Circle of Secrets (21 page)

“It was a school night and I had play practice — and some other stuff,” she adds vaguely. “And they said they’d probably be late. They took Maddie and never came back.”

Her eyes are so stricken, my heart wrenches inside my chest. I thought Mirage abandoned me, but I think I’d go crazy if my whole family just up and left one day. What if I never saw my daddy again? Or Grandmother Phoebe? Or even Mirage. And Miss Silla Wheezy and that Mister Lenny flitting around the house? I’d miss ’em. I know I would. And that makes me happy and sad all at the same time.

I wish I was wearing the charm bracelet, and that it truly
did have magical powers and could give me the answers I need. Ever since Mister Lenny stole it, I’d been leaving it at home so Mirage didn’t catch me wearing it. It’s too boiling hot to wear long-sleeve shirts every day to hide it. “Then what happened?”

“After I ate the supper my mamma left me in the fridge, I met my friends on the bridge. We’d jump off and swim and have races from one end a the pier to the other.” She looks up at me and almost smiles. “I always won. Even beat the boys.” Then she pauses and glances away. “We weren’t supposed to be on the bridge at night though. Especially not when my folks were gone. It was gonna be the biggest dare of all. We’d planned it for weeks.”

A disturbing prickle rises along my arms. Gwen was talking about the time when the bridge was still whole. Before it cracked apart and broke. Before the empty pilings and the sharp, rusty nails. A group of kids who met on the bridge. Played games. Before the blood.

“Was your best friend — Mirage — there?” I ask, taking a gulp because it’s hard to even say her name to Gwen.

Gwen thinks for a minute. “She was busy after school with her mamma so I couldn’t find her right off. Nobody answerin’ their phone neither. So I rowed real quick and left her a note in the blue bottles to meet me at the pier.”

“Then what happened?”

“I knew she didn’t want to go that night. That she was scared. But I kept pushing her. And I left her a message in the blue bottle,” she repeats and then glances down at my cupped hands at the note I’d just showed her.
“That note.”

All at once, Gwen snatches up the scrawled-on note and runs for the riverbanks.

“Aah!” The sound rips from my throat as I stare at my empty hands.

Jumping up from the grass, I race after her, pumping my arms hard as I can, but she runs faster. While I watch, Gwen jumps into the boat and begins to paddle toward her house.

“Gwen!” I shout. “Stop! Let me go with you!” The wind snatches my words and throws them away.

I keep shouting, but she doesn’t turn around. The way her head is bowed, I can tell she’s still crying, but she rows and rows and rows without looking back.

There’s no way to get to her without a boat.

But Mirage has a boat.

Do I have time to get to the town docks, row out to the island and back, before Mirage arrives? I think she’s in town today running errands, but I can’t remember. If she is, then the boat is sitting at the docks. I hope.

I run past the cemetery and the broken-down pier and down the long, lonely road until I reach Main Street and head to the Bayou Bridge docks.

When I pass the school, I notice that it’s empty and deserted. Everyone is gone. What time is it? I have no idea.

My mouth is so dry by the time I get to the dock pilings, I can’t even swallow. I stop short and chew on my lips.

Mirage is there, sitting on the dock reading a book and tapping her foot like she’s impatient. I must be late and I wonder just how late I am.

Gwen has the blue bottle note and I feel an emptiness, a nagging worry, like I’ll never see her or the note again.

Mirage looks up as I stand there, panting, and I realize that I left my backpack somewhere. The cemetery? The café? The bayou bank when the water started rising?

I can’t remember.

“You missed going to the library with me,” Mirage says.

“Bayou Bridge has a library?”

She nods, frowning at me. “Startin’ to wonder what happened to you. You’re missin’ your school pack, too. Where’s it at?”

“Um, I’m not sure … maybe school? Gym?”

“You got homework?”

I don’t know how to answer her because I have absolutely no idea. I haven’t been in school for at least two days. Mrs. Daigle and Tara and Alyson feel very far away and not quite real.

“Shelby Jayne?”

