Harrow Lake

by Kat Ellis

  The chattering follows me as I sprint for Carter’s house. I stumble a couple of times on the uneven ground, but don’t even pause to brush the grit from my palms. In minutes, I’m hammering on his front door. I try to steady my ragged breathing and listen for the sound behind me, but it’s gone now.

  Ranger Crane opens the door.

  “Hey, Lola. What can I do for you?”

  For a second, I don’t know what to say. Then it spills out in a torrent.

  “It’s Marie Conner—the girl who was Little Bird in the parade—I think she’s hurt . . .” Or worse. “But I couldn’t find her!”

  Ranger Crane’s smile drops. “Where did you see her?”

  “In the woods near the Bone Tree—I heard her scream, but then she was just . . . gone.”

  Carter and Cora appear in the hallway behind their mother.

  “What do you mean, you couldn’t find her?” Carter says over her shoulder. “Where did she go if she was hurt?”

  “I don’t know,” I snap. “She was there one second and gone the next.”

  Ranger Crane’s eyes narrow. “Do you think she might be playing a prank on you, Lola?”

  “What? No! You didn’t see her—she was scared. I think . . . I think someone might’ve been chasing her.” I will her to understand without my having to say his name. All three of them exchange a look. Finally, Ranger Crane nods like they’ve reached some silent agreement.

  “I’ll go take a look,” she says. “There might be a . . . another sinkhole.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Carter says, and the two of them rush past me.

  I watch them from the doorstep and jump when Cora puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “Jeez, you’re shaking!” she says. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  The adrenaline is beginning to subside now. I feel hollow and useless.

  She didn’t fall into a sinkhole. That sound I heard—it was him.

  I should’ve done something to help her.

  “I know what you need,” Cora says, snapping her fingers. “Wait here.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Cora stands at the edge of the quarry near the house and spits into it. I’m propped against a tree, my ass getting damp with dew as early evening settles over Harrow Lake. We’ve drunk almost a full bottle of her mother’s home brew between us—what Cora calls “red-eye.” She’s wobbling a little, but she’s managed not to fall so far.

  “They won’t find Marie, you know,” she slurs.

  The cold, leaden feeling in my gut says she’s right. I told Cora what Marie said in the woods, but I haven’t told her about Lorelei, or what Grandmother and Grant said, or about Mary Ann or Mister Jitters. I don’t want to listen to any more of Cora’s theories about my mother right now. “Do you know her well?” I ask.

  Cora shrugs. “Everyone knows everyone in a town this size. What you mean is do I like her.” I don’t contradict her. “The answer is no. Marie has always been kind of a try-hard. But that doesn’t mean I’d want anything bad to happen to her.”

  “But it has,” I say bleakly. “Like it did to the other Little Birds.”

  Cora frowns, then drinks some more red-eye. “I’ve decided I’m not going to get stuck here like everyone else. I’ve got a plan. I’ll be one of those roving reporters—you know the ones they send out to cover the big news stories like assassinations, coronations, wars? I want to go out there and really see some shit. I mean, if I stay here, all I have to look forward to is getting snatched, or spending the next ten years turning into my mom.” She staggers over and slumps down by my feet. “What about you?”

  “Me?” I blink.

  “Yeah. Are you going to be a movie director like your dad?”

  Am I going to be . . . Ha! What would Nolan do if I tried to carve out my own piece of real estate in his world? Nothing good, certainly. But what does he expect me to do if not that? What’s left for me?

  I will make my own world. Dozens of worlds. Hundreds.

  The idea is small and new, but it glitters. I take the red-eye from Cora and let it add fuel to that spark.

  “I’m going to be a writer,” I tell her.

  “What kind of writer?” Cora asks, and I grin.

  “The kind with good stories and bad habits.” We cheers to that, taking a mouthful of red-eye each. “And I’ll choose a new name, so no one will know who I am, and see that name printed on the cover of a book. Ten books. I’ll find a little house somewhere and paint it primrose yellow. Adopt a cat that spits and hisses and runs away for days at a time, but always comes home in the end.”

