I don’t know what to say.
Rowan sets his shoulders. He holds his head high. “You asked what I think this means. His name on this list of lost things.”
I nod slowly. I think I know what he’s going to say.
“I think this is a list of everything we’ve had to sacrifice. I think this means that, if we want our mom back, this is what we have to give up. An eye for an eye,” he says. “I think this means our dad is dead.”
Hazel
Sunday, May 14th
Lost: Track of the past
In Irish, the word aisling means a dream. Not the kind you have at night about showing up to work naked or your teeth falling out. An aisling is a vision, a fever dream. The kind that turns skin to cloth and back again, the kind that stirs up ghosts.
My lighter in the lake. My dad’s name on the tunnel wall. Maybe my mom isn’t lost after all.
And, if my mom’s alive, that means maybe I’m not such a monster.
My heart’s a hammer. My feet pound the weeds. I try to pry the boards off the doors of the other houses to see if any are loose, to see if there are other squatters in the development. They’re all nailed fast. At the last house, on the far side of the development, I stop. I think I can see something moving on the ground in the field up ahead.
What looked at first like a cluster of rags becomes suddenly, heart-stoppingly clear.
It’s a girl. Facedown in the shallow, swampy water of the storm-flooded field, red curls scattered around her head. As I move closer, I see that her hair is scorched at the ends.
I don’t know how long I stand there. It feels like I’m waiting for something. For a sign. For someone to tell me what to do. The others are back by the tunnel, hidden by houses. If I don’t call out, no one’ll come.
Her dress is as black as ashes and her skin is charred. There’s no way she’s alive.
I almost crash into Rose when I run back through the development to find her.
“There’s a girl lying facedown in the field just over there,” I hear myself saying. Then I add, “I think she’s dead,” in case that hadn’t been clear.
Rose pulls me back, retracing my running steps, but slows when we approach the wall.
“There.” I point.
Rose walks slowly along the wall, eyes on the ground. I can hear the squelch of each wet step she takes. I don’t let my gaze wander any farther than her face, waiting for her reaction, waiting for her to tell me who the dead girl is, why she died here, what to do.
Red hair, bare legs.
Rose keeps walking. When she hits the end of the wall, she turns to me, and she says, “You’re sure she was here?”
At first I don’t understand. Then my eyes scan the marshy field. There is no dead girl. I practically run to the place I saw her, but there’s only the mud and puddles, the grassy ground.
“She was,” I say. “She was right there.” I want to say, I’m not crazy. I want to repeat, She was there, she was right there, until the words become solid matter and conjure up the dead girl, scorch marks and all. But I can’t. Because I’m not sure enough to swear on it. Because of the haze of last night and the nights before that. Because of the last vestiges of the magic moonshine making the space between the trees become the reflections of the trees.
There’s an old plastic raincoat caught on one of the spindly branches of the trees bordering the field. It sounds like wings flapping in the wind. “It must’ve been that,” I say to Rose, pointing at the empty raincoat. “It must’ve blown there from the ground. Rags and sticks and raindrops. That’s all I saw.”
Rose takes me in her arms and kisses my hair.
“It’s okay, Hazel,” she says, but it isn’t.
We hear a shout from the far end of the development. Rowan, calling our names. When Rose and I run over, he’s pointing at Mags’s car pulling in.
Mags gets out of her car, a brown Labrador puppy jumping at her heels. “Down, Lucky.” she says, and marches toward us. “What trouble have you got yourselves into this time?”
“What?” I ask. I can hear my voice get all defensive.
“The police are coming,” she says. “Go put those boards back over the French doors.”
“Shit,” Rowan says. He doesn’t ask questions. He just runs to the house.
Mags grunts and picks up the puppy. Where’s the usual Lucky? I wonder.
Olive must be wondering the same thing, because she asks Mags, “Where’s Lucky?”
Mags purses her lips. “Ran away,” she says shortly. “Maybe got run over. Maybe crawled under a bridge to hide in the storm. They do that.”
