by Anne McAneny
“I probably oughta be a teacher, but I gotta make more money than that.”
“Your dad did okay with teaching.”
“Sure, but what did he have left when the hard times came?”
Chloe hesitated. “That what you consider your life now, Hoop? Hard times?”
“It ain’t easy. I mean, we get by, but it’s like the difference between climbing onto a cushiony mattress at night and pulling a rucksack over your body in a dirt hole. Either way, you sleep, but one sure is easier than the other.”
“We got an extra mattress in the attic . . . if you or your dad wants to use it.”
Hoop lifted his head and grinned. “You sure are a softie, Clover. I wasn’t hinting around for no mattress.”
“Well, it’s there if you need it.”
He tossed the twig at her and sat up, all smiles. “You’re sweet. It’s a wonder Rory McShane hasn’t scooped you up. But I was just making an analogy, or a metaphor, or one of them things Miss Farlow’s always going on about.”
Chloe felt herself turn red, but with the sun casting everything in a crimson light, she knew Hoop wouldn’t notice.
“You figure we’ll be friends when we’re grown up?” Hoop asked. “’Cause I sure don’t.”
Chloe’s heart shattered, but part of her held out hope that Hoop would declare they couldn’t be friends because they’d be husband and wife.
“And here’s why,” Hoop continued. “’Cause I’ll be so rich, I’m gonna have to refuse your calls on principle.”
Chloe laughed, relieved. “That ain’t gonna work, because I’ll be your boss and you’ll have to take my calls.” She splashed him with a flick of her oar.
Hoop cackled. “Ain’t gonna have no boss. Heck, I’m gonna own the likes of Richie Quail. You’ll be talking to my secretary like, ‘Tell him it’s that girl he used to call Clover,’ and my secretary will be all like, ‘Mr. Hoop says if you keep calling here, he’s gonna renew that restraining order against you.’”
Chloe splashed him again. “I’ll still barge into your office and fire you. Somehow.”
“Won’t matter. I’ll still be rich—’cause I’ll be ready for the hard times.” He flicked the water with his fingers. “See what I did there?”
Chloe rowed them up to Mr. Swanson’s dock. “What?”
“I brought the conversation full circle, just like ouroboros.”
He splashed her one final time, and they laughed.
Chapter 47
Despite the short distance of the trip, I gunned my boat, skipping it through the water. I looked like all-around hell, but I didn’t care. Let the wind whip my wet hair into a frenzy. Let the water splatter my face. Didn’t matter what a girl looked like to face the living dead.
I cut the motor, lashed my boat to the dock, and sprinted up the walkway to the front door. The doorbell light glowed, but a visit of this magnitude required serious pounding. I raised both hands and pulverized the thick slab of wood like a madwoman. When an answer didn’t come immediately, I kicked the metal plate at the base of the door. “Answer this door, dammit! Let me in!”
And then, slowly, evenly, as if he’d been standing on the other side the whole time, Hoop Whitaker pulled the door open. He wore a body-hugging workout top and loose black pants. He held the same mug he’d drunk from the afternoon before, when he’d programmed his name into my phone as R.O. Borose. His face, flushed, held a concerned expression, shaded with devilish delight.
I analyzed that face now, from follicles to earlobes to Adam’s Apple, and then I did it again, from forehead to nostrils to lips. The nose, the eyebrows, the cheekbones, the jawline, the clavicle, the hair. None of it fit, or rather, none of it fit perfectly.
He gazed back the whole time, pinning me with his hypnotic eyes, and then he broke into a smile, broader and more sincere than I’d seen from him so far—and I knew it was true.
“Color contacts?” I said.
He winced guiltily. “They’re prescription. I’d take them out, but I really do want to see all of your reactions while we talk.”
My nostrils flared. “Hair dye?”
He tousled the brunette waves on his head. “It darkened naturally over the years, but I did take some Nice ’n Easy liberties with it.”
