by Katrina Leno
By the time I reached Colin’s house, she was gone—already inside or else disappeared into the night. Colin’s parents were always traveling; they owned the only general store on the island and they left often, on buying trips. They’d been gone before Annabella had been murdered, before my mother had disabled the ferry. I wondered how they would even make it back.
Colin was standing on his front porch, and when he saw me he waved me up. I had been to this house with Verity so many times that it felt weird to be here now, without her, but I was glad that Colin was here, one friendly face against the darkness of the night.
“Hey, Georgina,” he said. His usual upbeat energy was more subdued, and I was reminded for the second time that night that everything was different now. “How are you holding up?”
“It’s been hard,” I admitted.
“I saw you at the funeral, but I didn’t know what to say. Things like that . . . they just mess with my head. You know?”
“It’s fine. I get it.”
“I should have reached out to you, though. I’m sorry.” He took the umbrella from me now that I was safely under the roof of the porch, and he shook the water out over the railing. There was a bucket full of umbrellas outside the front door; he added mine to the bunch. “There are all kinds of things to drink inside. Help yourself, okay?” he said, but I didn’t get a chance to respond, because Billy Kent erupted from the house in a mess of alcohol fumes and noise. He seemed to pause midstride when he saw me, a burst of laughter dying on his lips as he pulled the front door shut behind him and froze.
“Oh,” he said. “Georgina. I didn’t realize you would be here.”
“Georgina is my friend,” Colin said, putting his arm around my shoulders in a protective way that set me immediately on edge. “Why wouldn’t she be here?”
Billy rolled his eyes, but then he seemed to catch himself. He took a slow breath. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought she might have other things to do.”
“Other things to do?” I asked. It took me a minute to catch on, but then I had a flash of Lucille falling all over herself to get away from me, of Shelby leaving the funeral early, and something clicked together. “Are you kidding me?” I hissed. “Billy, you’ve known me my entire life.”
“Have I?” he said. He was drunk; I could tell by the way he swayed almost imperceptibly back and forth, by the way his eyes didn’t quite seem to focus. “Because right now it feels like I’ve never really known you at all.”
“Oh, give me a break—” I said, shrugging out from under Colin’s arms. “Don’t worry, I’m not staying. Let me just get my sister and we’ll both go.”
“Your sister? Mary isn’t here,” Colin said.
Billy recoiled further at the mention of my sister, and a big part of me wanted to whisper some singsongy mumbo jumbo in his general direction and see how quickly he sobered up, afraid I was turning him into a cat or a frog. But then Colin’s words caught up to me, and I looked at him.
“What do you mean she isn’t here? She was just ahead of me.”
Billy opened his mouth to speak, but Colin stepped in front of him, pushing him bodily away from me.
“Enough, dude,” Colin said, disgusted. “Yeah, I don’t know, Georgina, but I’ve been out here for a few minutes. She’s not here.”
“Fine. What about Vira? Is Vira here?” I asked.
Colin shook his head. “She’s not either, sorry.”
“Great,” I said. I reached behind him and plucked my umbrella out of the stack.
“Georgina, wait—”
“It’s fine, Colin,” I snapped. “Everything is fine. Enjoy your party.”
I opened the umbrella and stepped out into the rain, ignoring Billy’s jeers and Colin’s attempts to both call me back and shut him up. My body felt hot with anger—at Billy Kent and every person who shared his opinion, and at my sister, for inviting me to this party in the first place and then vanishing without a trace.
I didn’t even realize where I was going until I was halfway to the town green, to Ice Cream Parlor and the small two-story apartment above, where Vira lived with her mother, Julia.
I didn’t meet a single soul the entire way, and the water came up to my shins and soaked my sneakers and splashed up my legs until I was soaked to my waist. I had a single word stuck in my head and it played over and over to the tune of every nursery rhyme my mother had ever sung me.
It was the word they had called all the Fernweh women before me. The word they would call all the Fernweh women after me. The word that could seem like either a blessing or a swear, depending on how you said it.
When I got to Ice Cream Parlor, it was closed. There was a funny sign on the door, handwritten by Vira:
closed due to inclement weather;
also, stop being assholes
I felt my heart swell with love for my best friend because I knew that second part was directed at all the people like Billy Kent and Lucille Arden, all the people who were suddenly convinced we must have had something to do with Annabella’s death.
I walked around the building to the metal stairs that snaked up the back, leading to the second floor and the door to the Montgomerys’ apartment. I knocked a little melody on the glass windowpane and Vira appeared a second later. She scowled when she saw me but she flung the door open, reached a hand out, clamped down on my wrist, and pulled me inside.
“I’ve called you a thousand times in the last three days. Did anyone see you come up here? Geez, you’re soaked.”
“Nobody saw,” I said. “There isn’t anybody out there to see.”
“Good.”
“What do you mean, good?”
“Sorry. But I think I’m the only person on the entire fucking island who hasn’t lost their mind. Aside from you, probably. Unless you have lost your mind since I saw you last. I wouldn’t really blame you.”
“People are avoiding you because they know you’re my friend,” I guessed.
