Behold the Bones

by Natalie C. Parker

  “Really? Well, that’s wonderful.” Mom’s smile says she can’t believe I failed to share this bit of news. “Candace goes out of her way to make people feel welcome.”

  Red snorts. I can’t blame him. I go out of my way for friends and roadkill and not much else.

  Mr. King continues as if he didn’t hear. “It’s a wonderful thing. Moving can be tough on the kids and I’m grateful for people like Candace.”

  Mom’s hand falls on my shoulder with an approving squeeze. It’s more contact than we’ve shared in days. How is it possible that this man, this complete and total stranger, has walked into my house and inspired my mom to love me again? I’m so intensely resentful I have to look away or risk eating his face.

  But no one notices because Mr. King has more to bestow on his loving public.

  From the inside pocket of his blazer, he produces three black envelopes, passing one to Mom, one to Aunt Sarah, and one to Nanny. “One final thing and then I promise I’ll be out of your hair. My son’s eighteenth birthday is coming up, and as a way of saying thank you to all the good people of Sticks, we’d like to invite you to join us for a celebration and see all we’ve done to restore the old Lillard House. My only regret is that I’m giving you such short notice. The gala will be this coming Friday night.”

  “Oh!” My mother sounds dazzled. “That is soon, but of course we’d love to come.”

  “All I ask is that you come ready to dance and eat your share of birthday cake. I’m afraid the one I’ve ordered will be quite large and if you don’t help us reduce its size considerably by the end of the night, I’ll have to charge it rent.”

  My parents eat it up. Nanny eats it up. The cousins eat it up. If the invitations were edible, they’d eat them, too. Their words of thanks and awe blur together after a while.

  I tug the invitation from Mom’s hand and slip my finger beneath the flap, easily popping it open. The interior of the envelope is lined in shiny gold foil, and just like the envelope, the card inside it is black and heavy. Pulling it out, I find curly white font that reads:

  Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt and Ruth King

  Request the honor of your presence

  At the eighteenth birthday celebration

  In honor of their son

  GAGE ROOSEVELT KING

  The sight of Gage’s name pulls him to mind: standing dirt-streaked and gallant as he shook my hand. I wouldn’t mind seeing him again and I certainly wouldn’t mind dancing with him.

  The rest of the invitation includes the address and date all spelled out as though using numbers is déclassé. The very last line on the card reads, “Formal Attire Requested.” Anyone seeking to fulfill that request won’t do it by shopping in Sticks, where our options are Kristy’s Kountry Stitchin’ or nothing.

  There’s definitely nothing in my closet that would satisfy this sort of request. No, this is going to require an out-of-Sticks trip if I want to do it right. And that’ll be tricky with our preseason volleyball camp starting up tomorrow. But a gala held at an old plantation house? Even I can admit it sounds romantic, and I’d look damn good in a corseted dress with a sweeping, layered skirt.

  Red clears his throat dramatically and I look up to find all eyes on me.

  “What?”

  “Possum, didn’t you hear Mr. King’s offer?” Dad has no sense of when pet names are and aren’t appropriate. He stands at Mom’s back, towering even above Mr. King.

  “Nope,” I say. “Wasn’t listening.”

  Mom sighs, but Mr. King is once again smooth.

  “I was telling your parents that I’d like to shoot an episode focused on the stories all the local kids tell about the swamp. I hear that you’re the girl to see about that and I was hoping you’d consent to sitting down with me sometime. Informally, if you prefer.”

  The promise of fame has Mom’s face all lit up. She’s already planning my walk down the red carpet. Looking at me with renewed interest because of Mr. King.

  It infuriates me.

  “Sorry,” I say, pointedly not looking at my mother. “Not interested.”

  Mom protests, but Mr. King’s smile is practiced.

  He says, “Fair enough. I can see you’re determined and far be it from me to force anyone into show business if they don’t want it.”

  With that, he begins to say his good-byes. I hear the cousins thank him more than necessary and tune in long enough to learn he’s offered them jobs on the film crew. Everyone smiles. Thoroughly, thoroughly charmed. And I guess maybe I have been, too, because I can’t stop imagining what it will be like to dance around those tall, white columns in a gown that swirls around my feet like a river.

