by Emily Henry
Hannah drops her voice into a whisper. “I’m serious, Junie. You could probably get her fired for that. It’s freaking creepy how she keeps getting into your business.”
I feel a barb of defensiveness, like when someone else joins in when you’re complaining about your siblings. “Yeah, well, it’s not like she’s the only problem. There are billions of things keeping us apart.”
Hannah’s lips turn down in an exaggerated frown. “It’s a week without a phone, not a prison sentence. I’m sure he’s at home moping and pining, like you’ve been doing all day. It’s a bump in the road, Junie.”
“A cursed bump.”
Hannah shakes her head, bangs swinging over her blue eyes. “You’re not going to try and do it alone, though, right? Issa told you not to go without him.”
“No. We’re going to try to meet up tonight.”
Her gaze flashes toward my mom, and she whispers, “Maybe you should slip Léa some Ambien.”
“Frankly, I think she could muscle through on sheer willpower.”
“I want candyyyy!” Grayson announces then, kicking the shoulder blade of the woman sitting in front of us. She turns around with a glare, and Mom flashes an apologetic smile.
Toddy leans forward. “The game’s almost over, Gray.”
“I’m soooo hungry,” he groans. “And I’m about to pee my pants!”
The buzzer sounds then, signaling a Five Fingers loss. As we make our way out to the snowy lot, Grayson skips along dramatically clutching his crotch and squealing in faux misery and true delight at the way the people crane their necks to watch him.
When we get home, everyone else slips inside, but Mom catches me on the porch. “Could you give us a minute?” she asks Hannah.
When the door is shut behind her, I say, “What, don’t want an audience while you attach a house-arrest tracker to my ankle?”
Mom gestures toward one of the garden chairs, and I plop down as she eases herself into the other. It’s freezing out, and our teeth are fighting a chatter. “You know I hate this, June. I would much rather trust you.”
“Then do.”
She sets her hand on top of mine. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but Todd thinks you should know.” After a long beat of silence, she gives her head one firm shake. “Abraham Angert was a murderer.”
I stare at her, uncomprehending. “What?”
“He killed your grandfather’s sister, your great-aunt. Issa. It happened when Jack II was very young, but it affected him profoundly. Your father grew up hearing about it—older people in town were still talking about it. Jack II was a sad, sad man. Losing his sister destroyed his family.”
My mind grasps at the words, but they don’t make any sense. Abe couldn’t have killed the girl he loved. And even if he did, that wouldn’t be an excuse for banning me from Saul.
“She was only seventeen,” Mom continues. “Abe said he had no recollection of doing it, and by the time of the trial, his counsel had persuaded him to plead insanity.”
“What do you mean he said he had no recollection?”
“Issa’s father, Jack the First, never believed it. So her brother, Jack II, didn’t quite believe it either, and your father really didn’t believe it. They thought the Angerts were . . . dangerous.”
My scoff isn’t enough to show how completely ludicrous that sounds. “Dangerous. And that’s what you think?”
“I don’t know, Jack.” Her face twists at the sound of my name. She frees her hand and sinks into her chair. The snowfall has picked up. The lawn is almost entirely coated with white, Shadow and Grayson’s cherry sprouts bowing under the weight, and the treetops glint silver. “I think there was more to it than any of them ever let on. And I loved your daddy, but he was not the most forthcoming person—he wanted the world to be rosy and bright for us all the time, even at the expense of the truth.”
“I know.”
Mom narrows her eyes as if trying to see through my skin. Finally, she gives up, and they soften. “I don’t know why he thought what he did, but he was afraid of them, June. And there wasn’t much else he was scared of.
“I can’t protect you forever.” Her voice quivers as she stands, a cloud of ice crystals hovering in the air from her breath. “I’m going to while I can.” She looks back, resting her hand on the weather-rusted doorknob. “I can’t lose you too.”
I know what we’re risking if we go to the water. But I also know what we’re risking if we don’t.
“You won’t, Mom,” I whisper.
Thirty-Seven
INSIDE, Hannah’s already got her homework arranged on the kitchen table. The boys are on the couch, watching old episodes of Adventure Time, flat out shrieking with laughter, and Toddy’s setting up Happy Lamps, his yearly effort to sprinkle the house with imitation sunlight as we slog toward winter, which likely won’t let up until April or May.
He emerges from the basement carrying the clock he bought me last year, the kind with a light that clicks on an hour before your wake-up time, intensifying gradually until it theoretically wakes you up with the misconception you’re going to see the sun that day.
Against my wishes, my coldness toward him thaws.
Mom comes and sets my phone down beside me, tapping the tabletop with her manicured fingernails. “I still don’t want you communicating with him,” she says.
Toddy halts his dig through the hall closet, standing still in a hopelessly obvious attempt to listen in. I nod, and that’s that. Toddy huffs and heads upstairs. Mom follows him, and I stare at my phone, debating whether it’s safe to text Saul.
Han looks up from the calculus problem she’s been scowling at and whispers, “You can use my phone to text him if you want.”
