Behold the Bones

by Natalie C. Parker

  “Welcome to the collective,” I say, relieved.

  By the time lunch rolls around, the rumors about me and my ghostly counterpart are in full swing. I know it’ll blow over. I know it’s 100 percent temporary, but it’s hellish and I don’t like it, and if I think this is bad, I can’t wait to see what my spot on Local Haunts generates.

  Heath joins us at lunch and so does Nova, which for her consists of an apple, a chocolate bar, and a diet soda. If I tried to subsist on that, I’d keel over five minutes into practice, but I suppose nonathletes don’t need to be much other than conscious and coherent.

  “I heard you were at the racetrack Saturday night, Candy,” Nova says, biting into her apple. “I thought it would be sort of an all-testosterone scene, but girls go, too?”

  I know how she heard it and I’m surprised that the memory of that conversation with Gage is tinged with something like apprehension.

  “It’s basically the only scene,” I say apologetically, but she doesn’t shrink away.

  “Sounds fun.” She smiles around another bite. “Guess that’s where I’ll be next time. Do you guys just meet up there? Or is there some sort of introduction protocol? I don’t want to misstep so soon in a new town.”

  She’s nice, smart, not openly critical of my town, and I like her. Which, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I decided before committing grand theft equine with her.

  “How are you dealing with the house?” Sterling asks, brazenly ignoring Nova’s questions. “You must be suffering without air-conditioning.”

  Nova rolls her eyes, breezing past the slight. “It’s not awesome, but my room is pretty amazing. Or it’s going to be. You guys should come check it out. Maybe help me decide where to put what. I’m horrible with decoration.”

  This is perfect. If I have any chance of convincing Mr. King not to use that footage, it’s by cozying up to his daughter. In the space of a minute, we’ve agreed to hang with Nova King in the Lillard House after volleyball practice.

  The day continues to surprise. At the end of lunch, Riley Wawheece calls my name and doesn’t follow it up with anything obnoxious or harassing. “Candy. Hey. Wait up,” is all he says. Which, of course, I don’t. But he continues his pursuit with some of his infamous charm. “Goddamn it, Candy, I’m trying to give you something. Just wait a goddamn minute.”

  Heath and Sterling usher me forward while Abigail turns to run interference, which is usually enough of a deterrent for anyone looking for trouble, but Riley persists.

  “Just,” he starts to shout, but thinks better of it and lowers his voice, “I just need to talk to you for a fucking second.”

  I stop and turn to face him. On one side of me, Heath bristles. On the other, Sterling utters a sigh of displeasure. They’re not usually so aggressive, but the Wawheece boys occupy a special place in all our hearts. Even without the abbreviated story I told them about Saturday night at the Chevelle, they’d resent any attention he directed our way.

  “What do you want?”

  He takes a few hulking steps forward. Being so close to him under regular light, it’s difficult not to express disgust. He has a face like a rockslide, eyes and mouth crowding his large nose. His shorn head is pocked with old scars, and his lips are big and wet. It’s no wonder he’s angry. I’d almost feel sorry for him if he wasn’t also mean. But he stands there with his shoulders hunched and without his posse, looking almost contrite.

  “It’s no big deal, I just wanted to give you this.” He digs into his bag and produces a puffy plastic sack. It crinkles when he pushes it into my hands. “And to say I’m sorry I acted like a dick.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific.” I laugh, but he doesn’t, and Abigail shoots me a critical look.

  “I’m apologizing, for Chrissake.” He tugs at the back of his neck with fat-knuckled, paint-spattered hands. “Just. I’m sorry, all right? That’s all I’m saying. Sorry. Are we cool?”

  This time he looks me right in the eye. His “sorry” is delivered both forcefully and with a hint of desperation. It’s unsettling.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We’re cool, Wawheece, we’re cool.”

  “Great,” he says with a nod of his head. And with an awkward wave, he turns and skulks the opposite way down the hall.

  The four of us stand still for a moment, watching him cut a path without even trying.

  “You wanna tell us what that was about?” Heath asks.

