Fiendish (14 page)

“If that’s true, though—if the craft is just lighting up every which way—maybe it was just being how it always is. I mean, if it doesn’t have to follow any kind of natural laws, how can anyone really say what’s normal?”

Even to myself, though, I sounded like I was trying too hard to convince someone.

“I don’t know much about the hollow,” Shiny said again, and she closed her eyes when she said it. “But the kind of thing you’re talking about sounds pretty far from normal. I’m pretty sure what you’re talking about can’t come to any good.”

FIREFLIES

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
he farther along it got into evening, the clearer it was that there would be no supper, and neither Shiny nor Myloria seemed very motivated to do anything about that.

I’d just gotten out a box of Bisquick and was reading the directions to fix myself some pancakes when I heard the roar of a familiar engine. I stepped onto the porch just in time to see Fisher’s Trans Am come skimming onto Weeping Road and scream up to the house in a long rooster tail of dust. Then it cut off, and the yard was so quiet that the silence seemed to be a solid thing, like it was clapping in on my ears.

I sat down on the sagging front steps and watched him get out of the car, trying to look however I would if I hadn’t seen him make dogwood flowers grow from nothing or watched him pass out in the road or seen him without his shirt on, bleeding all over the bed.

He came up the steps to me, moving stiffly, but looking better than he had. The way he held his arm close against his chest, though, made me think he was not yet fully recovered. He stood beside me where I sat, but didn’t say anything, even though I waited what felt like a year.

Finally, I sighed and looked up at him. His back was broad, lumpy along one shoulder, like maybe he’d bandaged himself up, but the bandages didn’t fit too well under his clothes.

Now that I knew the shape of the tower, I could picture the line of it. I sat with my arms around my knees, tracing it in my head, the way it narrowed to a jaggy point at the back of his neck.

He glanced down at me, like he could feel my eyes on him. “You studying me like that because you’ve got something on your mind?”

“Yeah, I do.” The steps creaked under his boots and I shaded my eyes. “You’re supposed to be home in bed, working on not getting yourself killed.”

“Well, I don’t do so great with sitting around the house. I just needed to get out.”

I pointed to his arm, the way he held it awkwardly against his chest. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, dropping down onto the steps next to me. The nearness of him was delicious, and I wanted to reach over and touch the edge of his T-shirt because it looked like it might be soft and I wanted to find out, and because he was close enough to touch.

“You look like you got some rest, at least,” I said finally, when I’d been staring at his T-shirt long enough that I had to say something.

He nodded. His face was tired, but his color was better and the dark circles around his eyes were gone. “I would have got more, except Isola can’t stay put. Kept me up, wandering around the house all day. Swear she must’ve gone up and down that hall a hundred times.”

I remembered Isola that morning, her eyes bright and hungry like she was trying to study the truth right out of my face.

“You
were
in pretty bad shape. Maybe she was worried.”

He shook his head. “You got all my sheets and stuff in the wash. And she didn’t say anything, except to get after me just now when I was leaving, for having a girl over past nine. Sometimes I think I’m about to lose my damn mind, living with her.”

I thought of Myloria, with her vague ways and her empty eyes, like she was always looking past me.

“It might not be so bad,” I said. “To have someone pay attention or try and take care of you. She’s mean, maybe, but I don’t think she’s stupid.”

He glanced at me, and his eyes were exhausted. “Maybe, but that sure doesn’t make her any more fun to deal with.” Then he jerked his head toward the back of the house and pulled himself to his feet. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

I almost asked him again if he was feeling all right, but let it go. We climbed down off the porch and headed out past the barn. Behind the house, the ground sloped away to a little fenced-in garden and a wooden shed with a wire run full of chickens. Farther down, a rickety pump house leaned awkwardly, and beyond that, a tire swing hung from one of the willows that stood along a bend of the creek. Old pieces of broken farm equipment were scattered here and there, sinking slowly into the ground. A hay rake sat in the shade near the swing, looking like a giant mouth of bent, rusted teeth. It was strange to be reminded that this land used to be good for something besides rot and sadness and ruin.

