Beware the Wild (31 page)

I know I won't. It's fear that makes this place dangerous. It's time people started seeing this swamp for what it is, it's time the people of Sticks, at least some of them, learn that ignoring the bear in your house won't make it go away.

“When will he wake up?” Heath asks, a few feet away.

I think of the day Phin disappeared. It had only taken a few hours for Lenora May to appear at the fence. I say, “Soon.”

Around us, the swamp is loud with sounds I recognize and sounds I don't. I settle on the ground a short distance from the tree. Heath crouches before me with a question in his eyes, but I shake my head. Last week, I'd have begged him to stay. The thought of being alone at a moment like this would've been terrifying, but now I'm not afraid.

“Okay,” he says, pressing his lips to mine in a too-brief kiss. “Call me when you're home.”

Then he's gone, and it's me and my siblings curled between the roots of the everblooming cherry tree and the swamp
.

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T
HE BEETLES AND CRICKETS ARE
doing their best to lull me to sleep when I hear a hazy, “Hey, Sass.”

Phin steps from beneath the cherry tree on shaky legs, dressed in gray canvas pants and an oil-stained T-shirt. I'm in his arms before he can say another word. He smells warm and familiar, a cocktail of sweat and grit and spice. I don't let him go for several
minutes.

“Let's go home,” he finally says.

I nod, but first step beneath the tree limbs. As with Fisher, Lenora May's body has faded into the swamp. There's nothing left of her but what I hold in my mind—not her real history, but the one we shared, which is real enough.

The bracelet she gave Grandpa Harlan, and Phin gave me, gleams from the base of the tree and I decide it's as fitting a memorial as any I could make. She made it to protect her loved ones from Fisher's anger, and that's precisely what it did in the end.

Shine is quick to show us the way, but when the partly destroyed fence appears, I stop.

“Phin, promise me something?”

He pauses. In the distance, I can see the red gleam of his Chevelle in the moonlight, as polished as the day he left. There won't be a fuzzy peach hanging from the mirror or a missing hubcap. There won't even be damage from me sticking a screwdriver in the ignition.

“Don't forget,” I say.

“I never did,” he admits, and climbs into the yard.

I don't follow. I stay with my hands resting on the post of the fence that's done nothing but keep people trapped for so long. Grandpa Harlan built it because he was afraid. The town kept it up because fear has a way of spreading like crabgrass if you don't tend to it.

Phin pauses when he notices I'm not by his side. “What's wrong?”

“Will you give me a hand with this?” I ask, giving the middle plank a good shake. Fisher was wrong about a lot of things, but maybe he wasn't wrong about this. “Grab a hammer.”

He gives me a long, wry look, like I'm stirring up trouble, which I guess I am. “How about I grab two?”

He jogs to the carport and returns with two hammers. Together, we knock at the planks until we've created a wide gap in the fence line. For the first time in decades, the swamp isn't caged.

We've just piled the boards behind the carport and stashed the hammers when Mama appears on the screened porch standing in a puddle of light. Her face is shadowed, but her voice is live as a rattlesnake when she calls, “What in tarnation are you two up to with all that whacking? And where do you think you've been? Get inside, both of you.”

It's too dark for her to see what we've done to the fence. I imagine there'll be hell to
pay in the morning, but I'll be ready for it.

“You hungry?” Phin asks, treading carefully on this old battleground.

“Starving.”

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W
E HAVE AN UNCANNY ABILITY
to keep secrets where anyone can see them in Sticks, Louisiana.

Three days after a dozen people tromped out of the swamp, having floated around in a pond with tails and claws, it's as if nothing strange ever happened. Candy and Abigail are over at my house every day with a box of Old Lady Clary's sticky buns, making and executing plans for the summer. Sheriff Felder and the good ol' boys mend the swamp fence and talk about the storm that blew in something fierce Sunday night. There are new faces in town, too. Those Fisher stole decades ago or more. They've all been folded into the fabric of our town, neatly and quietly. And all the others cluck their tongues and shake their heads, turning their eyes away from the swamp.

I can't tell who remembers what by the way they're all acting. Last week, that would have sent me screaming into a pillow. But this week, I help Mama recover fallen Mardi Gras beads, and wind a string of Christmas lights around the newly repaired fence, complete with a hard-won gate. She doesn't remember Lenora May and that's the part that seems most cruel, but she also doesn't remember missing Phineas or the fact that for one shining moment her husband was the town sheriff.

Heath is the only one who hasn't changed. Every morning he sends a text as soon as
the sun's kissed the sky pink. It's always the same. It says,
Phineas Harlan Saucier
. I respond,
Nathan Payola
. And he returns,
Lenora May Lillard
. He brings me coffee shortly after that, always spiced with cinnamon and blissfully free of milk and sugar, and we spend the morning talking about meaningless things like movies and music, filling in the gaps we didn't have time for the week before.

