by Micol Ostow
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Parker: Lunch?
Nancy: Yes, please.
Nancy: On my way to the cafeteria. Save me a seat?
Parker: And a mystery meat nugget.
Nancy: Not to seem like an ingrate, but that I could probably actually do without.
Parker: Don’t knock it until you try it!
Parker: Fine, have it your way.
Nancy: That’s generally my preference.
Parker: Mine, too. Guess we’re a perfect match.
A perfect match, I mused, looking over Parker’s last text message, or a perfect storm? After all, two people who were accustomed to each having their own way were bound to butt heads sooner or later, right?
I’d worry about that another time, though. I had plenty on my mind as it was.
In my head, time had ground to a standstill since McGinnis had carted Caroline away (sans handcuffs, of course, but a cart-off was still a cart-off, and I knew it when I saw it). In reality, though, for the most part, life went on. The case was gnawing at me—as, I suspected, it must have also been for Melanie’s family and friends. But for those who hadn’t been directly impacted by the vandalism, and who hadn’t been present when a bird slammed itself directly into the newsroom window bearing a decidedly downbeat missive, things were basically business as usual, especially now that Caroline had been pinned down as a perp. Now all the chief had to do was find Melanie, and fresh off the success of having collared Caroline, that felt—to others, apparently, anyway—eminently within reach.
It all seemed way too neat and tidy for me.
I was walking down the hall toward the cafeteria, stomach grumbling, when I heard voices. I was running late and the halls were mostly deserted, which meant the sound was isolated, my awareness heightened.
It was a guy and a girl. Arguing.
Typical teen drama, I assumed, planning to continue on my way as my stomach gave another misguided rumble. But then I realized, I know that voice, and I paused in my tracks.
It was Theo. And he sounded testy.
“Look, I’m sorry things worked out the way they did, but you have no right to blame me. You dug your own grave.”
You dug your own grave. It was only a figure of speech, but it made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
“You didn’t have to sic Barney Fife on me, though, did you?” The girl, also tense. Which was how I was accustomed to hearing her. Caroline.
I inched closer to the corner of the hallway, flattening myself against the row of lockers as best I could, hoping to get a better listen.
“Come on. The guy had a ‘long list’ of exactly two people: you and me. We were the only ones around here that had publicly opposed the reenactment. If I hadn’t pointed him in your direction, he would have ended up sniffing around me. Girl—you were guilty!”
“Well, you couldn’t have him sniffing around, could you?” she snapped, her voice dripping with scorn.
“Caroline, you did all those things. You can’t exactly get all high and mighty in this scenario. I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to deal.”
Emotion washed over me, hot and high. Caroline was responsible, at least for some of the stuff that’d been happening. I couldn’t hold back. I stormed around the corner, coming face-to-face with Theo, and shocking both of them.
“Nancy, jeez,” Theo said. “Lurk much?”
I shot him a look. “See, the thing is, lurking generally pays off, I’ve learned.” I whirled to face Caroline, anger flooding my system. This was the person who’d trashed Daisy’s locker after all. That made this more than criminal, more than potentially violent. That made this personal. “They let you go? Already?”
“I’m still a minor. It’s vandalism. It was a first offense. My parents spoke to McGinnis; I’m going to pay a fine and do some community service. Believe it or not, I actually have to help set up the stage at the fairground.” She made a retching sound. “I guess McGinnis thought it was very ‘let the punishment fit the crime,’ all tragically ironic and such.”
“That’s not irony,” I said bitterly.
“No one ever knows how to use that word correctly,” Theo said, apparently completely unfazed by the entire scene.
“We can save the English lesson for later,” I said. “First offense. So he counted the locker, the newsroom, and the raven together. Like a three-for-one. I guess you’re just lucky he hadn’t seen the burned grass at the fairgrounds when he first questioned you. The punishment could have been way worse.”
“Yeah, they could’ve insisted you do makeup for the show, too,” Theo put in sarcastically.
I looked at him. “Not helpful.”
