How We Became Wicked

by Alexander Yates

  “We’ve been busy,” she said.

  “I can see that,” Mrs. Lee said, smiling broadly at them through the bookshelf. Her deeply red lips and white teeth looked like they belonged on a different face. Meanwhile, Klara said nothing at all. She seemed to not even be looking directly at them.

  “Do you mind if I ask with what?” Mrs. Lee continued brightly.

  “Looking for Port Emory,” Hank said.

  “Want to save us the trouble?” Astrid asked. “You could just tell us where it is.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Lee said, her smile stiffening. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  There was a long and awkward silence. Eventually, it was Klara who broke it. “If there’s anything Amblin needs while he’s . . .”

  Mrs. Lee dove in. “Absolutely! I was just thinking that with the commemoration coming up, we should put together a nice care package for Amblin. I’ll even have Mr. Collins bring up some lobsters and corn on the day. And speaking of that . . .” She rubbed her hands together, pleased as punch to have found a graceful segue out of this unpleasant business. “Could we ask for your help with something? Klara and I could use some strong young backs for a moment.”

  “Help with what?” Hank asked.

  He’d directed the question to his stepmom, but of course it was Abigail Lee who answered. “Oh, nothing serious. Just a little party prep. It won’t take a minute!”

  With that the vice chairwoman hooked her arm around Klara’s waist, marching her around the bookshelf and deeper into the archives. Astrid and Hank exchanged a quick glance before following. Mrs. Lee seemed to know exactly where she was going, weaving between the shelves and cabinets. She turned into a little chapel and stopped, tapping her chin a few times.

  “Now, Klara, do you happen to remember where . . . ? Ah, never mind. There it is.” She pointed up at a large rectangular box sitting atop a repurposed mahogany dresser. “If you two could get that down for us, that would be splendid.”

  “What is it?” Hank asked, grabbing one corner of the box as Astrid took hold of the other. Together they slid it off the dresser and lowered it to the dusty floor.

  “Just some decorations for next week,” Abigail said, kneeling down to flip back the cardboard flaps. Inside was a neatly packed row of framed photographs—pictures of commemorations past. Every year the townsfolk would gather at the beginning of the party to take a group photo. It was tradition to hang some of the old photos off of the crystal walls. As though the people of Goldsport needed another reminder that time was passing. Astrid pulled the most recent one out of the box.

  “Oh, that was a lovely time, wasn’t it?” Abigail said. “Klara, dear, I remember that meringue you made. Bliss!”

  Astrid examined the photograph. She found herself and Hank off to the side of the gathering, wrapped tightly in each other’s arms. They wore frantic expressions of panic and delight. This picture had been taken at the peak of their relationship. Just an hour prior, the two of them had snuck off to the gardens with a stolen bottle of champagne and made a whole bunch of mistakes. Beside her, Hank flushed. He snatched the picture out of Astrid’s hands and passed it to Abigail facedown.

  “How many of them do you want?” Hank asked, his voice flat.

  “Oh, the last ten years should be perfect,” Abigail said.

  Hank began to leaf through the pictures, not saying another word. With each one he pulled away, everybody in the frame grew younger. Astrid looked on as she and Hank became nothing but friends again. They grew shorter. Their faces filled with baby fat. Astrid watched as her dad’s hair returned. She watched Mr. Bushkirk grow slim and Klara’s posture straighten.

  “Well, now,” Abigail said, gathering up her ten pictures and clutching the stacked frames to her chest, “that does it. Would you two mind putting the box back for us?”

  “No problem,” Hank said.

  “And you both . . . You’re going to come, aren’t you?” Mrs. Lee asked. “To the commemoration, I mean.”

  “Of course they aren’t,” Klara snapped. “Abigail, please stop being ridiculous.”

  This took them all by surprise. Abigail blinked so hard that it looked like she had a bat caught in her eye. “That’s . . . Well, that’s silliness,” she said. “They simply must come. It’s commemoration!” She looked from Astrid to Hank, giving them her most forceful smile. “Do say you’ll come.”

