Beware the Wild (12 page)

I take the stairs two at a time and race down the hall to find Lenora May, anxious to share—

I stop in the doorway of her empty room.

The feeling sours.

And now I'm angry all over again, at Lenora May for invading my house and my heart, and at myself for letting her. Guilt is a worm in my gut and even though I
know
it's
not my fault, nothing can erase the fact that my instinct after sharing a beautiful first kiss with Heath was to tell my older sister.

I want to hate her so purely, but still a part of me resists.

From the bathroom, I hear the shower squeak off and I'm sick over how close I came to giving her a sincere moment. I hurry to my own room and rest my back against the closed door. Then, I find the cherry in my pocket and cradle it in my palm.

Tomorrow. By the end of tomorrow, I'll never think of her again and all my precious memories and thoughts will be safe again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

T
HERE'S A SONG MY GRANDPA
Harlan used to sing. Hum, really. In the evenings when he'd sit on the rocker with his pipe burning sweet tobacco, he'd hum the same tune over and over. He said it was a gift song. No words, but full of promises. Someone had given it to him long ago and now he was giving it to us.

Phin and I would create a nest of quilts by his feet searching for shapes in the black pines until one or both of us fell asleep. We did that as often as Mama let us. In my memory, that was every night. I'd fall asleep cuddled up to Phin with sticky summer dew on my skin and Grandpa's lullaby in my head. Then I'd wake in my own bed with the previous night's dirt still between my toes.

I must've been dreaming of Grandpa because I wake with his song in my ears. But it's not Grandpa's voice I hear. It's Lenora May's, trilling down the hallway.

Suddenly, I'm so awake I could split wood. I leap from bed and charge to her room,
where she's zipping a dress that looks curiously like one of Phin's plaid shirts.

“You can't have that!”

She stops her singing. “The dress? I think the zipper's broken.” She tugs ineffectually on the little tab. “Can you see?”

“The song.” I make no move to help her. “You can't have that song. Don't sing it. You can live in this house, you can drive Phin's car, but you can't have that song.”

“Oh,” she says, pressing a hand to her heart. “I—I'm so sorry, Sterling. I didn't mean to upset you.” Sunlight fills her green eyes like tears. “Truly. I won't sing it again.”

I don't know why I say it, but I thank her before locking myself in the bathroom.

On my way downstairs, there's a strangled sound coming from her room. Crying? I pause, unsure, but then I catch a hissed “damn zipper,” and continue on my way.

Mama's in the laundry room, folding and muttering to herself. She calls good morning, but makes no mention of the night before. I guess Darold still hasn't reported on my evening activities. That's a small blessing. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. I hurry on my way.

I swing by Clary General for coffee, wishing all the good ol' boys stationed in their rockers a good morning. Something's got them on the edges of their seats. All brows are furrowed, but they stop their agitating to give me a gruff welcome as I pass. Old Lady Clary's in her usual position behind the counter. She's smothering a set of sticky buns in her famous brown sugar glaze humming a little as she rocks back and forth on her feet.

“Still got that bracelet on?” she calls without looking over her shoulder. The floorboards cackle beneath her feet. “Mmm, child?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Reflexively, I reach for the bracelet and run my fingers around the silver band, over the sharp rise and fall of the petals and leaves. “It helps me remember, doesn't it? The people everyone else forgets?”

Old Lady Clary freezes for a second. Then she picks up her tune again and shuffles to the other end of the workstation to rinse her hands. “Yes, shug, that's one of the things it does.” My mind snags on the word
one
. “Some would say it's a curse, remembering,” she says, returning to my end of the counter with the sort of smile on her face I can't help but reflect. “Just coffee today?”

The air tastes so good, my mouth waters. I can't help myself.

“And a sticky bun. Unless you'd like to tell me about any of the
other
things the bracelet does.”

She takes my money and folds it away in her register, pretending she's not watching me from the corner of her eye. The register chimes and she hands over an extra-sticky
sticky bun along with another of her smiles. This smile isn't as warm as the first. It pushes her eyebrows up, her cheeks out, her chin down. It's as if she's saying,
I know what you're up to
.

There's no more time for questions. The door opens and in tromp all the men from the front porch. They take their time, stomping on the mat and clustering around the doorway. Sheriff Felder is the first to break away.

“Miss Ida,” he says, setting his coffee mug on the warped countertop. His expression is grim. “Mind if I take a look at the property line? We've had a few reports of vandalism at different points along the fence and I'd like to have a look around before I get going.”

Old Lady Clary waves him through the back door. “Always welcome, Sheriff.”

By the front, the men are grumbling. All of them wear similar expressions of concern and stand with hands on hips. Among them, I spot Darold. He's dressed in business casual: a gray polo shirt embroidered with the logo of the
STICKS POLICE
, and dark blue jeans tucked inside brown cowboy boots.

“Any word from the schools? How's the fence there?” one man asks. I can't tell which mustache moved the most, so there are about four possible speakers.

Darold stands tall among them. It's always strange to see him in town, to see who he is when he's not grinning at Mama or lounging in his recliner with a beer in hand. He doesn't slouch or study the ground. He keeps his shoulders back and his eyes steady on whatever's coming at him. But I guess he has to. There's more than one of those boys always looking for him to slip up.

“Nothing from the school yet,” he says. All grumbling comes to a halt to make room for him. “But there was some damage along the fence at the side road, and Rhetta Chaisson says there were planks down on the far road, too.”