Caroline, meanwhile, stared at me. “I had nothing to do with that raven. Or the fairgrounds. I promise.”
I put my hands on my hips. “And I suppose you weren’t following me the other night, over by Stone Ridge, either?” Following me, and leaving creepy-as-hell messages on my windshield.
She flushed, and dropped her gaze. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I, uh … well, I kept hoping that if I mentioned the curse, like, dwelled on it, you know, people would get spooked and back off, maybe cancel Naming Day entirely. But it turns out, no one knows very much about the curse in the first place, so getting people riled up was, like, a very tall order.”
“Yeah,” I said simply. “That curse has a very slight footprint. It’s definitely a thing.” I sympathized with her—but only to a point. She had terrorized me down a dark and twisty road, after all. It hadn’t done much to engender goodwill. (Although it did rule Parker out, which was a relief.)
“Look,” she said, cocking her hip and looking me in the eye again. “You came to talk to me about my alibi, about being with Stephenson—”
“Right,” I said, remembering. “Wait—he lied for you?”
She shrugged, her cheeks pink.
“Why would he do that?” I demanded. When her cheeks blazed red and she averted her gaze, I realized. “Oh.” My eyes widened. “Caroline, you have to tell someone.”
“It’s not like that.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Or, okay, maybe it’s kind of like that. Or, I kind of want it to be. Wanted. I mean, it just made it all the more humiliating that he didn’t cast me.”
No wonder Caroline had been so furious.
I stepped forward, reaching out to her. “Caroline, you know that’s—”
“I know,” she said, nodding and cutting me off. “I know. And believe me, Stephenson definitely knows. Whatever was going on—and I’ll admit, I have … had … feelings, and I definitely felt like it was mutual… .” I must have shuddered, or otherwise reacted, because a flicker of defensiveness crossed her face. “Anyway, whatever it was, trust me, we both know. It was wrong. And nothing ever happened. It was all totally emotional.”
“Good,” I said simply. Did I believe her? Maybe. She wanted to be telling me the truth, that was clear. But I wasn’t her mother, or her guidance counselor, and picking this story apart further wasn’t going to ingratiate me to her, or make her any more willing to trust me or tell me the truth.
“Anyway,” she said, “you were investigating the whole thing, that much was obvious. And, well …” She trailed off, suddenly shy. “Anyone who’s ever heard your name knows you’re, like, known for investigating. So if anyone could get to the bottom of the curse thing, it was you.”
“So you followed me to that interview in Stone Ridge.” Well, that explained the overwhelming feeling I’d had of being watched. I was being watched.
“But you came up empty,” I said, “just like I did.”
“Yeah.” She did sound genuinely remorseful. I wasn’t sure where that got us now, but I noted it nonetheless.
I stared at her. “Why did you do it? All of it?”
“It was Daisy,” she said. “She was the one. She’s in the reenactment, she’s on the paper, her family is Old Horseshoe Bay—”
“Old as it gets,” Theo agreed, as if to remind us
that he was still here. Not that there was any great need for him to still be here. But then again, I was actually the intruder, having inserted myself into Theo and Caroline’s conversation in the first place. So I gave him the most patient, if strained, smile I could muster.
“That’s why I targeted her,” Caroline said. “It wasn’t cool, but it seemed like the best way to, you know, make a thing.”
“A thing.” I hated the idea that my friend had been targeted for Caroline’s petty revenge scheme, but standing here in front of her, processing the waves of humiliation radiating off of her … it was hard not to feel the tiniest bit sorry for her.
I opened my mouth to say something—though what, I wasn’t sure yet. But before I could get a word out, Lena came dashing up to me. Her typically styled hair was frizzing around her in a fuzzy halo, and her eyes were red-rimmed, mascara forming sooty rings under her eyes. In a word, she looked manic. I felt my heart squeeze—what next?
“Parker said you were on your way to the caf!” she managed, her voice thick. “I was looking for you there.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s Daisy!” she said, breaking into a hysterical sob.