I get into the boat, pretending everything is okay. “No, I don’t got any homework.” I cross my fingers and plan to work really hard to make it up tomorrow. Assignments and grades don’t seem very important, not when Gwen is upset and has disappeared. Not when everything about her is turning upside down. I don’t want to think about it. She’s real, she’s real, I keep telling myself. If she’s not then maybe
I’m
the one who’s gone crazy.

Maybe Mirage just gave Gwen a picture of herself when she was eleven years old so the pictures in the two sides of the locket matched. Maybe that’s the simplest explanation. They met somehow and became friends. Bayou Bridge is a tiny town. Everybody knows everybody else. Nothin’ to be jealous about.

I want to pull out all the blue bottle notes and look at them and piece them together, but I have to be patient and wait until we get home.

I listen to the water shushing against the sides of the boat
as the wind rises, blowing moss through the trees and bending the cypresses. I sneak a glance backward and Mirage has a pained look on her face.

“Storm’s comin’,” she says as we turn the last bend in the bayou and see the swamp house up ahead. “Thought it was just some rain blowin’ through, but it’s gonna be bigger. Watch out for snakes and gators; they tend to be on the move when it’s gonna storm. Jest gettin’ to their favorite hiding places so they’re safe.”

I chew on my cheek and just nod, then jump out as soon as we touch land and throw the rope around the piling.

I want to steal the boat and go find Gwen, but now I can’t. With every second, I’m getting more and more worried about her taking off like that. I wonder when the coast might be clear to leave and go out to Gwen’s island. Probably just enough daylight if I leave in the next hour.

While Mirage gathers her pack from the bottom of the boat, I run up to the porch. At the front door, I look back. She’s not following very fast.

She doesn’t even glance at me as she throws her stuff on a patch of scraggly grass, then turns back to the boat again. From under a piece of canvas, she hauls out a wooden stake.
Next I see a square, red-lettered sign from Bayou Bridge Realtors.
HOUSE FOR SALE.

I stand at the top of the porch and watch Mirage pound the sign into the front yard. She trudges the rest of the way up the slope of yard, gusts of wind throwing old cans and nets and traps around the place. Mirage chases after them, but I think she’s tired because she gives up easily and then stomps up the porch.

I don’t know what to say to her. Seeing that
HOUSE FOR SALE
sign makes my stomach feel out of sorts, my heart heavy in my chest. Mirage is serious. She’s really going to sell the house and leave the swamp.

I perch on the edge of my bed, toes digging into the rug. Isn’t that what I’d wanted? For her to move back to New Iberia and show that she really loves me? I can’t imagine her living with Grandmother Phoebe again. In some ways I can’t imagine
me
living with Grandmother Phoebe again.

Mirage doesn’t fit there. She never did.

Only took me this long to figure it out.

After a whole year away from Mirage, now I can’t picture her being anywhere else. It’s like she’s a part of the swamp with its deep water and purple hyacinth and the stillness and birds.

I throw myself backward on the bed and squeeze my eyes shut, worried about Gwen, worried about Mirage, worried about me. Wondering how we all fit together.

The phone rings and I freeze.

Through the door, I hear Mirage answer it and her voice is murmuring, murmuring, murmuring.

I wait for her to call me to come to the phone, since Daddy often calls before dinner, but she doesn’t and I wonder why he wouldn’t ask to talk to me.

Finally, I get up, open the bedroom door, and stand in the hallway to listen.

Mirage says, “Thank you for calling, Mrs. Daigle. Yes, I will. Appreciate your help.”

Mrs. Daigle, my teacher.

Mirage says good-bye and hangs up.

And I know that I’m in deep, deep trouble.

Quickly, I run back to my room and shut the door again. I think about hiding in the wardrobe, but she’ll find me crouching inside that wardrobe in three seconds flat.

But Mirage doesn’t come hunting me down.

Because the telephone rings again. I’m saved for the moment.

While I wait for all heck to break loose, I pull the blue bottle notes out of my pocket and lay them across the quilt.

The blue bottle notes tell a story. I just need to figure out what the story is, despite all the missing pieces.

I lay the papers out one by one, trying to put them in order of questions and answers. Half the notes were written by Gwen. The other half by Mirage.

