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Zoe
The Cove was breathtakingly beautiful at this time of day. It was hard to believe anything sinister had ever happened here. Of course, if Nelson had a habit of bringing new girls here, giving them moonshine, and then trying to get them into the woods, probably lots of sinister things had happened here.
Jason turned the car around for the third time. Zoe sensed that Jason liked driving around in circles. Maybe he wasn’t interested in helping her so much as he was interested in driving around instead of going to school. Or maybe he was trying to get out of picking up his obnoxious girlfriend. Wishful thinking.
“Then you turned here.” He slowed at the end of Battle Ave, where they’d just come from.
“I think so.”
He looked at her. “You think so?”
“Jason, have you ever been drunk?” She knew the answer to this question.
He didn’t answer.
“It’s like trying to remember through mud. Like there’s mud in my brain, and I’m trying to push it out of the way, but it’s thick and it keeps sliding back into the path.”
His eyes made it clear that he was trying to understand. They also made it clear that he didn’t. But how sweet of him to try. She realized then that she was falling in love with Jason.
Awesome.
“I’m pretty sure I turned here.” She ripped her eyes away from him and looked up the hill. That area also looked familiar. Had she gone further up the hill? “Or maybe I went straight.”
He chuckled. “Okay, we’ll do both.” He continued straight, but not only were there no small museum churches up there, there were no buildings at all. He came to another stop sign. “Does this look familiar?”
“No. I really don’t think I came this way.” If she had, she’d done a lot more walking than she’d thought she had.
“All right. Let’s go back to Battle Ave.” He sped down Hill Street, but when he turned back onto Battle, he slowed to a crawl.
He was right. There were no churches. Then she saw a house that looked familiar. Again, she was looking at it through a layer of mud. It was a nondescript yellow house, but she thought she recognized it. Then her eyes landed on the small shack beside it. She gasped. When she’d lain down, she’d stared at the yellow house. Her eyes studied the abandoned shack in front of her.
“What is it?”
“That’s it,” she said and then wished she hadn’t.
Jason leaned toward the windshield. “That’s what?”
The tiny house’s porch was the same shape and size as the one she remembered. But there was no light over it. The house had been painted white once upon a time, but the paint had now mostly flaked off. It looked terrible.
“Tell me,” Jason said gently. “What is it?”
She felt sick. What was going on here? “I think there was more than moonshine in that moonshine.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that they gave me something that made me hallucinate.”
He scrunched his eyes together. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, bath salts, Ecstasy, or roofies, or something?”
“Do roofies make you hallucinate?”
“I don’t know!” she snapped and instantly felt guilty. “Sorry,” she said meekly. “I don’t know.”
“I have not heard of anyone in Carver Harbor having any of those things, and if someone did, I doubt it would be Nelson. He’s too poor to have any of that stuff.” He sounded super snobby when he said this, but she wasn’t about to defend Nelson—for any reason.
“Yeah.” She studied the weird little house. The more she looked at it, the more she knew that they’d found the spot. “I did Ecstasy back in Missouri. And it didn’t feel like I felt on Monday.”
“How did it feel?” He sounded genuinely curious, and she felt like she was taking him over to the dark side.
“It made me really happy and like, in love with everyone. I was not happy on Monday. I wanted to die. And I’m grateful I wasn’t in love with everyone because I don’t want to ever feel affection for Nelson.” She leaned back against the seat. “We can go. Sorry for the wild goose chase. I don’t know why I thought this was a church.”
He hesitated.
She waited a moment and then opened her eyes. “Are we ditching school altogether?”
He laughed tentatively. “No. Definitely not. But it seems like you’re still not telling me everything.”
She wasn’t. But she’d told him enough. He already thought she was a whack job. She wasn’t about to add that a strong, gentle, invisible man had carried her home in his arms. “Nope. You know the whole stupid story.”
Jason was quiet the rest of the way to school.
They were definitely late. “Do you know of a way to sneak in?”
He snickered. “No need. You’re with me. Come on.” He parked and got out of the car, and then waited for her to join him.
She hoped people were looking out the window and seeing this: her and Jason DeGrave casually arriving at school together, late.
He sauntered in through the front door and straight toward the office. This is not the way she usually handled being late to school. “Hey, Linda. Sorry we’re late. I had to help Zoe find something.” He flashed a dazzling smile at her.
It worked. “That’s all right. You want a late pass?” She smiled a wide smile that revealed she once again had lipstick on her teeth.
Someone should really tell her about that habit and how to avoid it.
“Yes, please,” Jason said charmingly. “That would be great. Thank you.” Then he leaned on the counter, looked at Zoe, and winked.