Vira rolled her eyes, which was always an impressive sight, because she could get them so far in the back of her head that only white was left. “I’m so sorry, Georgie. On top of everything.”
“Your mom?”
“I’ve been working on her. But it’s me against the whole world, you know? Thankfully she’s not here right now.”
“I think I’m uninvited to book club,” I said.
“Eloise is sympathetic to your cause,” Vira countered. “Shelby and Abigail can go fuck themselves.”
She steered me farther into the apartment, finally pressing my shoulders down until I was sitting in one of the yellow plastic chairs around the kitchen table. The Montgomerys’ home was a strange, strange place. The entire decor was 1950s and very bright and cheery, but Julia, a taxidermist in her spare time, had filled the apartment with every animal that had died on By-the-Sea during the last twenty or so years. The centerpiece on the table was a family of squirrels, perpetually frozen in a snugly, sleeping bundle of bones.
Vira got me a towel and then poured me a cup of tea from a teapot that had been warming on the stove. She sat across from me and watched as I half-heartedly toweled off and then tried a sip of the tea.
Vira in this kitchen would never get old to me. Her black dress, her black hair, the tiny silver stud in her nose—all of that set against the backdrop of bright yellows and blues and oranges was at once both alarming and deeply satisfying. The one place I felt more at home than home was sitting with Vira in her kitchen.
The tea was citrusy and light. Vira made her own tea of herbs she grew in a small garden on the metal landing outside her bedroom window. The rains had probably ruined it now.
“First things first,” Vira said. “Did she?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like asking. But I have to ask.”
“I know.”
Vira sipped her tea thoughtfully.
“I promised my mom I would find out who killed
her,” I said. “But I don’t know where to begin.”
“‘Begin at the beginning,’” Vira recited, “‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”
“Alice in Wonderland? I don’t know what that means.”
“Sure you do. You’re here, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know where I am,” I said, brushing away a tear that was making its way down my cheek.
Oh.
I hadn’t meant to cry.
“Georgina,” Vira said, producing a tissue from a quaint ceramic tissue box, “you always cry when it rains. Come on; let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”
We moved into Vira’s bedroom. This was the only room of the apartment not decorated in chirpy fifties decor. Vira’s bedroom walls were black, and her twin bed had a canopy of black lace and her windows were fitted with black lacy curtains. Everything was black and lace, basically, which gave the room a strange Victorian, haunted-dollhouse-type feel.
The one place I felt more at home than home and Vira’s kitchen was Vira’s bedroom.
Vira rummaged around in her closet, and I stripped while her back was turned. She tossed a fluffy black robe over her shoulder. It smelled like rosewater and lemons as I slipped it on.
I moved to sit on the bed but was greeted by a furious yowl from something moving underneath the blankets.
“Careful!” Vira shouted, diving over to the bed to pull a little bundle of fur out from under my butt.
“What is that? And what was it doing under your sheets?”
“My cat! Rain. Don’t you remember? She likes to sleep under the blankets.” She presented the kitten to me proudly. Rain was scrawny and twisty and very, very cute. “When she dies—in, like, eighteen years—I think I’ll have Mom turn her into a lamp.”
I scratched Rain between the ears. “May you live a long and happy life.”
Vira put the kitten down, and Rain burrowed herself underneath the covers of the bed again. Vira pushed her to one side, lit some tall white pillar candles in her defunct fireplace, and then we sat across from each other on the bed.
“I’m so sorry all this is happening to you,” she said.
“Ain’t no thing,” I said, but we both knew that it was a thing, and that it was a thing that really sucked.
“I know why you came here,” Vira said.
“Because I love you and I missed you and I wanted to spend time with someone who doesn’t think I did something to Annabella?”
“Nope. Because you want to solve a murder and you know the best way to start—”
“Oh no.”
“—is by contacting the spirit world and giving them a quick hello, how do you do?”
I groaned. Vira slid off the bed and crossed the room to her closet, standing on tiptoes to pull something down from the top shelf.
Vira’s Ouija board was made of wood the color of stained tea, and it said Talking Board across the top in curved letters. The word yes was written in the top left corner, the word no was written in the top right. At the bottom: Good-bye. The middle of the board held the alphabet and the numbers, zero through ten. The planchette was cool when Vira placed it into my hands. She set the board on the bed and arranged it just so between us. Then she sat down again and looked at me expectantly.
“You know how I feel about this,” I said.
How I felt about it: very creepy.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that the spirit world was so easily accessible that an old wooden board would suffice to serve as mediator between this plane of existence and theirs, but if that were the case, I also wasn’t entirely convinced that was a good thing to play around with. And I didn’t know what sort of spirits would be so eager to talk to two teenaged girls sitting on a flooded island in the middle of a rainstorm, anyway, but I couldn’t imagine it would be the good ones.
“What do you intend to accomplish here?” she asked, even though technically this wasn’t even my idea. But I knew intentions were important. Especially when it came to creepy things like Ouija boards. Intentions were everything.
“I want to ask about Annabella’s killer,” I said. “Who killed Annabella? And where was my sister the night it happened?”
