ran dry. Like everyone else, he didn’t talk about the troubled teens sent to the reformatory who came home hollowed-out husks, everything inside them leeched away. Their vigor. Their youth. Their joy. Their loss was everyone else’s gain. But the earth absorbed their resentment, despair, and rage as well. Those heavier feelings sank deeper into the soil, creeping down from the reformatory and slowly penetrating every inch of Gardnerville, until it found a fresh victim to fill with sudden power and fury. Every year the dark power infesting teens grew stronger and stronger—until in a fourth year the explosions were catastrophic and inevitable.
“It’s a totally messed-up system,” Elton had said, years ago when Piper first explained the cycle to him. She was already half in love with him by then, but this sealed the deal. She thought they were on the same page, that he believed, as she did, that a broken system needed to be destroyed. It wasn’t until much later—too late—that she realized how wrong she’d been. Elton had no interest in destruction, but rather in exploitation. The biggest problem with Gardnerville, as he saw it, was that we were “closing the barn door after the horse already bolted.” He thought people needed to be locked away before they did something terrible, instead of after. Typical newcomer point of view. A simplistic solution to something bigger than they could even begin to comprehend.
I stomp a foot on the porch and push Elton out of my thoughts. It’s bad enough that I have to deal with him in real life; there’s no need for him to be taking up the increasingly limited space in my head as well.
Crouching down, I pick the recorder off the ground. The taped-on battery door came loose upon impact. I push the batteries back into place and then smooth the tape back down. It would be smarter to pull the batteries out and disable the damn thing. Or else suck it up and just listen to the damn tape. Minutes pass as I stand frozen, weighing my options. Who knows how long I might’ve stood there lost in uncertainty if Elton’s Prius hadn’t at that moment crested the hill and rolled into view.
It’s not exactly a reprieve—more like trading one type of trouble for another. At least this is a type of trouble I’m familiar with. I shove the recorder into my front pocket and then, making it clear that I’m in no hurry, stroll to the end of the driveway, where Elton’s car is waiting.
His window slides down. “Get in,” he says.
I lean forward to peer inside. As I suspected, Foote is sitting shotgun. Straightening, I take a step back. “I’d rather not.”
“Always so difficult,” Elton says, directing his comment to Foote.
I’ll give Foote this: he’s not like Elton’s other stooges. Instead of laughing or eagerly nodding in agreement, Foote just shrugs. “Can’t blame her,” he replies, so softly I almost miss it.
The tips of Elton’s ears go red. It’s his tell. Has been since the day I met him. “Get in or I’m cutting you off.” He growls the words at me.
I get in.
Elton laughs ’cause he’s a dick and a sore winner. He knows those damn pills are the only thing holding me together. He hands me a bottle of water with a faintly pink tint. I don’t want to drink it, but refusing to do so would only draw this whole thing out even longer. Twisting the cap off, I put the bottle to my mouth and tilt my head back. It has a faintly floral taste, reminiscent of the monstrous burps that plague me the day after a forget-me-not bender. My one small act of defiance is to fling the empty bottle at the back of Elton’s head. I miss and it bounces off Foote’s oversized skull instead.
Then there is nothing to do but stare out the window as the Prius slinks through town, searching for prey.
We begin by driving down the familiar streets that make up the nicest neighborhoods of Gardnerville. The house I grew up in is among these, and yet I almost have trouble recognizing the place. It’s not that anything looks all that different. Maybe the yards are tended a bit better than usual. And windows that would normally be tightly closed are wide open, trying to catch a breeze. But those are small and barely noticeable things. Really it’s the feeling of Gardnerville that is off. The fear, the tension—the constant strain of wondering who and where and when—is gone.
It’s Elton’s doing. He knows it too; his puffed-up pride fills the car as he surveys the changes.
Idiot. You’d think he would’ve learned his lesson about playing with fire after the way things turned out with Piper. But if anything, that only redoubled his ambition.
Still, even I have to admit that on the surface his two-part plan seems to cover all the bases.
