And this is it. I can feel it. The dark and massive thing I’ve sensed riding my back since morning; stretching, blocking out all light, some huge black bat at full wingspan, jaws lowering down on my head—not just our stupid Saturday night prank, but something hungry and idiotic and cruel, and it’s starting. It’s starting right now.
My voice is separate from my body: “What?”
“You didn’t hear, huh.” Trace’s coyote eyes widen. “Toxic Twins.” Nods toward the cool table. “Ivy ran away Thursday night. Guidance and the cops are asking around to see if anybody knows anything.”
“What?” again, but softer, an echo. Ivy, knitting up a storm at the park; being cool enough to give me a heads-up about the unspoken rules, helping me avoid the girlfriends’ claws.
I turn, looking at where we sat last week to hear the story of Dabney Kirk’s head. Landon sits separate from the rest of the skaters, picking at her food with a pinched, abstracted look on her face. Her hair is down—free of its usual slick twists, it’s a pedestrian shade of light brown, unexpectedly curly—and she isn’t wearing any makeup, rendering her strangely vulnerable. She senses us looking, returns the stare for a moment, then goes back to sporking her burrito to death. “Ran away where?”
“They’re not sure yet. There was a big fight at her house Thursday night—her stepmom again—and I guess she bolted,” Sage says, shaking up her strawberry milk, and I can’t tell if she senses it, too, the sudden wrongness of everything, if that’s why her expression is so closed. “That’s the reason Landon texted me yesterday. She didn’t say anything about Ivy running away, just asked if I’d seen her. I figured Ivy’s dad took her phone away again.”
I remember the assembly Friday, spotting Landon sitting by herself on one of the top risers, combat boot bobbing, keeping time. Waiting for Ivy. “Thursday was forever ago.” Glance at Kincaid, who’s listening closely, rubbing his knuckles over his road rash.
Trace shrugs. “Cops and her family kept things quiet over the weekend. Figured she was just hiding out and she’d come back on her own. Now they’re thinking maybe she caught a ride down to her mom’s place in West Virginia.” Trace nods over at Landon. “You know her stepmonster was always weird about them. Finally drove Ivy out the door.”
“Without her other half?” Bree shakes her head. “Can’t see it.”
“Maybe they got in a fight, too,” I say, half listening, and the words drift and evaporate under lunchroom white noise, as they should, because I don’t know them, Landon or Ivy, and the new kid is the last person who should be floating theories.
On my shoulders, the dark thing flexes its scaly feet, folds its wings, and continues to wait.
Fourteen
AFTER THE LAST bell, I linger in front of the school, wondering if I can catch a ride with Trace, or if they’ve left for the park already; taking the bus seems so bourgeois now. I’m about to give up when I see Kincaid push through the glass doors. His gaze finds me, and in an instant, I know he was looking for me.
It’s been a long, strange day, and I’m not sure I’ve got the chutzpah to finish what I started with him at the lunch table. I turn, moving toward the street at what I hope looks like a casual pace, jogging over the crosswalk with my backpack beating my backside—very slick, nice form. Down the sidewalk, trying to look like I have a destination, checking over my shoulder once all the buses have roared by, contorted faces and flailing hands beyond the filthy windows like some view into hell’s furnace room.
Kincaid follows at a distance. Riding the flat gray horizon, not waving or calling for me to wait up. Just tailing on his board.
Despite my mood and the doom creature riding my shoulders, that damned smile is back, the one I can’t keep off my lips, and I turn on the speed—won’t run, but neither will he, pushing off and coasting, keeping that long stretch of sidewalk between us. I’m ready for this role reversal, letting him be the one in pursuit for a change. My mind’s scrambling—where to go? I don’t want to walk all the way to the Terraces. Main Street it is. Straight shot down the hill.
The wind’s fierce, but I keep up my barely restrained speed walk past the post office, Song’s, and the gas station, ending up in the lot of D&M, where the Blazer sits in its usual spot. Good enough—how does Kincaid know I don’t need antifreeze and scratch tickets?
Inside waits the usual old convenience store stank—stale cigarette smoke, coffee, pizza congealing under heat lamps. The cashier, a guy with a mop of reddish hair, glasses, and an immobile expression of snark, barely lifts his gaze from the pages of a college chemistry textbook on the back counter.