It's easier to breathe after that, but every time I get near the swamp, I feel it tugging in my belly.

The cherry left me with a connection I'll never break. Every day the swamp calls to me, begging me to cross the fence again, to twist my fingers in Shine, and never look back. I wonder if that was how Fisher felt before things got so bad. I can imagine that wanting the power to protect someone he loved drove him to take as much as he could. In the end, he was more power than he was person and that made him more danger than protector. I think that's why he looked so sad, so full of pain, just before he vanished.

For a while, it's hard to tell what Phin remembers. He goes through the days as if he didn't miss finals or the race or graduation. Cody comes over on Tuesday to work on the Chevelle, like always. Phin joins Darold and the rest of the boys in their quest to repair the fence, and he starts filling a laundry basket with all the things he wants to take to Tulane.

It's three days before he says anything about the swamp.

He pauses in his work to toss a wrench into the grass and says, “I wish I could have known her. I wish I could have thanked her, too.”

“She knew.” I think of Lenora May in the kitchen, spots of white flour in her dark hair, and I miss her. “She was a good sister.”

He nods. “So are you.”

I shake my head. “I haven't been, but I will be.”

“Not everyone would've come after me.” He ducks his head to flip hair from his eyes. “I scared myself, Sass. That—that morning when I nearly hit you.” He looks sideways at the carport and his jaw clenches. There's a small dent in the wall I didn't see before, lasting evidence of that furious moment. “I ran away because I wanted to hurt you and I knew I was losing control. I felt myself turning into
him
. Dad.”

“You wouldn't!”

“But I
could
.” His eyes are pinched, his lips tight. “The point is I could have and I nearly did. And that . . . is worse than dying.”

Tears gleam in his eyes. I've never seen him so vulnerable. Somewhere along the way we agreed that in order for me to be safe, he needed to be the strong one. That
was the dark secret rotting in the middle of Phin's chest.

“I used to be afraid that if you left me, I wouldn't survive.” I put a hand on his chest, one of Old Lady Clary's bracelets secure around my wrist. “But I'm not afraid, Phineas. I'll miss you, but I know I'll be fine. Even when bad things happen, I'll be fine. I want you to go to Tulane and be brilliant.”

“How,” he asks, “could I be anything else?”

The swamp is louder now than it was before, crouching beyond my open window. The air is calm, but I can hear it sighing and singing. I can feel its magic reflected inside me as if it's the sun and I'm the moon. It tugs at me, urging me to
come away, come away, come away
. This is why Lenora May said it was dangerous to bind yourself to the swamp. This is what Heath has struggled against for so long. Even with a Clary charm on my wrist, the pull of Shine is stronger than ever before.

But so am I.

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Had I known the endurance required to publish a single novel at the start of this process, I might have turned back at the door
.

I will never in a million years be able to thank my agent, Sarah Davies, appropriately. She is tireless and discerning, and this book would be a muddy, muddy mess without her skilled hand. I would also be a muddy, muddy mess without her
.

My editorial team at HarperCollins: Phoebe Yeh, Karen Chaplin, and Jessica MacLeish, whose encouragement, patience, and dedication have been invaluable—I swear I'm done making changes now. Bethany Reis and Susan Jeffers Casel, who are the Kung Fu masters of copyediting. Kate Engbring, who created the perfect cover for Sticks. And to everyone else on the Harper team I've never worked with directly but am indebted to nonetheless—thank you!

I would be nothing at all without critical readers: Valerie Kemp, who has likely read this book more times than anyone including me; Sonia Gensler and Kimberly Welchons, without whom this novel would be all arms and no legs; Maggie Stiefvater, for telling me to write something, and then to write it again better; Myra McEntire, Julie Murphy, Elizabeth Schonhorst, Victoria Schwab, and Alexandra Staeben, who all read at lynchpin moments and helped me through them; Carrie Ryan and Brenna Yovanoff for nascent conversations on New Orleans porch swings; and Christine Koval, Steve Smith, and Tiffany Trent, whose early enthusiasm was inspiring
.

To the very fine ladies of GFA and the Fourteenery: your unwavering support has been tantamount to sisterhoods of legend. Let's all drive to Vegas and get tattoos
.

My boss, Joane Nagel—your support has made a universe of difference
.

CK, for building me a whimsical, chilling website (and loving me anyway), and Emily Kennedy, for sharing this journey with me
.

My English teachers at Central Kitsap High in Silverdale, Washington: Mrs. Lillis King, who let me write my first novel as my senior honors project, and Mr. Bill Rosen, whose love of literature was contagious
.

To my incredible family, for giving me the power of story and a thirst for adventure
.

And to Tess, for doing this whole thing with me
.

Thank you
.

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NATALIE C. PARKER
grew up in a navy family in which having adventures was as common as reading fairy tales. She currently lives in Kansas with her partner in a house of monsters.
Beware the Wild
is her first novel. You can visit her online at www.nataliecparker.com.

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