Beware the Wild (4 page)

“Only if you get between me and my coffee,” I call, winning a hoarse laugh and a knee slap.

Beside him sits Sheriff Felder, coffee mug on one knee, hat on the other. He gives me a nod and quick smile. “Mornin', Miss Sterling. Didn't manage to bring that deadbeat of a deputy with you?”

There's no hint of the sympathy from yesterday, no sign that I should have anything weighing on my mind. But I need to be sure. “I left the house early, sir. I'm sure he's not far behind. He's—I think he's waiting on Lenora May.”

Hope stirs like nausea in my guts. I wait for him to answer, pinching my fingers into fists for patience.
I can't be the only one. I can't
.

“Sounds about right,” he says in his slow, sleepy way. “She's in those advanced classes with all the exams this week, right? Smart genes in your family, Miss Sterling. Don't you let that go to waste.”

My stomach threatens to revolt if I stay in this conversation much longer. “Yes, sir,” I say with as much cheer as I can force. I take the front steps two at a time.

Inside, Clary General smells like coffee, pinewood, and animal hide. With all the lazy fuss on the front porch this time of day, the interior is empty. The door groans behind me, and the floor beneath me. Clary General is an unquiet place, too full of memories to keep still.

The front of the store is designed to trap the ten tourists who come through Sticks each year. Every shelf is dedicated to swamp paraphernalia and local crafts. One is covered entirely in gator goods: dried heads, boiled skulls, teeth, claws, gator jerky, recipe books, and gator-skin purses. One carries all the sweets you can imagine coming from sugar and nuts: five flavors of pralines, candied pecans, butter toffee, chewy
caramels, and chocolate gators. Another holds the full collection of Clary General's Tales of Sticks' Swamp, an ongoing series of books written, illustrated, and published by the Clary family for more than a century. Every few years they release a new one and even locals can't resist. Candy hordes them, adding each new tale to her arsenal with a delight born of scaring her friends stupid, but they've always left me with a shiver.

I pull the most recent from the shelf. The first page is the same in every volume, a note from the first Old Lady Clary, who started recording these tales in 1868:

Obviously, Winona Love Clary isn't writing these anymore. This collection is the work of her some-number-of-greats granddaughter and current Old Lady Clary. I page through. All the stories are familiar. Unhelpful. Plenty of tales detail people going missing or getting stuck. But there's nothing practical about how to find them again. If anyone in town knows more than these stories are telling, it's got to be the author.

I only know Old Lady Clary is behind the tall counter by the sounds she makes as she tears plastic wrap to drape over her sticky buns, the quiet smack of her lips as she licks errant frosting from her fingers, the small chuckle of satisfaction that follows. As I press the lever on the coffee dispenser, her round face peers around the canister. An ever-ready smile hangs from the apples of her cheeks, her lips thin and glossy with sugar.

“Morning, Mrs. Clary.” I set my mug and a five-dollar bill on the distressed wooden countertop, beside a cluster of colorful seven-day candles. Each tall jar is painted with various Catholic saints and voodoo deities. More than once, I've seen locals take them through the back door and plant them along the ground at the base of the swamp fence.

She eyes the book in my hand and then me, curious. “Where'd you get that?”

I gesture to the shelves. “Over there. From your collection of swamp stories.”

She makes a sharp, wet noise of displeasure. “Not the book, child. That.” She points to my wrist where the bracelet sits.

“My bro—” I catch myself, suddenly unsure. “I mean, I found it in the attic. One of Grandpa's old trinkets. Probably belonged to my grandma.”

Old Lady Clary's eyes narrow to slits, her mouth puckers. Everything about her goes still and she releases a slow “Mmm.” Then, moving more quickly than I'd have thought possible, she sweeps my money into her till and counts the change. “You want the book, too? Sorry to say it, but I'm afraid this ain't enough.”

“No, ma'am, I just had a question.” I pause, flipping through the pages of the slender volume.

“About a prayer, shug?” she asks knowingly, reaching for one of the candles. It's decorated with an elaborate image of Marie Laveau dancing, a snake dangling around her neck.

“I think I'm past candles, Mrs. Clary.” I hit her with my next words before I can think better of it. “The swamp took my brother and no one remembers him.”

The candle thunks against the counter, and the whole shop settles into a thick quiet. I feel hope down to my toes. She's going to remember. She's the one who will help me, who will tell me what's happened, and how to fix it.

“My, my, my,” she mutters. “Yes, you're beyond candles, child, far beyond the reach of candles. I'm so sorry, so very sorry.”

It takes a moment for that to register. She's not denying what I've said, but what she's offering is so much worse. “No. How do I get him back?”

She shakes her head.

“You have to help me get him back!”

But Old Lady Clary gives another fierce shake of her head. “No, no. You stay away from that swamp. It's a fearful place and no good can come of it. Best to forget and move along.” She cuts me off before I can voice a single word. “Nuh-huh. I don't want to hear any more, Sterling Saucier. You mark my words and keep a good distance from that swamp.”

“Please,” I beg. “You must know
something
.”

She lowers her voice, her eyes on my bracelet. “There's more than one kind of fog in that swamp. Keep clear of it. That's all I'm gonna say.”

The door opens with an offensive creak, and Mr. Marrioneaux lumbers in.

“Dear Ida, I've come for a refill,” he sings.

I don't move, but Old Lady Clary won't meet my eyes, focusing instead on Mr. Marrioneaux. It's like I'm not even there.