I glance toward the stairs and shake my head. “We’re meeting tonight anyway.” I dig my folders out of my backpack, and Hannah shrugs and returns to her work. I last two minutes before I cave and start a message to Saul. I rephrase it eleven times but still find no delicate way to tell him what Mom told me. I settle on: My mom said Abe killed Issa.
I let out the breath I’m holding and pick up the photocopied notes I harangued Stephen for, my last attempt not to fail Ms. deGeest.
The top page is a sort of timeline printed in uneven shades of gray, covered in streaks of highlighter and Stephen’s chicken-scratch notes. “STORY ARC,” it says at the top.
My phone buzzes. I check the stairs again for Mom or Toddy before opening Saul’s reply.
Eli won’t tell me anything about Abe. He shuts down whenever I ask. I don’t know what happened, but I can’t imagine the guy we saw making out with Issa in the cave hurting her. There’s more to this.
Agreed, I respond. Mom finally left me alone. I’ll see if I can track down some Whites before tonight.
My phone buzzes almost immediately. Please don’t do that. What if they take you to the water again?
I sigh. I keep making promises I can’t keep. That I’ll stay away from Saul, that I won’t go to the water without him, that I’ll do my creative writing homework despite the utter chaos inside my brain. What will you give me if I wait?
Apple fritters by the dozen. I’m at Egrets with NYT-blah-blah-blah Eli Angert right now.
Egrets, the storefront downtown that sells pastries and cider from Egret Orchard, is a Five Fingers autumn staple. It’s only open a few months a year, during which everyone eschews their usual cafés in favor of apple everything. See you at two then.
I turn again to the STORY ARC timeline and try to focus.
The main horizontal path curves across the page like a speed bump, vertical lines labeled “TURNING POINT” dividing it into sections.
Stephen’s labeled the first section of the timeline: “ORDINARY WORLD.”
Before I met Saul, my mind fills in the blank.
“TURNING POINT 1: NEW OPPORTUNITY.”
“TURNING POINT 2: INTRODUCTION OF MAIN GOAL.”
“PROGRESS TOWARD GOALS/TESTS, ALLIES, ENEMIES.”
Feathers/Issa—ally? Nameless—enemy? Ms. deGeest—mentor? Enemy? Ally?
“TURNING POINT 3: POINT OF NO RETURN.” It’s the halfway point on the line, with two more big turning points marked afterward.
Point of no return: the cliffs over the swimming hole.
I can feel Saul’s knuckles grate against mine. I remember the fall breeze rustling over our naked skin, drawing goose bumps on our arms and legs. His eyes on me, his breath, half the stars strewn across the sky and half warbling in the oily water.
There is no returning from what I heard in the cave or what I found in the water. And there’s no returning to how things were before I knew Saul Angert.
I drag my laptop to me and start to type. I begin by describing the way Saul fumbled over the tent and how it made my insides turn into bumblebees. I write about the way he kissed me, breathed against me. How the water drew us into it with the false promise that anything that happened within it would be sacred, unknowable, secret, and safe. I write it all.
I could be embarrassed at the thought of Ms. deGeest reading this, but I’m not sure she ever will. I’m writing this for myself.
So I can remember.
So if someday the curse squeezes my heart so hard the blood stops pumping, I can disappear from this world knowing that night won’t be lost. The truth won’t be lost.
I, Jack O’Donnell IV, love an Angert.
“More coffee?” Han swipes our mugs up and carries them into the kitchen. I look up, feeling like I’ve just emerged from the warm water beneath the falls.
The boys have changed into pajamas and moved on from cartoons to a boxing video game.
Shadow keeps saying, “Gray! You don’t have to move side to side! Your character does that automatically!”
Grayson keeps kicking and half-elbowing Shadow as he waves the wireless controllers around in a frenzy.
Hannah glides back with our refilled mugs. “So I chose my AP psych paper topic: the fallacy of memory. Thought the research could help with your little . . .”
“Curse?” I finish.
“I was going to say problem.” She drops into her seat. “Anyway, it turns out memories are rarely totally accurate, and the more we’re asked about them, and the way we’re asked about them . . . well, it changes them.”
“Example?”
“Um, this guy showed a video of a car accident to two groups of people. To one group, he asked questions about what happened when the cars were smashed into. He asked the other what happened when the cars were hit. A week later, the smashed group remembered seeing shattered glass in the video. Which there wasn’t.”
“Huh.” I think about all the memories I’ve seen so far, the way that, though I’m not really there, I can still feel them.
“You know how sometimes you remember something specific from your childhood, and your parents can confirm it happened, but when you picture it, it’s less like a memory and more like you’re watching it happen to someone else, like a video? Memory is mostly about making connections. We have snippets of real information, bits of imagination and emotions, and we combine them to tell ourselves stories. That could explain how you experience the memories. Sure. They could belong to your dad, but maybe you don’t see them through his eyes because he didn’t really either. His brain created a full to-scale replica of the moments you’re visiting.”
“Weird.”
“If you think that’s weird, you should hear about this rat experiment these scientists did.”
“‘Rat experiment’ is basically my middle name.”
“They found out they could pass phobias down through generations of rats.”
“Everything about that grosses me out.”