We’d only gone down past the edge of the yard when Fisher stopped and took a deep breath. He was still trying to act fine, but I could see the first strands of bright, electric red pulsing out of him, shining ugly into the dusk.

“Just stop working so hard to seem like it doesn’t hurt,” I said when I’d got tired of pretending I didn’t see the way he clenched his jaw. “It’s not like I can’t tell.”

He didn’t answer or argue, just closed his eyes, cradling his arm against his chest.

“How bad is it?”

He laughed. “I think I can feel every damn muscle and nerve stitching itself back together.”

I picked a broken stick from out of the weeds and swung it, knocking the seeds off an early milkweed. “You shouldn’t have come out here, then. You should have stayed home to heal up.”

He gave me a tired, rueful smile. “I don’t know much about how that works. I’ve never really had to worry about it before. Last night, though. Last night was
bad
. It hurt so much it was hard even to breathe.”

“I know,” I said.

He made a little gesture with his good hand, like he was drawing someplace that only he could see, and wouldn’t look at me. “Every second, it was me deciding to take the next breath, and knowing if I let myself, I could pass out and then nothing would hurt anymore.”

I dug around in the weeds with the end of the stick. “Why didn’t you then?”

“It wouldn’t have been passing out.” He stared out into the field, full of tall grass and morning glories. “It would have been dying. So I just breathed, and worked really hard at not dying.”

Suddenly, I could almost feel the weight of the songs I’d sung him, the way his hand felt in mine.

“What happened to us yesterday?” I said.

The question seemed too small to conjure up what it had been like to see the world come undone, ready to chew up him and me and anything else it came across.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The hollow kind of lost its mind, I guess. I mean, it always sort of changes moods along with me, but not like that. The dirt there works in ways it never does out in the regular world, but that’s the first time I’ve seen it do anything like that.”

I took a deep breath and tossed away the stick. “I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure
I’ve
seen something like it.”

Fisher glanced at me sharply. “What are you talking about? Something here, out in the regular world?”

“Not any kind of fiend or hell dog,” I said. “But Shiny and I found something in the creek the other day. This monster-fish with a whole bunch of wrong, scary teeth. She cut it apart and we buried it, but I don’t think that will really make a difference if there are more of them.”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Fisher said. “I don’t know what this is.”

“Dangerous,” I said.

He laughed low and dry in his throat. “Yeah, that.” Then his face went stony again. “I keep trying to figure out what that was yesterday, and I can’t even start to make sense of it. All I can think is, what if that’s just what the hollow’s like now? It’s the only place I ever really feel okay, and what if this means I can’t even go there anymore?”

The edge in his voice was something like pain.

“It isn’t safe there,” I said.

“I know—I know it’s not, but maybe that’s
why
I like it. Or part, anyway. Town is safe. For me, everything is safe.”

I nodded. I didn’t like to point it out, but there were some things about town that seemed pretty far from safe.

Fisher was walking faster, kicking at a pokeweed bush as we passed, and now the words were spilling out. “When Isola’s mad at me, sometimes she tells me I shouldn’t even be here. That the only place for me is down in the hollow. She says it to be mean, but the thing is, it’s true. It’s the only place I really . . . belong. It’s kind of amazing there.”

I looked out at the empty pastures, at every tree and flower and blade of grass, at the muddy patches by the cow-stream, the crickets and frogs rustling around in the ditch. “But that’s not so rare or—or so special.
Every
thing’s amazing!”

Fisher didn’t answer, but he looked like he was thinking about that, or thinking about something. Whatever was on his mind did not look particularly comfortable.