“Oh,” says Olive. “I’m sorry.”
I bring the subject back to the police who’re apparently about to come find us squatting in an abandoned development. “Mags? The police?”
Mags gives one nod. “Some young lad’s gone missing,” she says. “From town. Probably drunk in a doorway in Galway, but they’re searching the area anyway.”
“A boy’s gone missing?” Olive says faintly. I guess they didn’t find that boy Laurel was talking about.
“C’mon,” Mags barks when Rowan returns, guitar slung over his back just in case. “Get in the car. If the police find you here, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Rowan shoves the guitar into the trunk, but there’s a car pulling up to the development.
“Ah, shit,” Mags says gruffly. A man steps out and walks toward us. He’s middle-aged, dressed in jeans and a green checked shirt with a green baseball cap on his head. He looks surprised when he sees us. He isn’t the police. Rowan relaxes slightly beside me.
“Mags Maguire,” says the man as they shake hands. “It’s been a while. Jesus, you haven’t aged a day.”
Rose barely suppresses a snort.
“Howareya, Dave,” Mags says brusquely.
“Good, good,” Dave says vaguely, but he doesn’t look all right. He’s pale and clammy-looking, fidgety and frantic. His eyes are all over the development. “You haven’t seen my eldest, have you?” he asks Mags. “He’s missing, we think. The police are searching in town, but I thought I’d check around here, you know—kids come here to drink sometimes. Still hoping he’s just sleeping off one too many.”
“Haven’t seen anybody around here,” says Mags. “Just walking the dog.” The newest Lucky sticks out a little pink tongue. Rose shifts beside me and glances at Olive, who looks like she’s seen a ghost. She’s almost as pale as Dave is. When he notices her, she gives a little flinch.
“Olive,” Dave says.
Olive knows the missing boy’s dad?
Olive forces a smile. “Hi, Mr. Murdock,” she says.
I can feel Rose freeze. It’s like she’s stopped breathing.
“You girls haven’t seen Cathal around, have you?” Dave asks, and I get it. I pretty much stop breathing myself. My hand finds Rose’s and I squeeze tight. I recognize his name from the messages she showed me. Cathal Murdock.
“No, not at all,” Olive says, with a pretty convincing innocent look. “I mean, I’m sure you’re right and he’s just at a friend’s house somewhere with his phone off. I get why you’re worried, but I’m sure he’s fine.”
Dave nods, distracted. “I’ll just have a quick look around, make sure. Enjoy your walk. Good to see you, Mags.” And he heads off toward the houses.
“We should get out of here,” Olive says in an undertone. “In case he sticks around.”
“The house is completely shut up, right?” I ask Rowan.
“Like we were never there.”
“Right,” Mags says, and she bundles the puppy into her arms. “Back to work. You lot keep out of trouble.”
Rowan, oblivious to Rose and Olive ashen-faced beside him, gives Mags a grin. “Have you ever known us to get in trouble, Mags?”
Mags grunts. “Maybe you w
ouldn’t so much if you listened to me every once in a while. Call your granda. He says he heard from Amy.”
“What?”
I feel like someone’s spun me around so the sky’s the ground and I’m about to fall upward. The words go in my ears, but they don’t reach my brain.
“He can’t have,” I say.
“Call him anyway,” Mags replies. “Just because you’re hurt doesn’t mean he isn’t hurting, too. She may be your mother, but she’s his daughter.”
Rowan bristles. “We called him yesterday, Mags. We call him like twice a week, but it’s no use. He can hardly speak. He has no idea who we are anymore.”
Mags looks at us with eagle eyes. “Well, do you?” she asks. She climbs into her car with the puppy and they disappear in a puff of exhaust and a squelch of mud.
“Batty old witch,” Rowan says nastily.
She can’t be right about Granda hearing from Mom. Or probably Granda’s not right about it.
Hope rises like smoke from the forest. I can’t let myself follow it yet.