I gawked for another fifteen seconds before swallowing a huge lump in my throat. I wanted to speak but ended up simply breathing, long and deep, before finally expressing my deepest, most heartfelt sentiment.
“You bastard.”
“Clover,” he said, setting down his mug and pinching his lips together as if to keep emotions at bay. He stepped onto the porch and pulled me in tight, catching my bent arms between us. I longed to become lost in his embrace, to feel the joy that should accompany this moment, but I beat him away with both fists, until finally, under the strength of his grasp, I gave in, releasing years of heavy, salty tears, and saturating my old friend’s shirt. The tears reeked of joy, rage, elation, relief, and far too much misplaced grief. I made sure he felt every drop, and a good part of me hoped they stung.
Finally, I pulled back and touched his face. He let me. How had I not seen it? The man in front of me may not have looked much like the thin, boy-faced teen I’d known, but his core had stayed true—same person, same soul, same energy. I shook my head in confusion. “You must have known when you programmed your name as R.O. Borose that I’d figure out who you were.”
“Of course. I mean, who programs their name with first and middle initials?”
“Those who want their names to sound like ouroboros.”
“One thing I knew for certain,” he said. “You’d never forget a good word.”
I sniffed away fresh tears and, like the gentleman he’d become, he produced a tissue from his pocket. “That word won me a jeopardy tournament in college,” I blubbered. “Daily Double and everything.”
His thick brows shot up, impressed, and I noticed that one eyebrow wasn’t sitting right on his face. I fixed him with a look of exasperation and ripped off the caterpillar-like creature. “Really?”
He cringed in pain and peeled the other one off himself, dangling it like a worm. “Everything else is real, so please, no more yanking.” He tapped his nose. “Got the new nose after a kick in the face from Petunia, a spunky baby elephant.” Then he circled his face with his finger. “The rest was very late puberty, and either good or bad genes, depending on what you think.”
I touched his face, still unable to fathom that he was alive. “All good,” I said.
At some point, he led me inside and we sat on the couch, our hands entwined. My mind flooded with twelve years of questions.
“Why didn’t you just tell me from the get-go?”
“I had to be sure I could trust you, and that I could keep you safe. Sometimes, ignorance is a strong shield.”
I wanted to cry again. How could Hoop Whitaker not have trusted me?
“You made it to the circus, then? Because the average person doesn’t encounter baby elephants.”
“I told you I’d join.”
“You told me a lot of things.”
“And many have come true.”
I sighed, still struggling. “Why? Why all this?” I gestured to the grand room in which we were sitting. “Why the deception?”
“Now that, I can’t tell you. But I will. Soon.”
“No.” I pulled my hand free from his grasp and pounded it on my leg. “No more secrets.”
“But they’re for your own good. Your own safety.”
“My safety? Why? What have you gotten yourself into?”
“Absolutely nothing. But others, they’ve gotten themselves into quite a pickle.”
“Others? Who?”
“Come on now. You’re the reporter. It’s all in front of you, ripe for the picking.” He leaned back and gazed at his ceiling fresco. “You just have to know where to look, and how to see through the façades others have erected.”
I gazed up, remembering my fixation on the fr
esco from my first night here. “Binoculars,” I said. “You never gave me the binoculars.”
He rose, retrieved a sleek pair, and pressed them into my hands. “Shall I get you a pillow?”
I shook my head, put the viewfinders to my eyes and gazed up. I could barely remember what it was that had struck me the other night, but as I searched from tableau to tableau, face to face, I saw it: Macy LeGrange’s face on the tiny, near-translucent angel hovering above all the scenes.
“This whole elaborate guise,” I said, “whatever it is you have going on here, it has to do with Macy?”
He looked at me as if I’d gone daft. “Of course.”
“And her stolen lottery ticket.”
He smiled, pleasantly surprised. “Clever Clover.”
The glint in his eyes held a trace of the demonic, and suddenly, I worried about his grasp on reality. Maybe Rafe wasn’t so far removed from the likes of the mirror-writing, candle-talking Mrs. Elbee. Maybe his interest in phantom-repellent amulets wasn’t simply of the collector variety.