  Neither of them answered. Klara, too, remained silent. She only stood there, examining Hank’s bruise.

  “Yes, of course you will!” Mrs. Lee all but shouted. “It’s settled, then. We’ll see you at the party. If not sooner.”

  And with that she again hooked a bony arm around Klara’s waist, and the two beat a hasty retreat out of the archives.

  • • •

  Hank watched them go. Once the ladies were safely out of earshot, he said, “You know, she’s the only person in this place that I feel sorry for.”

  Astrid only nodded. She didn’t think Klara had done much to earn her stepson’s sympathy. The woman had always been useless when it came to getting between Hank and his father. Worse than useless—she had made herself blind to it. Though it was hard to tell how much of that was her fault. And if Hank could forgive Klara, who the hell was Astrid to hold a grudge against her? He was the one with the busted face.

  Hank squatted back down on the floor and continued to leaf through the pictures Abigail had left behind. He and Astrid became ever younger in the photographs, shrinking from little children, to toddlers, to babies. There was a younger version of Klara, gazing down at Hank, frail as a bundle of sticks in her arms. Then he turned over another photograph, and there were suddenly more kids. Eleven little people, swaddled up in fleece and held close by beaming parents. There was Hank’s twin sister. There was his older brother, sitting atop Mr. Bushkirk’s shoulders. It was the generation that could have been but never was. By the following commemoration, the vex would have killed all but Hank and Astrid. He lingered over this shot for a moment.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Yup.”

  “They had no idea what was coming.”

  “Nope.”

  Nothing else to say. Astrid reached into the box as well and turned to the photo from the previous year. Then she, Hank, and most of the other children disappeared altogether. Another year into the past and even his older brother vanished. Only their parents remained, clutching champagne flutes in the same outstretched hands that would later hold children. His mother was there. His father looked truly happy. They all beamed for the camera.

  “Simpler times,” Hank said.

  “You mean before us?”

  “Sort of,” he said. “Before The First Voice told them about the vex. Just look at them here.” He pulled the picture all the way out of the box and held it close. “They’re not hoping for much more than a full belly, a walk in the gardens, and maybe a game or two in the afternoons. That’s the definition of a good day.” Hank snorted.

  Slowly his expression soured.

  “Not that anything has changed,” he said. He slotted the picture frame back into the box, setting it down so hard that the glass cracked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s the same today,” he said. “Why do they even bother holding the commemoration? Or the Sunday picnics? It’s not like those days are much different from other days. It’s all just eat, drink, and relax. Experience as little displeasure as possible while they all get one day older. One day closer to dying.”

  Astrid couldn’t say she disagreed. Still, she was surprised to hear the words come out of Hank’s mouth. She reached out and took him by the shoulder.

  “That’s not really fair,” she said. “You’re forgetting about sleeping in. And badminton. And the book club.”

  “And lobster cookouts,” Hank said, rising somewhat out of his anger.

  “Lobsters, totally. With rehydrated butter.”

  “God, I hate that stuff.”

  �
��Of course you do,” Astrid said. “On account of it tastes like snot.”

  Idly, she reached into the box and flipped back another photograph and another. The investors grew ever younger. “I don’t think they actually like it either,” she went on. “They just eat it so that they can remember real butter.”

  “Real butter must have been pretty great, then,” Hank said.

  “Real ice cream, too,” Astrid said.

  She continued looking through the frames, going further and further back into the history of Goldsport—getting closer and closer to the world before. It was actually kind of mesmerizing, watching all of her neighbors age in reverse. Watching her own parents fall back in love. There were Ria and Amblin in the center of the gathering, clutching hands and mashing faces. There were Ria and Amblin clinking glasses with arms interlocked. There were Ria and Amblin, awkward flirty teenage friends standing slightly apart. There were Ria and Amblin, little more than children themselves, ketchup on their pointed chins, held lovingly about the shoulders by their own parents.

  And then, suddenly, Ria disappeared.