When we’re out of sight of the development, Olive stops and touches Rose’s shoulder gently.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
Rose is staring at her hands. “It was us,” she says. “Wasn’t it? It was me.”
“What was you?” Rowan asks, but I know what Rose is thinking. Cathal. The spell. Balance and sacrifice.
“I lost my virginity,” Rose says slowly. “I wrote it on the tunnel wall. But I never expected to get it back. It’s something you can lose, but it’s not something you can find again, like keys or a bracelet.”
“Rose,” says Olive.
“So what if, instead of giving me my virginity back, the spell got rid of Cathal?” Rose says. “What if I wanted him to disappear so badly, that’s what happened?”
“That has nothing to do with this,” Olive says, always trying to be the voice of reason. “And, like Dave said, he’s probably just out somewhere without his phone and hasn’t thought to call his parents.”
“I wanted him gone.” Rose is staring straight ahead. “Maybe the spell knew that. Maybe it knows what you’re thinking.”
“Spells don’t know anything,” Olive insists. “Let’s call Aunt Gillian.”
Rose seems to snap out of it. “We can’t tell her now. Not when he’s missing,” she says, and she looks kinda scared. “What if the police think we’ve got something to do with it? What if they find out about the spell?”
“The spell isn’t . . .” Olive hesitates. It’s like she realizes she might actually think it’s real after all. Real—and powerful.
“I have to get back home,” she says finally, regret etched on her face. “So my parents don’t ground me again. They think I’m staying at yours, remember? My mom’s already not too happy about that.”
Rose nods, then looks at me. “Okay,” she says. “But I might stick around here for a bit.”
Olive looks disappointed for like three seconds until Rowan says, “I’ll walk you home.” I snort and try to pass it off as a cough that fools no one. Rowan scowls at me and Rose manages a little laugh.
When Rowan and Olive ride off and we’re sure Cathal’s dad is gone and the police aren’t coming, I take Rose’s hand and we follow Ivy back to the house.
Just before we reach it, we hear a crack and a thud. The three of us run the rest of the way. In the weed-choked driveway at the front of the house is a flat wooden board, the nails still in it, sticking up into the air like thorns. I hammered those nails in myself, up on Mags’s ladder yesterday morning. I mustn’t have hammered them far enough in, or else the storm last night weakened the wood. I look up at my half-uncovered bedroom window and freeze.
There’s someone in there.
A dark shadow at the window. Tall and broad. I grab Rose’s arm hard, reach out for Ivy’s sleeve. I say, “Stop.” They look up and see him, too. It. Something.
Ivy backs up and Rose gives a strangled scream. I race around the back of the house without thinking. I rip the boards off the French doors and clatter up the stairs.
“WHO’S IN HERE?” I yell. I can hear Rose and Ivy calling after me from below.
I slam open my bedroom door.
It’s light for once. The mattress looks dingy, the bags of my stuff overflowing on the floor.
The room is empty.
I spin around and burst into the other two bedrooms. The bathroom. The linen closet. I hurl myself down the stairs and check the front room. The dining room. The downstairs bathroom. The cupboard under the stairs. Everything empty.
Rose and Ivy stand hesitantly at the kitchen door.
“You saw it, too, right?” I round on them. Their nods are slow, their faces tight.
“Do you . . .” Ivy says. “Do you think it might be Ash again?”
I nod, but only so I don’t scare her. That shadow wasn’t in the shape of a girl. I try to picture the boy I saw on Friday night, the first time the boards came off the window. I remember his longish hair, his necklace that could’ve been beads or teeth. His whistled “Hey Jude.” He might’ve been tall, but he was definitely around my age. The shadow upstairs looked more like a man.
I’m not sure why I think of my dad. Maybe because he’s tall and broad. Maybe because he was in the flat with my mom when Rowan and I ran away. Maybe because if she died, he did, too.
