“Please,” Rose begs. “It’s the biggest night of the year, and I don’t want to be the loser who goes solo again.” A slight lisp trails over the word “solo.” When Rose was younger, she talked with a lisp. All her Ss sounded like Ths. In grade school, kids used to tease her whenever a teacher asked her to speak out loud in front of the class. But after regular visits to a speech therapist up in Newport three days a week during our first years of high school, suddenly it was like she stepped out of her old body and into a new one. My awkward, lisping best friend was now reborn: confident and fearless. And even though her appearance didn’t really change, she now radiated like some beautiful exotic species of human that I didn’t recognize, while I stayed exactly the same. I have this sense that someday we won’t even remember why we were friends in the first place. She will float away like a brightly colored bird living in the wrong part of the world, and I will stay behind, gray-feathered and sodden and wingless.
“Fine,” I relent, knowing that if I skip another Swan party she might actually disown me as her only friend.
She grins widely. “Thank God. I thought I was going to have to kidnap you and drag you there.” She shifts her book bag higher onto her shoulder and says, “See you after class.” She hurries down the hall just as the final bell chimes from the tinny overhead speakers.
Today is only a half day: first and second period, because today is also the last day of school before summer break. Tomorrow is June first. And although most high schools don’t start their summer session so early, the town of Sparrow began the countdown months ago. Signs announcing festivals in honor of the Swan sisters have already been hung and draped across the town square and over storefront windows.
Tourist season starts tomorrow. And with it comes an influx of outsiders and the beginning of an eerie and deadly tradition that has plagued Sparrow since 1823—ever since the three Swan sisters were drowned in our harbor. Tonight’s party is the start of a season that will bring more than just tourist dollars—it will bring folklore and speculation and doubt about the town’s history. But always, every year without fail or falter, it also brings death.
A SONG
It starts as a low croon that rolls in with the tide, a sound so faint it might just be the wind blowing through the clapboard shutters, through the portholes of docked fishing boats, and into narrow cracks along sagging doorways. But after the first night, the harmony of voices becomes undeniable. An enchanting hymn sailing over the water’s surface, cool and soft and alluring. The Swan sisters have awakened.
TWO
The doors of Sparrow High are flung open just before noon, and a raucous parade of students is set loose into the sticky midday air. Shouts and whoops of excitement echo across the school grounds, scattering the seagulls perched along the stone wall that borders the front lawn.
Only half the senior class even bothered to show up for the final day, but the ones who did tear out pages from their notebooks and let the wind carry them away—a tradition to mark their freedom from high school.
The sun sits lazy in the sky, having burned through the morning fog, and it now seems defeated and weary, unable to warm the ground or our chilled faces. Rose and I stomp down Canyon Street in our rain boots, jeans tucked inside to keep them dry, with our coats unzipped, hoping the day will brighten and warm the air before tonight’s all-night bash, which I am still not entirely thrilled to attend.
On Ocean Avenue we turn right and then stop at the next corner, where Rose’s mom owns a shop that sits like a little square cake with white-painted brick walls and pink eaves—and where Rose works every day after school. The sign above the glass door reads: ALBA’S FORGETFUL CAKES in pale pink frosting–swirled letters on a cream-colored background. Yet the wood sign has started to collect a greenish brine that will need to be scrubbed away. A constant battle against the salty, slimy air.
“I only have a two-hour shift,” Rose says, hoisting her book bag over to the other shoulder. “Meet at nine on the dock?”
“Sure.”
“You know, if you had a cell phone like a normal person, I could just text you later.”
“Cell phones don’t work on the island,” I point out for the hundredth time.
She blows out an exasperated breath. “Which is catastrophically inconvenient for me.” As if she were the one who has to endure the lack of cell service.
“You’ll survive,” I say with a smirk, and she smiles back, the freckles across her nose and upper cheeks catching the sunlight like constellations of golden sand.
The door behind her whips open with a fluttering of chimes and bells clanking against the glass. Her mom, Rosalie Alba, steps out into the sunlight, blocking her gaze with a hand as if she were seeing the sun for the first time since last summer.
“Penny,” Mrs. Alba says, dropping her hand. “How is your mother?”
“The same,” I admit. Mrs. Alba and my mom were friends once, in a very casual way. Sometimes they’d meet for tea on Saturday mornings, or Mrs. Alba would come out to Lumiere Island and she and my mom would bake biscuits or blackberry pie when the thorny blackberry bushes began to overtake the island and my dad would threaten to burn them all down.
Mrs. Alba is also one of the only people in town who still asks about my mom—who still cares. It’s been three years since my father disappeared, and it’s as if the town has forgotten about him entirely. Like he never lived here at all. But it’s far easier to endure their blank stares than it was to hear the rumors and speculation that spun through town in the days after he vanished. John Talbot never belonged here in the first place, people had whispered. He abandoned his wife and daughter; he always hated living in Sparrow; he ran away with another woman; he went mad living on the island and waded out into the sea.
He was an outsider, and he had never been fully accepted by the locals. They seemed relieved when he was gone. As if he deserved it. But Mom had grown up here, gone to Sparrow High, then met my father at college in Portland. They were in love, and I know he never would have abandoned us. We were happy. He was happy.
Something far stranger happened to him three years ago. One day he was here. The next he wasn’t.
“Will you give this to her?” Mrs. Alba asks, extending her palm where she’s holding a small pink box with white polka-dot ribbon.
I take it from her, running the ribbon through my fingertips. “What flavor?”