The Accident Season (22 page)

“And have the same family, and grew up together,” Alice says, but she’s smiling. Then she shrugs. “It’ll take some getting used to. And I have no idea what Mom’ll think—”

“Don’t tell her.” Sam’s voice is huge in the room.

Alice is taken aback. “I wasn’t going to, Sammy,” she says softly. “But she’ll figure it out.”

I look at my hands on Sam’s hand, I look into his riverbed eyes. I get up carefully and limp downstairs. I sit at the typewriter. I hid the secret earlier when Bea was hanging them all up, but now I write it out again. I type it carefully so the ink doesn’t run.

I am in love with Sam.

I tear out the sheet of paper and pin it to the twine in the hall, just at eye level, in front of the kitchen so that everyone can see it.

***

Later, we go down to the river. We leave all our layers in the echoey house and we limp-walk-hobble down to the water like changeling things, like we’re not quite used to this human skin.

I lead Sam and Bea and Alice along the bank toward the broken bridge and we stand facing the rushing river and we hold hands in a line and we scream and scream to the other side. Birds fly out of the trees. Fish hide in their hollows. Dogs bark. The river rises up to swallow us, but it takes all our secrets instead. The ones that were stuck to the roofs of our mouths. The ones that made it hard to speak. The trees on the opposite bank shake with them.

I think about the clearing that the trees are hiding. I think about the trap, about the dream catchers and the flypapers on the trees. I think about all the little Elsies.
She needs us to help her find her way home
.

When I tell the others what I’m thinking, Bea says, “You can’t cross the water with that cast.” My shoulders droop. Then Bea kisses my cheek and grins. “Wait here just one second.” She splashes into the river and across to the other side. The water sucks at her bare legs. When she returns, she’s holding her dress out like an apron. Inside are all the dolls.

“I told you.” I pick up the pieces of the porcelain Elsie. “I told you it was her.”

***

A few days later, my mother shows us her grave. Baby Elsie, we call her when my mother is around, but in our hearts we know she is as old as we are. After that, we go there sometimes. We bring flowers and smoke cigarettes, we drink whiskey from hip flasks. Every time we leave, we put a tiny doll beside the headstone.

The council rebuilds the bridge: a proper, sturdy stone archway over the river. There is a small plaque in the middle with an engraving that reads:
IN
MEMORY
OF
ELSIE
MOR
RIS
.

Maybe I just need to be remembered,
she said, so we remember her. Every time we cross the bridge, we remember her.

I think it must have felt like drowning, catching death that way. I think about Seth hitting his head on a rock, I think about hands holding me under the water. I think about Sam in secrets, Alice in fire, my mother in memories. I think that we all drown, in one way or another.

Every so often I look closely at a picture I’ve just taken and I get a glimpse of mousy braided hair, a sensible brown shoe, a lace collar, a tartan skirt. The worry lines have been replaced with half a smile. Accidents happen. Our bones shatter, our skin splits, our hearts break. We burn, we drown, we stay alive.

These days after school we walk home the long way, past the remains of the ghost house. It isn’t empty anymore; there are carpenters in all the rooms. We can hear them from half a mile away. They hammer and bang and saw with electric machines that dust over the tracks our feet made on the floor. Sometimes I imagine going there and stealing a door handle or a key, a hinge or a pane of glass. But there are no windows left, and anyway, I would be too afraid. There are words there that can’t be painted over.

We walk along the river and listen to the carpenters’ song. We sit on Elsie’s bridge and drink my mother’s lemonade. In the daytime we flavor it with lavender water. Some evenings we spike it with stolen gin. Sam and I and Bea and Alice nestle close.

We raise the jam jars we use as glasses. We toast the river and we say the words together.

One more drink for the watery road.

About the Author

Moïra Fowley-Doyle
is half French, half Irish and lives in Dublin with her husband, their young daughter, and their old cat. Moïra’s French half likes red wine and dark books in which everybody dies. Her Irish half likes tea and happy endings. Moïra started a PhD on vampires in young adult fiction before concentrating on writing young adult fiction with no vampires in it whatsoever. She wrote her first novel at the age of eight, when she was told that if she wrote a story about spiders, she wouldn’t be afraid of them anymore. Moïra is still afraid of spiders, but has never stopped writing stories.
The Accident Season
is her debut novel.

Find Moïra online at

ecritureacreature.tumblr.com

/teacupfrenzy

@moirawithatrema

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