She took my hand and maneuvered it and the planchette onto the board.
I suddenly didn’t feel well; my belly ached with some vague discomfort and my palms felt a little sweaty.
“Vira?”
“I’m concentrating.”
The room felt suddenly warmer, like the candles were throwing off more heat than their tiny flames would suggest.
“Vira, is something happening?”
“Who killed Annabella?” Vira said, but she wasn’t talking to me, she was directing her words toward the board between us. We both had the tips of our fingers on the planchette and the absolute scariest part of how it jumped into motion is that I knew Vira would never, ever push it. She took this shit way too seriously.
“That’s not me, that’s not me,” I said.
“I know, shush,” Vira said. She looked positively radiant, alive with excitement.
The planchette moved to point at the letter E.
The planchette moved to point at the letter V.
I wished desperately that it would spell out something non-sinister and light, like how about: E-V-entually the rain will stop and Annabella’s death was just a joke, she’s actually fine and well and also you guys are totally safe and everything is great!!!!!!
The planchette moved to point at the letter I.
The planchette moved to point at the letter L.
Evil.
Of course the planchette spelled out the word evil, because life could never be calm and easy, life always had to be scary and dangerous and mean. The planchette kept moving.
The planchette moved to point at the letter M.
The planchette moved to point at the letter A.
The planchette moved to point at the letter N.
The planchette stopped moving.
“Evil man,” Vira said, mostly to herself, but also, I thought, because she considered the phrase evil man to be too good and creepy not to say out loud. “Do you know his name?”
The planchette moved to point at the word no.
“Hmm,” Vira said.
“I’m going to pee myself,” I whispered.
“At least we’ve ruled out some genders,” Vira said, choosing to ignore me. “Of course it’s a fucking man. Men are always killing things. Okay. Where was Mary Fernweh the night Annabella was murdered?”
The planchette moved to point at the letter W.
The planchette moved to point at the letter I.
The planchette moved to point at the letter T.
The planchette moved to point at the letter H.
The planchette moved to point at the letter H.
The planchette moved to point at the letter E.
The planchette moved to point at the letter R.
And then, as if it wanted to be very clear that it would share no more knowledge with us, the planchette moved to point at the word good-bye.
Vira didn’t look up from the board. She let her fingers fall away, but she just stared at the planchette like it was going to do something. For its part, the planchette sat motionless on the board, like a completely innocent thing. I thought the silence in the room was going to kill me but as soon as I opened my mouth to speak, Vira held a finger up. Shush.
Then she said, “With her. The planchette spelled—”
“I know—”
“With her.” She finally looked up at me. She looked more confused than anything, like she was trying to wrap her brain around what we’d just learned. “Do you remember what I said? Maybe I wasn’t specific enough? We don’t know who the her is.”
“Vira, I think if we can be confident about anything in this world, it’s that you know how to be specific with your Ouija questions.”
Vira put her hand to her mouth and bit one nail, almost methodically. She shook her head a
little. “And Mary told you—”
“That she didn’t do it. Yeah.”
“So if she didn’t do it—”
“Then why is this thing saying she did?” I finished.
Vira shook her head again. “Well, it’s not saying she did do it. It’s just saying . . . she was there, maybe? Or maybe she saw Annabella before? Honestly it would be really nice of the spirit realm if we could get another question or two,” she said, and poked the planchette for emphasis. Nothing happened.
“Well, I guess we’ve figured one thing out,” I said after a minute.
“What?” Vira asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“There’s a whole lot my sister isn’t telling me.”
So maybe Billy Kent had a reason to be wary of us, after all.
Maybe everybody did.
I cut through the graveyard on the way home. Autumnal, eternal, welcoming. The rain here was not as fierce; it died down to a steady, light trickle. The ground was soggy with wet leaves. Although it must have been after midnight by that point, the moon was bright in the sky and lit everything with a soft, yellow glow.
Vira had given me dry clothes to wear (black jeans, black turtleneck, black lacy bra) but those, too, were already damp. I propped the umbrella up against a grave and sat down on a stone bench. Because I couldn’t go home, because I couldn’t think of where to go, so I figured I might as well stay there and make myself comfortable.
Vira had given me a spoon and a pint of Broken Hearts ice cream for the road, which seemed appropriate. I pulled the top off the carton and started eating. It was that perfect temperature: soft and creamy, not too melty. I was halfway through the pint when I heard the whistling, and somehow, though I didn’t think I’d heard him whistle before, I knew who it was.
Harrison Lowry.
He hadn’t seen me yet, and so I was gifted the rare pleasure of watching the movements of someone who thinks he’s completely alone. Harrison whistled a somber, depressing tune that sounded a little bit like the By-the-Sea shanty. He walked with his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, which was just a little too big for him, in an adorable sort of way, in a way that made him seem a little younger than he was. His hair was wet and messy, and he didn’t have an umbrella with him. And he looked sad, distant—like he was in another world entirely. That was probably why he hadn’t noticed me yet, although he’d come to rest not ten feet away from me.