Autumn

by Sierra Dean

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you take that box up to the attic for me? Just some papers from the sale of the old house and some… It’s some papers. Your grandma said there’s plenty of space up there, even after remodeling for your room, so we might as well make use of it.”

  Lou hadn’t seen the attic yet in all her explorations of the house to date. In spite of the fact it was literally on the other side of the drywall from her, there was no direct access from her room to the storage half of the top floor.

  The box she was meant to take sat next to an interior door on the back wall of the kitchen. It was a tattered cardboard banker’s box, torn and ratty on the side like it might fall apart at any moment. Lou hoisted the box up, balancing it on her hip and opening the door. The stairwell was dark, with a minimal patch of yellow light from the top of the stairs guiding her way.

  The kitchen door swung closed behind her, making the space around her even darker, and Lou staggered on a step halfway up. She held tight to the box, bashing her knee against the wooden riser, unable to brace her fall.

  “You okay?” Her mother’s voice was muffled from the kitchen. Lou must have made a louder noise than she’d expected.

  “I’m fine,” she called back, though her knee called her a liar, throbbing in dull pain. “Just tripped.”

  She made her way up the remaining stairs, her injured knee thumping its own tiny heartbeat, and when she got to the top, she immediately dropped the box so she could rub the wound. There was no scrape, but it would definitely be bruised in the morning.

  The lid of the box had come off when it had fallen, and a quick glance inside showed her the mortgage documents her mom had promised, but a few folders also bore the logo of the hospital where her father had died. Lou had no interest in seeing how much money it had cost her family to see him slip away, so she repositioned the lid on the box and kicked it into a corner.

  Without her burden, Lou was able to get a good look of the attic. It was a fair bit smaller than her side of the upper floor, making her silently thankful to her grandmother for being so gracious to her. Unlike the light, airy feeling of her bedroom, the beams and ceiling were all aged dark wood, and most of the windows were covered with brown paper, giving the room its dim yellow glow.

  Several old steamer trunks were lined under the wall with neat stacks of cardboard boxes piled on top of them. An old sewing mannequin was covered in dust in one corner with an ancient velvet coat draped over it. There were moth holes chewed through the material, making it look older than it probably was.

  Curiosity overcame her when she saw a trunk with its lock popped and no boxes on top of it. There didn’t seem to be any harm in doing a quick investigation of the trunk’s contents, and she wouldn’t disturb anything.

  Lou knelt in front of the trunk and opened the top. The hinges squealed, rusted from disuse. For a moment she held her breath, waiting for someone to come in and tell her she shouldn’t be snooping, but the room remained quiet. She could hear the muffled voices of people talking on Granny Elle’s TV, but otherwise there was no sound in the house.

  On the top insert of the trunk was a small khaki uniform with a sash covered in multicolored patches. Each badge was decorated to represent some skill—canoeing, hiking, archery—and they were neatly sewn onto the sash with perfectly even spaces between them. Obviously the work of a proud parent and not the child himself. It reminded Lou of her own Girl Scouts sash, though she’d sewn those badges on herself in order to earn the sewing award.

  She fingered the prizes on her father’s sash reverently, then put the miniature uniform to the side, careful not to ruin the folding job. She didn’t want the shirt or sash to end up wrinkled.

  Underneath was a collection of toys, and Lou’s heart leapt. It was like finding a secret time capsule dedicated solely to her father. A beaten, brown leather baseball glove was next in the pile. An elastic was wrapped around the outside, keeping an aging Rawlings baseball trapped inside.

  She took the elastic off, and the ball rolled out. Inside the pocket of the glove, the leather was worn so smooth it shined. Lou imagined her father using oil to condition the leather and the ball to mold the glove to the proper size. It smelled sweet and slightly like lemon. She placed the ball next to her hip, sure no one would notice it going missing, and added the glove to the pile of other goods.

  The trunk contained old Hardy Boys paperbacks, dog-eared sci-fi novels—Lou took a few of these, the ones that looked the most well-loved—and at the bottom of the trunk was a stack of papers.

