Chapter 21

Alice

Melanie offers to call me in sick to school on Thursday, but I have something I want to do after, so I tell her no thanks.

She's making porridge for Finn when I come into the kitchen. I grab a glass of water and swallow my antidepressant. My head is pounding, my mouth thick and cottony. I feel like I could go back to bed and sleep for a year.

My stomach is swirly, so I skip breakfast and yank my hat and coat on as I call out to Mel that I'll be at yearbook club after school. It's a total lie, but I don't even want to think about what she'd do if I were late getting back. She's already worried enough about me as it is.

It's cold outside, but the snow has stopped, and the roads have been cleared. My breath turns into white clouds as I pedal to school. I make it through third period, then do my trig test. It's easy, but I make sure to miss two questions so I don't get any extra attention from a perfect score. I mean, it's not that I'm disliked or bullied or anything, just that, other than Maya, I'm mostly ignored, and that's how I like it. It's better than being called a freak.

Before my family disappeared, I was sort of an unknown. Now everyone knows me, but not for the right reasons.

Maya is gone at lunchtime, helping drama club set up for their production of Scrooge in a few days. I sit at the back of the cafeteria by myself, picking at today's abomination—"brain pizza," which is basically a lumpy beige square with fleshy white strips of mozzarella glued together like neurons and something green that could be spinach. Or mold. Tough call.

I jump when a lunch tray clatters onto the table next to me. It's Jinx. As usual, she's dressed all in black with purple-black lipstick, black eyeliner and mascara, and a choker necklace that's a battlefield of spikes.

Maybe Jinx's vibe is angsty. But no, I decide, that isn't quite right. She's definitely not sad, with her Cheshire cat grin. She takes a giant bite of whatever gloop—meatloaf?—is on her plate, eyes fixed on me.

"Where's Maya?"

I shrug and pick at a blob of mozzarella.

"You know an English teacher at this school was murdered by a serial killer?"

I blink. "Seriously? When?"

"Like, ten years ago. I read about it before we moved here." Jinx's mouth moves around her meatloaf. Schlmt, schlmt, schlmt. Making a sound while eating is called klut . It's like knives in my ears.

"You know that creepy forest—Killer's Grove? She was walking home through there, and somebody shot her in the back of the head. Cut both of her arms off, too. Now she wanders through the forest, looking for her arms and all the pieces of her brain. It's one of the ghost stories in Killer's Grove I read about."

"Whatever."

But Jinx laughs, and for some reason, it makes me laugh, too.

"Is that true?" I ask.

"Google says it is."

I wonder what else she's googled, if she knows about me.

"I looked you up," she says, as if she's read my mind. She leans closer and whispers, "Actually, Maya told me all about it. That you talk to ghosts now."

My face goes hot, and a ringing begins somewhere in my brain. "Maya said that?"

She nods.

I stand quickly, ready to get out of there, but Jinx touches my hand. "Don't go. I shouldn't have said anything. I think it's cool."

"It's not cool ," I snap, but I sit back down, resume picking at my brain pizza.

She chews another bite of meatloaf. "I'm sorry about your family."

"Thanks."

"Was Maya close to them?"

"We grew up together, so I guess. Why?"

Jinx shrugs. "She still seems pretty torn up about it. About your mom especially. I wondered if they were close."

I stare at Jinx, baffled. I never got the sense Maya even liked my mom, let alone grieved her.

"Why'd you move to Black Lake?" I change the subject.

A shadow crosses Jinx's face. She looks down at her legs stretched out under the table. She has a run in her tights, all the way from the top of her boots to her skirt hem. "My parents divorced. Mom got me, and we moved here."

"Lucky you."

"It isn't too bad." She grins. "It fits my vibe."

And for some reason, that gets us both laughing again for, like, no reason, and it feels good and clean and normal.

Danny and Kevin, two popular jocks on the football team, pass our table.

"Freaks," I hear Danny mutter.

This shuts me up fast, but Jinx just laughs harder, her teeth very white against her purple-black lips.