  8

  THERE ARE THREE THINGS WE leave Sticks to buy: cars, clothes, and contraceptives. The upcoming gala requires at least one of those.

  It’s been two days since Mr. King made his missionary tour of Sticks and stirred the town into a frenzy. Since Sunday night, I’ve heard more talk about Local Haunts the show than local haunts the problem. Between daily stops at Clary General, the usual stream of gossip I enjoy on my phone, and my own research, I can say that the show is to be called Local Haunts: Shining in the Bayou, that Mr. King’s wife has yet to be seen by anyone, and that the town is ready to serve up all our stories on a silver platter.

  The only ghost sighting I’ve heard of since his arrival happened at the end of day two of our preseason volleyball training. I was just leaving the locker room when all of a sudden Kelly Thames started shrieking that there was a crying girl in one of the shower stalls. Though it couldn’t have been a full minute from when I heard her scream to when I arrived at the shower, I saw nothing. And based on what Sterling reported about Kelly and Hallie fabricating a ghost story, it’s just as likely this was a fabrication, too.

  This is just the kind of drama the scent of fame inspires.

  Wednesday after volleyball, Sterling, Abigail, and I drive south to New Orleans to shop. It’s a long trip—a necessary one if we don’t want to end up in the same dress as three other girls—and we had to promise hourly check-ins to all three of our mothers to avoid a chaperone. Even then we were allowed to go only because Sterling’s brother, Phin, goes to Tulane and is close enough to be male in case of emergencies. But the true testament to how excited our mothers are lies in the credit cards we each carry in our wallets.

  This dance is serious Sticks business.

  I drive because unlike Sterling, I have a car, and unlike Abigail, I don’t have to share it with a twin sister. This part of Louisiana is all long rows of pines with pockets of swamp and small towns and plenty of underworked cops looking to make a buck. I set my cruise control at the limit because I like my driving record spotless.

  “Do you want to know what I found out about the Kings?” I ask when yet another radio station crashes into static.

  “How is there possibly something you haven’t told us yet?” Sterling leans up from the backseat.

  “Are you not buckled in?” Abigail snaps. “Sterling Saucier, don’t make me come back there.”

  “I only found it last night on some ghost-hunter forum,” I continue.

  “How do you even know how to look for this stuff?” Sterling asks, clicking herself into the center seat belt.

  “She’s part bloodhound,” Abigail explains, which is close enough to the truth. I’ve always been good at tracking down stories.

  “According to this site, Mr. King got into ghosts because of a near-death experience he had as a kid. He was driving home from visiting his grandparents with his dad. It was late and they were near some marsh in Washington State when it started to rain. They were taking a back road and were in the middle of nowhere when Grand Mr. King swerved off the road and drove straight into the water. Somehow, Little Mr. King got free, but his dad drowned.”

  “Oh my God.” Sterling shrinks in my rearview mirror. “That’s horrible.”

  “It is, but this is where the story gets crazy. He was, like, nine years old or something a
nd all alone in the middle of a rainstorm, swimming through the bog. But he didn’t give up. He swam to shore, followed the road until he saw lights in the woods, and headed for them.”

  “I don’t want to hear this,” says Abigail. “This isn’t going anywhere good.”

  I ignore her because she definitely wants to hear this, she just doesn’t know it yet. “Little Mr. King struggled through the forest toward the lights, which turned out to be a little cabin. What choice did he have? He knocked on the door and a beautiful woman answered. ‘Oh my!’ she cried. ‘What’s a little boy like you doing in a storm like this? Come in, come in.’ And she swept him into her house and warmed him by the fire.”

  Abigail’s eyebrows keep climbing and Sterling’s shoulders have rolled in on themselves. But they’re still listening.

  “Well, Little Mr. King told her what had happened to him and his papa, and she soothed his little tears and told him that the storm had knocked the power out, but she’d call the police first thing in the morning. Poor Little Mr. King cried until she sang him to sleep, and he slept all through the rest of that terrible storm.

