Sweetly (16 page)

Samuel gives me a cold look.

“Not like that,” I say with a sigh. “But why not Sophia or Jessie or Violet? Why not every girl in Live Oak?”

Why not me? It’s a silly question, but one I’ll never stop turning over in my mind. Two little girls, mirror images of each other, two halves of the same person, and the witch chose her. Why her? Why the others?

“Tell me about Layla. Please. Maybe we can work out why it’s them and not girls like Sophia.” The words fall from my mouth before I’ve thought them through, and I cringe at the look Samuel gives me as he shakes his head. Part of me is relieved, I admit—I don’t want to hear about her. I don’t want to know about the girl he still aches for. The girl who vanished, whom—I know from experience—he still probably sees if he closes his eyes long enough.

But I have to know. I have to know why Layla was special, because maybe knowing means no one else has to vanish. Maybe knowing means I can help stop girls from fading away. I can make up for letting go of my sister’s hand in the forest.

I inhale. “Maybe we can keep other girls from vanishing, Samuel.”

He looks up at me. He bites at his lips and drums his hand on the side of his pants for a moment.

“I told you about my brothers,” Samuel begins slowly, “about growing up with them. Everything was a competition, and then my dad got sick, and then… it was all too much. Some of my brothers moved far away, across the country. But I wasn’t quite that bold, so I just trekked around the southeast. I ended up in South Carolina one day, and I met Layla.”

He stops, and for a moment, I think he’s going to try to get away with ending his story there. Instead, Samuel takes a deep breath and continues affectionately, nostalgically. “She was with her friends at the drive-in you found me at, watching some stupid girly movie on the opposite screen as me. Brown eyes, brown hair, blue jeans, and an orange shirt—I never liked orange before that moment. And…” Samuel shakes his head. “I had to know her. I followed her around Live Oak for hours before I got up the nerve to talk to her, and when I did… I can’t even explain it.” He looks over at me. “Have you ever met someone and just known that somehow, everything you do in your life is going to have to do with that person? Even if you don’t know how yet?”

I shake my head and try not to look too distraught about it. That sort of certainty, that sort of knowing, isn’t something I’ve ever experienced. Until Sophia, I hardly even had a friend, much less a soul mate.

“She told me about living in Live Oak, how everyone here is stuck. And I thought about my brothers scattering across the country, about my dad’s Alzheimer’s getting worse, and for some reason… a place where you get stuck, where everyone you love gets stuck… that seemed sort of like a paradise. So I stayed. She and I started dating; we…”

“Fell in love?” I offer when Samuel doesn’t say anything for a moment too long.

“Yeah,” he says. “We fell in love.”

Samuel rubs his temples, and I see where the dark lines on his face come from: the expression he’s wearing right now. Worry, fear, concern, dismay.

“Sophia Kelly had just gotten back from college the year before and taken over the chocolate shop after her old man died. I’d only met her a few times—I didn’t think as much of her as everyone else did, but then, I only had eyes for Layla. But Layla and all the other girls in town were excited to go to this chocolate festival that Kelly was going to throw.

“The party was on a Saturday night. Layla came by afterward and…” He stares at the ceiling before continuing. “Spent the evening with me. And then she was gone. People saw her leaving my house, walking down Main Street holding her shoes. That was it. She was gone.”

Vanished. People probably asked him. People probably blamed him. I know how it works. I know the look they give you when they think somehow, someway, it’s your fault.

Where’s your sister?

“Are you still in love with her?” I ask Samuel, though as soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that I don’t really want an answer.

I can’t blame him if he is. When people are gone, they’re perfect—like my sister, the daughter I could never live up to, no matter how much I looked like her. If he loved Layla that much in her life, of course she’s even more wonderful, more beautiful, in her death. Yet still, I hope he isn’t. I selfishly, greedily want him to say he isn’t.

Samuel’s lips tighten and he hesitates. Just as I think the answer is about to emerge from his mouth, he rises sharply. “We’ll talk about it later. You need to get back to Kelly’s.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

M
y brother has been invited to play football with a bunch of the Live Oak guys—I guess our quarantine as strangers is over. According to Sophia, they’re some of the Lake City football team’s ex-stars, kids good enough to be Live Oak heroes but not good enough to get scholarships out of town.

“Seriously. Plus, Ansel is, like, four times the size of most of them. I have a feeling it’ll be him pummeling them, and then we’ll go get ice cream if Dairy Queen is still open,” Sophia says.

I look away, press my lips together. Technically, I’m supposed to be meeting Samuel today for another lesson. But based on the way he looked at me when I asked him about Layla, I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t there. Besides, I feel guilty skipping the game—Ansel hasn’t played in ages and Sophia wants me to go…

“It’s not a big deal,” Ansel tells Sophia. “She’s seen me play a million times before. And besides, when Gretchen wants to finish a book, that’s all she talks about anyway,” he teases me. It’s the line I fed them—I’m so caught up in a book that I want to stay home and read all day.

He’s probably not even going to be there. Just go. Go with Sophia and Ansel. Don’t think about monsters or Naida or your sister for a little while. That’s what you always wanted; that’s the new life you wanted to start.

The voice in my head is very, very convincing.