"Oh, come on." She nudges me with her toe. "You gotta have a sense of humor or you can't survive in a place like this."

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"What, being called a freak? Whatever, man. Everybody feels like a freak sometimes. Even those dickheads."

I stare at her.

"I'm going to my house after school," I blurt. "I mean, the house I used to live in with my family. Before they disappeared."

Jinx arches one eyebrow and shoves the last bite of meatloaf into her mouth. "Let's go now."

"Now?" There's still half a day of school left.

"Yeah. Now." Jinx grabs her tray and marches off. It kinda feels like I have no choice but to follow. So I do.

I push my bike through town toward the park. Jinx walks next to me, her cheeks and nose bright red from the cold. She obviously isn't from here; she isn't dressed warm enough for a Black Lake winter. I take my scarf off and hand it to her.

"Thanks." She winds it around her neck and hunches deeper into the soft material.

The park is empty, just a long stretch of white snow that crunches under our feet. Jinx pulls a wrinkled joint and a lighter from her pocket and veers toward the gazebo.

I lean my bike against the side, and we sit on the bench inside. Jinx lights up, takes a deep drag.

"Want some?" She hands the joint to me.

I hesitate. I've never done drugs before. I mean, besides prescribed ones.

Jinx shrugs, pulls the joint away. But I reach for it. I don't want her to think I'm scared. And I want to try. To numb everything going on inside me.

The joint tastes like burned paper, and my lips and throat feel like they've caught fire. I break out in a coughing fit that Jinx finds hilarious. Tears stream down my cheeks, but I'm laughing, too.

Jinx plucks the joint out of my hand. The pot hits me almost instantly. It makes me a little giddy. Soon I'm sweating like a microwaved cucumber. My eyelids feel like they're weighted with kettlebells. I am a sloth. I cannot move.

"Did you know sloths can't fart?" I tell Jinx.

"What the fuck?" She splutters with laughter behind a haze of smoke.

"The methane in their digestive system gets absorbed into their blood."

Jinx is howling now. "That is totally useless information!"

"They can also hold their breath for forty minutes. That's how lazy they are."

"How do you know that?"

I shrug. "I read things, and they just stick in my brain. What's your real name?"

"How do you know it isn't really Jinx?"

"Is it?"

"Ha. No. It's Summer."

"Seriously?"

"Why do you think I go by Jinx?"

I crack up.

Jinx tells me about her life as a military brat, moving from country to country, the cool rigidity of Berlin, the cosmopolitan vibe of London, the hot passion of Buenos Aires. I tell her about life in Black Lake, how suffocating it's felt since my family disappeared, my upcoming decision on leaving. She has this way of listening that makes me feel like I'm the most fascinating person in the world.

"I think Summer fits you," I blurt.

"Yeah?"

"You're a cheerful goth." The words come out more accusing than I mean for them to. But it's true. Despite her spiky choker and her black makeup, Jinx's vibe is sunny. And I realize that all this time, her vibe has been colored by my own jealousy.

Jinx grins and takes another hit. "Life's too short to be mad. You almost died, you should know."

I sit back and think about that.

My brain feels like it's folding in half. Time passes. Stars die and oceans evaporate. Children are born. Glaciers melt. I am high as fuck. We are laughing like lunatics; I can't remember why. My mind feels numb and empty. I'm not thinking about my family or worried about being a freak or whether I should leave Black Lake. Nothing.

Jinx is talking about this pastry thing called an empanada, and my mouth is watering when suddenly I see something in my peripheral vision. A movement. A shadow. I jump up, looking around wildly. Jinx thinks this is the funniest thing ever.

"You're tripping sack, girl." She stubs the joint out, laughing hysterically. "It's the weed. Come on, let's go check out your house."

I still feel eyes on me, prickling up and down my neck, but I grab my bike, and we head across the snow-covered field. Nothing feels funny anymore. Now I feel jumpy, like I have Pop Rocks bursting under my skin. But Jinx is right. I have to go home. I have to go back there, just to see. To check.