  The liquor must be burning through my brain cells right now, but at least my hands aren’t shaking anymore. When I hand the red-eye back to Cora, she’s smiling.

  “I think you should call it Cora,” she says. “Cora the cat.”

  I roll the idea around, then nod firmly. “All right. I will.”

  “Good. I like the idea that one day there’ll be a hissing, spitting Cora somewhere outside of Harrow Lake.” She takes another long pull from the bottle.

  “You really hate it here, don’t you?” I ask.

  “Do you blame me?”

  Marie’s terrified face flashes through my mind. “No.” I reach for the bottle in Cora’s hand.

  She looks out across the water, where moving glints show the cars chugging along Main Street in the distance. “I’d tear Harrow Lake up by the roots if I could.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because that desire probably comes from the badness this town put in me.”

  She’s not laughing anymore. There’s a fierceness in her eyes that makes me feel hopeful for her.

  “Carter says I should wait until I graduate before I leave town,” she continues. “But I don’t see the point in waiting. If I stay here, I’ll only end up getting stuck, like him. Carter will never leave. He’ll just get some girl pregnant and marry her—convince himself he’s found true love and all that bull, when really he’d be out of this town in a heartbeat if only he could figure out how to ignore Mom’s guilt trips. He’s got less sense than that bird in his bedroom.”

  Behind us, someone clears their throat. Cora and I both jump. “Ravens are very smart, actually,” Carter says.

  He leans against a tree only a few yards away from us. I don’t know how long he’s been there, but he’s easy to miss in the fading light. Cora sighs.

  “No sign of Marie, then?”

  Carter shakes his head wearily. “Nothing. Marie’s parents said she was due home hours ago. They’re falling apart right now.”

  “Have they called the police?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he confirms. “For all the good it’ll do. They’ll put up posters, hold a search when she doesn’t show up in a day or two. It was the same when Marie’s sister Gretchen went missing last year. The police will probably just think Marie ran away, too.”

  I remember Cora telling me about Gretchen at the parade. Now her parents have lost two daughters. How can a family survive something like that?

  Carter nudges the empty red-eye bottle with his toe. “Mom’ll be looking for this when she gets back,” he says to Cora. “You might wanna rearrange her stash so she won’t notice.”

  Cora springs to her feet, the wobble gone. “I’ll see you later, Lola.”

  She disappears around the side of the house.

  “So what has Cora been filling your head with?” Carter says. “Besides booze, I mean. Which she knows she shouldn’t touch.”

  “She’ll turn into a coyote,” I tell him, “if you try too hard to pin her down.”

  “I know.” Carter offers me his hand. I take it, and get clumsily to my feet. “But she’ll have a better shot at the life she wants if she finishes school before taking off.”

  “If she g
ets a chance to finish school,” I mutter, thinking about Marie. About Lorelei, too, and things left unfinished.

  Where are you, Lorelei?

  “I graduated, and so will Cora,” he says, stepping out of the shadows so I see his determined expression.

  “I—” I almost choke when I see his face properly. I didn’t get a good look at Carter before, but now I see the corner of his mouth is swollen, his lip split with a purple bruise set around the cut. “What happened to you?”

  “I fell down the stairs,” he says.

  “Your house doesn’t have any stairs!”

  Carter gives a bitter laugh. “Or Wi-Fi, as you pointed out. It does have indoor plumbing, though, so we aren’t quite the cave dwellers you seem to think we are.”

  That was what I said to him just days ago, but my words sound so much harsher when he repeats them back to me. Why was I so mean to him? I don’t remember now.

  “Look, Lola, maybe you should be getting back to your grandma’s house.”

  “Probably.” I can’t stop staring at his bruises. He opens his mouth to say something, then changes his mind. “What?”

  “Have you told your grandma there’s something going on between us?” he says. I’m surprised by the question, but even more by the edge of annoyance in his voice.

