Sweetly (28 page)
No time. Besides, you didn’t tell them about Samuel.
“Sophia,” I repeat, still breathing heavily.
“Gretchen? Are you okay?” she asks, eyes flitting from Ansel back to me. Sophia kicks her blankets aside and hurries toward me in a camisole. I reach forward and grasp her hands.
“Sophia, listen,” I plead, searching her eyes for something, though I’m not sure what. “The shells. I know about them. Three girls the first year, then five, and this year. Sophia—you can’t go through with the festival.”
Sophia’s face changes so quickly that it’s almost like magic—from careful understanding to wide-eyed, sweating fear. She shakes her head, and her fingertips tremble in my hands. She yanks her palms from mine and turns sharply to go back to her bed, where my brother sits, looking bleary and confused.
“What? What are you talking about?” she demands. Sophia struggles to find the edge of the sheets, struggles to avoid my eyes, struggles for every breath.
“Sophia, you know it’s true. That’s why you’re scared of the shells—you know what they mean. The witches—I mean, the werewolves—they’re leaving them to scare you—”
“What?” Ansel interrupts, voice icy.
I turn to my brother in desperation. “Ansel, the witch, the witch that chased us and took Abigail, it was real—it was a werewolf, a Fenris. And now there are more of them here. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to ruin it for you—I wanted us both to be free. But they’re here, and they’re trying to scare Sophia by leaving the shells. I shot one in the forest—”
“The witch… what?” Ansel asks, shaking his head. He thinks I’m crazy, thinks I’m cracking somehow, drunk, maybe. I take a deep breath, try to slow my racing thoughts.
“There are three shells in the shed from the first year. Five from the second. Eleven this year.” In my mind I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t shot that wolf tonight. Would twelve girls be marked? I continue aloud. “Sophia, you have to cancel.”
“No, don’t be silly,” Sophia says, voice shrill. “They’re just shells.”
“They’re more than that and you know it!”
“Gretchen, why don’t we go downstairs? You can get something to drink and some candy—”
“I know you’re scared, Sophia,” I cut her off. “But we can leave, if that’s what you want. We’ll pack up Ansel’s Jeep right now and we can leave, pick up Samuel—the four of us can go anywhere you want. We won’t let any more girls disappear. But you have to stop the festival. You have to cancel it.”
Sophia is shaking now, so hard that she looks as though she’s freezing in the midsummer heat. She shakes her head and tears erupt in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. “No, no, I can’t…”
I don’t know what to say. I look desperately to Ansel, who looks as if he’s certain this is a dream—that after all this time, there’s no way I’m pulling the witch into our lives again. Sophia shakes, mumbles. I can’t understand what she’s saying, only that it means no.
No, she won’t cancel the festival even if it costs eleven more girls.
“You really are the first sign of Live Oak’s end days,” I whisper aloud. “Why, Sophia? Why?”
She has no answer, only more tears. Ansel wraps her in his arms, strokes her hair, tries to comfort her.
“I’m not staying here,” I tell him. “I’m not helping her do this, knowing—”
“No! Gretchen, please!” Sophia’s words explode from her mouth. “You have to stay. Please, just through the festival.” There is so much desperation in her voice that Ansel releases her and leans back. Her eyes are wide, crazed; her lips tremble, and she chokes on each breath. “I’ll do anything, Gretchen, please!”
“Why?” I ask breathlessly. Sophia gets out of bed, falling to the ground at my feet and grabbing my hands, sobbing with every breath. My chest tightens. I feel tears building that don’t make it to my eyes.
Her words are watery and forced. “We’ll do what you said after that—we’ll leave. You and me and Ansel, we’ll all leave. Just wait, please wait, till after the festival—”
“Why?” I ask again, more forcefully this time. She stares at me through fountains of tears but doesn’t answer. “Why, Sophia?” My voice grows angrier, frustration breaking through. “Why do you keep doing this if Naida disappeared too? And if you know girls will vanish? You said you’d do anything—just
tell me why!
