by Amber Hart
“I’m just grabbing a suit,” she says, heading toward the back of the cottage.
I eye the pot on the stove. Something that smells like heaven is bubbling and popping inside. I have no idea why Jorie likes Gran’s cooking so much when clearly her parents know how to whip something up.
“Smells delicious,” I say. I find myself wandering over to the pot.
“Jambalaya,” Mr. Langston says. “My wife’s recipe mixed with my Creole family recipe. Turns out, it’s the perfect blend. Want some?”
“No!” Jorie calls from the back room, which seems to sit right behind the kitchen, from the sounds of it. “We’re heading to the pool, remember?”
Mr. Langston chuckles. “Of course, honey, just trying to be polite.”
Jorie reemerges in a textured bikini top and jean shorts with a towel flung over her shoulder.
“Save me a bowl for tonight?” she requests.
“We’ll save one for Willow, too, if she’s coming back,” Mr. Langston replies.
“Great!” Jorie says. “See you later!”
She brushes a quick kiss on her mother’s and father’s cheeks before rushing out the door. I manage a wave, not nearly as inclined to leave so quickly. What a beautiful place to call home.
“You ready?” Jorie says as we slide into the car. “The pool is bound to be packed.”
She hands me a bottle of lemon tea she grabbed from the fridge. I uncap it and relish the sweetness. Heat on my skin, smile on my face, we head to the pool.
14
Beau
Leaning back in a warm lounge chair, I feel as though my skin has actual real Georgia sunshine living within it.
I glance at Willow, who hasn’t spotted us yet.
“You’ve come to the pool because of her,” Charlotte says. “She didn’t invite you. Heard it myself through the open window.”
“We would have come to the pool anyway, and you know it,” I reply.
It’s a Saturday routine of ours. I glance at Pax and Grant, who are attempting to talk to a group of girls. Well, mostly Grant is making a fool of himself. Nothing new.
Charlotte laughs. “Fine, fine. You’re right. But the point is that you’ve been fixated on her, and that’s unusual.”
My sister’s not wrong.
“She’s not making it easy,” Charlotte says. “Aren’t you bored of it yet?”
“Not at all,” I answer honestly.
Charlotte hasn’t stopped harping on this.
“Do I need to remind you how worthless you are with her around?”
My sister’s comment stings worse than swamp yellow jackets. Still, I don’t let on how much.
“No.” I shift my gaze because someone has blocked my view of Willow.
“Like a sad little puppy, trotting behind. You used to always be grinning. Now I catch you looking like you’re deep in thought, transfixed. Your friends are here, in case you’ve forgotten. Why aren’t you over there talking to those girls with them?”
“Shut up, Charlotte,” I growl.
“Maybe I’ll warn her off, tell her some of the stories of all the girls you’ve made cry,” Charlotte whispers.
I whip around. “You can go to hell.”
“Oh, I’m sure I will,” Charlotte coos. “But not just yet.”
Her threat is empty, it seems, because she doesn’t move a muscle.
“I don’t actually need to tell her,” she continues. “Looks like she might be mad enough without my warning.”
I look up. In my distraction, I didn’t notice that Willow had spotted us. She and that friend of hers approach.
“Are you following me, Beau?” Willow asks, hands on her hips.
I smirk. “Now why would I do that? Far as I remember, it’s a free country. And by God, it’s a hot one. Which, incidentally, the pool helps with.”
It sounds almost as though my sister whispers, “Liar,” but I can’t be sure.
“Funny thing, you never mentioned you were coming when I told you my plans.”
Willow looks edible with her angry scowl and red bikini.
“Did I need to inform you?” I ask, cocking my head to the side.
Her skin is bronzed by the sun and shines with oil. She’s not as thin as some of the girls here, and I like that—the way her body curves and moves. Her hair sticks to her back, and there’s not another girl more beautiful.
“Usually that’s the sort of thing reserved for boyfriends and girlfriends,” I say. It’s mean of me, but as much as I want Willow around, I don’t need her thinking I’m all that into her. Even though I am.