Now that I really study them, I see that the first notes were written by Gwen and the other notes are from Mirage. Mirage’s notes are sort of like answers to Gwen.

But then there’s that first, urgent note I’ve looked at a hundred times by now. The note Gwen stole from me at the cemetery. I wish I had it in my hands right now. I close my eyes and picture the words in my mind.

Don’t forget! Tonight’s the night!
Come to the bridge — and hurry!

Why? What was happening on the bridge? That’s the note that makes my palms sweat.

Then I place the very last blue bottle message on my bedspread and freeze right to the floor. A deathly chill rushes over me.

There are two of the very same note! Why did I never realize that before? What bottle did this second one come from? I remember finding the first one, but I have no memory of seeing this second, identical one before.

The first one is the message written in Mirage’s handwriting:

I can’t find you! Are you lost?

And now there’s this second note that reads exactly the same:

I can’t find you! Are you lost?

Like an echo. It’s definitely written by Gwen, but her handwriting has changed a little bit from the other notes she wrote. The writing has become shaky and spidery. Just like a ghost. I shake my head, not wanting to think about that.
Refusing
to think about that. There has to be a logical explanation for all the peculiar-ness about her and Mirage. Of course, there ain’t no reason why a grown-up
traiteur
can’t be friends with a girl from the other side of the bayou. Gwen told me that
her
mamma is a
traiteur,
too. The families are friends. Nothin’ strange about that.

So why can’t Mirage find Gwen? Or why can’t Gwen find Mirage? Why write the messages? Why doesn’t Gwen just come to the door and knock? Why did they write the same words to each other? Most of all, why write notes in a blue
bottle tree like Mirage is a girl again? That’s the part that don’t make sense. And that’s the part I hate thinking about.

Maybe the bridge is some kind a mysterious time-travel portal? But that idea’s like something out of a movie. And it still doesn’t explain away all my questions.

And what about that very creepy death note rolled up inside the tiny blue bottle charm, the one that says,
She’s dead? That
note was written by Mirage and put on her charm bracelet.
My
charm bracelet now. I retrieve the bracelet from under my pillow and smooth my finger against the various tinkling charms. The exact same charms as Gwen’s bracelet. Spooky. Like it was planned. Two friends buying charms together.

I snap open the locket, wishing there were pictures inside. Wishing for more
clues.
I rub my finger across the plain yellowing paper inside, remembering the photographs inside Gwen’s locket.

As I sit cross-legged on my bed, staring at the blank paper, I realize that it’s not just any regular paper — it’s got a glossy finish. Just like photograph paper!

Sticking my fingernail underneath one of the edges, I find the paper is wedged in tight and starting to crumple. Finally, it starts to come up around the inside where it’s been tamped into place for so long.

I flip the tiny paper circle over in my palm.

And there’s the picture of Gwen on the other side.

I feel myself go still and quiet. Hold my breath and count to ten.

Carefully, I lift up the edge of the opposite side of the locket.

And there’s the tiny photo of the dark-haired girl with long curls and piercing eyes staring into the camera. Mirage.

The very same pictures that are in Gwen’s locket. But
this
locket, the one in my hands, belonged to Mirage. And now it belongs to me.

Holding the bracelet around my wrist, I snap the clasp in place.

Just as quick, I take it off again and hide it deep in the empty pocket of my jeans so Mirage doesn’t see it.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

I
CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT.
T
HE COINCIDENCES ARE TOO GREAT,
too bizarre.

There is something seriously wrong with Gwen and that Deserted Island.

Mirage is still talking on the telephone, and if it’s my daddy, I can’t figure out why they just keep talking and talking and talking.

Scooping up the notes, I cram them into my jeans where I know they’ll be safe. After I creep out of my bedroom again, I slide down the walls until I’m crouching like a mouse in the shadows.

I hear Mirage say my name in a low, tense voice along with a shuffling sound I can’t identify. Then I realize Mirage is pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor.

I crane my neck around the corner and see her twisting the telephone cord between her fingers.

“Yeah, I gotta sell, Philip,” she says in a choked voice. “Can’t stay here no longer. It’s jest too much. I can’t discuss the house no more. Right now we gotta talk about Shelby —”