I SNUCK OVER to the Bell farm once a few years ago, and just watched the goings-on from the shadow of the woods. I was there for a while, and they never even looked in my direction, not any of them, like I was invisible, like I was a ghost.
I had this idea that I’d catch Leaf off guard, and maybe a look would pass over his face, fleeting but there, really there, and then I would know. I would know that he thought of me.
He and Wink were outside with their siblings, they had a picnic and then played some game with a lot of hooting and hollering, and he was different with them, so different, especially the pretty brunette sister, he was rowdy and loud and he laughed all the time. I’d never even heard his laugh, not his real laugh anyway. And after a while I started feeling bad about myself, standing alone in the woods while they all laughed and played together, and I’m Poppy, I never feel bad about myself, ever, so I went home and never did it again.
The eighth time I followed Leaf to the hayloft, I kissed him with my whole soul, all of me, all the bad parts and the good parts too. I kissed and kissed him, his thin straight nose, his freckled cheeks, his wide bony shoulders, his hard white torso, but his green eyes never even met mine, not once. So I got naked, I thought I would stun him with my stunning beauty, but he only shrugged his shoulders and said I could be the spitting image of Helen of Troy for all he cared, I was still not worth the breath I breathed.
His younger sister called out from somewhere in the yard and he went down to her without another word. I cried while I put my clothes back on, fast, fast, the hay caught up in the creases and scratching me all the way home, but it felt good, like the nuns and their hair shirts, a punishment on the path to redemption.
WHEN THE HERO knocked on our old screen door at sunset I thought he was coming to get his fortune told, like everyone else who came to our house.
He came bearing one pink little wildflower in his hand and he gave it to me when I opened the door. I didn’t know what to do with it so I just held it in my fist while he stood there looking pleasant and awkward like the ordinary farm boy before destiny knocks and he’s forced to pick up the sword and take to the road.
I let him inside and then, before I could change my mind, I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk in the forest.
He looked out the windows at the setting sun, and then said yes anyway.
I planned to take him down the path that went right by the Roman Luck house. The Roman Luck house was full of bad things and sadness and unforgivables, but I wanted to see what would happen.
Midnight waited in our kitchen while I got ready. The Orphans surrounded him, asking him questions he didn’t know how to answer, mostly about whether he’d seen the ghost of Lucy Rish yet in his house across the road, and if she threw apples at him or if they fell right through her old ghostly hands. He smiled and didn’t seem to mind all their asking.
I put on a green cotton dress, because the tree spirits like green. It had been Mim’s dress when she was a girl, and had a white belt. There was only one little hole, in the back, where you could hardly see it.
I forgot to brush my hair before we left, but I did remember to dust my arms and neck with powdered sugar. It made the mosquitoes come at you, but the night was blustery and I wasn’t worried. Besides, the unforgivables will feed on you, unless you give them something sweet. It distracts them and they leave you alone. Mostly.
THE INSIDE OF Wink’s house was just as cluttered and chaotic as you’d expect a house to be with so many dogs and kids running wild. The kitchen was long and rectangular. I saw baskets of brown eggs on the wooden counter, and bowls of apples and bags of potatoes and onions. There were pots hanging from hooks on the ceiling, and a pile of folded laundry on the end of the table, and everything looked neat and tidy, in its own messy way.
The walls were a bright turquoise blue and there was a working woodstove in the corner. Everything smelled like gingerbread, and Wink’s mother offered me a square piece as I waited. She was a short woman with big curves and wary green eyes and long red hair, no gray. She wore her hair in thick braids that crisscrossed her head in a style that looked both ancient and also sort of artsy and modern. She had on a black blouse-y shirt thing and a long skirt, lots of colors, and black boots with complicated laces. She looked like what you’d expect a fortune-teller to look like . . . but she also just looked like a mom. A mom who liked to dress interesting and cool instead of wearing beige pants and pastel-colored cardigans.