“Awesome,” August said, at the same time Brit said, “How do you know that?”
I had heard people talking about it at school—this was briefly a party spot, before the cops started routinely buzzing by on weekend nights. “I know it’s shocking, but I occasionally know stuff.”
“But illicit stuff, though?” Brit said.
“It’s not illicit.”
“You were the one who said we shouldn’t go in.”
I sighed. “We’re just … briefly surveying. For research. We’ll be fine.”
“You’re the one who’s gonna tell the cops it’s for research, okay?” August said, following me around back. “I really feel like they’ll believe you.”
“Why?”
“You have an honest face.”
“I could be a huge liar, you wouldn’t know.”
“Tell me a lie right now.”
I picked my way through the tall grass. “When I was seven, I entered the firehouse’s annual hot-dog-eating contest. I ate half a hot dog and then threw up, and then cried a lot, and they made me honorary winner because they felt bad for me.”
He looked at me for a moment. “It’s true. You’re trying to trick me.”
I grinned. “It’s a lie. I knew you’d think I was going to do that.”
I would never tell him he was right.
We reached the particular spot in the back, and just as the girls from school had said, there was a wooden board covering a large window that was attached loosely enough at the top that you could push it to the side and slip through. We did just that.
It was dim inside. This part of the house was basically a shell—unfinished floors, drywall only.
I could tell it would be a nice place if it was ever finished. The kitchen was giant—an island outlined on the floor, chalk marks laid down for where the appliances would go. A long hallway branched off to the right, a large doorway straight ahead opened up into the old side of the house, where a staircase led up to the second floor.
We didn’t venture upstairs, just poked around a bit on the first floor, not saying much to each other. There was nothing with which to really draw a conclusion about Megan or her departure, besides the unfinished nature of everything that spoke of said departure.
When we headed outside again, we sat down by our bikes, looking up at the place. “It is interesting, though,” August said eventually. “That addition is huge. Why would you start something like that and then abandon it?”
It was quiet.
“Maybe she witnessed a murder,” Brit murmured.
“Brit!”
“We’re spitballing!” she said. “There’s no harm in spitballing!”
August grinned. “Does she have a song about murder? Or one that implies having witnessed a murder?”
Brit’s eyes widened. “She does actually.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. ‘Murder Creek Murder: The Knife Is Behind That Rock.’”
“Okay, you were the one who suggested murder—”
“There’s a follow-up single too,” I said. “It’s called ‘Remember the Time There Was That Murder? I Do, and It Haunts Me.’”
“By Megan Pleasant,” Brit continued. “All rights reserved. People and events represented are entirely fictional, except for the murder—that part’s real.”
“Why do I even—Why do you—” August sputtered, but he was fighting a laugh.
Brit laughed mercilessly, and I couldn’t help but join in.
* * *
Brit parted ways with us on the ride back. It was quiet as August and I dismounted our bikes outside the Conlins’ house.
“So she wrote a song about Acadia,” he said, like he had been contemplating it this whole time. “About loving Acadia.”
I nodded. “‘Gave You My Heartland.’ A different thing to do in Acadia for every day of the week. It was her first big hit.”
“We should probably do it, don’t you think?”
Something in my brain short-circuited. “Sorry?”
“The Megan Pleasant week. Let’s do it. Everything in the song.”
August was proposing we do the “Gave You My Heartland” week. A song that was ostensibly about different locations throughout Acadia, but was also very much about falling in love with someone over the course of a week at said locations. Did he know that? Was he—did this mean—
“Why?” was all I could say.
He looked away, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“For research or whatever,” he said. “To properly inhabit her mind-set.”
I blinked.
“And to get to know the town,” he continued. “It’ll be multipronged.” And he glanced back with a smile that I couldn’t help but return. “Let’s go bowling on Monday and do the hokey pokey on Tuesday and whatever the hell else she says we should do.”
He didn’t know, then. About the falling in love part. “Hokey pokey isn’t one of the things.”