  A few were old class papers, some scribbled notes, and the very last sheet was from a sketchpad. When Lou looked at it, everything else she’d been holding in her lap tumbled to the floor.

  There was the woman with the tangled braid, the one Lou had been seeing in her dreams, and cowering at the woman’s feet was a coyote.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cooper hated game days.

  On the Friday of games all players were required to “be presentable.” As the coach put it, he wanted them to “look like goddamn gentlemen.”

  Cooper didn’t have a dress shirt of his own, so he had to wear one of Jer’s, but his mom had splurged on his only tie, a green-and-bronze-striped number that he thought looked pretty damned good on him.

  A blazer was optional, and Cooper didn’t feel like it would help his image any, so he went with the basic shirt/tie/slacks combo. All in all it made him feel like he was volunteering at a funeral parlor.

  Lou sat on her stool beside him in chemistry and gave him a once-over. He couldn’t decide if the smirk playing on her lips was because she liked what she saw or she was resisting the urge to make fun of him.

  “What?” he asked, smoothing his tie self-consciously.

  “You clean up real nice, Cooper Reynolds.”

  He dipped his head, trying not to show her how the compliment made him grin but failing miserably.

  It was nice to have a normal discussion for once. The past week had been strained, and between his mom and her grandmother, they had only been able to meet at school. Practice for the upcoming game had eaten up the rest of his spare time, putting their already limited research efforts to a halt.

  On Tuesday she’d seemed uneasy about something, but when he’d asked, she brushed him off, telling him it was nothing.

  To have her back to her sweet, smiling self was a treat. Even more so was knowing he’d get to spend real time with her at Archer’s party later that evening. It was the only thing motivating him to go, knowing they’d get to have a good one-on-one.

  If he was being honest with himself, what he was really looking forward to was asking her to go for a walk in the woods with him.

  If he grew a pair by then.

  “You coming to the game tonight?” He knew she was going to the party but hadn’t thought to ask if she’d be coming to see him play. The idea thrilled and terrified him in equal turn. The only person who ever routinely watched him play was Mia. His sister even dragged her bizarro goth boyfriend out to games with her. She’d never missed one.

  His mother had only been able to come once.

  “Yeah. Marnie has been making a huge deal of it. There’s apparently a whole routine I get to be a part of. Dinner at the Dairy Queen. Game. Sounds like there are plans to go to Marnie’s after the game to ‘change’ and ‘put on our game faces.’” Lou made little air quotes around these words and rolled her eyes.

  She spoke fondly of Marnie most days, so Cooper knew she considered the other girl a friend, in spite of any warnings Marnie had issued against Cooper. It was hard for Cooper to be bitter about it. Marnie had never been outwardly malicious towards him, and she’d welcomed Lou with open arms.

  He would have liked it better if Lou came to the game on her own, but he wasn’t going to begrudge her for having other friends. He didn’t want her to experience his own friendless existence.

  Friendless except for her.

  She snapped her goggles on and turn
ed her attention to Mr. Price when he entered the room, but Cooper kept his gaze locked on her. Where had this crazy girl come from? This girl who managed to look beautiful even in plastic protective goggles covering half her face. Who actually wanted to spend time with him.

  Clearly she was insane.

  But that made two of them, because he was crazy about her.

  Two months earlier he would have rolled his eyes just for thinking something so stupid and cheesy, but there it was.

  And what was worse, he wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her everything. Maybe that’s what had his mom so spooked. They hadn’t figured out the connection between Lou’s father and his own mom, but what if she’d told Lou’s dad something and he’d freaked out? Perhaps his mom’s fear had more to do with her own history and not Lou in particular.

  They needed to determine how their parents were connected, and maybe then they’d have a better shot at sorting things out.