It's all I can do to step away and hold all this anger inside myself when I'd like to throw it at Old Lady Clary.

Through the open door, I spy Darold's cruiser pulling into the store's gravel lot, and then something I can't believe: Phin's Chevelle racing up the road toward school with Lenora May's grinning face at the wheel.

“Thanks for everything,” I call sarcastically. And then I hurry after the girl who stole my brother's life. And his car.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

S
TICKS
H
IGH CROUCHES AT THE
top of the only land in town high enough to call a hill. A flat, redbrick building with bits of white trim to add a touch of Southern flair, it's old and quaint and a tight fit for the two hundred and thirty-two students it serves. The Chevelle gleams in the student lot, the one place Phin swore never to park, not with the money he poured into that paint job. Took six months of after-school work at the auto shop to save enough to paint it the color of open defiance. Of all the things Lenora May's taken, this one seems the most unjust. After two seconds of staring at the shining chrome, feeling futile, I spin and let that anger carry me the rest of the way to school.

Locker doors slam open and shut with the sort of enthusiasm reserved for the first and last weeks of school. The air is electric and cold and too sweet. Someone crows at the other end of the hall.

I'm surprised to find Candy at my locker. Just as she's the first on the volleyball court during the season, she likes to be in her desk no later than fifteen minutes early to get herself organized for the day.

She greets me with a careful smile and an uncharacteristically gentle “Hey, Saucier.”

“Hey,” I manage, trying to fathom why she's so contrite this early in the day.

“So, I'm the worst friend. I got into it with my mom last night and in my brilliance, left my phone in the den. I missed every one of your texts. Forgive me?”

In the middle of the night, after hours of watching the Shine make eerie shapes and shivering in my bed, I'd sent her three 911 texts in a row. Now, I think I'm grateful she missed them.

“Forgiven,” I say. “Last-minute panic about the final. I couldn't remember the name of Twain's first publication. L-Lenora May knew the answer.”

She nods. Confirming what I already knew: she doesn't remember Phineas.

My stomach releases another angry yowl, reminding me that I haven't eaten since sometime yesterday. Candy is immediately fierce.

“When's the last time you ate? Did you get breakfast? I'll bet you didn't.”

I produce the apple and retrieve my coffee mug. “Breakfast of champions.”

Her frown is bone deep. “Champions of what? You've got to eat, Saucier, it's a basic function of the human body. We eat, we sleep, and we spike.”

“Look. I'm eating. Mmmm, apple.” I take a big bite of the fruit. It's sandy and mostly disgusting, but I force a smile. “So just leave it alone.”

“You may not want to talk about this, and that's fine, but you can't hide the fact that you've been starving your brain for the past few months, and I need you on the court this fall—on
varsity
, so you can listen while I talk.”

This is an argument we've rehearsed many times since the day Phin announced his
intention to leave and I lost my appetite. I know how this conversation goes.

Candy doesn't disappoint. She launches into an account of my eating habits over the past three months, my slow but steady drop in weight, my inability to eat a normal meal, and ends with a statement about how “thin doesn't equal beautiful.” She's gotten better at it, I have to admit.

“Beauty is a social construction. I'm your best friend and that means it's my job to tell you the truth, and the truth is that you were a helluva lot prettier three months ago than you are now, so snap out of this.” She's gotten so passionate in her speech that she's turning heads. But she's immune to the attention.

“Keep your voice down, Candy, I hear you,” I say.

“I'm not so sure that you do.”

The first time she asked me about this, I'd tried and failed to explain that it wasn't about wanting to be thin; I couldn't think of food when the threat of losing Phin to college was so near. She'd cut me a little slack, but now that Phin's not even a distant memory in her head, that piece of our friendship is gone, gone, gone. How much of my best friend disappeared with my brother?

I'd rather not find out. I give her the only innocuous nonresponse I can think of. “It's not that simple.”

“Whatever you say,” she says with a defeated sigh, “but I'll be here whenever you're ready to talk. Promise me you'll still be here, too.”

She says the words so casually that at first I don't understand her meaning. Where would I go? But then I get it. The constant pressure in my stomach becomes hard and pointed.

“I promise,” I say, and it's true. It never occurred to me that avoiding a few meals might actually kill me.

Maybe it had occurred to Phin, though. The thing that made him angriest was fear, and he was furious in the moments before he ran into the swamp.

“Sterling,” he'd said, his voice a caged bear. “Why are you
doing
this? Why are you starving yourself?”

The bracelet was a dead weight in my hands, my shoulders pressed to the carport wall. I answered, “What do you care? You're leaving.”

He'd moved so quickly then. His fist flew at my face. I closed my eyes a split second before I felt the carport buck. Darold appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Phin from behind. That's when Phin spun and threw a second punch into Darold's eye.

I'd thought it was anger that made him take a swing at me. I'd thought he was angry with me for losing weight or for caring so much that he was leaving. I'd thought that he
was angry because leaving wasn't easy. But maybe he was as afraid as I'd been.

I take another bite of my apple, hoping it will taste good enough to get me through the whole thing. It's grainy and gross and entirely unappetizing. Candy averts her gaze as I take one more bite and drop it in the trash.

The bell rings five minutes after I've handed in my exam. Candy snaps her pencil against the desk and turns hers in with a little more flourish than is strictly necessary. On her return, she bends to drop a tease in Abigail's ear. Abigail swats at her and continues frantically scribbling. Watching her makes me want to hold my own breath. Finally, she slides back in her seat, her shoulders relax, and she stretches her long, dark legs.