  Astrid had come to the last picture. She pulled it out to get a better look. Still, she couldn’t find her mom. Actually, as Astrid investigated the picture, she realized that she could hardly find any of the investors in the gathered crowd. There was Ronnie Gold, her grandpa. And there was Klara, looking beautiful and severe in an evening gown. But where was Mr. Collins? Where were Abigail Lee and the other investors? And who was that little sandy-haired girl grinning gamely beside a young Amblin? The more Astrid searched, the more she realized the entire photo was filled with unfamiliar faces. It was as though Astrid’s whole town had been replaced by a group of strangers.

  “What the . . . ?” Hank, too, was puzzling over the picture.

  Astrid held the beginnings of a thought in her mind. It was in that place before you can even recite the words to yourself in your own head. She stood up from the floor, knees shaky, and traced her way through the dusty aisles. Hank followed her. They returned to the giant map tacked up above the organ. Goldsport glowed—a bright circle painted in the most hopeful shade of yellow.

  Astrid climbed back up onto the organist’s bench and ran her fingers over Goldsport. She could feel the subtle elevation of the paint. She worked her thumbnail under the raised edge, and the yellow circle began to crumble and bend. It came away in dusty flakes. There were letters beneath the paint. Words. Astrid knew what they would be before she could even spell them out.

  Port Emory.

  CHAPTER 20

  Thank the Investors

  AT FIRST ASTRID FELT BLANK.

  Her legs carried her out of the archives and down the glimmering greenway. She and Hank passed through the dairy gardens, where the milk goats were bleating in their cages. They crossed the plaza, where Abigail and Klara had rejoined the commemoration committee to hang up the old photographs. Hank yanked on his bee suit, and together they stepped out of the harbor hatch, through the stinking curtains dripping with quiet, and back onto the north shore.

  Minutes later they were at Ria’s house. Astrid opened the door, and it clattered loudly against the inner wall. She hadn’t meant to slam it.

  “Mom!”

  There was no answer. Astrid checked the pegs on the wall of her mother’s quiet room and saw that her suit and waders were missing. She returned to the veranda and scanned the tidal flats. Ria was out there in her bee suit, digging for clams in the shallows. A few singers circled about her, tracing streaks of purple light across the water, skimming like dragonflies.

  Astrid and Hank headed for the flats, wading into the outgoing tide. Ria heard their splashing and straightened up. She must have realized that something was wrong, because she dropped her spading fork and bucket, which bobbed like a little boat upon the water.

  “Astrid,” she called. “What happened? Is it your father?”

  “Eliza used to live here,” Astrid said.

  “What?”

  “The wicked woman,” Astrid said. “The woman Henry Bushkirk shot. She used to live here.” Astrid had reached her mother. The outgoing tide soaked through her jeans, pulling her gently toward the open water.

  “Used to live where? What do you—”

  Astrid cut her mother off, throwing a hand back in the direction of the greenway. “This is Port Emory. Goldsport is Port Emory.”

  Even as she put this into words for the first time, it dawned on Astrid how obvious it should have been. The ruined fire station, the vacant church, the antique houses, their quaint little fleet of lobster boats. These could only be the bones of an older town, upon which the flesh of Goldsport hung. The glass, the gardens, the pressure-ventilated underground grocery—these were nothing but adornments. How could Astrid not have seen this before?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but . . .” Ria trailed off, apparently unable to finish her sentence. She seemed to crumple within her bee suit, as though somebody had pulled a plug and let out her air. Then she gave her head a hard shake. “Sorry,” Ria said. “Old habits.”

  “Is it true?” Hank asked.

  “It is,” Ria said. For a moment she offered nothing more than that. Then she reached down beneath the water and groped about for her spading fork. When she found it, she straightened and retrieved her floating bucket. “Who told you?” she finally asked.

  “Nobody,” Astrid said, flicking the word at her mother like a dart. “We had to find out in the archives.”

  “I would have,” her mother said. “I wanted to, a few years ago. But your father thought it was too early.”

  “But . . . why keep it a secret at all?” Hank asked.