We crossed the little dirt bridge that ran over the ditch, and opened the gate into the back pasture. We walked out through the hay and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree. We were close enough that I could feel the warmth of him in the air against my skin, but not quite so close that we were touching. Around us, the fireflies were coming out, lighting up around us in the grass, tiny and bright.

“It’s hard to be around you,” he said, and his voice sounded so strange.

I let out a crowing sound, almost like a laugh, but not. “Then tell me to go away, if I’m so awful. Or at least, don’t come over to go walking.”

“It’s hard to be around you,” he said again, and he said it with his face turned away and his shoulders hunched. “But you’re not awful. I just—I always want to tell you everything.”

“Then why don’t you tell me?”

He shook his head. “It’s not . . . it’s not easy.”

“Things don’t have to be easy,” I said.

Fisher was a silhouette against the sky. He was leaning forward, looking out over the pasture with his hands clasped between his knees. His profile was wistful in the dark, and suddenly, he didn’t look fierce or stoic or defiant. He looked tired.

His hair was dark and shaggy, hanging his face, but his skin seemed to shine up out of the dusk, brightening the line of his nose and mouth and chin. He looked forlorn against the sky and I watched him, waiting for something to change. For him to stop looking so unbearably lonely. It seemed like maybe if you had crooked blood and a secret world and an iron skin, you were always lonely.

“Fisher?”

“What?”

“Are we friends yet?”

He laughed softly. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we are.”

“Fisher?”

He turned toward me and I kissed him. Not the way the magazines or movies talked about, but awkward and too fast. His mouth was warm and soft against mine and then when he made a little hurt sound, I pulled back.

For awhile, we just sat like that, side by side, quiet and still in the middle of the field. My cheeks were getting hot, so I stared off someplace that wasn’t him. The other day, I’d made up my mind in ten seconds that I was going to kiss him, in some far-off make-believe way that didn’t feel real or mean anything. Doing it though, actually doing it, was so much more scary than anything I’d wished for or imagined or bragged about to Shiny.

When I glanced over at him, he was just looking out across the empty pasture at some far-off spot in the grass.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

He squinted at me and his voice was hoarse. “How did you know I wanted you to?”

“Wanted me to kiss you? I didn’t.”

He swallowed like he was having a hard time catching his breath. “And you just decided to do it anyway?”

“Well, yeah. It was what I wanted, and you looked like you needed it.”

He reached for me, grabbing me around my waist and pulling me toward him. His hurt arm was shaking and he rested his hand against my hip. His other hand was flat on my back, pressing me hard against his chest. I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt and he was kissing me like it was the only real thing, and there was no field, no fireflies, no dusk. Like he could breathe me in and there wouldn’t be him and me at all anymore, just one solid thing. I put my arms around his neck, pulling him closer.

His teeth knocked against mine, pinching my lip and I gasped. “
Ow
.”

“Sorry.” He pulled back, shaking his head. “Sorry, I don’t have a lot of practice at this kind of thing.”

The way he looked at me was almost shy, like he was worried what I would think.

“No, it was fine.” I took a deep breath and couldn’t stop the spinning feeling, like everything was full of a pale, quiet light and the world was about to fall away. “It was good.”

He reached for me with his good hand, touching the side of my face. “I could do it again.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

LILIES

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he thrill of kissing Fisher was still zinging around in my head the next morning. He’d kissed me in the field, and walking home, and then again on Myloria’s porch, and one last time as I was letting myself into the house.

I caught myself going over it again and again, till I had to stop for fear of wearing out the memory before I was done with it.

The day was long and aimless, like all the other days at the Blackwood house, and with no chores or errands or appointments, time seemed stuck in a way it never had when I was little.

By the time the sun started to get low, I’d had about enough.

“Hey,” I said to Shiny, who was sprawled out on the bed, working on her witch cards again. “I’m going into town to see the fair. You should come if you want.”

She rolled her eyes like that was about the most worthless thing she’d ever heard, but as soon as I left the bedroom, she followed me out.

