The Ghost Tree

by Christina Henry

  “David, did you—”

  Just then Karen materialized in the doorway—or at least, it seemed that way to Lauren. Their stairs were really squeaky so normally everyone could hear everybody else going up and down the stairs. It was impossible to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night for a snack without her mother finding out. Lauren was so shocked by David’s words that she hadn’t heard Mom at all.

  Karen looked sweaty and irritated. “What happened?”

  “I slipped and bunked my head,” David said.

  Karen’s eagle eye immediately located the drops of water on the floor. “Did you slip on the water?”

  “Yes, and it’s my fault, I dripped it on the floor,” Lauren said. “I’ll clean it up now.”

  Lauren put David on his feet and gave him a little wink and mouthed, Popsicles later.

  “You should have cleaned it up in the first place,” Karen said. “How can you be so irresponsible, Lauren? He could have been seriously hurt. He could have gotten a concussion.”

  “Mom, he’s not going to get a concussion from slipping on the kitchen floor,” Lauren said, rolling her eyes. She reached for the roll of paper towels and Karen slapped her hand away.

  “Use a kitchen towel, not a paper towel. What do you think we are, made of money?” Karen said. She spotted the wrapped sponge that had flown out of David’s hand when he slipped. “And don’t use that sponge on your dirty bike. It’s brand-new. Use an old one.”

  “That one was for me, Mommy,” David said. “So I could help.”

  “Did your sister tell you to get it?” Karen asked.

  David looked uncertainly from Lauren, who’d grabbed an old kitchen towel to wipe the floor, to Karen. Lauren could tell he didn’t want to get his sister in trouble.

  “Yes,” Lauren said, kneeling down to mop up the water. It was always like this with her mom—nag, nag, nag, complain, complain, complain. Whatever Lauren did it was the wrong thing, even when she tried to do the right thing.

  “Lauren, I keep trying to explain to you that we can’t afford to waste what we buy, and you’re going to use up a brand-new sponge on your bike and then it will have to go in the trash after that.”

  “Okay, I won’t,” Lauren said. She was trying really hard not to yell back at her mom, who seemed like she wanted to pick a fight.

  If Lauren yelled, then she would get punished—grounded, or lose her television privileges or that week’s allowance, or whatever else Karen thought was fair at the moment (though it never was fair—the punishment never seemed to fit the crime, in Lauren’s opinion). She hung the towel on the rack near the sink so that it would dry.

  “Don’t hang that there, it’s dirty from the floor,” Karen said. “Put it in the laundry room with the other dirty towels.”

  “Okay,” Lauren said. She started for the laundry room, which was just off the kitchen.

  “What happened to your shorts?” Karen said. “They’re covered in mud.”

  “I know,” Lauren said, rolling her eyes when she was sure Karen couldn’t see her. “My bike got muddy, too, which is why I was cleaning it.”

  “You should have taken your shorts off first and put them in to soak. Those stains might not come out now.”

  “Don’t you think I should finish washing the bike first?” Lauren said. “I’ll probably get dirt on me from that and I don’t want to mess up a clean pair of shorts.”

  “Don’t use that tone with me, young lady,” Karen said.

  Mom always said that when Lauren was right but she didn’t want to admit it. Lauren tossed the towel in the pile stacked in front of the washing machine and returned to the kitchen.

  “Did you put the towels in the washer?” Karen asked.

  Lauren stopped. “No. You didn’t tell me to.”

  “Do I really have to tell you to help out? Oh, yes, I forgot. I do. I just finished doing your daily chore upstairs.”

  Lauren opened her mouth, then snapped it shut.

  I am not going to argue, I am not going to argue, I am not going to argue.

  “I’m going to go and finish washing my bike,” she said, and went outside.

  Her mom probably wouldn’t follow her and continue to harangue, because she was always worried about what the neighbors would think. Lauren could have told her that the neighbors could hear her shouting anyway, especially with the windows open. And all the windows were open, because they only had two air conditioners and Mom said they couldn’t afford the extra cost on the electric bill. Mom flipped out whenever Lauren left the window fan in her room on if she wasn’t actually in there.