  “I have no idea.”

  Abigail nudges me with her elbow. “Not true. Look in the bag. But . . . maybe hold it away from your face.”

  “That’s what she said,” I mutter, gingerly peeling open the bag.

  Inside the plastic is a crumpled brown paper bag, and inside that is a bottle of vodka. New, unopened, and exactly like the one I abandoned at the track.

  “Is he hitting on you?” Sterling asks with justified alarm.

  “It’s not a box of condoms,” Abigail answers, totally deadpan.

  “Jezuz,” Heath breathes, walking away with his chivalrous sensibilities.

  “No, it’s actually an apology,” I muse, wrapping the bottle and stashing it in my bag before a teacher comes by.

  “What’s happening?” Sterling asks. “Do you think he’s dying?”

  “Maybe he’s had a change of heart?” Abigail suggests. “Trying civility for a while?”

  I shake my head, unsure what to think. He’s not the apologizing type. Neither of the Wawheece boys are, and if Riley suddenly decided to make amends on all his past wrongs, what chance is there he’d start with me for a transgression as small as stealing my liquor? Not much.

  The bell shrieks overhead and the hallway goes from calm to frenzied. Sterling rushes to Choir with Heath at her side, Abigail heads to Government, but I stand still and follow a thought. Throwing down enough cash for a bottle of vodka he wouldn’t get to taste couldn’t have been fun for Riley. There’s no way he made this decision on his own. Someone else must have put him up to it. No one among his usual crew. Even if one of them had enough of a conscience to suggest it, they wouldn’t have the chops to enforce it.

  There’s really only one possibility.

  The warning bell rings. Sixty seconds to get across campus to Journalism. But looking up, I see I’m not alone in my near-tardiness. Along with five or six harried freshmen, there’s a figure leaning against the lockers at the far end of the hallway. Button-down shirt with rolled sleeves and a swath of bands around one wrist. When I spot him he stands, gives a little salute, and disappears behind a classroom doorway.

  Lord help me, I recognize him from a distance: Gage King.

  13

  THAT EVENING, SUNSET MURDERS THE top half of the Lillard House.

  Nova answers the door in bare feet. Her smile greets us along with a puff of paint thinner or something just as pungent.

  “Sorry about the smell,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “They painted the upstairs after the party and it reeks. I’ve got the windows open in my room. It helps, I promise.”

  “How are you not high all the time?” I ask, stepping into the cavernous foyer.

  “Who’s to say I’m not?” she teases with a laugh. “Call it a bonus.”

  Without the press of a crowd, and the dazzling sight of Gage King in a three-piece suit, I see more of this transformed foyer than I did during the gala. The floor is cool, smooth marble, and an enormous chandelier hangs from the dome of the ceiling. Rich wallpaper of burgundy and gold rushes to meet white molding halfway down the height of the tall walls. The two stairways that curl around the foyer are carpeted in red, and the whole space has been decorated with gold accents and light. It’s like stepping into a painting.

  “Wow.” Sterling stares up at the chandelier. “This is—this is really—”

  “Ostentatious?” Nova offers. “Grandiose? Pretentious?”

  Clever, self-deprecating, funny. She was meant to be my friend.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Abigail offers solemnly. “Y
our home is gorgeous.”

  “I just live here,” Nova says with a shrug. “But thanks. My dad will appreciate the compliment.”

  She leads us up one of the curling staircases and down a long hall to a corner room at the back of the house. Her room. As promised, the old-fashioned floor-to-ceiling windows are open with gauzy purple curtains ruffling in the breeze. It’s warmer up here on the second floor, sticky warm. The breeze helps keep things tolerable. Not an ideal way to live, but any self-respecting southerner can stand a little warmth.

  Nova’s walls have been painted the color of pumpkins. A bold choice, one she’s softened with white trim and purple accents. The windows overlook the hill in the backyard and the oak forest north of the house. I peer out the latter, hunting for any sign of that little shack we visited last time, but the oaks are dense and guarded.