Maybe we’ve managed to bring our mom back from the dead with our spell. But we didn’t write our dad’s name on that wall beside hers. When his name did appear, it was on a list of lost things. Maybe that means we’ve condemned him forever.
Olive
Sunday, May 14th
Lost: Set of car keys (dog-charm key ring); large, brown teddy bear (tattered and well-worn, answers to Bunny)
We ride out of the development in silence. The roads are still soggy. The sun has cleared all the mist away and the day’s getting bright, the light reflecting in the water and the glossy black of the wet road. Our tires splash mud up the backs of our bare legs. The world is warming up.
“So,” I ask, after we glide past the border of the development. “What was with that lighter?”
“What lighter?” Rowan asks as if I’ll believe he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“Come on,” I say. “Hazel completely freaked out when I found it. Did she throw it into the water on purpose?”
Rowan’s riding a bit behind me, so I have to turn my head to look at him. I can’t read his expression. “I can’t—” he starts to say, then stops and bites his lip. “I dunno,” he answers finally. “I thought she lost it ages ago. But maybe she had it all along.”
I slow down so we can talk. “It’s the same as yours.”
“They were gifts from our parents. They were theirs when they were young. They had our initials engraved on them when they gave them to us.” He huhs a dry laugh. “Gifts, bribes, what’s the difference? What was with the guy the police are looking for?”
“He’s a—he’s—he—” I swerve to avoid a puddle. “He’s in our year. He’s been harassing Rose. He’s a sad excuse for a human being.”
“And now he’s missing.”
“He might be missing, he might not,” I say to Rowan.
“The police are out looking for him, Olive.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I insist. I pull ahead around a bend.
Rowan speeds up and rides beside me. “Hazel told me what happened,” he says. “To Rose. It’s one hell of a coincidence if he’s the one who . . . who caused her to cast the spell.”
“If you mean he’s the one who sexually assaulted her, then yes.”
“Yeah. I just mean maybe she’s right. Maybe we did do it. Maybe it was the spell.”
Anger flares up hot inside me. “Yeah, well, I have to say, if he is missing, I won’t be terribly broken up about it.�
� I don’t even care if Rowan thinks I’m a horrible person for saying it. But he just gives me a serious look, and nods. I think back to his parents’ names on the wall of the tunnel; his mother’s name, written in the hope that she’d be found; and his father’s, appearing somehow on a list of lost things. Would you sacrifice one person for another, if you could?
I stay silent until we get to my road. I badly want to change the unspoken subject, but I’m not sure how to go about it. Finally I think how lucky it was that Mags drove all the way to Oak Road to warn us people would be searching the development.
“Did Mags really call that puppy Lucky?” I ask Rowan suddenly.
He looks surprised for a second, as if that’s not where his thoughts were at all. “Yeah,” he says, giving me a sympathetic look. “Mags is actually really unlucky with pets. They have this tendency to die or disappear. Then she gets a new brown Labrador and calls it Lucky, too.”
“She’s a really strange person.”
Rowan laughs. “You can say that again.”
We stop a few houses down from mine. Rowan pulls his bike up level with me and leans over to give my lips a soft kiss. My brain shuts down.
“D’you want my number?” I ask. “Since we both forgot last time?”
He takes down my number and calls it to give me his.
“Good-bye,” Rowan says before he rides away. “Olive, like the tree.”
I watch him go. Last week Rose told me it was typical that I’d fall for some dodgy squatter and I laughed it off, but now I realize she was right. Four hearts lost, and mine looks like it was one of them. Not so much to a dodgy squatter, but to someone strange, sad, and slightly magical. Rowan, like the tree. I can’t keep the smile from my face as I open the door to my house.
Inside, my dad is tidying the kitchen before our monthly whole-family Sunday lunch and trying unsuccessfully to hum along to the plinky-plonky jazz coming from the radio. I grab a chocolate bar from the cupboard and he gestures at me to give him one, too.
Spellbook of the Lost and Found Page 20