I’ve never actually wanted a girlfriend.
This shouldn’t be an exception.
For a moment, the only sound between us is my hard exhalation of breath, then laughter, the spring of the diving board, and loud splashes join our silent conversation. Not once does Willow or I say what we actually mean.
I think she wants me here but won’t admit it.
I know I need to see her, but I won’t tell her that.
Our day is wrapped in false pretenses and tension, the illusion of control.
She huffs. “Fine, Beau. Enjoy your afternoon at the pool.”
I wish she would’ve invited me herself. I also wish that I didn’t want her to.
I watch her go. Her friend won’t make eye contact with me.
Beside me, Charlotte beams. “You are such a fool.”
“I’m five seconds from drowning you in that pool if you don’t shut it.”
A guy approaches Charlotte.
“Maybe I’ll ruin your chances here,” I hiss.
Charlotte laughs. “Go ahead. Unlike you, I don’t care. There are many more to choose from.”
Frustration laces through my thoughts. Charlotte can so easily dismiss them all. I used to be able to do that, too. Until Willow. I have a weakness, and my sister knows it.
The guy reaches the foot of her chair. He’s nervous but brave when he introduces himself, wondering if she wants to go for a swim. She tells him she’d love to. I’m relieved to see her go.
Now I can eye Willow in peace.
Willow takes a few steps into the Olympic-size pool. A group of guys rest their arms on the edge of a corner near her. One sits atop the ledge.
I can’t make out their words, but a couple of guys have approached. Jorie seems to enjoy the attention, and it doesn’t look like Willow is opposed to it, either.
My blood suddenly feels as though it’s boiling. Damn this sun.
I can’t look away. Willow smiles. Laughs at something one of them says. I worry she might like him, and that pisses me off. I don’t want those guys talking to her. She’s driving me crazy, and I don’t like it one bit.
I know the emotion I’m experiencing, though I’ve never actually felt it before. Well, maybe a bit the day in the hall when Willow agreed to a date with someone else. I’m definitely sensing it now. Disbelief punches my heart. Anger swarms, clouding my vision. I want to be allergic to this feeling, to stay as far as possible from it, to remain cold and neutral, but I can’t push it away. I don’t like it. I’ve seen it on other people’s faces. Never on my own.
Jealousy.
I have to put a stop to it right away.
I glance at the girl near me who won’t take her eyes off my face. And then I give her a full heart-stopping smile. She takes it as an invitation to join me. I don’t object.
She tells me her name. Blah, blah. I don’t care.
I glance at Willow, who is watching me back. I pretend to pay better attention to the girl in front of me. What was her name again? She moves in closer.
Five minutes pass. The girl continues to prattle on.
Ten minutes. Charlotte returns and begins talking to her.
I have to get Willow out of my mind.
The guy Charlotte met is part of the same group of friends as the girl next to me.
Twenty minutes. Charlotte invites them all to the house. There’s four total. I don’t catch
their names because I’m too busy thinking of Willow.
I don’t want to let the words burst free. Go out with me, Willow. A real date. I’ll show you that I can be nice.
I’m dangerously close to speaking this out loud.
Damn, Willow. Somehow, she snuck into my mind. Maybe I will actually ask her out. Soon.
15
Willow
My dreams are strangling me, choking the very air from my lungs. I have somehow gone back a few hours to the pool, the scene replaying in haunting clarity. Beau leaves with a group of people, one of them being the girl who seemed to like him. I wonder if he likes her, too. The scene shifts. From my porch, I watch all six of them lounge in chairs off the side of his cabin, soaking up the sun until it falls from the sky. Jealousy burns, singeing my insides.
Creak.
A sound wakes me from my slumber. My eyes crack open enough to see a figure in my room. I sit up quickly, and then remember that Jorie spent the night. She stands by my window, arms leaning against the edge. At first, I think she must have sleepwalked, but then I notice her open, alert eyes.