“You can’t change the past,” I said. “You know that, right?”
He assessed me in a clinical manner. “I have no intention of changing it. I don’t need to. Because in a circle, past is future’s future and future is already past.”
I stared at him, wobbling between staying put and running for my life. Who knew what had happened to him in the years since the accident? Or what toll his obsession—and losses—had taken on him.
“What’s going on?” I said. “I feel like the answer’s hovering in front of me like a hologram, but I can’t see it.”
“That’s because you, like everyone, accept things at face value. You fill in what you expect to be there.”
“The blue circle,” I said cautiously.
“Precisely.” He smiled in a somewhat sinister way. “I intend to destroy the illusion that the blue circle exists at all. To peel away, at any cost, what the collective mind has filled in.”
“The collective mind? Whose?”
He sat down again, leaned back, and filled his body with a full and potent breath. “The audience’s.” His voice and manner were nothing like the innocent, hopeful Hoop I’d known—the Hoop who would gaze at a gray day as easily as a sunny one and declare it spectacular.
“I need a clue here,” I said.
“And a clue you shall have, Clover. But not yet.” The corners of his lips curled up and the edges of his eyes lowered to meet them.
“Boyd’s basement,” I uttered with caution, lest it raise painful memories for him. “Obviously, you’re alive, but . . . were you . . . ? Did Boyd . . . ?”
He put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Yes, I was in Boyd’s basement. I’d ridden my bike there to get help. The details are foggy now, but he must have knocked me out and dragged me to that room, or told me that’s where the phone was. I don’t remember. Either way, he cuffed me until he could figure things out. But sometimes, Clover, when you’re fishing, a reel refuses to do what its very name suggests, in which case you check for line that might be caught in the bushing.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“As any good fisherman will tell you, it’s best to use a tiny, flat screwdriver to get under the line and pry it out.”
“You picked the cuffs?”
“Child’s play, really. They were like something a dominatrix would pick up at a novelty shop.”
“And you picked the lock to the door to get out?”
“No, I tore off half my sleeve, and when Boyd came back in to do whatever he planned to do, I jumped him from behind, wrapped the cloth around his neck and pulled for all I was worth. When he fell unconscious, I took my leave.”
“What about the duct tape?”
“Believe it or not, that duct tape must have fallen out of my pocket when I jumped him.”
Like a circus clown, Hoop used to store one of everything in his pockets. He could have produced a rabbit from them if he’d wanted to.
“Remember that demo Sheriff Ryker used to do at school?” he said.
“He just did one.” And suddenly, I knew what had happened. In the old days, before the sheriff had to cover topics like bath salts and huffing, he spent more time on bullying. For one demo, he’d called Hoop forward, and Hoop had made the entire class laugh by putting duct tape over his mouth. The sheriff ripped it off—thus leaving his DNA on there—and sent Hoop to the principal. Hoop no doubt pocketed the tape and forgot about it. It had been the final day of school before spring break—and The Week—had begun.
“But the blood,” I said.
“Planted that a few weeks ago, along with the skull pocket watch. Needed to kickstart this thing.”
“What thing?”
He smiled and it scared me. “Answers are imminent.”
“Who else knows who you really are?”
“In Beulah? Only you.”
“I don’t get it. Why allow us to believe you were murdered?” My emotions surfaced again as I discussed the murder of the man sitting next to me. “Why let us dig for your bones and test for DNA? I don’t—”
“An old circus principle, Clover. Make the audience believe so ferociously in the illusion that it will curl their brains and shrivel their last doubt. They must believe that the tightrope walker can fall, that the lion can maul the trainer’s neck on a whim.” He let out a snort of amusement. “The audience thinks the clown on the unicycle is the one struggling for balance, but an audience—an audience on edge—they are the ones fighting to stay balanced. In the end, you must make them question every rational thought they ever accepted as truth. And . . . if you succeed . . . things happen.”