I wander over to the two-bags-for-a-dollar gummy spinner, warmth returning to my face and hands, counting silently, waiting to see what Kincaid will do next.
A couple minutes later, a jingle of entrance bells, and Kincaid’s beside me, gusting in on cold air. “Hi.” He’s out of breath, smiling.
“Hi.” Now that I’m caught, I can hardly keep the laughter out of my voice; it’s tight in my lungs, making me feel buoyant, ready to float up to the water-stained ceiling panels.
“You came all the way down here for gummies?” Kincaid nods to the cashier, who nods back. “Thought you were trying to lose me.”
I clear my throat, keeping my gaze on the selection. “What do you think? Sharks, watermelon slices, or hedgehogs?”
“Easy. Hedgehogs taste like Pepto.”
Not sure if that’s an endorsement or not. I grab two bags of sharks and go to the counter, glad Ma gave me money for supper before I left for school this morning; Dad must’ve told her I probably wouldn’t be home in time to eat with him. Ma’s gotten stuck with this eleven-to-closing shift lately, probably because she’s the only one willing to work it.
The cashier’s gaze is acidic, like my purchase is too small to justify the basic motor functions required to make change for a five-dollar bill. “So.” Beside me, Kincaid coughs, still congested. “You were going to tell me what I am.”
“That’s why you’re following me?”
“One of the reasons.” His gaze flickers over me, physical as a touch.
My body floods with heat, adrenaline, and I can’t look away from the peeling decals on the countertop. He’s returning fire. Oh my God. I have no idea what to do.
The cashier slides the cash register drawer shut with a ching. “Okay, kiddies. Take the pubescent mating rituals outside.” He and Kincaid do a fist bump; the cashier nods at me, telling Kincaid, “Remember to wrap it up, buddy. Last thing I need is your skate-rat progeny coming down here, trying to steal the Bic lighters.”
Kincaid laughs. I leave, face flaming.
Back on the sidewalk, I set the pace to hyper speed. Kincaid rolls up alongside, skating backward, hands in his coat pockets, zigzagging. “So?” he says to me. “What am I?”
“Other than a big show-off?” He laughs again. “How did you not kill that guy just now?”
“Owen? He’s Trace’s cousin.”
“So it’s okay for him to trash you?” And me, I think, but my pride won’t let me say it.
“He’s the reason I can drink.” Looks back at me. “If he didn’t buy for Trace, then Trace couldn’t sell to us.”
“Supply and demand, huh.”
“I guess. Anyway, he didn’t mean anything by it. That’s just how he is.” Considers me. “I’ve never seen you pissed before.”
“Yeah. Well. It happens.” What I’d almost said to him at the lunch table was probably too personal, too harsh, but I’m feeling thorny now, so I say, “You really want to know what you are?” He raises his brows. “Snake-oil salesman. Flimflam man. You think you can sell people on anything. And usually, you can.”
“Really.” Intense interest.
“Hey, you came all this way. The least I can do is insult you.” I rip open one of the bags and hold it out. “Shark?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “But not you. You’re not buying.”
“Nope. Told you.” I pick out a gumm
y, wincing at the occasional stray raindrop striking my face, hard as a pellet of buckshot.
“Then you won’t be scared to go back out there.” Kincaid squints at the clouds. “It’s daylight. Things usually don’t try to eat you in the daylight.”
I recognize his brand of teasing now, and I snort. “What is it with you and that marsh?”
“It’s a good place to be alone.”
“And you want to be alone with me.” Too late, I realize how it sounds. Oh, shit.
The last thing I expect him to say is “Yes.”
It opens a pocket of silence between us, the unspoken thing we’ve just acknowledged. My heart races and my body feels anything but still, yet we walk without discussion up a side street I’ve never taken, another shortcut, another steep hill that starts a fire in my quads. At an intersection of quiet streets, Kincaid scales the slope to an old cemetery surrounded by chain link. Ignores the gate, hops the fence. I follow. Inside stands a massive oak, leaves turned yellow, a blazing hand of glory against the sky.