”
Sophia crumples forward, heaving, like a drowning girl. She curls into a ball on the floor, and I can’t understand her words, can’t understand what she’s trying to tell me, can’t understand anything except that she isn’t telling me why. I want to love her, I want her to be the patron saint of candy, but I just…
Can’t.
“Gretchen,” Ansel says softly, gently, words barely heard over Sophia’s moans. “Go stay with Samuel till after the festival.”
“Come with me.”
“I can’t… I can’t leave her like this,” he answers, and drops down beside Sophia. She collapses against his body, mumbling, murmuring pleas for me to stay. He holds her tightly, and I think he might be the only thing keeping her from falling apart entirely. Her rock. She has never looked so breakable.
Of course he can’t leave her. He loves her.
“I’ll watch out for the girls at the festival and make sure nothing… happens. And when it’s over, we’ll…” He looks from Sophia to me, swallows hard. “We’ll sort all this out. You and I will. Just us.”
“Ansel—”
“Gretchen, please. She can’t handle this.” He reaches into the pocket of his pair of jeans on the floor, grabs his keys; he tosses them to me so swiftly that I barely catch them. “Take my car and go.”
I exhale. Nod. Turn sharply, unsure what else I can do. I feel as though this is a dream—someone else is running my body; this isn’t really happening.
“Gretchen?” Ansel calls after me. I don’t mean to, but I see Sophia’s eyes. She still wants me to stay, so badly that she doesn’t even seem able to form the words to beg me again. Ansel continues, and his voice sounds the way it used to, back when he was my only rock. Serious, protective, soft. “Gretchen, listen to me. Just in case this is all… Just stay inside the night of the festival. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I say immediately.
I force myself to turn around, to walk to my bedroom, Naida’s bedroom, Sophia’s bedroom, what would have been Lorelei’s bedroom. I throw clothes and books into my suitcase hastily, driven by tears and hopelessness. Luxe barks and drops a tennis ball at my feet. I kiss him on the head just before yanking my suitcase out the door. I let it fall down the stairs—I don’t think I’m strong enough to carry it.
I throw my things into the back of the Jeep and urge it out of the driveway, swerving a little.
Keep moving forward, keep driving, keep going
. If I look back, if I think about what just happened, I won’t be able to stop crying.
I park the Jeep next to Samuel’s motorcycle and leap from the driver’s seat, then sprint through Ms. Judy’s dew-laden grass. Samuel opens the door when I reach the halfway mark, a confused but happy expression on his face—but when he sees my tears, his expression falls. He takes a single step toward me, but in that amount of time I’ve closed the space between us—I collapse into him, and he wraps his arms around me, lifting me up off the ground.
And then, finally, I really cry.
W
aking up in Samuel’s arms is comforting; I ignore the realization that the chocolate festival is this evening and instead push myself closer to him, kiss his chest before snaking out from under his arm while he’s still sleeping. I pull on fresh clothes, open the front door, and inhale the fresh morning scent, dew and grass and hay smells. The sun is barely up, and a light mist is settled over everything. It makes the world look beautiful, innocent. It makes everything look safe, as though maybe last night were a bad dream.
But it wasn’t. A helpless feeling, rooted somewhere near my stomach, grows and pushes into my heart. I’ve failed. I couldn’t save Sophia, I’ve been thrown out, and I have no plan for saving the other Live Oak girls tonight—if it can even be done. I wrap my arms around my legs and watch the sky for a few moments. I don’t know what to do. I’m finally
not
the scared little girl, and I’m just as helpless as if I were.
I have to move. I can’t just sit here and dwell—I need something to occupy my mind. I rise and cross the lawn, get into Ansel’s Jeep, and drive toward Judy’s diner. Live Oak is already busy by its own standards, with all the old townspeople out watering flowers or going for walks. I cut through the center of town and see Judy’s on the horizon.