Hannah laughs, but her eyes widen at the prospect of talking science. “It’s called genetic memory. It’s present in animals at birth, leftover information gathered by previous generations. Like, rats learn to be afraid of cats, and cats learn to be afraid of dogs. Not every new rat or cat has to have firsthand experience with the enemy to learn that fear, you know? Some are born with it.
“Maybe that’s how O’Donnells are with the falls and with Angerts. Maybe it’s genetic memory.”
“That’s not the same thing,” I point out. “I was freaked out by the falls because my parents were constantly telling me to stay away from them.”
“True,” Hannah says. “Bad example. Anyway, what are you working on? Seems like you’re over your writer’s block?”
“In this exact moment, yes.”
“Well, you know what they say: Rome was built in one exact moment.”
“What’s writer’s block?” Grayson hollers over his shoulder.
Hannah whispers, “How can one tiny organism make that much noise while simultaneously catching every word we say?”
“He’s got to be some kind of reincarnated god,” I answer, then shout, “It’s when you can’t write.”
“I get that,” Grayson says.
“Oh? What are you writing?”
“Homework stuff.” He sends one of his controllers flying into the wall.
“Hey, bud, use the wrist straps with those things, okay?”
He chases it and picks it up, but it’s too late: Shadow’s character has knocked Grayson’s out. “Is Mike going to come over and help you with your homework?” Grayson asks.
Shadow glances back at us. “Yeah, tell Mike to come over. Grayson’s too easy to beat.”
“Mike?” Hannah asks.
I’m distracted by a lone White sifting down the hall toward the stairs.
“June?”
“Mike does Junior’s homework,” Grayson answers Hannah.
“He’s her tutor,” Shadow corrects him.
The White twirls up the banister. I know I told Saul I wouldn’t, but it’s here for me—sent to me, like I’m now sure all the memories have been.
My heart begins to race. “Be right back,” I tell Hannah and jog upstairs. The White clings to my closet door.
Why can’t I let this go?
Because he’s sending them.
The White dances like a dandelion in a summer breeze. I reach a shaking hand out and hungrily accept its warmth into my skin.
I can’t resist. I step through the doorway.
I’m still inside my closet, but I’m facing out into my bedroom now. Shouts are coming from downstairs: screams—a man and woman—and the shatter of porcelain.
A teenage Issa hurries into the room, pulling little Jack II in after her. She closes the door, shutting out some of the noise, but Jack II is still crying. She shoots him a forced yet fierce smile, then hurries to the bed and starts ripping the blankets off it.
Jack rubs his eyes and takes a tentative step. “What are you doing?”
She flings the smile over her shoulder, golden-red curls falling into her face. “I’m building a safe house.”
“A safe house?”
“Take the pillows and follow me, Jack.” She carries the bundle of bedding into the closet, passing right through me. She begins tying the corners of the sheets to the shelves along the wall, stringing up a fort.
Jack II’s chin snaps over his shoulder at the sound of another shout. “Jackie,” Issa says, taking his shoulders.
He stares at her with saucerlike eyes. “What’s a safe house?” he whispers.
She studies him, the expression on her heart-shaped face as serious as that on his round one. “A safe house is a doorway to a magical place.”
“Like the thin place.”
“Yes, like the thin place. When we go inside, we won’t be here anymore. We’ll be somewhere no one can find us. A secret place for you and me alone. H
ow’s that sound?”
Jack nods solemnly, and Issa squeezes his shoulder, then ducks into the blanket fort. He follows, a look of wonder spreading as he inspects the light spilling through the blankets. “We’ll be safe,” he says.
“We will.”
“Why is he so angry?” Jack asks.
A sadness flickers over Issa’s face. “I think because he is afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of losing what he loves.”
Jack’s mouth forms a perfect circle of concern. “The cherries?”
Issa folds her legs underneath herself and pats the pillow beside her. Little Jack curls up there, letting his sister smooth his hair. “He’s very lonely, Jack,” she says. “He’s watching the world as he’s always known it change into a place he doesn’t fit. He resents those who know how to change with it and those who pity him. I think he even resents those who love him.” She squeezes his shoulders. “You and I won’t ever be alone like that. Someday you’ll be grown up, and when you are, we’ll escape together.”
“Where will we go?” Jack asks.
“Anywhere you want. With anyone we want.”
“I don’t want him to hate me,” Jack whispers.
She discreetly brushes tears from her eyes and kisses the crown of his head. “Have I ever told you about the night you were born?”
He shakes his head, and her lips press into a smile. “Papa was in Maryland. Everyone wanted Jack’s Tart, and people had money to spend back then, so he’d gone to sell seeds to a farmer down there. He hadn’t wanted to go, but you weren’t due for another two weeks, and Mama told him there was a better chance of every fish in Lake Michigan turning silver than your being born in the next two days.
“But you had other ideas, and sure enough, when Papa reached the hotel that night, there was a message waiting for him: You were on your way. He was so happy, he picked the clerk up and spun him around, gave him all the cherry seeds he’d brought to sell. Then he hopped right back in the car without so much as a glass of milk for dinner and headed for home. But as he drove, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a star falling over Backbone Mountain.