People in school thought Wink was strange. Beyond strange. If a person was just a little weird, that person could be made fun of. Maybe they knew too many Star Wars quotes, or maybe they talked to themselves, or lived in a one-room mountain shack, or smelled like basement, or did magic tricks in school every chance they got because they wanted to be magicians. These people could be teased. Laughed at. Made to cry. But not Wink. The bullies had given up on Wink and her siblings years ago. The Bells were impossible to ridicule—they were never, ever embarrassed. Or scared. Eventually the bullies got bored and moved on to easier prey.
Wink had an older brother named Leaf. He graduated last year, but when he’d been in school everyone, everyone, had been afraid of him. Leaf had calm green eyes and dark red hair, as straight as Wink’s was curly. He was tall and lean and you’d never think he’d be able to beat the hell out of anyone. But he did. All the time. He had a temper on him that no one, not even the teachers, took for granted.
Everyone said the Bell kids were witches and weirdoes. And people left them alone. And they seemed to like it that way, for the most part.
So why was Wink standing on my porch right now and staring at me and looking like she wasn’t going anywhere?
Wink reached into a pocket of her overalls. It was so deep her whole arm disappeared inside. When she pulled her hand back out, it held a small book. She flipped through it, found what she was looking for, and handed it to me. It was old, and the pages were half falling out. Wink held it open at an illustration of a boy with a sword at his side. The boy was on a hill, facing a dark stone castle, grim-looking mountains in the background. He looked like he was waiting . . . waiting for something to come out and kill him.
“That’s Thief,” Wink said, pointing one of her short freckled fingers at the boy. “He fights and kills The Thing in the Deep with the sword his father left him.” She tapped her fingertip on the page. “See his brown curly hair? And his sad blue eyes? You look like him.”
I glanced at the illustration again, and then back at Wink. “Thanks,” I said, though I wasn’t sure it was a compliment.
She nodded, kind of gravely, and put the book back in her deep pocket. “Have you read The Thing in the Deep?”
I shook my head.
“I’ve read it to the Orphans many times. The Orphans is what I call all my sisters and brothers, because there are so many of them and because we don’t have a father anymore. We do have a mother, so they’re not real orphans, but she’s always busy reading people’s leaves and cards and we’re left to ourselves, mostly.”
Wink paused.
“That’s why you’ll see a lot of strange cars in our driveway. A strange car means someone is here, and she’s reading their cards.”
Wink paused. Again. She was in no hurry.
“Mim read my leaves and she said you and I were going to have a story together. I was wondering if our story was going to be like The Thing in the Deep, because you look like Thief.”
Wink took a big breath, let it out, put her hands in her pockets, and stopped talking. A breeze floated by and lifted her thick hair off her shoulders. After her long speech, she now seemed content to just let us stand in silence.
I didn’t quite know how to talk to Wink yet. That would come later. But I already found her sort of relaxing. The seconds ticked by and I listened to the trickling of the creek down by the apple orchard and the rustling sounds of my dad unpacking inside. I felt my shoulders ease downward and my posture soften. Being with Wink was somehow like being alone, except not, you know, lonely.
And eventually I realized that the reason I felt so peaceful was because Wink wasn’t taking stock. She wasn’t trying to figure out if I was sexy, or cool, or funny, or popular. She just stood in front of me and let me keep on being whoever I really was. And no one had ever done that for me before, except maybe my parents, and Alabama.
“So what happens in the book?” I asked, after a few minutes of breezes and curly hair and overalls and not-judging and soft, peaceful quiet. “What happens to Thief?”
“There’s a monster in the shape of a beautiful woman. She kills people. Children, old people, everyone. She tries to kill the girl that Thief loves. He fights the monster, and he kills her, because he’s the hero. There is a great victory. And a descent into darkness. There are clues and riddles to solve, and trials of strength and wit. There’s redemption, and consequences, and ever after.”