  “You mean like we’re . . .” I struggle for the right word. “I, uh . . . no.”

  “Okay. Sorry, I should’ve figured you wouldn’t. And it’s hardly important right now.” Carter rakes a hand over his hair, pulling a few strands loose of the tie. “But I guess she doesn’t want us to hang out anymore, so I gave your phone to Uncle Grant to pass back to you.”

  “You did?” Damn it. Grant probably had it rattling around in his truck while he played his space-invasion games, and he never said a word.

  “Yeah. He made it clear I was to stay away from you.”

  “He what? Oh—oh.” I raise a hand and let it hover near the swelling at the corner of Carter’s mouth, remembering Grant’s grazed knuckles earlier. “He seriously did this? What the hell is wrong with people in this town? Sure, let’s just beat up our kids and scare them to death with monsters! Nothing screwed up about that at all!”

  “Hey,” Carter says, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and hunching in on himself. There’s none of that live-wire energy about him now. “It’s not a big deal. And we’re not all the same in Harrow Lake, you know.”

  He looks so down, and I’m only making it worse.

  “I should go,” I tell Carter. “I’m ‘stirring up trouble,’ as Grandmother would say.” Just like Lorelei.

  “Wait—don’t leave.” He catches my hand. His skin is so warm and rough. Would it be so bad to lose myself for a little while with him? What would it be like to just brush my lips against his, our bodies fitting together like two puzzle pieces?

  I have too many puzzle pieces to sort through already.

  “Hey, are you okay?” he says, and although it’s not the time to bring this up with a girl missing, for the first time in a long while I don’t want to bury my secrets, and I don’t want to lie.

  “My grandmother told me Lorelei is dead.”

  “What?” He opens his mouth again to speak, then closes it. “But . . . when?”

  This is news to Carter. I’m so relieved he wasn’t hiding this from me all this time, whether it’s true or not.

  “Years ago, according to Grandmother,” I say. “But I don’t believe her. She told me Lorelei took an overdose, and she and Nolan kept it secret to avoid a scandal. But I’ve been thinking about it, about why Nolan wouldn’t tell me that—I mean, it’s not as though I’d go calling all the major news outlets, is it? And Lorelei’s my mother, for god’s sake. It can’t be true. After all, it was never reported by the media, and I never saw any rumors about it on the Nightjar fan sites, and they gossip about everything. I just can’t see how it could be true.”

  “Then she’s alive,” Carter says, firmly. “And you want to find her.”

  “Either way, I want to know what the hell happened to her.”

  If Grant was right, last time Lorelei was here she wanted to find out for sure if Mister Jitters was real. What if Lorelei disappeared because she found exactly what she was looking for?

  Nonsense, Nolan whispers to me. But I can’t just shake off the idea without seeing for myself. If I want to figure out what happened to her, where she went, then I have to begin somewhere. What if I find him? That’s a terrifying prospect.

  What if I don’t?

  I don’t know how to tell Carter any of this. That my mother’s obsession has become mine, just like her jitterbugs and her dresses.

  Carter puts a hand on my arm. My pulse quickens as I think about the first time Carter and I were alone like this—in his room, where pencil sketches cover the walls. That one sketch in particular showing a ruined church lit from above, as though it sat at the base of a sinkhole. There was another just like it in the museum. He tried to brush that off as nothing, too.

  “You’ve been in the caves, haven’t you? Even though it’s not allowed?”

  Carter fidgets with the leather strap of the flashlight pendant hanging at his throat. His brow furrows like he’s concentrating on something unpleasant. “Nobody goes into the caves, Lola. They’re dangerous.” And now I know what he looks like when he lies.

  “I want to go.” If I just see the caves, taste the air inside, I’ll know if that’s where she went—and why. “I don’t care about that ridiculous monster story, Carter. I just want to see for myself.”

