“Have a good time, honey.” My mother rose to her feet at the sight of me and held me tightly in an embrace.
“Thanks, Mom.” I answered, immediately finding myself in my father’s arms. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.” He responded as we parted, and Connor placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Are you ready to go?” He inquired expectantly.
“Yeah.” I breathed, and we moved in the front door’s direction.
“Melissa.” I looked over my shoulder as my mother called for me, and the look on her face said more than she ever could. “Make sure you’re home by 11:30.” She told me, and I gave her the smile that she wanted.
“Sure.” I unlocked the door and let Connor step out into the darkness ahead of me. And as I closed it, I took one last look inside.
“Are you coming?” Connor called from the front seat of his Oldsmobile; and hurriedly, I locked the front door, crossed the snow-covered lawn, and slid in beside him. His Letterman jacket was draped over the headrest of the passenger seat; and I realized that for a second, as fleeting as it was, I had forgotten what tonight was. For a moment, I stared through the windshield and up at the full moon that hovered above us. “So I guess this is how we’re spending what could be our last night on Earth?” He joked, but I knew that he was just as terrified as I was.
“I guess it is.” I replied, still gazing up at the sky; and without another word, Connor turned the key in the ignition. And Cedar Crest disappeared from view.
I didn’t think that I would be standing at Adrienne Shelley’s steps again. But somehow, I’d found myself there once more, as if time had fixed itself into a loop around me—always bringing me back to the place where I began. But this time, there was no game to be won, no trip across the state to see a haunted bridge in the middle of the night. Too much had changed since then for it to be that simple.
“You good?” Connor turned to face me as I reached out to press the doorbell, and I paused to answer.
“Yeah.” I nodded and leaned on the button. Almost immediately, the door swung open, and Adrienne’s bright blue eyes waited for us on the other side.
It surprised me, how alive she seemed compared to the corpse of her that we had seen in the hospital. But she was standing there, her golden hair falling over her shoulders as if the last few weeks had never happened.
“Hi, Melissa! Hey, Connor!” She exclaimed as she embraced me. “Happy New Year!” She rubbed her arms with her hands as she shivered in her gold sequin dress and ushered us inside. “Gosh, it’s freezing out here. Come in.” I shed my coat as I crossed the threshold, suddenly feeling the warmth that emanated from the fireplace. “I’m so glad you could come.” Adrienne raised her voice over the music as she closed the door and took my coat to hang it in the closet to the left. “Follow me.” She spoke as she grasped my hand. “Hannah and Chloe are here, too.” I glanced back at Connor as I was quickly whisked away, but he could only grin before I was gone. We passed a table of cookies as she led me through the living room teeming with familiar faces, and I made a note to visit it again before we left.
It was so unusual for me—walking through a tunnel of people. I wondered how she could have possibly gotten used to it.
“Heads up!” A few of the boys from the basketball team called out, and I ducked just in time to avoid a box of pizza.
“Melissa!” I turned my head when I heard my name to see Dorothy in a pink dress, sitting at the piano as Melanie played something that sounded like it was from the seventeenth century; and I waved in response. We slowed as I spied Kris, Thomas, and Gregory on the couch in the living room; and Adrienne let go of my hand to stop and give Kris a kiss on the cheek.
“Hey, babe.” She said, and he looked up at her with a smile. And in those blue eyes, I could see how much he loved her.
“Hey, Adie.” Those blue eyes widened when he caught sight of me, as if he didn’t expect that I would come.
I’d probably get a lot of that tonight. “Hey, Melissa. How’s it going?”
“Great, thanks.” I answered, but he held his hand to his ear to let me know that he hadn’t heard it. “Great!” I said it louder, but he shook his head; so I gave him a thumbs up so he would understand.
“Oh! There they are.” Adrienne chirped as Hannah and Chloe emerged from the kitchen with cups of soda and a bowl of chips, and she waved her arm over her head to claim their attention. The both of them beamed when they saw her, and they started to make their way from the kitchen and into the den. But Hannah paused when she caught a glimpse of me, and I watched as she whispered a few words to Chloe and walked into the living room instead. My heart sank into my stomach as Chloe shrugged sadly and followed her. “I’m sorry.” Adrienne turned to me, apologizing. “I don’t know what’s going on with them—”
“It’s okay.” I shook my head, stopping her before she could finish.
So that’s what everyone thought of me…How could they not? If I were anybody else, I would have thought the same thing.
It was all her fault. Melissa Moonwater—it was all her fault.
“I’ll just go see what Connor’s up to.” I told her; and she nodded, frowning a little.
“Wait.” She sighed when I started to leave, and I stopped to listen. “I know that you’ve been looking for Heather.” And then I saw something—something she’d never shown me before. “Don’t give up.”
Hope.
“Thanks.” I whispered, hugging her tightly; and I stepped away from the couch to return to the living room, hoping that Connor would be where I left him. But he wasn’t. I stood on the steps by the front door in an attempt to find him among the crowd, scanning over the countless pairs of high school sweethearts cooped up in their own little corners, living life as if their microcosms were the only things that existed. My mind betrayed me, and I thought of Caleb—how much I missed him. But I pushed him out of my thoughts and reminded myself of what I had done—why I had done it.