  “He woke the next morning to the birds chirping and the sun on his face and in the full light of day, he could see that the roof that sheltered him all night was full of holes and animal nests. There was no sign of the fire that warmed his skin or the woman who sang him to sleep. He made his way to the road where the police were searching for him high and low.

  “The amazing thing is, the sheriff said that Grand Mr. King’s car was so far submerged in the bog that they never would’ve thought to look for Little Mr. King if they hadn’t received a call from a woman who refused to leave her name. She told them exactly where to look.” The look of gentle horror on their faces gives me a grin. “Supposedly, the house is still there and the police report corroborates everything.”

  “No wonder he hunts ghosts,” Sterling says, exhaling heavily. “I just wish he didn’t have to do it in the Lillard House.”

  “I wish he didn’t have to do it in Sticks,” I add, but Sterling shrugs.

  “If you ask me, it’s about time we started talking openly about the swamp. Nothing good comes from pretending it isn’t unusual.”

  “Nothing good comes from reality TV,” I all but spit.

  “At least he’s asking questions,” she counters.

  Sometimes, I think Sterling is tragically simple. She thinks people are what they seem and that exposing the truth is uniformly better than hiding it. But sometimes the truth is a secret because it’s personal and no one’s business but your own.

  “Just because he’s asking questions doesn’t mean we have to answer them,” I say.

  “Someone should.” Sterling keeps her voice light, her eyes averted in her version of determination. Which looks a lot like avoidance to me.

  “Nothing good comes from giving another person power over you,” Abigail says. “Trust me.”

  Traffic thickens as we approach the city and I hush everyone so I can concentrate on not killing us. It’s an eternity before Abigail announces the exit I want and I steer us off the interstate to the rougher roads below.

  Almost immediately I regret wishing away the rushing chaos of the interstate. The roads of the city are tight, twisting things that branch off in unexpected directions, crossing traffic that doesn’t look friendly, depositing you onto even smaller one-way roads with unreliable street signs. By the time we find a metered parking lot, I’m sweating and my heart is racing.

  “Good job,” Abigail says with an encouraging pat-pat-pat on my shoulder.

  “I have no idea where we are,” I return, looking around at the brightly colored buildings. It’s not my first time in the city, but somehow the rows of fuchsia, lime, coral, and gold—colors that should not look as good pressed together as they do—look strange and new.

  “Magazine Street,” Sterling says cheerfully as though I haven’t just been through an ordeal. “Or, off of it, actually. It’s right there.”

  We step onto the blistering pavement and head in the direction Sterling points. I take a deep breath of air that’s coated in grease, sugar, and something decidedly not sweet.

  “What is that smell?” Abigail asks before I’ve recovered.

  Sterling takes a deep breath. Having been in these parts of the city twice in as many months, she’s our resident expert. “That’s the city,” she says. “Three parts grease, two parts Hurricane slushy, with a splash of piss.”

  I take another breath. The second taste isn’t so bad, and by the third breath it’s very nearly pleasant. “Better than the swamp.”

  “Okay,” Sterling says, studying her phone. “The shop we want should be just down this way. Also, I was wondering if, uh, well . . .” She pauses abruptly, looking between me and Abigail as if she expects us to read her mind.

  “We’re actually aging before your eyes,” I say, impatient.

  Sterling frowns but carries on. “I was wondering if we could stop at a drugstore before we go home.”

  “Sure? Why are you being weird?”

  “It’s just in case. I mean, I want to be prepared in case Heath and I . . .” She raises her eyebrows.

  “Oh! Right. Yes. Of course. Obviously.” I might’ve kept going except Abigail gives me a shove.

  “Thanks. I just can’t imagine buying anything like that from Old Lady Clary or the gas station.”

  “Nor should you,” Abigail says, genuinely shocked. “The things they carry are so old, you might as well make your own.”

  We laugh both from horror and hysteria.