  “Don’t waste a lot of water rinsing it off,” Karen called after her. “Our water bill is high enough—”

  “—as it is,” Lauren finished, but under her breath so Karen couldn’t hear.

  “No, David, you stay here,” Karen said. “I want to look at the back of your head.”

  David’s response drifted out through the screen door. “But, Mommy, I want to help Lauren.”

  “You both don’t need to get dirty,” Karen said. “I have enough laundry to do.”

  Lauren crouched down by the bike, soaping the tires. Had Mom been like this before Dad died? Sometimes, Lauren admitted, although it had mostly been directed at Dad. She remembered Mom complaining about Dad’s greasy coveralls and the way he left dirty coffee cups in the sink and used towels on the floor of the bathroom.

  And yeah, Lauren thought, it wasn’t very nice of him to do that.

  It was thoughtless, but Lauren had never assumed there was any malice behind it. Her dad had just been forgetful, easily distracted. Mom always acted like he did it on purpose just to piss her off.

  A trickle of sweat ran down her spine, and suddenly she remembered what had happened before the woods and the vision and the blood. She’d thrown up behind Frank’s Deli, and Jake Hanson had brought her a cup of water.

  And put his hand on her back. She could almost feel it there still, like the touch of a ghost.

  She felt her face flush. What was she doing thinking about Jake Hanson? He’d been nice to her for a minute, that was all. It wasn’t anything special. Besides, he was too old for her. Like, way too old. He wouldn’t think a skinny kid like her was cool.

  For half a second she thought about calling Miranda, asking her what she thought. Then she remembered how dismissive Miranda had been, even though Jake was both older and more attractive than Tad. Jake, at least, wasn’t so wrapped up in his stupid self that he didn’t notice other people.

  And he’d touched her, and been kind to her. She wondered if he would be the same if they met again.

  8

  Miranda had already decided that she was going to lose her virginity with Tad. It was such a weird way of thinking of it, she thought—losing her virginity. Like she was going to accidentally leave it somewhere.

  She’d heard a lot of girls her age say they were “saving” it for “someone special,” but Miranda saw her hymen as a burden that she wanted to be rid of as soon as possible.

  Everyone knew that older guys only dated girls who put out, and Miranda was not going to waste her time with some loser freshman. She wanted a junior or a senior, somebody with a car who could take her places that weren’t in Smiths Hollow.

  After the Dream Machine, Tad and Billy had decided to head over to the pizzeria where they both worked, because they could get discounted slices even when they weren’t on shift.

  “You want to come?” Tad asked.

  “Whatever,” Miranda said. No point in making it seem too obvious that she wanted to stay with him for the rest of the day. If she played her cards right she could just slide along with him until dark. She wasn’t going to give it up to him today, but she definitely wanted to get him thinking dirty thoughts about her, and that meant a trip to Make-Out Field in his Camaro.

  He
r parents never noticed if she came home late, and if they did, she could just say she was with Lauren. They never checked to see if she was lying.

  The only hiccup in this plan was Billy. Lauren’s job had been to take care of Billy, but she’d snuck off at some point during the day. Not that Lauren was super-hot—especially in her kiddie clothes, like she had on today, but her presence would have deterred the Third Wheel situation.

  Now Miranda was stuck, tagging along after two older boys, when what she really wanted was for Billy to realize that he wasn’t needed and to go home. Billy was the one who was the Third Wheel.

  When they got to the pizzeria, Tad asked her what she wanted. “It’s half price for me. Employee discount.”

  Miranda was really hungry and the pizza smelled so good, but she didn’t want him to think she was a pig so she said, “I’m not hungry. I’ll take a Coke, though.”

  The sugar and the bubbles in the Coke would make her feel full, and she wouldn’t think about how good the pizza looked. She’d read in Seventeen about the pitfalls of eating in front of boys. Tad would not think of her as sexy if he spent twenty minutes watching her stuff her face with junk food.