  He knew he couldn’t tell her about what had happened to Jer, though. The secret had been kept so long, and in mere months it wouldn’t matter anymore. The point would be moot. And would it help her to know what really happened to him, or would she be off thinking he was exactly what people had claimed he was?

  Someone who left.

  He was going to end up leaving her, and knowing that put a damper on all his warm, fuzzy feelings. Didn’t she have a right to know what he was going to put her through? If she stuck around, it was inevitable.

  “Mister Reynolds.” Mr. Price tapped a yardstick on the counter impatiently. “I’m sure whatever has you off in la-la land is incredibly important, but do you think you could spare a moment of time to answer the question?”

  A few giggles rippled through the classroom, and Cooper looked around nervously. Lou dipped her head, not meeting his eyes, but she furiously scribbled something in her notebook and dropped it on the counter.

  Huge letters read: COMBUSTION REACTION.

  “I, uh… A combustion reaction?” He sounded unsure because he hadn’t heard the question, but the tittering amongst his classmates stopped.

  Mr. Price seemed disappointed that he couldn’t humiliate Cooper for getting the answer wrong.

  “Miss Whittaker, if I’d wanted an answer from you, I’d have directed my question to you, is that understood?”

  Lou looked up and smiled. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  A few more snickers rang out. Mr. Price looked unimpressed.

  “Since everyone finds this so humorous, I’d like to see how funny it is in detention. Mr. Reynolds, I’ll see you at lunch, lest you try to play the football card on me. Miss Whittaker, I’ll see you after school, as you have no such excuses.”

  “But—” Lou began to protest.

  “I think I said no excuses.”

  Cooper gave Lou a sympathetic look when she tossed her pen down on the counter in disgust. Turned out Mr. Price could get worse.

  Mr. Price went on to explain the experiment they’d be doing that day and what defined a combustion reaction, but Cooper drifted off in thought.

  He was going to tell Lou.

  That night, he’d tell her everything.

  If there was any benefit to serving after-school detention instead of an in-class lunch hour like poor Cooper had to, was that Lou got to avoid Mr. Price. Lou made her way into the detention hall and forfeited her cell to the supervising teacher, who tossed it into her desk drawer with about a dozen others and a few handheld video game systems.

  She surveyed the room and spotted a familiar face in the back row. Archer looked up from his textbook and gave a wave, so any hope Lou had of pretending she hadn’t seen him went out the window. She briefly debated sitting by herself under the guise of being a good little detainee, but a small group of girls were chatting quietly, and the teacher didn’t seem to care. Archer nodded at her and raised a quizzical brow.

  How could she argue with a brow raise?

  After weaving her way through the desks, she took the empty spot next to him. He grinned broadly and shut his book, no longer maintaining the pretense of studying.

  “Hello, Miss Eloise.”

  “Ugh, please. Lou.”

  “Right. Pretty girl with a boy’s name.”

  “I’m not sure if you just complimented me or insulted me.”

  “Just stating facts, that’s all. Lou is a boy’s name.”

  “At least I’m not named after Target’s in-store brand.”

  “Ahh, nicely played.” He winked at her and turned in his seat so he was facing her. Lou looked at the teacher, expecting her to separate them at any minute. But Ms. Evans seemed deeply engrossed in a tattered Harlequin and wasn’t paying any attention to the students.

  “So, what did you do to get yourself in here? Shouldn’t you have gotten a free pass since you’re on the football team?”

  “Nah, I’ll be out of here with loads of time before the game. Plus, who says I’m not here to enjoy some peace and quiet and get a little studying done?”

  “Um, because that would be insane.”

  “Valid point. What did you do?”

  “Shared my notes with Cooper in Chemistry.”

  “And you got stuck in here, but he didn’t? That seems unfair.”

  “No, no. Mr. Price figured if we were in here together we’d just talk the entire time, so he made us serve our time separately. Now I’m starting to see the logic in that.” She gave him a pointed look.

  “Oh, no, this is totally different. See, I’m irresistible.”