  The shop on Sterling’s map turns out to be a two-tiered creaking building with several cats and an attendant with makeup that doesn’t look real. She can’t be much older than us, but she welcomes us with a sort of disinterest that makes her seem out of our league. Or maybe it’s that we’re out of hers. Far, far below her league. But I’m not intimidated. I give her a cool smile of my own and breeze past racks of airy pastel tops and skirts to the second floor as if I know where I’m going. I don’t, but since I didn’t spot a single dress on the ground floor, the only way to go is up.

  The top floor opens like a little ballroom. The ceiling is strung with paper lanterns and Mardi Gras beads. Mirrors line one entire wall, reflecting rows of gowns all gleaming like jewels in the sunlight. Silk, satin, chiffon, and more fabrics I’m not cultured enough to name. This place smells expensive.

  We stop in a clump at the top of the stairs. Unmoving, but moved nonetheless by the scene before us.

  “I don’t think I can pick,” says Sterling.

  “I wish I didn’t have to pick,” says Abigail.

  “We’re going to have to pick for each other,” I say.

  And that’s exactly how it goes. For Abigail, Sterling and I find dresses that look like the sun—in shades of daffodil and amber and smoke. For Sterling, we go for the drama of jewel tones—indigo and ruby and plum. And for me, they pick the aggressive colors of spring—peach and lilac and moss green. We know one another better than we know ourselves because even as I turn my nose up at the sight of a peach-colored gown, I see how perfectly it complements my skin.

  It works to our advantage that we have no time to agonize over our choices. Sterling goes for the indigo, Abigail for the amber, and I pick the moss. Together, we’ll be balanced and beautiful.

  We spend what remains of Wednesday shopping hours tromping up and down Magazine Street, dodging tourists and street merchants, gasping or vomiting at price tags, and, finally, purchasing the rest of what we need: accessories, shoes, and new underthings.

  Our final stop is the drugstore. We choose the huge one on Canal Street even though it requires a short drive deeper into the city. Size, in this case, matters because the larger the store, the less anyone will care about three seventeen-year-olds perusing the contraceptives.

  Canal Street takes us temporarily away from the press of multicolored houses and storefronts to a wide street separated by trolley tracks and two
rows of towering, corporate buildings. Here, the crowd is different from the lazy tide of Magazine Street. Here, the people look bored and alive and hungry in a way that manages to be enticing. I decide this city is an intoxicating wilderness and I must have it one day.

  I press myself into Abigail’s side, gripping her hand in my own. “Look at this place! Isn’t it amazing? I can’t wait to leave Sticks for a place like this.”

  She leans into me. “It’s all right.”

  “All right? Beale, this place is freedom personified! You can’t tell me you wouldn’t love it here.”

  “Maybe,” she answers thoughtfully. “But I don’t know if I want to leave home.”

  That stops me in my tracks. She stops a step ahead of me and turns. Sterling stops ahead of both of us, the neon lights of the drugstore flashing around us like rain.

  “But you have to leave,” I say. “How will you ever be yourself, the real Abigail Beale, in Sticks?”

  She frowns at me like I’m stupid. “I am the real Abigail Beale.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  At that, her shoulders pull back and she folds her arms across her chest. “What are you getting at, Candace Pickens?”

  “Really? I’m getting at you’re gay, Beale. You like the ladies and you’re terrified to say it at home.”

  Sterling steps to Abigail’s side looking around nervously. But the city doesn’t care if we have this discussion because the city doesn’t care if Abigail’s gay: her parents do.

  “You don’t know what I’m afraid of,” Abigail answers.

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Abigail should want to leave our town just as much if not more than I do, and here she is saying she might not leave at all?

  “Y’all, not to derail this touching conversation, but I’m a little afraid of getting home late, so can we save this for the drive?” Sterling tugs on each of our arms, a literal return to reality.

  We have to skirt past a woman dressed like a Las Vegas showgirl and a man performing both sides of Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene to get inside the drugstore.

  I can’t believe Abigail doesn’t see this place and dream of a different, freer life. I can’t believe she doesn’t feel the same stubborn pull I do and hate the thought of spending two more years in a town no one can place on a map. She’s either lying to me or herself, and I think I know which it is.