“You okay?” I ask.
She startles. “Yeah, sorry to wake you.”
I pull back my tangled covers and join her. “Why are you up?”
“Nightmare,” Jorie says, trembling. “I had a dream that Beau came for me next, that he was the killer.”
I peer outside, drawn to the moon shining off Beau’s roof, making it look like a waxed, slippery thing. Stars claw holes above. Something howls a nighttime lullaby.
The front door opens, and the pool girl exits with Beau at her side. I don’t know what happened between them, only that she obviously isn’t staying the night. Why is he spending time with her in the first place? Did they do more than talk? Charlotte and the other three friends follow her.
They get in a car and leave, headlight glare swallowed by the shadows of the trees. Charlotte and Beau stay. I glace at the clock. It’s two minutes past midnight. The car vanishes from sight. Beau turns toward my house and tilts his head like he means to find my top-floor window. Darkness cloaks the room, making it impossible for him to see me. Still, I feel his gaze.
“Come on,” Jorie says, draping an arm over my shoulder. “Let’s get back to sleep.”
Though I thought it’d be hard to fall asleep while thinking of Beau, I somehow managed to rest a couple of hours ago. I can only hope for the same now.
Beau doesn’t move from his front porch. The image of him burns my mind as I close the curtains, and slink back to bed. My sleep is not peaceful. It feels as though Beau’s stare has followed me through the window and into my dreams.
…
The news of another murder stuns my family at breakfast Sunday morning.
“A serial killer?” Mom asks, dipping her bread in runny yolk.
“It’s a Mangroves Murder, so I suppose,” Dad replies with an uneasy look.
I can hardly eat my breakfast. Partially because of the news and partially because I tossed and turned all night, waking up more tired than when I fell asleep.
Jorie eats next to me, peering at the police officer in our kitchen. Neither of us heard anything strange. No telltale noises. No outsiders in the mire aside from Beau and Charlotte’s guests. Nothing.
Now, blue-and-red lights pierce the windows. Cops park in our yard. They take boats out, searching the swamp for clues.
The Mangroves Murderer has struck again.
Same details: reported missing by parents. Found bruised and strangled alone in the bog. Only my family and the Cadwells for miles and miles. But one detail is different. This girl was killed earlier in the night, around ten o’clock instead of at midnight like the other victim.
Both were high school students. I didn’t know this one, a girl named Julie Lore. I study the picture the officer has placed on our kitchen table. It’s disturbing, to say the least, to be looking at a dead girl who was once so alive. Her short brown hair is pinned to one side by a flower clip. Her thin lips sparkle with gloss. The life still shines in her doe eyes, which stare right into the camera.
“Did you see her at your neighbor’s house at any point in time?” the officer asks.
“No,” I answer. All I saw was the girl from last night, who doesn’t happen to be the one in the picture.
“No,” Jorie echoes. She absentmindedly rubs the hem of her pink shirt, which matches nice-like with her pink-and-white-striped pajama bottoms.
“You sure you didn’t see anything at all, not even the smallest clue?”
“Nothing,” we reply.
“Did you know that the girl was once involved with the Cadwell boy?”
“Of course she was.” I wince because that’s jealousy talking. “He’s involved with a lot of girls. So that’s no real surprise.”
The officer makes a note on his pad before pulling out a card. “Call if anything comes up, if you suddenly remember anything unusual, if something seems odd to you.”
“Will do,” Dad says, taking the card.
When the officer leaves, Dad turns to me. “I’m not sure I want you hanging out with that boy alone anymore.”
“He didn’t kill anyone,” I say. “He and his family have been out looking for the killer, too. I’ve seen them. Plus, I know for sure he wasn’t the one.”
“How do you know that?” Dad asks.
“Because until about midnight, there were guests at his house,” I say. “He couldn’t have been out in the mire when he was home with them.”
“In that case,” Mom says, “maybe you’re better off being with him or Jorie when you’re in the swamp. I don’t want you going out alone. I think you ought to stay in the waters close to the house.”