  Stacked on the foot of her bed are a pile of her intended decorations. They range from glittery Venetian masks to mirrors to prints of vibrant paintings by no one I recognize. We start by turning on some music—her room, her choice, and she chooses some completely inoffensive pop—and spreading the items out one at a time.

  “We move so often,” she explains, “it just makes me feel better if my room is always mine. These help.”

  “Where did you get these?” Sterling raises a mask to her face—a pointy-chinned blue mask with purple and green feathers sprouting around the top and a spade painted on one cheek.

  “Oh,” Nova says, and pauses, as though deciding whether or not to tell the truth. “My father took us to Italy a few years ago to investigate some old haunted church.”

  “Your Venetian masks are actually from Venice?” Abigail asks, wonder in her voice.

  “I bought them there,” Nova answers. “But for all I know, they’re made in China like everything else.”

  “Have you been anywhere else?” Abigail presses with a new light in her eyes. New Orleans does nothing for her, but I’m glad to see she’s not blind to the idea that the rest of the world might have something to offer her.

  “A few places.” Nova holds up by her dresser a painting of a girl who might be drowning. I’ll never understand the urge to make death beautiful. “Dad likes to film on location as much as possible, of course, and he likes to take us with him.”

  “Nice to have a dad who cares,” Sterling says without a hint of bitterness or jealousy. I’m proud of her for clearly thinking of her stepfather, Darold, and not her sperm-papa.

  Nova only shrugs and moves to place a painting on the wall. “Here?”

  “You weren’t kidding about needing help with this stuff,” I say, reaching to take the painting from her hands. “At least you picked great colors, but you’d better leave the decorating to us.”

  We spend the next hour and a half piecing together her room. As we work, she shares little stories behind each piece. A tacky boomerang she picked up in Australia for a boyfriend who dumped her while she was away—she keeps it for the irony of knowing things don’t always come back, a pastel obi covered in flying cranes and mountains given to her by an old Japanese woman on their trip to a haunted fishing spot in Hakone, prints of paintings she bought at the MoMA or the Louvre or some other amazing place I’ll be lucky to see for myself. By the end of it, Abigail’s gone quieter than usual, and Sterling might be realizing there’s a world outside of Louisiana for the first time in her life.

  Now that the sun’s done and gone, the breeze through the windows has a hint of coolness to it. Humidity begins to loosen its hold so that it’s practically comfortable if you aren’t climbing on chairs and straining to hold a frame in place while Abigail marks the spot for the nail.

  “Nova!” The voice of Mr. King comes from somewhere in the house.

  Nova hops off her bed. “Be right back,” she says, skating out the door.

  As her footsteps recede down the stairs, I take a peek inside her closet. Abigail makes a sharp noise but doesn’t move to stop me. Which is basically the same thing as turning a blind eye.

  Tugging on the light string, I find Nova’s fashion sense displayed before me. Not all of it is relevant to the South, but it is all enviable. Leather jackets, adorable dresses, tops I’d have to drive to New Orleans to have any hope of finding. On the floor, unopened boxes are stacked neatly, and on the back of the door hangs an impressive shoe caddy.

  I push the door closed just as Nova reenters the room. She definitely saw me but says nothing about the fact that I was snooping in her private business. Instead, she holds the door open and invites us downstairs.

  “Dad’s made daiquiris,” she says. “Virgin but still awesome. Anybody allergic to strawberries?”

  “Not today,” Sterling says, sparing a glance for me.

  Nova leads us downstairs to the back porch. On our way, we pass what is now the family room, where Thad crouches with a controller in his hands in front of a TV large enough to crush him. He jumps as something on screen explodes, whooping and stabbing the air with his little fist.

  “Nice move, Thad,” I call, leaning through the door and doing a quick search for Gage. Not here. Probably not home, which should be a relief.

  Thad spins and his heavy little face breaks into a grin. “Candy! Hi!” he calls, then hops up, shrugging his shoulders roughly, and adds, “I mean, hello, Miss Candace.”

  “It’s okay if you call me Candy. We’re friends, right?”