If there's something about my mom and dad I don't know, secrets they kept, maybe it's there, in our old home.

If I can find something, anything to tell me where their bodies are, maybe these grief hallucinations or hypnagogia or whatever the hell is happening to me will stop. Maybe I won't be such a freak. If I can find some answers, maybe I'll be able to leave Black Lake.

We round the last corner and there's my house, a typical New England Colonial, three bedrooms with dingy white paint and navy shutters. It's a little outdated, tired, the paint peeling, the shutters cracked. The lawn is overgrown. But for a second I see how it was : Ella's and my bikes thrown haphazardly onto the front lawn, the swing set out back creaking as Ella pumps her feet. Alfie sitting in an apple tree that drops ripe fruit onto the shed my dad built with his own hands, watching, like me.

I used to compare our house to Jack and Mel's. Their place is so expensive . They could afford all the designer things I thought were so important. I always felt a little embarrassed, but now I see everything differently. My house looks like what it is: a family home. And it makes my heart ache.

"Is that Killer's Grove?" Jinx asks, pointing past my house to where the pavement stops and the street dead-ends, the trees blanketed with snow.

A shiver scatters down my spine. "Yeah."

It isn't really called Killer's Grove, obviously, but if there's another name for it, I don't know it. My whole life, people have been scared of it.

"When I was a kid, me and all the neighborhood kids used to dare each other to go in. It was, like, a rite of passage or something."

"Did you do it?"

"Yeah. I was ten years old. You can't run away from a dare when you're ten or you look like a scaredy-cat."

I remember walking into the trees, palms slick with sweat, grass-stained knees knocking together. That feeling, it was like I'd just been swallowed. The sun had disappeared, blotted out by the dark shadows of the tall, tightly knit trees. My heart thrummed wildly in my throat, my feet kicking up dust from the dirt road as I walked. But I kept going, deeper into Killer's Grove.

The dare said I had to stay in Killer's Grove for two minutes, so I started counting. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. But soon I lost count. Killer's Grove was different than I'd expected. Light filtered in from the trees, casting god rays all around. The green was a deeper shade than I'd ever seen. The sound of a river babbled in the distance. The forest floor was a carpet of purple bluebells stretching deep into the woods.

"What happened?" Jinx's voice brings me back to the present.

"Nothing," I say.

It's both a lie and the truth. I walked out of Killer's Grove a few minutes later. But that was the day I realized beautiful things can grow in the darkest places.

Jinx and I cross the street. My dad's ancient Honda is still parked in the drive. The cops never found anything useful inside. I run a finger over its frosted surface, scoring a line along the side.

I unzip the outer pocket of my backpack, fishing around for the keys I still keep there, the cute little Alice in Wonderland figurine dangling from a key chain. My dad always wanted to leave a spare in one of those decorative rocks, but my mom wouldn't allow it, even though she was the one always forgetting her keys.

Mom could be a little airy fairy, which was her best and her worst trait. She'd forget to take us to soccer practice because she'd get caught up baking chocolate chip cookies. Or she'd get distracted painting and forget we needed groceries.

My mom was a free-spirited artist, quieter than my uncle Jack but just as magnetic. My dad always said she had charisma, a golden ambience, that she had a genius for friendship. People were drawn to her. They liked her because she liked them.

But, like many artists, she never "made it." She started working for my uncle Jack last year after her art studio closed down. She never said it out loud, but I always got the feeling she was sad about that. That she felt like a failure.

She used to keep a diary in the bedside table next to her side of the bed. Maybe it's still there.

A shadow flickers in my peripheral vision. I rock back on my heels, scanning the neighborhood, the snowy road. There's a subtle movement in my old babysitter Mrs. McCormack's curtains across the street. Is she watching? I'm still high, I tell myself. I'm just being paranoid.

"I can't find my keys!" I call out to Jinx, frustrated.

Jinx has climbed the stairs, and she points at the front door, which I now see is cracked open a little ways. "Maybe you won't need them."

She pushes it with the toe of her boot, and it creaks open.