  He shrugged and ordered two pepperoni slices for himself and two Cokes. When the slices came Miranda actually felt her mouth water. She didn’t even know that was a real thing that could happen. She thought it was only something authors said in books.

  Tad slid into a booth and Miranda slid in next to him because Billy was still ordering his food and this was her best chance.

  She didn’t sit too close to him at first, because he seemed serious about his food and she didn’t want to get in his way. Guys got cranky if they were hungry. Even her dad, who almost never raised his voice for anything, was crabby if dinner was late to the table. And Miranda did not want Tad to be cranky with her. She wanted him to be in a very good mood.

  “Hey, what happened to your friend?” Tad asked through a mouthful of pizza.

  “She had to go home,” Miranda said, shrugging. She was going to blister Lauren’s ears tomorrow on the phone for wandering off without saying anything.

  “Too bad,” Tad said. “She was kinda cute, although she seems young.”

  “She’s six months younger than me,” Miranda said, wriggling in her seat a little so her breasts would bounce and jiggle. “But she’s still a little immature.”

  Tad’s eyes had locked onto the motion of her chest like she was a hypnotist with a swinging watch. “Yeah, you look a lot older.”

  Miranda gave him a slow smile and wriggled a little closer so her right breast brushed against his left arm. “Want to share a bite of that pizza with me?”

  Tad lifted the slice, seemingly mesmerized. She took a tiny mouse bite off the end, nothing that would make her masticate like a cow. The explosion of salt and fat on her tongue almost made her moan aloud and she felt her stomach rumble, but she ruthlessly pushed aside her hunger. If she got up for food now she might lose him.

  Miranda carefully chewed the little piece of pizza, darting her tongue out to lick her lips. Tad followed the motion, exhaling a little breath, and she knew he had a boner because he shifted in his seat like he was trying to get comfortable. Then she picked up her Coke and wrapped her mouth around the straw in the kind of manner that would only suggest one thought.

  She didn’t really care if she had to give him a blow job or not. She really liked the idea of riding to school in Tad’s Camaro, maybe passing Lauren pedaling along on her lame ten-speed.

  Well, Miranda had given Lauren a chance to get in on the action. Billy didn’t have a Camaro, but he did have his own car and he could have driven Lauren to school in it if she’d played along.

  Miranda was on the verge of upping the stakes—she thought she could get away with feeling Tad’s crotch under the table; there was no way he would miss the message then and it might even hurry things along—when Billy slid into the seat across the booth from them.

  Tad immediately sat up straight, ignoring Miranda. She put her Coke back on the table with more force than she meant to. Guys didn’t like girls who acted pouty, but fortunately Tad didn’t seem to have noticed.

  “Hey, guess what R.J. just told me?” He didn’t wait for Tad or Miranda to ask but continued on in a rush of words. “Some old lady on Maple Street found two dead bodies in her backyard today! I bet that was why those cops were speeding by earlier. Man, we totally should have followed them. We might have seen the bodies.”

  “Damn,” Tad said, pounding his fist on the table. “That would have been awesome.”

  “What old lady?” Miranda asked.

  Billy looked at her like the furniture had spoken. He obviously hadn’t noticed her sitting in the booth at all, which was ridiculous because he’d been standing right there when Tad asked her to come along with them.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Some old lady. Why do you care?”

  “My friend lives on Maple Street,” Miranda said. “If I knew which house you were talking about, we might be able to go over and look.”

  “Nothing left to see now,” Billy said. “R.J. told me they took out the bodies in an Igloo cooler, so they must have been totally mutilated.”

  “Like a serial killer chopped them up or something?” Tad asked. “Cool.”

  Miranda could see her planned evening slipping away. Tad was no longer thinking about Miranda’s breasts or Miranda’s mouth. He was thinking about the dead bodies.

  “Did R.J. say who was chopped up?” Miranda asked.

  Billy stuffed half a slice of pizza in his mouth and chewed. “Some girls. Nobody knew who they were.”