“You know what I mean. Line-dancing on Wednesdays. Pulling a rusty bucket out of a well on Thursday.”
“I’m going to poke you.”
“Tip a cow on Friday. Fuck a bale of hay on Saturday.”
It was hard not to laugh, but I just leveled him with a stare. He grinned, almost sheepish but not quite.
“Okay. I’ll stop.”
I drew the silence out until he looked away, smile faltering with something close to an apology.
“If you listened to the song,” I said finally, “you’d know we fuck bales of hay on Thursdays.”
He grinned.
twenty
On Monday, we went to Miller’s—Monday nights at Miller’s, pitchers for five and a booth for two.
We both ordered chicken tenders and fries. We couldn’t get pitchers for five, not only because we weren’t old enough to order them, but because Miller’s raised the price of their Monday-night pitchers following the fame of “Gave You My Heartland.”
After we ordered, August looked at me, drumming his fingers against the table. “So after we do this—like once we finish the whole week, is the ritual complete? Do we have to cut our palms and dance around a fire and then Megan Pleasant will appear and grant us three wishes?”
“I guess there is something kind of … ritualistic about it. They used to do tours and stuff.”
“For real?”
“Uh-huh. All the spots—here, Tropicana, the bridge, everything.”
“Isn’t one of them out in the middle of a field?”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you listened to it.”
He began opening packs of sugar and dumping them into his iced tea. “Of course I listened. Do you think I’d go into this unprepared? What if there’s something crazy in there, like lassoing a bull, or jumping off a building?”
“Then we’d be lassoing and jumping for the full Megan Pleasant experience.”
“Here’s to that,” August said, lifting his cup. I knocked mine against it.
* * *
On Tuesday, we went to the lake—skipping stones, watching clouds go by.
The lake was not truly a lake. Acadia had a few ponds—one back by the Pritchetts’ farm, one near the highway with a little creek running into it. A dip in one of the fields by school filled up sometimes when it rained, but we figured that Megan wasn’t referring to that one. Context clues in the song led everyone to believe it was the pond that August and I were currently standing in front of—the one in Fairview Park, ringed by willows.
We tried to skip stones. August had never done it before. I managed to get three skips, and he crowed when he got two.
“Did you see that?”
“Not bad.”
“Not bad? That was expert level!”
“If you’re expert level, then what am I?”
“God level.” He tried again, and the rock sank with a thunk, sending up a small spray of water. “I’d build a monument to you, but I’m fresh out of rocks.”
* * *
Wednesday was for ice cream cones, after we both finished at work.
“Technically we’ve already done this one,” August said, and took a swipe at his mint-chocolate-chip cone.
“Yeah, well, technically, we should be alone,” I replied, looking pointedly at Terrance.
August’s eyes shone. “Sophie’s right. The song doesn’t mention a third wheel.”
“It doesn’t say there isn’t one either,” Terrance said with a grin.
“Schr?dinger’s lyric,” August said. “There both is and isn’t a third wheel until Megan confirms.”
“There’s definitely a third wheel,” I said. “I can confirm it right now.”
* * *
We went downtown on Thursday.
We were supposed to drift from one shop to the next, shooting the breeze. A number of shops lined the street downtown—the weird old antique shop; the hardware store; Mrs. Weaver’s bakery. Every small town I’d been to seemed to have something super random too, like a coin shop, or a pipe-organ store. In our case, it was a vacuum-cleaner-repair shop that was never open but somehow never went out of business. Maybe they serviced one vacuum cleaner a year and lived on that lone repair.
I told August this, and he nodded in consideration. “Could be possible.”
“Fifty grand to fix your vacuum.”
“I mean, that’s a deal. My vacuum cost twelve million dollars.”
“Really.”
“Uh-huh. Military-grade. It could drain a lake.”
I grinned. “If you aim it at the sky, it’s capable of tearing a hole in the fabric of space.”