But in the end, I returned to my family.
I wasn’t particularly kind to Sam when I told him my decision. The whole thing had thrown me for a loop, I guess (but I was also younger, more cruel, a little terrified).
We fought; Sam left. He wrote me many postcards over the years. I never attempted to find him.
I thought about him often after that, of course, especially in the past few weeks I’ve found it weighing heavier and heavier on my mind.
But then I figured out what was so different about him, about Sam, and it wasn’t a good thing anymore. It is something dark and sad and eternal.
We aren’t living some make-believe fantasy about immortality, are we? We’re just trying to live our lives and do the best we can in the time we’re given.
Anyway, that’s what I tried to do.
If I know anything, it’s that he wouldn’t have gone to Harry’s office and you would have.
And if that’s true . . . then please, Lottie, give it back to him.
Whatever the little voice is currently telling you . . .
Don’t drink it.
—H.
I put my letter back in my purse just as my new phone buzzed. A message from Sam:
Whenever you want! Let me know.
It would be the first thing my aunt asked me to do that I didn’t do blindly.
I wrote him back:
Can you really live forever?
His response took a long time. But when it came, I started the car and drove.
Margo did not know why she did it.
Alvin was just a few feet away from her, exploring an oversized, dusty book, not paying her any attention. She poked around the attic for a few minutes but grew quickly bored, uninterested by the grime and the dirt that time had settled over this place. There was a faint unease growing in her stomach; they weren’t supposed to be here. Why had the door opened for Alvin but not for her? What did the door have against girls? She’d strained against it with all her might, but Alvin had turned the handle easily and let them inside.
And what was this house even doing in the middle of the woods? It hadn’t been here before, right? Alvin and Margo had explored these woods a hundred times, a thousand times; surely they couldn’t have missed a house this big, sitting in the middle of a great clearing, looking a little like someone had just set it down out of nowhere.
No, there was something weird about this house, and there was something weird about this attic, and she was tired of exploring, tired of this particular adventure. She wanted to go home, to have something to eat, to know why she was suddenly holding this glass vial in her hands.
Why she was suddenly . . . What?
Where had this come from?
Margo brought the vial up to the light. It had liquid inside, clear, like water. The glass was dusty; she wiped it off against her shirt. There was a little tag around the neck of the bottle. It said: Everlife Formula. The bottle was corked.
Margo didn’t like that at all. She put the bottle back on the shelf.
Or . . . No, she didn’t. She had uncorked it.
But when had she done that?
She had told herself, very plainly, to put the bottle back on the shelf. But now she was holding it and it was open.
She sniffed it. It smelled like nothing.
She should dump it out on the floor. Nothing good ever came from drinking things of unknown origin.
But then . . .
It was already open.
She brought the bottle to her mouth— And drank.
—from Alvin Hatter and the House in the Middle of the Woods
23
I told Sam to meet me on Enders Island. I drove there slowly, letting myself process, letting my brain catch up to what had happened in the short time since Aunt Helen’s death.
I didn’t know how I felt about her.
For the first time in my life, my feelings for Aunt Helen were in question, tottering on the edge of a cliff as high as the one Em and I had jumped from. I remembered how the wind had blown through my hair, how the colors had blurred together as we fell. I remembered the day Aunt Helen had told us she had cancer and then later, so soon afterward, the day she told us she was dying. I remembered being on Facebook and seeing the trending topics: Helen Reaves Diagnosed with Terminal Cancer.
I remembered how it felt like for the first time, her fame was working against her. People showed up at the hospital with stuffed bears and bouquets of cheap, grocery store flowers. They meant well, but we had to hire a security detail to stand outside her door. People took pictures of her with IVs in her arms, her legs sticking out like two pieces of straw from underneath a hospital robe.
“As long as they don’t get a picture of my butt,” she said once, as my mother turned bright red and yelled at every single person she could find who might have something to do with why people with Alvin books and Sharpies kept ending up in Aunt Helen’s hallway.
“People think you should have to exchange privacy for success,” she told me once, weak, coughing into a tissue, her cheeks pale and cold. “I don’t know when we started being okay with that. I guess whatever sells the most magazines, right?”
When I reached Enders Island, I put Aunt Helen’s letter for Sam back into the wooden box, and I held it away from my body when I walked to meet him. He was as close to the water as he could get. He held a tote bag in his hand.
“Hi,” I said when I got close enough.
He turned around and smiled, then he saw the box and frowned. “Oh,” he said.
“I take it you’ve seen this before?”
“I don’t want it,” he said, turning back to the water.
“Well, throw it away then. You can do whatever you want with it. She told me to give it back to you.”
“Some things you can’t just throw away.”
“Like paint thinners,” I said. “Turpentine. I know. You have to take them to special recycling centers. But there’s always a way. Sometimes it’s more inconvenient, but there’s a way.”
Sam reached into the bag and withdrew two masks. He tried to hand me one, but I took a step back.
“Do you trust me?” he asked. Then: “I guess that’s a stupid question now.”
I opened my mouth to argue but then stopped myself. I mean—he was right. He’d done nothing but lie to me since I’d met him.
“Everything you told me,” I said. “Everything . . .”
“I know. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you.”
“If you had wanted to tell me, you would have told me. That’s how it works. That’s how friendships work.”
His face fell two shades darker, a shadow caused by something invisible, something I couldn’t see.
“I haven’t had one of those in a really long time,” he said.
He lowered the hand holding the mask.
Did I trust him?
Nope.
Did I trust my aunt?
Yeah. I had to. She had meant everything to me.
“Give it,” I said, holding my hand out.
He looked surprised but didn’t question me. He handed me the mask and took off his shirt. Then he looked at me like I should be stripping.
“Really?” I said.