My walk to Clary General this morning had been a quick one. I hadn't noticed anything wrong with the fence. Of course, my mind may have been a little too occupied with thoughts of kissing Heath to notice much of anything.

Mrs. Chaisson lives down where things start to look less like town and more like the national reserve. Though her road also runs alongside the swamp, we call it the “far road.” We're the only two families with houses that butt right up against the swamp. Except for the Lillard House, a few businesses, and one of the schools, everything else keeps a healthy distance.

“Ain't good,” Featherhead Fred barks, and more softly adds, “Bad omens.”

“Now, Fred, it's bound to happen. The fence is getting up there in age. This is probably the work of a couple rambunctious seniors pulling down planks to amuse themselves.”

“But there was damage behind your house, too, ain't that right, Gatty?” Mr. Tilly, a dog lover who always has one or two pale-eyed Catahoula curs around him, asks. Like so many others, he looks to Darold for reassurance. “And you and Emma didn't hear anything?”

“Doesn't sound like rambunctious teens to me,” another voice adds.

Theories start to fly. Someone suggests a squatter after wood for a new shack, someone suggests bears, and someone suggests poor Featherhead Fred's just trying to make trouble. They're all riled up about what's to be done and who's to blame. And they're talking circles around the swamp; every single one of them working hard to believe there's nothing unusual about it.

“Why's the fence so important, anyway?” I ask.

All eyes fall on me, each looking equally baffled.

It's Darold who finally speaks. “What kind of question is that? You know as well as anyone the fence is there for our protection. It was your granddaddy who built it.”

It's no easy thing to challenge a pack of good ol' boys. They wear their truths and sureties like armor and it's probably foolish to think I'll be able to force them out of a habit as deeply entrenched as denial.

“Protection from what? It wouldn't do much against a gator and it certainly wouldn't stop a bear worth its hide. So why's it there?”

The silence that falls is heavy. No one's willing to say it. They'd rather sit here and pretend we've got a squatter while people go missing.

“Our swamp is a dark place,” Old Lady Clary hisses in my ear. I'd been too focused on the conversation by the door to notice her come forward. She stands at my shoulder, her soft body leaning into mine. Her breath is sweet and hot on my neck. “A wild place and no place for young girls like you to be treading. You can't trust what goes on there. Can't trust what you see, what you hear.”

“How's that any different from the rest of town?” I declare loudly, crossing to the front door. All but Darold clear the way. “I'm going to be late.”

He stares down his nose and doesn't move. We've never been close, but that's not entirely his fault. Phin and I weren't ready for another father figure when Mama first brought him home. We'd had all we could take between a violent dad and a dead-too-soon grandpa. But he's good to Mama and that's as much as we could ask for. It almost doesn't matter what he is to me.

Almost.

“Excuse me,” I say.

“Need a ride?” he asks. “I'm headed that way, and you and I have something to talk
about.”

So this is how it goes. He knows I lied and went out with Heath and, in return for not telling Mama, I'm supposed to let him treat me like a daughter.

“No offense,
Darold
, but the last thing I need is a deputy escort to school.”

It's pitch perfect and all the old boys laugh me right through the door. They've probably already forgotten my troublesome questions about the fence.

Because that's what they're good at.

Candy finds me in two seconds flat. Either she was stalking my locker or she had a system of spies in place to tell her when I arrived. Both are likely.

“Also, why are you suddenly so against using your cell phone?” she asks as though we were in the middle of a conversation. “I—” She stops dead, her eyes locked to the half-eaten sticky bun in my hand.

“I'm not.” I shove my coffee into her hands and open my locker.

“I beg to differ,” she volleys, wisely choosing not to comment on the pastry. “Where is it? Right now. Where is it?”

It takes me a minute to fish my phone from the depths of my bag. I hold it up for Candy to see that the sound was switched off. Pressing the
MENU
button, I'm surprised to find I've missed ten text messages from Candy, three from Abigail, and one from Heath. The last sends an abrupt and rousing current through my body. I'm suddenly desperate to flip through the messages to his, but I'm too slow. Candy snatches the phone from my hands.

“Oh, la la, what's this?” she teases, pushing my coffee mug into my hands. “A message from Heath? Post steamy, illicit date? What could it possibly say? It's a best friend's job to screen, right?”

“Candy, don't!” I protest, but she's too much in the spirit of things to relent.

Her fingers move over the screen until she finds what she's looking for. I brace myself for the worst.

“Well, that was underwhelming,” she announces, handing the phone over. “What does this even mean?”

Not sure what to expect anymore, I look at the screen where Heath's message glows. It's only three words, but they mean the world:
i remember u
.

“Nothing,” I say to Candy. To Heath, I respond with four words of my own:
i remember u, too
.

The day crawls by. I finish my French exam in half the allotted time, and my chem exam just as quickly. I wish I could put my head down and sleep like Abigail, but I'm too
focused on how to get the single cherry into a tart for Lenora May. Over and over, I practice slicing the cherry in my mind, pitting it and setting the halves in a mug. When her back is turned, I'll place them in a tart and pinch the corners so I know which it is. Then it's as simple as handing her
that
tart. There's so much room for error I couldn't fit it all inside Noah's Ark.

But it's all I've got.

Things go smoothly enough at first. On the drive home, we stop by the Winn-Dixie where Lenora May grabs peach preserves and I buy a small bag of cherries.