Part one: drug everyone. He started slowly, about four years ago after he discovered the quints’ genius for turning wildflowers into mind-altering substances. Scarlet runners, forget-me-nots, foxgloves. Each pill catered to a different part of the high school population. But that wasn’t enough; too many teenagers were slipping through the cracks. So the sunflowers were invented. Instead of selling these like the rest, creating an artificial demand by only releasing one batch of pills a week, he started giving them away without anyone ever realizing it. For almost two years now he’s been putting them in the water supply. With the heat wave we’ve been going through this summer, everyone is guzzling water, and now most people in town are so calm that they’re nearly comatose.
But even all those drugs aren’t enough to keep the bad stuff from bubbling up. Not during a fourth year anyway. That’s part two and that’s where I come in. Elton uses me to identify “troublemakers”—as he likes to call them—before they “act out.”
My eyelids grow heavy from whatever the quints put in that bottle of water. Drawing in a ragged breath, I can feel my defenses crumbling. Secrets begin to trickle in, and then it’s a flood crashing over me. They flow out of the houses around us, a steady stream of thoughts and desires. I drown in hidden sins and sorrows. Why aren’t more secrets made up of joyful things like surprise parties and newborn babies? Those secrets run through me like cotton candy, sweet and airy and insubstantial. The others are sticky like spiderwebs—they cling no matter how you try to pull them away.
Closing my eyes, I begin the process of sorting through the secrets, separating them into individual threads. I swallow back a laugh and squint my eyes open to peer at the back of Elton’s head while I hold one of his secrets. Such hubris, for him to believe that his secrets are safe from me. The quints told him that if he lined his “just one of the boys” baseball cap with aluminum foil, it would keep me out of his head. They must have known it was nonsense, which means they don’t like Elton. That is a secret with potential future power and I try to shove it deep into my gray matter, so it doesn’t dissipate the way the rest of the secrets will when this little car ride is over and Elton gives me a forget-me-not as payment.
My gaze shifts sideways, toward Foote. His expression in profile is severe, almost as if he is angry about something. I wonder what that might be and, without even thinking about it, reach out to take his secrets too.
Take them. A voice inside me whispers. Take all their secrets. Strip them bare and leave them hollow. It almost sounds like Piper. Except this voice is furious, calm, and conniving all at the same time. It’s ugly in a way that Piper never could have been. Still I can’t help but listen to it.
Take them, it says again. And this time, I consider it.
Foote’s head swivels around and his eyes meet mine.
One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand.
I blink and look away, out the window, pretending to study the shops on Main Street but still seeing Foote’s incredible blue eyes. I might once have compared them to blue pools of water, thinking of how I could plunge into them and dive straight to the bottom to find all sorts of sunken treasure. Now, though, they are more like ice, and all his hidden thoughts are frozen inside.
I hope my own thoughts are similarly locked away, because I’d hate for anyone to know about that whispery voice inside my head. I’d hate for them to suspect, as I now do, that it might be the fourth-year madness speaking to me, leading me toward disaster. If Elton had even an inkling of such a thing he’d have me guzzling gallons of sunflower water, or even worse—he’d send me straight to the reformatory.
Maybe I just imagined it. I comfort myself with the thought. Maybe it’s this damn pink water making me crazy.
Honestly, I don’t care what the voice was; I just want it to go away. I want everything to go away and I need a fucking pill to make it happen. But Elton’s not gonna pay up until he gets something out of this little ride. So I turn my attention outward again, trying to hunt down some sort of secret that will satisfy him.
Luckily, a new secret comes to tickle my nose. I follow its trail to a boy heading up the steps of Milly’s front porch. His name escapes me, but I recognize him from school. He might even be in my class. Starving. The secret screams.
Lord knows Milly makes the best pies on the planet, but this boy’s reaction is extreme.