We were in the front hall, getting our shoes, when Myloria came wandering in after us.

“I hate to be a bother,” she said, “But I have to just ask. You are not intending to be selling any kind of craft with that Dalton girl, are you?”

Shiny straightened up, holding a boot in each hand. “Rae is not ‘that Dalton girl.’ She’s my friend, and she does honest
work
for honest money. Don’t pretend like you know anything about that.”

Myloria’s mouth got very thin. “This is an upright family, and we don’t need to resort to charms and snake oil to make our living.”

“
We
need to be able to afford dish soap or milk! We need to be able to
buy
groceries
.”

Myloria blinked and looked away. “Well, I can’t help it if you want to lower yourself to tricks, but don’t you go giving people the wrong idea about us.”

Shiny snorted. “Like that we survive on possums and live in a decrepit old ruin like a couple of crazy people? No, we certainly wouldn’t want to give them
that
idea!”

With a huff, she rammed her feet into her boots and stalked out onto the porch.

I stood in the hall across from Myloria, waiting for her to turn away or else to scold me too, but she didn’t move or say a word. When we looked at each other, I could see a broken heart inside her but not any way to do a thing about it, and after a second, I followed Shiny out.

On the porch, I was greeted by Shiny’s back. She was leaning on the railing, under the long row of wind chimes, glaring out into the yard.

“Do you think we could stop and invite Davenport to come with us?” I said after what felt like forever. I had a feeling I knew what she’d say, but it was worth asking, and I was tired of waiting for her to turn around.

Shiny pushed herself away from the railing and reached for a mangy broom that was leaning by the door. “Are you serious? The girl’s a straight-up weirdo.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Shiny, you have to start being friendly to people sometime. You can’t just hang out with me and Rae.”

She pushed her hair back from her face and hooked it behind her ears, shaking her head. “I can’t even believe you sometimes. Here you come, sassing around like some ridiculous little Pollyanna, like you can help everyone sort out all their problems.”

“What are you talking about?”

Shiny affected a high, babyish voice. “Oh, let’s invite Davenport—never mind that she’s nearly a goddamn mute! Let’s run around with that Fisher boy and teach him how to be civilized, even though he’s the devil on wheels!”

“That’s not what this is. Don’t be stupid.”

“Yes, it
is
. You’re just going around giving your time and your goodwill to people who don’t deserve it. No one around here wants our help!”

“How do you know they don’t? And anyway, what have you got against Davenport? That she’s got a crazy daddy? That’s not even fair. That’s like blaming you for Myloria.”

The look Shiny gave me was terrible. “He is
nothing
like Myloria. People in the Willows are supposed to stick together, but at the reckoning, it was her dad right there in front, tying rags and lighting bottles.”

This new piece of knowledge just made me deeply sad for all of us. I didn’t know how to feel vengeful or angry the way that Shiny did. I could only grasp the aftereffect—that she was hurt and I was hurt. Maybe everyone was.

Shiny scowled, shaking her head. “He was hateful back then and he’s hateful now.” She turned away and began sweeping the porch with a vengeance.

I sat on the steps and leaned my elbows on my knees while Shiny muddled around with the broom, pushing the dust over the edge and into the flowerbed.

“Fine,” I said, looking down into the yard. For just a second, I could see that clear, perfect picture in my head again—the neat, well-tended flowerbeds and the candy-pink peonies. It hurt the spot between my eyes. “Fine, we don’t have to ask her. But you have got to quit acting like she’s some kind of horror. She’s not the one who made you get stuck out here in the Willows, with everyone acting like you’re the devil.”

Shiny stared out at the weedy yard. “No, I know that. When I stop and think, I do know that. It’s just easier, sometimes, pointing it at her, or at anyone. Because when it’s the reckoning, then it’s something too big to point fingers toward at all. Then it’s no one’s fault.”

But the words made something tighten in my chest— a tangled knot of guilt—telling me that it might be mine.

