Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

The night drifted on. Our buzzes faded, and there was nothing left in the bake. Slowly, we knotted back up by the fire. It was too cold to stay at the cliffs, even if you did have somebody to hang on. I didn’t; Seth never showed up.

Our parties on Garland Beach usually ended with music. Instead of pulling out his guitar, Nick plugged his laptop into an external battery and let GarageBand do the honors. Songs he’d written with Levi—Nick never stopped smiling, but it was a tell. Without my brother there to sing, it wouldn’t have been right to play.

“You’re quiet,” I said.

“Tired,” Nick said. He tossed his paper bowl into the fire and slid to sit on the rocks. That had to be all kinds of cold, I thought. He arched his back, stretching his arms, then slumping. “You drive?”

Picking out a piece of sausage, I shook my head. “Walked.”

The fire popped, full of mussel shells and sweetened with burning corncobs. Nick turned, resting his elbow next to my hip. His hair fell back when he looked up at me, a rare glimpse of his entire face. “I can take you home.”

“You finished my six-pack,” I replied. “I’ll walk you.”

“You should stop being a bitch to Seth.”

At first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. My fingers stilled, no longer searching the bottom of my bowl for more scraps. Since everything was uneven, and I was buzzed, I blinked down at him. “What?”

With a sigh, Nick slumped against the driftwood. “He’s trying to help you, Willa.”

“Who asked you?”

“Nobody did,” he said. “I’m the only one who’s going to tell you. ’Cause I’m not your friend. You’re my friend’s sister. My best friend’s girlfriend. I like you, but they’re . . . Get past it.”

On my feet, I threw my trash into the fire and turned on him. “It’s not done, you dickwad. How am I supposed to get over it?”

Nick leaned back on his elbows. “Over it, that’s something else. I said get past it. It’s not July twenty-third anymore. I don’t think you noticed.”

Replies surged in my throat, hot like bile. Terry Coyne hadn’t even been indicted yet. There was a house payment my father wouldn’t let me make. A boat I wasn’t supposed to fish from, a whole life that wasn’t going to happen.

Whether I needed to get past it or not, he wasn’t the one who got to tell me to do it. He wasn’t from Broken Tooth. He didn’t get to judge me.

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” he said.

Zipping my jacket, I backed away from him. Maybe my voice broke. My throat was tight, my face hot, but I wasn’t going to cry for him. None of the things in my head came out.

Instead, I said, “You can’t make me feel anything.”

“Sorry I called you a bitch.” Knitting his brows, Nick draped his arms over his knees. He looked small, but not young. Not even a little; the dark eyes he kept hidden behind his hair were wells, endless and empty and deep. “It’s true, though.”

I left him there, staring into the fire, because he was right.

He wasn’t my friend.

I watch her move through the village. She’s distinct from the rest. Her light has shape now. It outlines the fall of her hair and the sway in her step. The others simply gleam, so many fireflies in the dark.

She’s seen me. Recognized me. But she doesn’t come.

Why doesn’t she come? Is there some trick I’ve never learned? Some secret that Susannah kept when she trapped me here? Standing on the cliff, I try to be a beacon. It’s foolish; wishful thinking. Even if she could make me out at this distance, I’d be a firefly, too.

If I were a siren, I could sing to her.

If this were a fairy tale, I could send a tainted apple.

But this is a curse, and curses come with torment. I’m supposed to suffer, and this is a brand-new agony. I spent so many years holding back the fog because no good man, no man with scruples, would buy his freedom with someone else’s blood.

Now I realize, I’m not a man anymore. And she’s a trick of the light, no more real than a daydream. In fact, she’s worse than a daydream. She’s a glimmering ring of promises, just out of reach. I can go round and round, forever reaching for it, forever missing it.

Hope is the thing that torments me.

So it doesn’t matter that she’s thinking of me. That she’s seen. That she knows. There will be no rescue. No salvation. And I will spend two thousand years in this lighthouse, twenty thousand, eternity.

Unless I do that thing. I wonder now, why shouldn’t I?

At night, Broken Tooth could be quiet. It was on this side, most of the houses dark, most of the people sleeping. Streetlights hummed and spilled out sickly orange light. It hung in the fog, strange haloes at every corner.

My house was dark too. Daddy’s truck was gone, but Seth’s was in the driveway. Trudging toward it, I realized he was still inside. I saw his arms, curved over the top of the steering wheel, and his head, hanging.

All at once, I was exhausted. Rounding the back of the bed, I came up to the driver’s side and knocked on the window.

Startled, Seth jerked upright. At first, I thought he’d been sleeping. Then I realized there was nothing soft about his face. Every line was drawn tight, his lips, his eyes. He started to roll the window down, then something changed his mind. Waving me back, he opened the door.

But he didn’t get out. He pushed the door open as far as it would go. Then he turned to me, still perched on the bench seat. “I didn’t know where you were.”

“I had my phone.”

Seth nodded. He rubbed his palms on the knees of his jeans, then scrubbed them over his face. I wasn’t the only one sideways. I could tell just by looking at him that he wasn’t right. That he was wrong—we were too.

Then he turned, coming like he was going to get out of the truck. When he moved, I smelled perfume. Clinging to his coat, light and sugary.

A sharpness slid through my belly. All my insides fell, and I thought they might fall out. I knew that scent. The last time I smelled it, the girl wearing it spat at my feet. Probably would have gone for the face except she knew I would have punched her then.

Holding a hand up, I took a few steps back. My voice wasn’t my own. It was brittle, full of sharp edges.

“You spent the night with Denny Ouelette?”

Seth looked caught. Not ashamed, just surprised to be found out. Grimacing, he stopped his slide out of the truck. Leaning off the side of the bench seat, he pulled his own hair, then took a deep breath. Instead of sighing or finding some shame, he popped.

“I get tired of doing everything right, Willa. It’s not enough for you. I can’t make you happy, and fine. That’s fine—you shouldn’t be. But I can’t even make it better. I do everything you want me to, everything you need me to. And you couldn’t care less.”

Cold with disbelief, I stared. “So you cheated on me?”

“We just went driving around.”

“I know what that means!”

Seth bristled. “Nothing happened.”

I walked away, short, tight steps. My head screamed, anger that roared in my ears and cut my brain off from my mouth. Everything I said rolled out, like it was made on the tip of my tongue.

“Get out of my driveway. Go home. Go pick up Nick, he’s drunk at the beach. You can talk about how screwed up I am, and what a bitch I am, and when you drop him off, maybe Denny will let you stay the night and be all sweet to you. I bet nothing bad’s ever gonna happen to her. She’ll be sweet forever.”