Wink Poppy Midnight (7 page)

T
HERE WAS A
big thunderstorm a few years ago, it knocked down trees and houses and flooded the Blue Twist River, and everyone was super into it, it was exciting, destruction is exciting, no matter what they say. I went down to the river just to watch it rising, and to see what had been picked up in its stormy path, patio furniture, toys, dead animals.

I found Leaf standing on the bank, leaning against a tree,
inches from the muddy swirling rapids, doing the same fucking thing.

“It's beautiful,” he said, after we'd been there in the pelting rain for a while and had both just watched a red wooden door go floating past, and then a blue bike, and then a pair of black boots, tied together by the shoelaces, and then a little fox, on its back, its dead paws on its belly.

I went to the hayloft a lot after Leaf left on the bus. Sometimes the Bell brats were in there but when they weren't I climbed the ladder and sat in the sun, hay, quiet.

And now Midnight was living by them, right across the street. I suppose he thought he was moving up in the world, and getting away from me, yeah, as if it would be that easy, as if, as if, why is everyone around me so undeniably dumb? I want to like people, I do, actually, but they're all just so
dumb.

I'd already felt Midnight edging away from me before he moved out to that dumpy farmhouse. And then I found him talking to Feral on the steps and he was just so
into
her, into the red hair and freckles and weirdness, I felt sick just thinking about it.

Well, if Midnight wanted to be with Wink and her fairy tales and her hayloft and unicorn underwear and overalls, then I'd show him who she was. I'd really, really show him.

M
IDNIGHT
FOUND ME
as I was coaxing little blue eggs out from underneath one of the pretty white Silkies. I brought him inside to the kitchen and made poached yellow-eyes on toast for him and the Orphans. You need a big boiling pot to make poached yellow-eyes, which I like because using a big boiling pot makes me feel like I'm a witchie.

Mim was in her reading room, so I made coffee too. She didn't like me to drink coffee. She said it would give me dark dreams. I didn't give any of it to the Orphans, just me and Midnight, sipping from the same blue cup, fresh cream and brown sugar.

The Hero stood closer to me, after the hayloft. And he looked at me different too.

I told him the names of the Orphans, and we picked strawberries from the garden. I showed him how to squish his bare toes in the black dirt. We ate the berries ripe and juicy and hot from the sun, like Laura and Lizzie at the Goblin Market,
For your sake I have braved the glen, and had to do with goblin merchant men. Eat me, drink me, love me. Hero, Wolf, make much of me. With clasping arms and cautioning lips, with tingling cheeks and fingertips, cooing all together.

T
HE DAY SO
far:

Gathering eggs, breakfast, playing hide-and-seek, weeding the big square garden between the house and the barn, playing fetch with the dogs, Mim making Caprese salad for lunch with golden olive oil and fresh-picked basil and tomatoes, us all eating it standing at the kitchen table, me drawing up a treasure map for the Orphans, us all following it to the back pasture, digging holes with rusty shovels, looking for treasure.

When the sun got too hot I went home to get my tools. Coins, handkerchief, cards, steel rings. They were in a box in the basement. I'd kept them hidden since Poppy found them several months ago and teased me about it for weeks. I did my magic tricks for Wink and company in the hayloft and the kids sat still and wide-eyed and didn't even talk. Wink watched me closely and smiled her big, ear-sticking-out smile at the end.

After I put my magic stuff away, Wink pulled
The Thing in the Deep
out of the pocket of her overalls and started reading. She sat on an old quilt spread over a pile of hay,
barefoot, overalls, the Orphans around her, and me. The sun was streaming in the hayloft opening, low and hazy. Which was the only way I could tell how late it was. Time seemed to have stopped entirely. I hadn't had a day go by so dreamily, so lazily, since I was a little kid. Since before I understood the concept of time.

The tips of Wink's fingers were still stained from the strawberries, tiny, pink-red little flicks as she turned the pages. Her lips were stained too. I watched them as they moved with the words, mouth as red as blood.

Bee Lee cuddled up next to me, head against my side.

The Orphans consisted of three boys and two girls. All redheads, except for Bee, who had deep brown hair. Bee had just turned seven years old. I knew this, because it was one of the first things she told me. The twins were Hops and Moon, the oldest boy was Felix, and last of all was tiny Peach, the youngest. The ten-year-old twins were the wildest. They always seemed to be trying to outdo the other. Who could scream the loudest? Who could get the dogs howling? Who could put the most hay down the other's shirt? After that came Peach, who was about five or six, but had the same loud, rascally fierceness of the twins. Felix was maybe fourteen and had the look of his older brother, Leaf, about him. He was quieter than the others, though his eyes were lively enough.

Bee Lee was already my favorite. She was cuddly and sweet like the Bichon Frisé I'd had when I was little. She was always trying to squeeze her hand into mine, or put her dimpled little arm around my waist.

Wink had a beautiful reading voice. Delicate and slow. She read about Thief, about the death of his father, and the prophecy. She read about his journey into the Cursed Woods, just him and the clothes on his back and the sword his father left him. She read about how he needed to steal food, apples from orchards and pies from windowsills, to keep himself from starving. She read about how he sat by his small fire at night and sang the old songs to keep his loneliness at bay.