The blank sheet seemed to flap and ripple in my head, waiting for a picture to come clear. I nodded, but I was remembering the day I found the stone tomato, there on the vine like a secret, tucked in with all the regular ones. That one round, perfect stone suddenly seemed like the center of my whole life, powerful enough to ruin everything.

* * *

In town, all of Main Street was alight, blazing with colored streamers and carnival lights. It seemed like pretty much everyone in Hoax County was wandering through the tents and the arcade games, talking and laughing. Down at the end of the street, the rides were all lit up, turning like giant steel pinwheels. Lights raced and flashed. The metal cages rocked, and the screams tumbled down to us from a long way off.

Rae was sitting up on one of the sawhorses by the curb, nearly finished with a corndog on a wooden stick. When she saw us coming, she jumped down and slipped her arm through Shiny’s.

“You ready to make a dollar?” she said, pointing across the street to where a little group of girls was lounging on a picnic bench, looking bored and glossy. “I see some chickens waiting to pay good money for love charms.”

I squinted at them, trying to see what Rae saw. “But they look so clean and normal. Are you sure they’re the kind of folks who want what you’re selling?”

“Clementine,” Rae said, dropping her empty corndog stick into one of the metal trash barrels. “I’m going to let you in on a secret. Around here, you don’t have to look too far to find someone willing to pay for something crooked. Everybody you meet is talking out both sides of their mouths.”

Shiny studied the girls and shook her head. “You go if you want, but I have no desire to make small talk with Laurie Tuttle and her friends. And don’t you
even
tell me to be nice.”

Rae dug primly in her bag and pulled out a grape sucker. “Don’t take that tone with me, Shiny Blackwood. I wasn’t thinking any such.”

“Well,
sorry
—I just figured this was the part where you explain to me how everyone in this shitty little town is not so bad, how if I give her a chance, Laurie is just a sad girl with a big nose and an overbearing mother, and how Mike Faraday has some kind of crush on me!”

Rae surveyed Shiny with her eyebrows up and the sucker sticking out of the corner of her mouth. “Well, he does. But so what? Him liking you’s got nothing to do with whether or not he’s a bag of bullshit.”

Shiny just gave Rae a long, sulky look, but when she turned away, I saw that she was smiling.

Rae took Shiny’s arm again and tugged her toward Main Street. “Fine, we’ll peddle sin some other time. But when you finish up those cards for me and we get a real moneymaking scheme going, that’s the day you start being nice to people. A person cannot run a business if they’re chasing off every second customer because they don’t like someone’s face.”

“It’s not the faces,” Shiny said, “so much as just the
generalized
ugliness.”

The three of us made our way along the sidewalk. People were gathering all along the street, and Rae said it was because they were waiting for the parade to start.

We stood on the corner, watching the floats as they came through, each one preceded by a pair of little kids carrying vinyl banners printed with the name of the association or club responsible, the Campfire Girls following along behind the Junior Farmers and the baton twirlers and the 4-H float.

“Oh, no,” said Rae mildly, peering over her shoulder through the crowd. “Here comes trouble.”

Fisher was cutting his way through the crowd, followed by Mike Faraday and the Maddox brothers and a handful of other boys. He looked taller and more wonderful than I’d ever seen him, his hair curling against his neck, his eyes fixed on mine. His T-shirt showed a jagged row of thin pink lines on his bare arm where only two days ago, the skin had been laid open, and I could tell by the way the shirt pulled across his shoulders that the bandages were gone.

He cut straight through the crowd, coming up to me like it was nothing, reaching for my hand.

“Hi,” was all he said, and I said it back, trying not to smile too hard.

When I leaned my arm against his, his skin was slippery and smelled like salt. The easy way we leaned into each other made my heart skip. His hand was very warm, rough on the palm and the pads of his fingers.

The other boys all watched us from the safety of the curb, and I couldn’t tell if it was me they were eyeing, or if they were just making sure to stay well back from Shiny.