“Such as?”
“The bored become anxious. The calm grow agitated. The agitated grow irate. Doubters believe. Dismissers embrace. And betrayers betray in new and fascinating ways.”
A realization washed over me like a slow, thick liquid poured from above. The fresco. “Betrayers,” I said, glancing up. “The ones who destroyed your faith in decency and humanity.”
“Precisely.”
“But have they destroyed your humanity, Rafe? Your decency?”
A placid smile grazed his face. “I wish I knew, Clover. I barely remember the feeling of the old days anymore. I’ve dwelled so long on the other side.”
“Why come back now? Should I be worried?”
He touched my hand. “You? Never. I’ve merely tweaked the balance. But once a wheel is rolling, you can’t anticipate every hurdle it will encounter, or how people will react. I did get things rolling, didn’t I?”
“Oh my God. You placed those calls to Mrs. Elbee—from M. LeGrange.”
“I had hoped to inspire her to behave nobly. It almost worked, too.”
“And the fire. Did you set fire to Boyd’s?”
“In my defense, I called the fire department in advance, and I didn’t intend for it to grow quite so large. My only error.” He must have seen the horror on my face. “Come now, Clover. You’re in the inner circle—best seat in the house. The fun is just beginning.”
“Fun? This has been fun for you? Watching me squirm while I believed that my friend was tortured and murdered in some underground cell?”
His eyes warmed, despite the false layer of color between us. “Make it two errors, because I never, ever meant to hurt you. For that, I am truly sorry.” He glanced at the floor in either shame or embarrassment. “I guess I never fully understood how you felt about me.” He reached up and stroked my face. “I did try to reach out once, knowing you were the only person I could trust.” His face tightened and his lips twitched. “But that . . . didn’t go as planned. I’m sorry. My uncles forbade further attempts to contact you. Too dangerous.”
“You never got to say good-bye to your father.”
“Oh, I didn’t leave town right away. My father’s room, on the second floor of the hospital—I must’ve been in and out of that window a dozen times.”
“So while the whole tow
n was searching for you, you were hanging out at the hospital?”
“Whenever I wasn’t hiding.”
I frowned, letting empathy and selfishness fight it out inside of me. The selfishness won out. “Do you have any idea what your disappearance did to all of us? To all of us who adored you? I know that what happened to you was infinitely worse, but every kid in this town was devastated. Bad enough we lost Macy, but at least her death was . . . manageable. We had a service, we buried her, and it was horribly tragic, but kids get hit on bikes, you know? To compound it with the loss of you, and how much you must have been suffering, not knowing if you were alive or dead. It was like we couldn’t mourn her properly without you to lead us. And we wanted to be there for you. You were our energy—the class clown and the class genius, the one we all wanted to be. You and Macy were even voted Prom King and Queen—four years later. Do you have any idea how depressing it is to watch an empty dance floor with an honorary black spotlight floating around while they played—I don’t even remember what they played. You know why? I was too busy staring at a speck of dust on the floor, figuring out the best time to kill myself.”
“Don’t say that, Clover. Don’t—”
“Don’t what? Tell you that I tried to kill myself six weeks after you disappeared? That I have this tattoo on my arm because it looks good? No, Rafe! It covers my scar.” I thrust my arm out in front of him. “I did it the right way. No horizontal, cry-for-help slice for me. I went the full enchilada.” I shook my head then, confused to this day. “But I wasn’t as alone as I thought. When I came to, I was being wheeled into the hospital, my arm bandaged, my head pounding—and my heart still beating.”
“I know.”
I jerked my head toward him. “What do you mean—you know?”
“They must have torn off the bandage I put on, before you got a chance to see it.”
“See what?”
“The clover. I drew a clover on your bandage while my uncle drove you to the hospital. I was trying to let you know I was still alive.”
“You saved me?”
He smiled sadly and nodded. “You were so pale. Even in the dark, under that weird, sputtering light above the train platform, I could see how much blood you’d lost.”