Thankfully, Mom understands that I can’t be cooped up all day, that I need to get out sometimes. I know she wouldn’t be able to handle staying indoors constantly, either.
I nod. “Okay.”
This morning is as good as any for a large pitcher of sweet iced tea, and since I need something mechanical to do, I begin banging in the cabinets for tea packets. I always do mechanical things when upset to distract my mind—cleaning, laundry, studying. Today, tea.
“What are you doing, honey?” Mom asks.
“Making tea.”
Mom nods like this makes perfect sense. Hopefully I can distract my mind from the murders.
I find the tea bags. When the water begins to boil like bubbles coming to the swamp surface, I drop the tea bags in and wait. I make sure to double steep it. My hand is extra heavy when adding sugar, the way Gran taught me. I line up five clear glasses and fill them with ice that practically topples over the rim because that’s the right way to make Southern tea, thank you very much.
Tea pours smoothly from the pot to a pitcher, and then into the glasses. I stop halfway to add more ice when the boiling tea melts the towers I made. I hand out the glasses and take a seat again, placing a sliced lemon in the center of the table.
I take a refreshing sip. The tea washes away my worries, and I pretend for a moment that I’ve not heard of a single murder. That everything is normal. Perfectly normal.
…
The chill of the murders returns to me at night when I’m alone in my bed. I leave the window open. The curtain billows like a ghost on a breeze. Warm air pools around my body, braiding through my hair and attempting to slide beneath my sheets. The sky is filled with broken clouds, and the ground is filled with eyes I can’t see, creatures that peer into the dark. I wonder if the killer is one of them. I suppress a shiver.
I walk to the window in nothing but my pajama shorts and a tank top. I spot Beau’s cabin in the darkness easily enough. I make for the stairs and out the front doors. I need to feel humidity on my skin, a splintered deck beneath my feet.
It’s past midnight. No one is awake but me, the crickets, and the stars. I stick close to the front door, just in case. I don’t dare wander with a murderer on the loose.
The creak of a door makes me squint int
o the darkness. Beau steps out on his porch, the moonlight catching in his hair. Shadows cloak me. He shouldn’t know I’m here, but somehow he does.
Beau cuts across the path and stops at the dividing line.
“Willow,” he says.
I make not a sound.
“Are you still riding with me tomorrow?”
I don’t know if anything happened between him and the girl from the pool, and he must understand that the situation doesn’t look good from my point of view.
“I think I want to ride with Jorie,” I reply.
The wind picks up, this time carrying Beau’s final words. “Are you mad?”
Disappointed, maybe.
“No. I just want to see my friend.”
Jorie will have advice for me. I’m not ready to talk it out with Beau yet.
16
Beau
It’s been days since Charlotte invited the group to our house.
“You miss her, don’t you?” Charlotte asks, knowing full well.
“A little,” I admit.
I scan the school hallway for Willow. She’s been riding the bus with Jorie. Something tells me she got the wrong impression about the pool girl and me.
My sister sighs heavily and leans against a corner by the water fountain, watching me warily. Her looks of disappointment at my inevitable attachment to the next-door neighbor are many. I am half surprised she’s managed to bite her tongue.
“What can I do to help?”
I nearly choke on the gum I’m chewing. Charlotte is offering to help? That’s unlike her.
“You want to help?” I ask cautiously.
“Sure.” She shrugs. “I invited the pool girl and her friends to our house thinking that it was a step in the right direction, but then you went and just talked to her. Nothing more. I thought you were trying to get over Willow. A little advice: you’re doing it wrong.”
It seems like Charlotte means to say that I’ll get over Willow if I start something romantic with another girl.
“Who said I needed to get over Willow?”
She laughs. “Please, let’s pretend for one minute that I’m not offended by your assumption that I don’t see what’s happening here. You’re falling for her, but I’ll act as though this conversation never happened if it makes you feel better.”