Fisher twined his fingers with mine and when he did, the feeling was the best thing in the world, like it was always better to be this tangled up, to always have a piece of each other.

“Do you mind if they come with us?” I said, glancing at Shiny.

She rolled her eyes grandly. “What do
you
think? Anyway, I’d be more concerned about whether or not
they
mind it, because if a single one of them calls me any kind of craft-this or crooked-that, I cannot guarantee their safety.”

It didn’t matter, though. The boys were already falling back, wandering away from us into the crowd, but Fisher stayed right where he was. He didn’t let go of my hand.

The carnival was in full swing, lit up all over the east side of town. We wandered through the booths and tents, looking at the chickens and the pigs. After we’d seen the fair, we went down to the midway and pitched pennies into rows of plastic cups to win cheap wire-handled sparklers and silk roses, which Shiny thought were the most hilarious things in the world, but she kept pitching for them anyway. She and Fisher were doing a good job of pretending not to notice each other.

He pitched at a velvet rabbit with a plastic hat sewed on until he won it, and I laughed. The idea that he should want anything with a stuffed bunny was ridiculous, but when the man from the carnival took it down from the hook under the awning, he handed it to me.

I tried to pass the bunny back to Fisher, but he shook his head. “It’s yours.”

“I don’t have anything for you, though.”

Fisher shrugged and looked away. “You’re not supposed to. It’s like a . . . thing.”

“Well, that seems kind of unfair.”

“Sexist, you mean,” Shiny said, slinging another penny into the cup, holding her bunch of roses like a beauty queen.

Rae didn’t pitch for anything, just stood by and sucked her sucker, watching the rest of us and reaching up from time to time to twist the ends of her hair.

The carnival was like a dream from being little, and I was happy to stay there forever, smelling fryer oil and sugar and farm animals, watching the crowds and the colored lights.

I would have spent another hour just standing next to Shiny while she pitched for roses, but Fisher took my hand, pulling me over to the midway rides, where he led me through a rusty little gate and paid the fare to ride the swings. The seats hung on thin, jingling chains, and the speakers played Neil Diamond songs with a crackling hiss that made me think of my mama and how she’d danced around the living room in the evening.

As the ride began and the swings rose up, Fisher leaned sideways in his seat, reaching through the forest of chains for me until I reached back and let my fingers get twisted up with his. The swings rose higher, so that my feet hung out over nothing. Every time the ride dipped, I wanted to tuck my legs up so they wouldn’t drag over the roofs of the tents, even though I knew we were much too high.

I leaned back in the seat, laughing at the way the wind caught in my hair, and nothing in the world was wrong, and everything was beautiful. It didn’t matter that the town was small or that Shiny was angry or Fisher sometimes acted like he wanted to destroy himself and couldn’t tell me why. Up here in the swings, there was only warm, heavy air and “Sweet Caroline” on the speakers and Fisher’s hand holding onto mine.

From off in the hills, a whole mess of black clouds was rolling in. The sky overhead was still clear, but if the wind didn’t change direction, we were in for a storm.

When the ride stopped, we climbed off and filed down the metal ramp with everyone else. I was all set to get back in line and do it again, but Fisher leaned toward me, smiling, kissing my cheek, my ear, the corner of my mouth.

His lips moved to mine and I smiled against his smile, because in the warmth of his kiss, I understood that this was my life. This was my home, and the years I’d missed were gone but not lost, because I knew the taste of the dough from the fryer cart, and my mama used to dance around the house with Neil Diamond on the radio, and nothing was ever really forgotten.

I put my arms around his neck and leaned into him, his body warm and solid. Since last night in the meadow, he seemed less guarded, more sure. He kissed me harder, lifting me off my feet, and wrapped his arms around my waist so tight our whole bodies pressed together, and we sank back into the shadows, against the empty raffle booth.