“What?” An ice block slid down my spine. “What about Daisy?”
She gave another sob, this one more guttural, raw. She looked at me, grabbing me tightly by the shoulders.
“She’s gone now too.”
PART THREE THE CURSE
The year was 1942. The Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor, and the US was preparing to send its boys off to join the war. And while Horseshoe Bay often feels like a place frozen in time, for once, that wasn’t to be the case.
When the first round of letters arrived, including one for Hugo Dewitt, not a year out of Keene High at the time, his fiancée, like so many of those of the time, swore she’d wait for him.
But for Hugo Dewitt’s betrothed—and so many others—it was to be a wait that would never end.
While the rest of the town went on to celebrate Naming Day in ignorant bliss, those boys from Horseshoe Bay went off to fight a war—and never returned. The letters arrived a week later, leaving their families to lament that they’d been celebrating their town’s history while their boys were dying on its behalf.
It wasn’t the first tragedy to coincide with Naming Day. It wasn’t even the most notable, the most spectacular, or the most cruel.
It wasn’t the last, either.
People don’t speak of the Naming Day curse. But it’s no secret this town’s most joyous tradition has also been met with some of our most tragic losses.
Why should this Naming Day be any different?
Hence my sworn promise to you, today: It shouldn’t. And it won’t.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In moments of panic, there’s that beautiful old cliché about time seeming to stand still. I’d always assumed it was just an expression. Kind of like to dig one’s own grave. And maybe, technically, it was just an expression. Maybe what I was experiencing was no more a temporal fold or a hiccup in the metaphysical fabric of life than it was a singular hallucination, a total system shutdown on the part of my body at hearing the horrific, unfathomable news.
A girl can dream.
But this wasn’t a dream; it was a nightmare.
I watched as Lena’s mouth continued to form words, but I heard none of them. The air seemed to leave the room, and my vision tunneled to a tiny pinpoint, like I was standing at the bottom of a long-abandoned well. Faintly, indistinct as something murmured underwater, vague words began to swim toward me. Note … missing … I heard them on some basic, primal level, but couldn’t process them, couldn’t knit them together into any semblance of understanding.
There was something else down here with me too.
Something putrid, musty.
I reached up and rubbed my fingers across my neck, not at all surprised to find myself touching a frayed rope. A noose.
There, at the bottom of this odd psychic well, wrapped in wooly bunting, I found a noose draped around my neck.
Trance Nancy … Dream Nancy … whoever this girl was? Somehow, she wasn’t surprised.
I felt Lena’s frantic hands on my arms again, gripping me tightly enough to pull me out of the well and back into the hall of the high school. Her mouth, in real time now, shouted as she shook me.
“Nancy? Can you hear me?” Another shake. “Do you hear what I’m saying, Nancy? She’s missing! Nancy!” Her voice rose, becoming hoarser with each plea. “Are you listening?”
Something about the pitch of her tone, beyond panic and verging on total hysteria, finally broke the spell. The well, the horseshoe, the darkness—they were all gone, though that smell of must and decay still wafted, lingering. I was firmly in the hallway of Keene High, and Daisy was …
“Missing?” I swayed for a minute, a little woozy on my feet. Lena was still holding my arms, and I clung to her.
“Are you sure?” I asked, slowly coming back into my body. But of course she was sure. Lena wasn’t the kind who would freak out like this without damn good (or bad, given the circumstances) cause.
“I found a note. The … kidnapper must have left it. In my backpack. I don’t … I have no idea when it was left. How could I have missed it? How did I miss it, Nancy?”
Now it was my turn to coax Lena back from the edge. Tears welled in her eyes. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen Lena cry. “You just did. It’s okay. You didn’t do this.” I took her hand. “But you have to show me the note.”
“Maybe I didn’t do this.” She shook her head. “But I definitely didn’t do anything that could have prevented it either.”
“That makes two of us.” Though I had tried, I thought fiercely. I had looked into the curse as best I could, with so little to go on. The push and pull of how and when my secrets served me best was going to make me insane if I let it.