  “Maybe they’re from Silver Lake?” Miranda asked. Silver Lake was the next town over, where they had a mall and an actual air-conditioned movie theater with four screens instead of nothing but a lame drive-in.

  The thought of the movie theater gave Miranda an idea. “Hey, you want to go to a movie?”

  “Nothing playing here except that kiddie movie and the one about the old people,” Tad said.

  “Not here,” Miranda said. “Silver Lake. I think Rambo is still there.”

  “I saw it already,” Billy said.

  “I haven’t,” Tad said. “I had to work the night you and Owen and R.J. went.”

  The memory seemed to annoy him. Good, Miranda thought. Maybe he’ll get pissed enough about it to leave Billy behind.

  She scooted closer to Tad and pressed against the side of his body, reminding him of her earlier promise. “I haven’t seen it yet, either.”

  Tad put his arm around her, and it thrilled her because she knew that she’d won. Billy frowned at them as she snuggled in close.

  “Yeah, babe. Let’s go to the movies,” Tad said as her hand slid across his lap.

  9

  Richard Touhy III was the mayor of Smiths Hollow, like his father Richard before him and his father Richard before him. In fact, Richard Touhy III could trace an unbroken line of mayors named Touhy all the way back to the first mayor of Smiths Hollow, a man appointed by the Chicago baron who’d either saved the town from ruin or built it from the ground up, depending on who you talked to.

  At the moment he very much wished that his father and his father before him had worked at the canned chili factory like everyone else in town. It would be a blessing to worry about nothing more complicated than the mortgage and his union dues and whether his wife was boffing the postman.

  He was pretty certain, as a matter of fact, that his wife, Crystal, was boffing someone while he sat in his office every day from nine to five and shook hands with concerned citizens and discussed such stimulating topics as filling potholes and building a community center out at the place the local teens called Make-Out Field.

  While Richard had these illuminating conversations Crystal was getting boned by someone, maybe more than one someone, and he knew this because
she was always freshly showered when he came home. She claimed it was because she always did her Jane Fonda workout tape in the afternoon, but Richard was pretty sure her workouts didn’t involve leg lifts—at least, not Jane Fonda’s kind of leg lifts. Aerobics didn’t make you glow, and Crystal always had this radiant-lit-from-within look that told Richard more clearly than any love note that his wife was getting it from someone else.

  With some effort, Touhy redirected his attention to the phone that he held at his ear. Van Christie’s calm voice was at the other end, speaking terrible words about terrible things in a tone that implied his heart rate hadn’t yet been raised above sixty-five beats per minute.

  Why is the man always so calm? Touhy wondered. He’d never even seen Van Christie’s forehead wrinkle in worry.

  There was a sudden silence, and Touhy realized it was his turn to talk. “So what are you doing to identify the girls?”

  “Nobody seems to think they’re local—that is, from Smiths Hollow. We’ve flagged the departments in the surrounding towns, asking if anybody has reported two girls missing. Lopez seems to think that they came here in a car, so he’s out looking for abandoned vehicles.”

  “If they came from Silver Lake they could have come on bicycles,” Touhy pointed out. “It’s not that far away.”

  “If we don’t find any abandoned vehicles we’ll start looking into other possibilities,” Christie said. Touhy could almost hear the other man’s shrug.

  It was easy for Christie to shrug. Christie wasn’t the one responsible for the entire town’s well-being.

  “I think it’s important to keep this out of the public eye as much as possible,” Touhy said. “We don’t want people to think it’s not safe for their girls to be out, especially with the fair coming to town.”

  The appearance of the traveling fair was something that Touhy had been coordinating for the last three months.

  First he’d had to find a suitable place in town for the fair to set up. The huge open field of prairie grass that the high school kids called Make-Out Field had been selected for this. This pleased many of the parents who thought that Touhy wasn’t doing enough to deter their children from the sins of the flesh. Touhy didn’t bother explaining that teenagers would just find another place to pursue those sins. He imagined that a lot of local girls were going to find their dates’ hands up their shirts while they were on top of the Ferris wheel once the traveling fair arrived.