We heard Mim call out
dinner
just as Wink read the last word of the fifth chapter. She slipped the book back in her pocket. The Orphans jumped up and took off for the house, Bee Lee giving me a shy smile over her shoulder before darting down the ladder.

I looked at Wink, and she was looking at me.

“Should we go to dinner?” I asked.

She shrugged.

I got to my knees. I put my fingers on the small of her back, and kissed her belly button, right through her cotton overalls. She put her hands on my head, her strawberry-stained fingertips in my hair. I turned my chin, and leaned my cheek against her.

“What the hell is this?”

I jerked. Wink's hands dropped to her sides. I opened my eyes. Closed them. Opened them again, let go of Wink, and stood up.

Poppy.

Wink stepped backward, a quiet sidle into the corner shadows. Poppy ignored her. She was wearing another short, swoopy sort of dress, the kind that showed more than it hid. It was green, the same color as Wink's eyes.

“You weren't home and your dad wouldn't tell me where you'd gone. He's always hated me.” She paused, and ran her hand down her hair, smoothing it, drawing attention to it. “But I figured it out.”

“You're trespassing,” I said. “This is Wink's farm. You're not welcome. She doesn't want you here.”

Poppy laughed.

She grabbed me by the front of my shirt and yanked me toward her. Then she narrowed her eyes at the darkness behind me. “Is that true, Feral? You don't want me here?”

Wink stayed in the shadows.

Poppy let go of my shirt and walked into the dark. She wrapped her fingers around the right strap of Wink's overalls and pulled her, one step, two, back into the fading evening light at the center of the hayloft. Wink followed, meek as a lamb.

Poppy brushed a curly strand of Wink's hair off her cheek. Wink didn't stop her.

“Do you think Midnight is a prince come to rescue you from being a loser?” Poppy kept her fingers on Wink's face. “Is that what you think? I bet you kissed him last night, after you showed everyone your unicorn underwear at the party. I bet you crawled all over him. You Bells—you're nothing but animals. Dirty and sex-crazed like a bunch of smelly goats.”

“Stop it, Poppy.”

I didn't scream it. I didn't even raise my voice. But she took her hand from Wink's cheek and turned around.

“You protecting your new little girlfriend, Midnight? Wow, that's adorable.” She put her hand on her hip and twitched her torso until her dress swung against her upper thighs, swish, swish. “How can you stand it? How can you stand kissing such a pasty, freckled, dirty thing? Is it just hormones? Is this some kind of Testament to the Male Organ? Should I be taking notes? Putting together an academic study?”

“You're so
mean
.” I said it quiet, really quiet, but she was listening. “Why are you always so mean? What's wrong with you? Were you born like this? Sometimes I think there must be a hole in your heart . . . one that hurts and makes you roar like an animal with its leg in a trap. Is that it, Poppy? Is that why?”

Poppy just stared at me. An evening breeze blew in and stirred the hay and we all just stood there.

She turned.

Walked to the ladder.

Climbed down.

Left.

And then Wink was at my side, slipping her hand into mine. “Let's go to dinner,” she said.

And without even looking, I knew she was smiling. I could hear it in her voice, sense it in her fingers, strawberry tips pressing into my palm.

“Y
OU STARE AT
Leaf Bell. You stare at him a lot.”

“A lot,” Zoe echoed, her stupid brown pixie curls twitching as she nodded her head, her and Buttercup both looking at me. The two of them lived next door to each other, had always lived next door to each other. They showed up in kindergarten doing the creepy, creepy twin thing, same clothes and repeating each other's sentences and talking in unison. They have different hair and different skin and different eyes, and one's tall and one's tiny, but for a long time I could barely
tell them apart. Though to be honest I never really tried.

We were sitting in the bleachers, done running, wet hair from the showers making damp trails down our T-shirts. Buttercup and Zoe ran in black shorts and black shirts, and striped socks pulled up to their knees, it would have been less laughable if they didn't take it so seriously.

The boys were on the track, Leaf in front, he was always in front. He was the best runner at our 1,300-kid school, we took state the last two years and he was why.

“Leaf is vile.” Buttercup.

“All the Bells are vile.” Zoe.

“Aren't they?” They said that last bit together, twinsy style.

“Shut up, Buttercup. Shut up, Zoe.”

And then they swapped a secret, knowing smile. I felt like slapping it off their faces but instead I told them that if they ever mentioned Leaf's name again I would spread a rumor that I'd caught the two of them kissing the hot new math teacher Mr. Dunn in the cemetery, back by the Redding mausoleum, long grass hiding them from view. Details make a lie, it's all in the details, Buttercup and Zoe knew this by now. I'd taught them.

And they never said his name again, even on the day he left, even after I told them about Midnight, and what I'd done.

When I found Midnight in the hayloft with his cheek against Wink's stomach and her hands in his hair . . . the
expression on his face . . . and Feral looking down at him . . . There was something happening between them, something not in the plan.

Leaf gone.

And now Midnight.

Not again. Not again, not again, not again, not again.