We enter the woods on the far side of the cemetery, where the gravestones are sparse, forgotten-looking, a stone lamb for a lost child. Kincaid takes more care to make sure I’m keeping up this time. We follow two shallow gullies layered with blowdown and dead leaves, then come out in a familiar place, the ledge above the murals. He reaches out, holds my hand. My fingers feel small in his, oddly unfamiliar, and I can feel my pulse everywhere, every place I’d thought was private, untouchable.
He stashes his board in the weeds by the path, where his bag already sits; must’ve been there all day. Then we walk to the railroad bridge.
“How could anybody be under there?” By the time we climb the last slope to reach the railroad tracks, nerves have gotten me talking again. “I mean, I’ve seen the bridge. It’s not like there’s anything to hang on to in those tunnels. It’s stone.” I pause to catch my breath, watching him make the tracks. “Just saying, your Mumbler origin story needs some work.”
“He doesn’t follow rules like that. He can go anywhere.” Kincaid takes a few big steps, touching only the ties, arms out to the side for balance. “You’ve seen the painting. With those hands, he could probably stick on like a spider and crawl.”
A flash of white buzzes by my head, and I watch it spiral away, fluttering. “God.” I smooth my hair, imagining little insect legs tangling there, frantic. “I’m like a moth magnet lately.”
He looks up, watching it go. “Lace-border moth. They’re all over the marsh this time of year.”
And my closet, apparently. “What is he, then?” I say, actually finding the Mumbler a more appealing subject for once. “Where’d he come from?”
“I think we made him.” Kincaid keeps his gaze down as we follow the tracks, chin in his collar. “Like, people. How shitty we are. Poured out of the vials of the wrath of God, right. Where’s Trace when you need some good blasphemy?”
It has the ring of a bad charm, said aloud out here, in the isolation. Like an invitation, pushed beneath the door to something forever with its eye to the keyhole, its pupil a reptilian slit.
My hands are ice, freezing air leaving a taste of iron in my mouth as we cross from land to granite, the wind blasting us again now that we’re on the bridge platform, stripped of tree cover. Our jack-o’-lanterns still form a line along the railing. I hug my coat around me. “Crap. Don’t tell me this is becoming ‘our place.’”
It’s a risky joke, assuming too much, but I want that concept out of my head, vials of the wrath of God. He smiles slightly but doesn’t look at me, giving a slow nod. “You’re very funny.”
“Wow. Add a little pat on the head, and I’d feel super special.” I cut my eyes at him. “And since when aren’t you an easy laugh?”
The corner of his mouth goes up a bit more. “I think you joke around to cover how you really feel about stuff.”
“Kind of like why you tell stories?” He doesn’t answer. I shrug, looking off at the water, slate-colored under the overcast sky. “Maybe I just keep myself to myself, you know?” I don’t have to say just like you; he turns to me, and we bump into each other, his hands steadying my shoulders. I look into his eyes as another one of those steel raindrops spikes my lashes, making me blink. “Not that I’m mysterious or cool at all.”
He lowers his head to look at me closely, the teasing light in his expression again. “You. You are an unknown quantity.”
Our noses are nearly touching; wonder how he broke his, why he didn’t bother to make sure it healed straight. “Well,” I say, “that new-kid smell wears off after a while. Fair warning.” We both laugh a little, and his hands cup my face, crossing beyond friendly touch, and oh God, I’m going over the edge again, maybe not so different from surrendering to dreams, that warm pull of sleep, how our heat blends as we kiss—his lips as chapped as his hands, like I knew they’d be, because he’s always outside, the wind always taking from him. At first, it’s soft, both a question and a confirmation, then harder, our heads angling together to go deeper, his fingers in my hair.
We pause for breath, me looking back at him, so dazed that I say, “Do you even know my last name?”
He’s quiet a moment. “Do you know mine?” Honestly curious.
“Is it Kincaid?”
“No.”
We laugh again, and all we can do is kiss, and all he wants to do is get his hands under my clothes, which is fantastic except for the shocks of goose bumps leaping across my skin every time my shirt rides up. “It’s so cold,” I say in his ear.