  “You need to work on your confidence issues.” Lou dug into her backpack so she could hide her smile. Archer had a way of making annoyance charming, and she didn’t want him to know it was working on her. Plus, she didn’t want to admit he looked extra good in his game-day suit and tie. Not as good as Cooper, but still.

  “I’ve been told that before.”

  She tossed her chemistry textbook onto the desk and found her notebook, pretending to focus on acids and bases instead of Archer. This proved to be difficult, since hydrochloric acid wasn’t staring at her from two feet away. The harder she looked at her book, the more apparent it became that Archer wasn’t looking at his.

  A slight tingling crept up her spine, and she did her best to ignore it, but when the shivery sensation evolved into a fingerlike crawl, she shuddered and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  “Cold?”

  She glanced over at him, and the feeling got more intense. She wanted to look around and see if anyone else was getting the same creepy, chilly vibe she was. But when she tried to turn away, she found herself unable to move. When Lou met Archer’s eyes, the unsettling buzz on her skin grew to a fever pitch, and she wanted to shake herself off like a wet dog.

  “I—I, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing is going on.” He tilted his head to one side and watched her. “Are you sure you’re not just cold?”

  Lou wanted to deny it, but she was cold. And she was having a hard time remembering his question. Archer reached out and put his hand over hers, and all the sensitivity radiated to one point, where his skin touched hers. In that moment her mind went fully blank, like a white sheet had been pulled over her thoughts and there was nothing to think about, wonder over, or cause her to worry.

  There was only Archer and those cool, blue eyes of his.

  He smiled, and her stomach bottomed out, but it wasn’t the fun, floaty, butterfly excitement she felt with…

  With…

  There was someone who she was trying to think of, but the film over everything made a name and face impossible to grasp. Archer’s smile was lovely, but the longer she struggled to find her own memories, the more his grin lost its charm and became menacing.

  She wrenched her hand away, and once she was free of his grasp, the veil was lifted.

  Cooper.

  When Archer touched her, every thought of Cooper had been spirited out of her mind.

  Chapter Eighteen

  N
obody took football more seriously than small towns in Texas did.

  Lou had always assumed those giant crowd scenes in Friday Night Lights had been exaggerated for dramatic impact, but when she sat down next to Marnie in the jam-packed Poisonfoot stadium, she knew this was beyond anything television could have imagined.

  The crowd was roaring, chanting, “Let’s go Padres, Let’s go!” and stamping their feet in rowdy unison, so much so the benches rumbled like an earthquake. Back in Fresno there’d been one or two occasions Lou recalled an actual earthquake causing the seats shake, but even those experiences paled compared to this.

  Everyone, literally everyone, was wearing the burgundy-and-gray colors of the team, and Lou was eternally grateful to Marnie for warning her this would be a requirement. She was wearing a burgundy tank top—borrowed from Marnie—underneath a lightweight gray cardigan. At least she didn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

  Most of the crowd was dressed in official Padres T-shirts and hoodies, making Lou wonder if there was a merch stand somewhere selling overpriced American Apparel paraphernalia. More likely there was some hive mind welcome basket she had yet to receive which included her Padres gear, cowboy boots, and a handful of dirt to artfully smear on her jeans.

  She was squished between Marnie and Maisie—one of the other girls from their lunch table—and flanking them down the row were Ainslie, Haylie, Melodie, and Annie. Lou was the only one of the girls without an ie in her name. To be fair she was also the only one who preferred a boy’s nickname. During the first week the girls had tried to concoct a different nickname for Eloise, but the best they’d been able to suggest was Ellie, and frankly Lou liked being a Lou.

  Marnie, not content to stick with that, had started calling her Lulu, but it was close enough.

  The cheerleaders—a few of the missing ie girls from their group—were bouncing on the sidelines, getting the crowd foaming at the mouth for the game to start. Meanwhile the marching band was midfield doing a stirring rendition of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night”. It was a testament to their skill that Lou was able to discern which song it was through all the clashing cymbals and heavy trumpet line.