  Ria stared into her bucket, as though the right words might be down there with the shining clams. “Everybody in town would rather forget about Port Emory,” she finally said. Her voice was so small that it was almost drowned out by the singers. Astrid had never in her whole life heard her mom sound like that.

  “Why?” Astrid pressed.

  Ria looked up at her with an almost dumbfounded expression. “Because we are ashamed. And we don’t like feeling ashamed,” she said, as though this were the simplest thing in the world. “It’s not a story that we look good in. So we don’t tell it.” Ria’s gaze fell back down upon the outgoing tide. “Or, at least . . . we don’t tell all of it.”

  “What are you even saying?” Astrid felt as confused and disoriented as she had a few minutes ago, back in the archives. She couldn’t imagine what her neighbors—what her parents—could have done that they needed to feel so terrible about. They might have annoyed Astrid out of her skull 70 percent of the time, but they weren’t bad people. They were clever, and thoughtful, and diligent. They had taken responsibility for themselves, and worked hard, and made a home after the end of the world. These were the exact kind of people who were supposed to look good in stories.

  It was Hank who finally put it into words. “We stole it from them, didn’t we?” There was a kind of quiet dawning in his voice, as though suddenly everything made complete sense. But to Astrid, things had never made less sense.

  “We stole it.” Ria tapped her chest with her free hand. “You two didn’t steal anything. You weren’t even born when it happened. Tell me . . .” She looked from Hank to Astrid. “How much of it have you figured out?”

  “We don’t know,” Astrid said.

  “All right,” Ria said. “I’ll start from the beginning, then.”

  • • •

  Together the three of them waded out of the shallows and returned, dripping, to shore. But rather than lead them all back to her house, Astrid’s mother instead headed for a long snarl of driftwood that jutted from the sand. She sat, motioning for Astrid and Hank to join her. From there they had a view of the entire harbor, with Puffin Island glinting in the distance. The shattered north shore extended off to their left, while the glass-covered south shore lay to their right. At their backs rose the forested hills, the crown of the watchtower jus
t visible above the treetops.

  “All of this,” Ria said, stretching a gloved hand from the north shore to the south, “used to be called Port Emory. That was before the wickedness fell and before any of us lived here. I’m afraid that I don’t know much about what it was like back then. It used to be a real fishing town. But that was a long time ago. By the time the wickedness came around, Port Emory was really just for tourists. People—rich people, mostly—who would come here for a few weeks in the summer and rent out the grand old houses.”

  Here Ria paused, her face going sour beneath her bonnet. “Ronnie Gold, your grandpa,” she continued, “was one of these tourists. So was your father, though he was just a little boy at the time. They used to come here every summer.”

  “But Dad was born here,” Astrid said, almost defensively.

  “He wasn’t,” Ria said, snapping her head from one side to the other. “None of us were. Other than you and Hank, I mean.”

  Again she reached out to point from one end of Goldsport to the other. “You see how the beach is shaped like a crescent moon? You see how”—Ria turned, pointing behind them—“how the hills stretch all the way from the north shore to the south? That’s what sold your grandpa on Port Emory. On one side you’ve got a quiet ocean, with a hidden little harbor. And on the other you’ve got steep hills and a bog filled with mosquitoes. Your grandpa Ronnie decided that this would be a good place to try to ride it out. So he started calling up rich friends of his, to see if they wanted in. To see if they could help him build what he needed—if they could help him invest.”

  Ria bit down hard on that last word, as though she meant to damage it. She stayed like that for a moment, teeth clenched. When she spoke again, her voice took on a new edge. “My parents were two of those investors. I was very young, but I remember. We shopped around, visiting a few sanctuaries. We went to one high in the mountains, outside of Denver. We went to one built underground, in New Mexico. It was almost like shopping for a vacation house. But in the end my mom and dad decided that Port Emory was the best of the lot. The only problem was that the town was already full of people. But that was minor. Getting rid of them wouldn’t be nearly as complicated as digging the grocery or finding the right kind of glass for the greenway.”