Somehow, I knew: something terrible would have happened if he came with us.
“Hi, Melissa.” I whirled to see Dorothy rise from her seat at the piano now occupied by a trio of girls trying and desperately failing to harmonize. “Happy New Year—” She corrected herself. “Well, not yet. We’ve still got a few more hours.”
A few more hours. I wish I had more time.
She wrapped her arms around me, and I did my best to return the gesture. But when she let go, her lips had curved into a frown.
“What’s wrong? Did something bad happen?” She asked, and I couldn’t keep it inside any longer.
“I think I’m going to do something really stupid.” I breathed, holding back tears that only showed themselves through my reddening ears instead. But the look on her face transformed into one of earnest encouragement, and it took me by surprise.
“Are you sure it’s stupid? You don’t really look like someone who would do something without a good reason.” I opened my mouth to answer; but before I could, Connor was calling my name.
“Hey, Melissa.” He began as he glanced at his watch. “I thought maybe we should take off a little early. You know, since we have somewhere else to go.”
There he was again, trying to keep me safe from the troubled stares and worried whispers.
“Um…sure.” I looked to Dorothy, with a head full of questions; but she had resumed her place at the piano, and “The Water is Wide” found its way into my ears.
“Are we just going to sit here?” I glanced at Connor as I asked him, but he continued to stare off into the distance—at the island that no longer seemed so far away. The air was still, the trees more silent than they’d ever been. A layer of ice had formed over the surface of the lake, and the light of the moon and the stars that surrounded it set the white plane aglow in the darkness.
“One more minute.” He told me, and I knew what he was thinking.
This was really happening. “You know,” he started, finally facing me, “we didn’t think abou
t the lake being frozen over.” He grinned, and I couldn’t help but smile too.
“I guess we didn’t think about crossing it at all.” I replied. And for one more moment, it was quiet as we gazed at Cedar Crest Island together. “Well,” I rose to my feet and held out my hand to help him up from the ground, “let’s get this over with.”
“All right.” He answered as he stood and followed me to the water’s edge, and I sucked in the brisk forest air before setting foot on the ice.
“Here goes…” I took a step forward and immediately felt it crunch underneath me.
“Whoa!” Connor wrenched me backward as the ice cracked and buckled before our eyes; and the reservoir’s water seeped up from beneath it, sending large sheets of ice floating over the surface. I looked at him, suddenly horrified.
“What do we do now?”
“I don’t—I don’t know.” He shook his head. “If we tried to swim, we’d be dead before we got there.” I turned my head away from the lake to face him at his words, and he scrambled to explain. “The water temperature of lakes covered in ice during the winter is about zero and four degrees Celsius.” I blinked, not sure what he was saying. “Anywhere below fifteen degrees Celsius is immediately life-threatening.” He shrugged, disheartened. “We can’t cross it.” I stared down at the water in despair and caught the silver reflection of the moon as it rippled, and I raised my face to the sky to feel its light on my skin.
“Maybe we don’t have to.” I whispered and glanced down at my hands.
If I could concentrate hard enough—maybe I could do it.
I shut my eyes and wished for what I wanted.
For Heather.
All at once, something surged through me, as if I had been struck by lightning; and it tickled my insides and branched out into my hands, finally settling in my fingertips. I opened my eyes to see them shrouded in a bright white light, and I gazed at them in amazement.
“Melissa…” Connor murmured, tapping me on the shoulder; and I lifted my eyes and set them on the water. The surface began to shift, bubble almost; and as I squinted my eyes, I gasped as I realized what was happening. Like fireflies in the night, droplets of water illuminated by the moon drifted up into the air and filled the darkness with a thousand stars. “That’s all you, isn’t it?” He marveled, and I could only nod in response. Silently, I moved forward; and he leapt in front of me to keep me from getting any closer. “Wait. What are you doing?” He asked, knitting his brows together in concern; but I grinned in response.
“This is how we’re getting to the other side.” It was all I said, but it was enough to convince him. I stepped down into the lakebed and felt my boots sink an inch into the mud.
I guess I still had to learn a few things.
“What about the…” His voice trailed away as his answer floated over his head in the form of a fish trapped in a globe of suspended water. “Well, okay…”
“Connor, hurry!” I called to him, already farther down the path. “I don’t know how long this will last.”
“Right.” He sprinted after me, suddenly stopping when he saw the look on my face. “What’s going on?”
I’m not sure he wanted to know.
“Come here…” I gestured frantically, lowering my voice.
“Sure.” He answered, raising his eyebrows a little as he took a step forward. “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?” I held my breath, my heart losing a beat with every step that he took towards me.
He didn’t see it.
Even in the darkness, it seemed to thicken the night with a blackness that couldn’t be quenched with the moonlight. That thing that I had seen the night that Matthew died—the being cloaked in shadows—hovered a few feet from the ground, staring at me with its frighteningly black voids for eyes. It stayed there, unmoving, as silent as Death itself as it gazed at me. The tips of its robe dispersed like tendrils of smoke that curled around its body and masked most of its face, but I knew that I could never forget what I had seen.
