All this time, I still thought Arthur was trapped, cursed to carry on his mother’s work. But he wasn’t. He came home to bury his parents and found a letter setting him free. He never had to take up the sword.
Right now, he could be living in a cute two-bedroom apartment in Phoenix, haunted by nothing more alarming than mice. He could be working nights and dating a dental hygienist. He could be a professor or a happily starving artist or anything he wanted.
But he’s here, all alone, paying a terrible price so that no one else has to. And if he has made mistakes—if he let a monster slink out into the night, hunting Gravely blood—hasn’t he paid enough for it?
I fold the letter carefully along the tattered lines and slip it in my pocket. I swallow twice. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have read that.”
Jasper’s eye roll is almost audible. “Okay sure, but I did, and so did you, and now we both know the truth.”
“That we are criminals and degenerates?”
“That every Warden makes a choice. It’s not inherited or destined or whatever. A few of them had families, right? And do you know what happened to their kids? They moved away and got married and had normal lives! Nothing kept them here, not fate, not blood.” Jasper is leaning toward me now, speaking clearly, like a teacher talking to a sullen and slightly slow child. “The Wardens chose that place. And that means we can choose, too.”
“I get what you’re saying but”—someone hits the brakes in my brain, tires squealing—we?”
Jasper looks at me for a long time then. Long enough for me to notice the spongy, sleepless bags beneath his eyes, the new lines carved beside his mouth, the wispy not-quite-stubble of an unshaven teenager. Then he says, horribly slowly, “You aren’t the only homeless kid in this town, Opal.” In his eyes I can see the reflections of doors and stairs he’s only seen in dreams, the ghostly map of a house that isn’t his.
All the air seems to evaporate out of my bloodstream. I’m dizzy, breathless with emotions I can’t even name. Fury, maybe, for the years of secrets between us, and fear for what happens next. But also something acid and viscous, bubbling noxiously in my throat: envy.
“You can’t ever go back there. Promise me you won’t.” My fingers are biting into the turf, ripping roots.
Jasper is closing his laptop, sliding it between the textbooks in his backpack, zipping it shut. He stands, looking at me with that tired, distant expression back on his face. “Why? Because you want me safe, or because you want the house for yourself?”
“Oh, go to hell—”
“You haven’t been able to make up your mind, have you? But I have.” His smile is strangely gentle. “Nobody—not you, not that house—is going to tell me what to do with my life.”
Jasper picks up his blue plastic tray and leaves me alone at the edge of the field.
I waste the rest of my lunch break kicking rocks at the Tractor Supply dumpsters, periodically shouting swears. It doesn’t help; by the time I clock in I’m still so mad that Frank opens his mouth to bitch at me for being late and then slowly closes it and scurries down the cat toy aisle instead.
I ring up four customers without making eye contact. I don’t look up until a cool, not-from-around-here voice says, “Good evening, Opal.”
I hadn’t seen her approach the counter: a pretty woman with her watch turned to the inside of her wrist and a smile that looks like it was clipped out of a magazine and glued to her chin.
I’m not surprised; I always knew Elizabeth Baine wouldn’t give up easy.
I greet her with the aggressive apathy of a cashier on the sixth hour of her shift. “Find everything you need, ma’am?”
“Yes, thank you.” She places a pack of gum and a matchbook on the counter, one of those embarrassing souvenirs that says My Old Kentucky Home in blue script. I ring her up and she draws a matte black card out of her purse. She doesn’t hand it to me.
“Anything else I can help you with?”
She taps the card on the counter. “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
“Well, here I am.” If she’s trying to rattle me, she shouldn’t have tried it here. I’ve stood behind this counter and smiled down eight years of lewd suggestions, one attempted robbery, and more than a hundred 4-H-club moms with highlights and out-of-date coupons.
“Can we talk privately? You’re off at six.”
Frank is lurking in the lawn mower belts now, watching us, so I give her an extra big smile when I say, “Fuck off.”
A muscle moves in her jaw. “Then I’ll be quick. Our group has determined, thanks to your cooperation”—she wields the word like a knife, looking for a soft spot—“that it’s worth pursuing the phenomena at Starling House.”
My heart gives a guilty flinch, but my smile doesn’t twitch. “Best of luck.”
“We believe—” Baine inhales, her nostrils pinched white. “—that we need the keys. We are willing to pay you a substantial sum for them.”
“Oh, gee, that’s awful nice of you, but I don’t have them.” I make the same face I use when I’m telling someone their brand of dog food won’t be restocked until Wednesday. “And, as I don’t work for Mr. Starling anymore, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Her magazine smile is wadded up now, all edges and angles. “Can’t or won’t?”
This is the moment to cover my ass, to assure her that I’m still the spineless money-grubbing double-crosser she thinks I am. It wouldn’t even be a lie.
But maybe I don’t want it to be true. Or maybe I just don’t think Stonewood Academy would kick Jasper out after cashing the check Arthur sent them; it’s easy to be brave when it won’t cost you anything.
Or maybe I’ve just had a very shitty day. I bare my teeth at her, brazen and stupid, and don’t answer.
She waits, then says, “I see,” and slides her card across the counter.
I tuck her receipt in the bag and hand it over. “You have a nice day, ma’am.”
Baine lingers, studying my face as if she’s looking for the error in an equation. “I misjudged you, Opal.” She says my name like she owns it. “I thought you loved your brother.”
She unfurls a new smile as she says it, the bright white sneer of someone who has never spent a single week without dental insurance, who wins every hand because she has all the cards. It’s designed to put me in my place, to bend me.
Instead, I break.
There’s a hitch in my vision, like a skipping track, and then Elizabeth Baine isn’t smiling anymore. She’s bent double with her hands pressed over her mouth, making a sound like a rusty hinge in the wind. My knuckles are split, throbbing sweetly, and Frank is pointing at me in red-jowled triumph. My hearing has gone funny, but I can read his lips beneath the flying spittle: Get out!
Which is either the second or third time I’ve been fired this month, depending on how you count it.
This time I don’t run. This time I tuck my phone in my pocket and grab a candy bar from the rack. I touch the Butterfinger to my forehead in mocking salute and saunter out into the ripe spring sun.
Jasper and me used to jump off the old railroad bridge when we were kids. Everybody did, even though half the time the water left your skin rashy and red. It was the only satisfactory ending to a summertime double dare, high enough to scare you but not high enough to hurt, close enough to Starling House to send goose bumps down your spine but not close enough to stop you.
I used to like it: the curl of my toes over the edge, the rush of wind, the clap of skin against water and then sudden, plunging silence. It was like falling into another world, escaping the noisy gravity of reality, just for a little while. It was like dreaming.