  His smile softens as he nods once. So sure and serious. I return the nod, then, waving, I follow Sterling and Abigail to the porch.

  They’ve plunked down on the steps, each leaning against one of the tall columns supporting the high roof. Before us, the grass is depressed in a large square, but that’s the only lingering evidence of Friday night’s gala. The dance floor, the bandstand, and every errant champagne flute has been removed so it’s just us and a straight shot down the hill to the swamp.

  For a minute it’s the beginning of summer again, and I’m about to go into the swamp at Sterling’s side to find her brother. We didn’t know that the only way to win him back would be to leave Lenora May behind. She died beneath that everblooming cherry tree and when she did, the entire town forgot her. Except for us. We remember her because we were there. That’s the reason I started to believe any of this. This damn swamp changed how I understand my world.

  The notes of Thad’s video game crash through the open living room windows, anchoring me safely in the present. Nova appears at the door bearing a tray of tall glasses filled with deep pink. She hands them around, places a basket of pistachios between us, and settles cross-legged on the floor.

  The daiquiris are amazing. We barely speak until we’re slurping the dregs of strawberry seeds and ice from the bottom of our glasses.

  “Your dad missed his calling,” I say.

  “Right?” Nova asks with a grin when we lean back with full bellies and cold tongues.

  “If he ever gets tired of chasing ghosts, he’s got a future in frozen drinks,” I say. “But it doesn’t look like the ghost business is treating him too poorly.”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Nova says, her eyes trained on the swamp at the bottom of the hill.

  It’s too dark to see the fence and too late in the season for fireflies. The swamp’s just black and ugly and filled with shrieking bugs.

  “Any of you ever been inside?” Nova asks.

  “Inside where?” Sterling sits up a little straighter, looking between Nova and the swamp.

  “That swamp. Where all your ghosts come from.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask, more sharply than I should have.

  Nova narrows her eyes a bit. “Where else would they come from?”

  “All of us,” says Abigail as though Nova and I weren’t talking. I shoot her a look meant to caution against this much truth, but either she can’t see my expression or she doesn’t care, because she continues with, “I’ve spent more time than I even thought possible inside that swamp and if I don’t return before I go to my grave, it
’ll be too soon.”

  Nova prods, “What happened to you?”

  For sure, I think Abigail will shake her head as she has so often this summer, with regret and embarrassment and an ocean of silence behind it, but she speaks again. “I was lured inside by music and dreams, and once it had me, it transformed me into a beast. My mind wasn’t my own. Not all of it. Not enough of it—it was like my mind was a song I didn’t know.”

  Abigail never wants to talk about what happened this summer, how she ate a swamp berry and was lured inside by the same spirit who held Sterling’s brother, how he transformed her into a gatorgirl and made the rest of us forget her. I’m reeling from Abigail’s uncharacteristic sincerity when Sterling starts.

  “Just a few months ago, the swamp took my brother. Or, not the swamp exactly, but a spirit inside the swamp did. And there was a girl who took his place in town and no one knew the difference but me. Her name was Lenora May and her brother, Fisher, demanded that we return her to the swamp or he’d kill my brother. We barely got him back.”

  I feel my mouth open and have to focus to shut it again. Somehow we’ve gone from harmless chatter about the merits of ice drinks to confessional hour at the Lillard House. These are things Abigail and Sterling have discussed only a handful of times since they happened, and only ever behind closed doors with just the three of us and Heath. And here they are spilling secrets for someone we met last week?

  “Did you ever see the spirit?” Nova turns on Sterling. “Personally?”

  Sterling laughs. “More than that. I met him multiple times. Had conversations with him. Touched him.”

  “Touched him?” Nova’s eyes are eager. “You mean, you’ve felt the magic?”

  “I feel it every day. I love the Wasting Shine,” Sterling answers.

  Talking openly about Shine is a bit too much for comfort. Time to speak up. I wave a hand in front of both of them. “Um, y’all, maybe we should talk about something else. Anything else.”

  “What happened to you in the swamp, Candy?” Nova ignores my plea. My name is too sweet on her lips.