Wait. As I slow down by the Confederate soldier statue, I see an old man with a cane hobbling up the steps to a crumbling brick storefront with arched windows and two flags—one Confederate, one American—hanging out front. A hand-painted sign in the window reads
SEE GEN. ROBERT E. LEE’S RIDING BOOTS HERE!
I wanted something to occupy my mind, didn’t I?
I slow the car and pull it to the side of the street just as the old man gets the door open. He looks over his shoulder at me and gives me a crooked smile—I recognize him from the Fourth of July block party, the man with the moonshine. Sara’s grandfather.
“Here to learn about the general?” he asks.
I hesitate. “I guess I am,” I say, then smile back and hurry up the steps behind him.
The old man enters the museum first, turning to get the keys out of the lock as I walk toward the center of the room. The museum has high ceilings that allow sunlight to pour in but is only one floor. Straight ahead is a monstrous portrait of Robert E. Lee in his uniform—the painting is so large that it takes up most of the wall space, and Lee’s bluish eyes give me a hard stare. The other walls are decorated in similar memorabilia—portraits, some that look torn out of magazines or calendars, and one large, somewhat poor painting of Lee mounted on a sorrel horse.
“Come on, over here,” the old man says, hustling past me. He smells like medicine and aftershave, so powerful that it almost makes my eyes water. I follow him toward the back corner of the museum, where there’s a glass countertop display not unlike Sophia’s. The old man walks around it, opens his mouth to speak, but then cuts himself off with a sharp breath. He ducks behind the counter, grabs some cleaner and polishes the glass, and finally meets my eyes with his faded blue ones.
“These,” he says, pointing into the case, “are the riding boots of one of the greatest Americans to ever live, General Robert Edward Lee. Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the War of Northern Aggression. Lincoln himself wanted the general to lead the Union Army, you know, but Lee wouldn’t abandon Virginia. He wouldn’t fight against his homeland. That’s courage, young lady—that’s real courage right there.”
I kneel down to peer inside the case. They just look like boots—worn over-the-knee black boots with scuffed toes and heels. There’s a tiny picture on top of the case of Lee wearing them. When I look back up at the old man, he’s beaming, and I can’t help but grin. All Live Oak’s signs, all the banners, all the pride—all over a pair of boots.
“Over here,” he says, motioning to another case, “we’ve got the horseshoes of one of his second most famous horses, Lucy Long.”
I’m just looking down into a case below the painting of the sorrel horse—Lucy Long, apparently—when a shadow appears in the open door. It’s a teenage boy, pimply faced and with headphones jammed into his ears. His parents are behind him, and they file into the museum one by one.
“Excuse me,” the mother—a plump woman wearing too much makeup—says to the old man. “We’re trying to find the interstate? We’ve been lost in the country for an hour now.”
“You’re practically there—when you see Judy’s, you’ll see the on-ramp. But how about you take a moment, since you’re here, and learn a piece about the great General Lee?” the old man says. He’s moved closer to them and ushers them forward even though the family clearly wants to sprint for the door. The husband and wife exchange wary glances while the boy rolls his eyes and turns his music up loud enough that I can hear it from across the room.
I put my hands into my pockets and turn, looking at all the paintings again. It’s not so much that they’re Robert E. Lee—I barely know a thing about him—but rather that they, in some way, are Live Oak. All this history, all this past that they’re clinging to, even while the town falls apart around them. Even while the first sign of Live Oak’s end days prepares for another nail in the coffin of this town.
“Take the damn things outta your ears, boy, and come learn about history,” the old man tells the teenager, who sighs but yanks the headphones out. He slouches over to the glass case and looks in, pressing his hands against the glass and leaving fingerprints on the surface. The old man begins his spiel about Lee, and I turn to go—I’ve got to get to Judy’s and back, preferably before Samuel wakes up.
“How do you know these were his?” I hear the boy ask.
“Well, there’s a photo right there,” the old man answers.
“Of him in some riding boots. He was a freakin’ general. He probably had a million pairs. How do you know these aren’t just fakes?”