Still, though. “I have to see the note.”
“Here.” She gave it to me, unfolding it carefully and pressing it flat with her fist against the face of a locker.
I looked at it. Typed and printed, lettering in standard black, nothing at all distinguishing about the paper or ink. Anyone with a laptop, a printer, and a ream of paper could have done this.
The curse lives. Call off Naming Day if you want to see Daisy Dewitt returned.
Alive.
It was utterly nondescript. But I snapped a picture of it on my phone, for good measure.
I shuddered. With Melanie’s disappearance, the lack of notes or clues of any kind meant we could retain a drop of denial, if we wanted. No one had claimed the abduction or asked for ransom. This, on the other hand, couldn’t have been clearer. Daisy was being held captive. Someone wanted Naming Day canceled badly enough that they were willing to resort to kidnapping to get it done.
“Lena,” I said, looking up. “We have to take this to the chief. And Daisy’s parents.”
“Nancy.” Lena’s voice softened. She smiled at me, slightly incredulous. “Are you kidding me? I already have.”
* * *
I needed to think. We’d been dismissed from school early—that was my mom’s suggestion in her professional capacity as crisis counselor.
Apparently, two missing students constituted a major crisis, and Principal Wagner was about as worried about a major crisis at her school as the rest of us were about the actual missing students. McGinnis, Principal Wagner, and the mayor had called for an emergency town hall meeting tomorrow night, Friday, but incredibly, in the meantime, the Naming Day celebration had still not actually been canceled, so Lena went off to work on floats that we all secretly suspected were never going to be seeing any kind of parade. She was reluctant but admitted in the end that it was better than sitting around wondering where—and how—Daisy was.
“I’m on it,” I promised her, meaning it, but going just as crazy, all the same. “I’ll keep you posted.”
I’d spent the afternoon digging around online
, hoping against hope that there was some random clue about the Naming Day curse just lurking, waiting for the click of my fingers. There wasn’t. Finally, frustrated, I’d grabbed my notebook and wandered to town, heading down Main Street.
I’d also spent the afternoon negotiating a flurry of concerned texts from Parker; it was definitely sweet, but Daisy was basically the only thing on my mind. This case was too open-ended; having no real suspects was just as stressful as having too many—and much less useful, too.
The sun had just begun to set, fiery orange streaks flashing against the gray-white of the evening sky. In the distance, I heard the caw of a bird—something large, the sound echoing and ominous.
The dead raven flashed in my mind, neck twisted and eyes unseeing, a few droplets of blood spattering the grass where it lay. Something about it still nagged at the corner of my mind, a loose thread from a sweater that was slowly unraveling.
Or maybe I was the one unraveling.
The trees around me seemed to twist in the moonlight; twisted, gnarled branches became limbs, beckoning.
Warning me.
Shivering, I settled myself into the pagoda at the edge of the town square, overlooking the bluff. When I breathed in I could taste the salt air, and the spray of the ocean tickled my skin even from up here, up high. Normally, the pagoda was a peaceful spot, good for thinking, reviewing notes, clearing my head. But tonight, the empty square felt foreboding, and I knew that if my parents had any idea I was out here, alone, with two classmates missing, they wouldn’t be happy.
They knew I could take care of myself, but there was no reason to go tempting fate. That was what they’d say.
Idly, I took out my phone. A bunch of posts from Keene High’s social media were waiting for me. Since the bird and all the subsequent weirdness, I hadn’t had much use for Instagram. But Lena had continued to post—she’d had to, of course. I scrolled through the images, overwhelmed to see how the rest of the school was carrying on while for so many of us, life was completely turned inside out. Here was a shot of the reenactment rehearsal, the cast goofing around in ratty old-timey wigs. Here was Parker and some guys from the soccer team, posing with different tools in front of the skeleton of a parade float. I grinned at that, wishing I’d been able to join him. I liked that he’d kept his word even after he knew I wouldn’t be keeping mine, that day.