“Him.” The drug makes my throat so dry that the word gets stuck. Giving up on speech, I reach forward to tap Elton’s shoulder and to begin a chain of events that will end with that starving boy getting a one-way ticket to the reformatory and me taking a pill that will help me forget it ever happened. Better him than me, I tell myself the way I always do. Today, after hearing that whispery voice, it feels like more of a betrayal than ever.
But before I can alert Elton, I am thrown back against my seat and then jerked forward again, as the car screeches to a stop.
“Holy shit, you almost hit her,” Foote says.
“She threw herself at the car,” Elton spits back.
I look through the front windshield in time to see the object of their discussion climb onto the hood of the Prius. She deftly slides forward and begins to pound her fists against the glass.
“Cowards. Backstabbers. Traitors,” she screams. I hardly hear her, though, because while the windshield keeps her taunts at a safe distance, her secret slides right through it with ease.
And it is unlike any secret I’ve heard before, because it sounds like something Piper would say as it loudly declares, It’s time, Pollywog. It’s time.
I gasp, but my dry throat interferes again, turning it into a choking sound.
As if it’s a signal, the girl’s eyes meet mine. And for an instant I could swear it is Piper staring at me. Then the girl is scrambling off the car and into an alleyway, where she disappears from view.
“What did you see?” Elton turns around in his seat and fixes me with what he thinks is a piercing gaze.
I clear my throat and then lie easily. “Nothing. She just got released from the reformatory, right? There’s nothing left in there. Nothing that makes sense anyway.”
Elton takes his time thinking this over, letting me sweat. Finally, he nods. “You know Jonathan, right?” he asks. He knows damn well that I do. Jonathan is another one of Elton’s henchmen. He’s in charge of selling the quints’ pills, and I am one of his most regular customers. “That’s his sister, LuAnn. She got out of the reformatory a few weeks ago.”
LuAnn. Now I know why the face seemed vaguely familiar. Eight years ago she nearly killed Piper.
“Jonathan mentioned they’ve been having trouble with her. After that many years inside, you’d think she’d be bedridden, but she gets these manic bursts of energy. Disappears for hours. I should go after her, make sure she gets home okay.” Elton scrubs a palm over his face, suddenly looking less evil and conniving and simply tired and human.
Sometimes I am so used to hating Elton, I forget that the rest of Gardnerville sees him as a hero. After he and Piper had their infamous last rendezvous on the trestle bridge, and he traded in his flesh-and-blood legs for metal ones, Elton started giving speeches about how Gardnerville needed to change. Then he went one step further and told people he knew how to make those changes happen. He promised the people of Gardnerville what they’d always dreamed of: health, long life, and freedom from fear. Four years later he’s gone from being a high school teacher to practically running the whole damn town. People act like he’s the answer to their prayers, and as long as he keeps delivering on his promises, nobody really cares how he does it.
Sometimes this makes me remember him the way that Piper used to see him, the way she used to love him.
But then Elton ruins it by chucking a plastic Baggie at me. It holds one tiny purple pill.
“Try to wait until you’re home or somewhere safe before you take it.”
Elton is right, I should wait, but between the fourth-year whisper and the run-in with LuAnn I am desperate for the forget-me-not’s unique brand of oblivion. I open the bag, shake the pill into my mouth, and smile sweetly. “Haven’t you heard, Elton? Thanks to you, Gardnerville is now one of the safest places in the world.”
With that parting shot, I push the door open and climb out of the car. I don’t make it very far before Foote shows up beside me.
“Let me walk you home.”
“No thanks,” I say. “Getting lost is kinda the whole point.”
“Right,” Foote replies, but he doesn’t stop ambling along beside me.
I don’t want him there. I don’t want him to see me when I trip over my own feet and face-plant because I’ve forgotten how to walk.
“If you’re looking to get laid by a girl who won’t remember it the next day, try the park. That’s where most of the notters hang out.”
It’s a terrible thing to say, but it does the trick. Foote is no longer beside me. I force myself to keep going, to not turn around and apologize. In a few more minutes I’ll forget what I said, and who I said it to. And soon thereafter this whole day will be wiped away, like it never even happened.