“Okay.” Connor spoke when he was standing by my side. “I’m here. What’s going on?” When I didn’t respond, he turned to face the direction in which I was staring; but he scratched his head in confusion. Without a sound, it moved closer; and I stole a step backward, closer to the island.
“Connor?” I said his name, never taking my eyes off of the monster that slowly glided towards us.
“Yeah?” He replied, looking all about him as if he knew that he was missing something.
“You’re going to have to run.” I breathed, terrified as the space between us and the being grew smaller and smaller.
“What?” He asked, dubious; but when I locked eyes with him, he knew that I was serious.
“Run!” I shouted one last time as the phantom sped down that path with a bloodcurdling shriek of its own; and I crossed my arms in front of my face as water suddenly came rushing at me at all sides, and I lost my footing as it carried me away. I tumbled around in the murky water, the current pulling me in every direction but up; and I flailed my arms over my head and toward the sky to no avail. What felt like a million needles pierced my skin and set my limbs on fire; and even as I tried to scream, the breath was left frozen in my lungs. My whole body ached, cried out to make it stop; but all I could do was sink paralyzed into the darkness. With heart racing and lungs burning, I attempted to gasp for air and swallowed water; and my insides screamed in agony. And as the world darkened before me in the dizzying cold, I knew that this was what it was like to die.
“Melissa! Melissa!” Hands—trembling hands. It was hard: dragging me onto the bank. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. It was still so cold. “Please. Please don’t die on me.” My chest hurt, like my ribs had been broken in the struggle. “You’re not done! You have to save Heather! We have to save…” Scattered breaths, and something else—I couldn’t determine what it was. The smell of mud filled my nostrils; and for a moment, I saw the stars above me. But they blurred and blacked out as quickly as they had appeared. “Melissa! Melissa—come on! Come on…” Everything went numb: my fingers, my arms, my legs—and the pain in my chest, it was gone too. “I love you. You hear me? I love you…”
Chapter Fourteen
Moonshadow
My eyes fluttered open as I took my first breath, and the taste of smoke took hold of my tongue. I coughed it out of my system as I sat up, and the world came back to me as I gathered my senses. Trees. I was surrounded by trees, and the snow had been pushed away from where I had been lying. Disoriented, I turned my head toward the fire that flickered in the pit beside me; and the outline of a young man crouching by the flames disappeared from view.
“Melissa!” Connor breathed as he scrambled on his hands and knees to my side, and he placed his hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay? Oh gosh, I thought you were gonna die.” I grimaced as I set my hand on my forehead, shivering.
So did I.
“Let me get you something.” He hurried to a tree limb laden with our coats and grasped his Letterman jacket; and when he returned, he gingerly draped it over my shoulders.
And I remembered seeing Adrienne sitting atop her desk in History class, wearing Kris’ jacket over her shoulders—like I was wearing his.
“You have to go.” I whispered to him, continuing before he could protest. “I need to do this by myself.”
“You almost died back there.” He quickly glanced back at the lake far behind us. “What do you think would have happened if I didn’t come with you?” I couldn’t answer. “And besides, there’s no way to get back anymore.”
He was right. I could try to make a pathway again, but there was no guarantee that I would be able to.
“I’m in this now. There’s no getting rid of me.”
“You didn’t see what I saw. This is real…” I breathed. “When my grandfather told me that everything that’s been imagined really existed, he meant everything—even the monsters.” I told him, eyes wide.
“That doesn’t scare me.” He i
nsisted, with one last spark of skepticism in his eyes.
“It should.” I responded, but he looked down at the toothed edges of the zipper on his jacket. He was still holding them.
“Then I guess I’m not as smart as you think I am.” He pulled me closer to him with the edges of his coat until the space between us was no more, and our lips met in a kiss that seemed to have been waiting longer than we could have ever known. It obliterated everything else around us; and in that moment, I forgot where I was. It wasn’t electric—not the way it felt when Caleb and I first touched. It was more than that—the only proof I needed to know that magic really existed. I couldn’t keep myself from blushing when we parted, and the blood was rushing so loudly in my ears that I could barely understand what he said next. “Why did I wait so long?”
“I’m asking myself the same thing.” I chuckled in the silence. But we would have to answer that question later. “How long has it been?”
“What?” I’m sure to him it seemed to come out of nowhere.
“What time is it?” I asked him; and he checked his wrist, taken off guard when his watch wasn’t there.
“Hold on.” He hurried to the other side of the fire pit and plucked his watch up from the ground. He paused when he held it up to his face. “Two and a half hours—it’s 11:51…”
“We need to get going.” I tossed his jacket to him over the fire as I stood and sprinted to the tree behind him to retrieve my coat.
“Wait!” He exclaimed and kicked a heap of snow onto the flames, leaving the embers sizzling underneath the wood as they died. “Going where?” He wanted to know.
“The last time we were here, I found a tree.” I paused in my frantic scramble to glance back at him. “We have to get to it before midnight.” Connor stared at me, and his face said it all.
“How are you going to find a single tree in a place like this?” He gestured to the countless trees that surrounded us.
It was a valid question, but it didn’t matter. We had to make it.
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