We cross the bridge to the far side, the couples’ side, where I’ve never been. And we’re not picky—the ground works. Off the path, partly shielded by the branches of a blue spruce. He takes his coat off and lays it over us, his heat enveloping me, his weight, his kisses on my stomach, his fingers finding the hooks of my worn-out bra with the skill of an experienced bra finder, a worry for another time, and there are so many parts of him I want to touch, to kiss, to know.
After we hit the point where I whisper, “We should stop”—the last thing I want, but still—he groans and drops over onto his side, nuzzling under my jaw, kissing down my throat, tickling, making me laugh.
As we cross back over the bridge together, he holds my hand in both of his, rubbing my fingers, warming them as we move together, like I’m holding him up. I feel flushed, rumpled, thoroughly explored. I don’t know how far is too far for the first time touching a guy, how much I should’ve given him, why it even needs to be played that way, like awarding points or something. All I know is that I inhabit an entirely different skin from the one I wore before, one that never knew the feeling of his lips kissing just below the line of my underwear.
Our row of jack-o’-lanterns grins back at us, beginning to wizen, black mold speckling the corners of their mouths and eyes. “Where’s Ivy’s?” I’m not sure I’ve even spoken aloud until I feel Kincaid’s new stillness, his head leaned against mine. “Her pumpkin. It’s not there anymore.”
We stop by the space where it once sat. “Somebody probably knocked it off.” Sounds like his thoughts are still back there, in the trees.
“Do lots of people come here?”
“Not lots. I find beer cans and stuff sometimes.”
I go to the railing and look down, as if the jack-o’-lantern might still be bobbing below us, then examine the next one, Trace’s. “What the hell?” I laugh. “Somebody stole our offerings, too.”
The jack-o’-lanterns have been completely cleaned out. Even the cold sore treatment is gone. Kincaid rests his forearms on the railing, his gaze keen as he watches me. “Guess he must’ve been pleased. Maybe he’ll go easy on us this year.”
I look back at him, trying to gauge how much shit he’s giving me, if he’s really shutting me out of the joke again. But then he smiles, and impulse brings me in for more kisses, sliding my hands inside his open coat, around his waist, into the back pockets of his jeans, hardly able to believe I get to touch him like this, know the p
attern of his ribs—too easy to find—the few scattered moles on his chest.
We leave, passing my jack-o’-lantern, first in line. Ours, I mean. Mine, Sage’s. And Bree’s.
Fifteen
I DON’T KNOW what to do.
A dam’s burst, letting all the consequences through, sweeping away my floaty, spinning feelings, leaving nothing but this roaring in my ears. I’m practically silent on the walk back, searching for words—don’t take this wrong, but—can we not—at least, not in front of—but it’s impossible, the idea of pushing him away, turning him down when we’re so new, just born together.
I’m sick with the thought of Bree, flat-out nauseous by the time we reach the park. Everyone’s here, like they heard a rumor that we were handing out free Fireball or something. Bree’s talking with Sage, Trace, and Moon. She doesn’t notice us coming out of the trees, doesn’t look over until she hears leaves crunching beneath our sneakers. I’m quick to split off from him, and now who’s in the killing jar, beating their wings as everything goes dark?
“Hope you’re ready for this,” Bree says to me. “Trace wants to pull another one.” But her heat-seeking gaze follows Kincaid, watching him get on his board and do a couple slow laps to warm up. I force myself to look anywhere but at him. We didn’t cheat. There’s nothing to cheat on. But still.
Trace shows Sage something on his phone, and I take in all the details: how she sits with her hip pressed against his, their shoulders touching, things that were just vaguely discomfiting PDA before, but now, over the span of one afternoon, I can so totally understand, and envy. What I did in the woods with Kincaid was the farthest I’ve ever gone, a giant leap from that first, chaste little kiss freshman year, with the boy who only dated me because he knew it couldn’t last.
“There’s a crapload of stuff you can do to a car like that.” Trace grins. “Crack picked the wrong ride.” He points his phone at each of us. “You’ll get a text letting you know when. We’ve got to change up the day we hit, so there’s no pattern. Human brains want a pattern. We want them scared.” Two skaters, underclassmen, stray close to our spot, and Trace stares them down until they move on.
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