  He’s wavering. I need to tip the balance. What is Carter’s brand of Optimal? If it were Cora, I doubt I’d even need to convince her. But Carter isn’t out to burn the world; he wants to fix it.

  I’ll play the bird with a broken wing if it will convince him.

  “Won’t you help me, Carter? I don’t think I can do this by myself.” I look down, wring my hands. Glance up at him through my lashes. Hate myself a little.

  “All right,” he says on cue. I’m almost disappointed by how quickly he gives in. “But it’s gotta be our secret, okay?”

  “I know how to keep a secret,” I say.

  * * *

  • • •

  Grandmother is dozing in her rocking chair when I get back to the house. I spot my phone propped next to the photo of me above the fireplace, like an offering. I go over and snatch it up. The screen is dark, powerless.

  I lean against the windowsill facing my grandmother and follow the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Like this, she seems so frail. Like Nolan in the hospital. It would be very easy to grab the cushion she’s been sewing and hold it to her face, nice and tight, until she went limp. She must feel me watching, because she wakes with a start.

  “How long have you had this?” I say, clutching my dead phone.

  Grandmother blinks rapidly, not fully awake yet. “How long . . . oh, yes. Grant brought it by earlier. I put it on the mantel so you’d see it. But the house phone is working now, if you want to use that.”

  She looks so muddled, so tired.

  “I heard a girl from town is missing. Are you all right?” she says. “After what we talked about?”

  These are exactly the right things to ask. Grandmotherly. Optimal. I’m immediately suspicious.

  “I need to know what really happened,” I say. “Why Lorelei brought me here. What happened to her. If she was hurt, or if something else happened to her. Do you know what I’m talking about?” She won’t look at me now. She thought I was done with my questions.

  “Did she actually believe Mister Jitters was real?” I try again, but I get nothing. “Why won’t you tell me what really happ—”

  “HE NEVER TOUCHED HER!”

  I back up so fast my spine hits the mantel. One of the photographs clatters as it topples over, but I can’t tear my
gaze away from my grandmother. Her knuckles are white around the arms of her rocking chair, her eyes stark as a rearing horse’s. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who this woman is in front of me.

  “LORELEI WAS A LIAR! A ROTTEN, LYING LITTLE BITCH, JUST LIKE YOU, AND I’M GLAD SHE’S DEAD!”

  A fleck of spit hits my cheek. I’m scared she’s about to launch herself at me, but it’s as though someone has cut her strings. She collapses into the rocking chair, swaying back and forth, the screeching of the floorboards beneath it the only sound for a long moment. Two black kohl lines run down her cheeks, and she doesn’t even move to wipe them away. Then she starts to hum.

  It’s that song again. Lorelei’s song.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Nolan? Where are you? Are you even getting these messages?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I go to meet Carter at the fairground after sunset. I almost hope he won’t show up, but he’s there waiting for me in the shadow of the gates.

  “Hey.” The night casts harsh shadows over his face. “I almost didn’t see you there.”

  “That’s nighttime for you.” I manage to speak without my voice trembling. “Any news on Marie?”

  “No.” He sighs. “But you never know, maybe tomorrow . . .” The sentence hangs in the air, unfinished and convincing no one. He uses a large bunch of keys to unlock the gates. There are no lights on inside, and I think for a second we won’t be able to do this, but then I see the leather cord around Carter’s neck, the flashlight tucked into the collar of his shirt. “Are you ready?”

  “Where exactly is the cave entrance?” I ask, instead of telling him no, I’m not ready at all.

  “The easiest way to get in,” Carter tells me, “is through the abandoned gondola ride.”

  With the dark silhouettes of the fairground rides now looming over me, this place feels dangerous, like anything might be waiting for us in the shadows. One of the painted hounds on the carousel seems to breathe when we walk by, and I look into its lidless, glaring eyes. “We can’t turn the light on until we’re in the caves,” Carter says. “Just in case anyone spots us. But once we’re inside it’s not far to the church sinkhole.”