But not as convincing as the desire to stop girls from vanishing.

So Ansel and Sophia leave, and I start out toward the field. I pick dandelions as I walk, trying to keep my mind on finding bigger and bigger blossoms instead of worrying about whether or not Samuel will be there.

I reach the field. Samuel isn’t anywhere to be seen. A lump forms in my throat, half frustration and half self-pity. Of course. I knew I should have kept my mouth shut.

I let out the breath I’ve been holding when I hear the rumble of the motorcycle engine and Samuel rounds the corner. He edges to a stop beside me. I try to control the grin that wants to slide across my face.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Samuel raises an eyebrow. “Are you okay? You look…” But he can’t seem to find the word. I can fill it in for him easily:
relieved
.

“I’m fine,” I answer.

Samuel shrugs, then turns around to grab a silver helmet off the back of the motorcycle. He holds it out for me.

“Come on. Field trip time,” he says sarcastically.

“Um… what?”

“You want to know more about Naida, right?”

I nod.

“Well,” Samuel says, shaking his head, “I know someone who knew Naida. Probably did, anyway—she knows everyone. And if you’re willing to sit through an hour of Civil War stories, she’s happy to talk.”

“But… now?” I ask.

“Yes,” Samuel says in a tone of defeat. “If Naida and Layla and those other girls are special, I want to know why as much as you do. Please, Gretchen.”

I swallow, then take the helmet and pull it down over my head. It’s a little too big but better than nothing, I suppose. Samuel’s muscles tense when I grab on to his shoulder and hoist myself onto the back, and he doesn’t relax until we’re moving, cutting through the thick heat.

“Sophia and my brother are out at a football game somewhere in town,” I yell over the noise of the bike.

“We can avoid them,” he says, and I think I hear reluctance in his voice. He revs the motorcycle forward. The motion brings me closer to him, and before I know it, my arms are tighter around him than I intended. Underneath the leaflike scent is the aroma of sandalwood.

We’re approaching downtown Live Oak when Samuel suddenly takes a sharp turn; instead of cutting down the main road, he goes to the opposite side of the block, where the remaining stores’ back doors are located, most of them covered in graffiti. He keeps his eyes firmly locked on the road ahead of him, but I can feel the change in his body once we enter town; he stiffens, his back muscles knitting together. We seem to go around the outskirts of town, then dart back in for an instant—just long enough to pull into the drive of a massive antebellum house. Large columns line the front porch, and the driveway is shaded by sweet gum trees.

“I need to duck into my house first,” Samuel calls back to me. He cuts the engine and balances the bike as I slide to the pavement. I pull off the helmet and shake the sweat out of my hair.

“You live
here?
” I ask in amazement as we walk through the enormous house’s shadow. The porch is dotted with rocking chairs, one of which contains a dozing calico cat. The wind blows gently, and the scent of peaches stretches from the remains of an orchard to my nose. This house looks… loved. It doesn’t match the rest of Live Oak, as if it’s proud to be sitting here instead of a forgotten bundle of wood and concrete.

“Expected a tent in the woods?” Samuel says with a cocky smile.

“Not exactly,” I answer, avoiding his eyes.

Samuel laughs. “I don’t live there,” he says, nodding to the house. “I live there.” He motions toward a building I thought was a shed, mostly hidden behind the peach trees. It’s held up on a stone foundation, and the windows are cloudy with age.

“It was the slave quarters,” he says as we cut through the trees; the buzz of Japanese beetles roars around my head. “Rent’s cheap enough that I can pay it by doing odd jobs around town instead of breaking down and applying to the Piggly Wiggly. It’d be hard to hunt Fenris from the produce section.”

Samuel’s house looks as though it might fall over in a strong breeze, but I don’t think that’s why I’m nervous as he sticks a key into the door and pushes it open. He hurries me inside and shuts the door behind him.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I don’t have AC. If you can trap the cool air inside, it’s not so bad, but if you leave a door open and the hot air gets in, it stays in.”

“Right,” I say, as if I’ve heard of such a thing a thousand times before. My eyes scan the room—a bed, unmade and lacking a frame, rests in one corner. A single chair, beaten shag rug, a stack of worn magazines… and that’s it. Very bachelor-esque. Samuel ducks into a doorway and lets the door drift almost shut behind him.

I hear the sound of water running, drawers opening and shutting. Just as I’m considering snooping in what I assume is a kitchen around the corner, he emerges. His hair is smoother than normal, and it looks as though he’s washed his face. I raise an eyebrow.

“My landlord is particular. Trust me, you’ll understand when you meet her,” he says, face reddening a little. “Here, brush your hair.”

“What?” I ask, offended.

“Seriously,” he says, passing me a comb. “If you don’t brush it, she’ll say something.”

“Fine,” I mutter, blushing, although when I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror, I realize the helmet wasn’t exactly kind to my hair. I run the comb through it and return to the main room.

“Better?”

Samuel nods and, before I know what he’s doing, strips his shirt off. He drops it onto the floor and kneels down to a dresser drawer. I don’t mean to stare, really, but I find myself doing just that. Samuel isn’t especially muscular and has a farmer’s tan where his T-shirt lines hit. But his skin is smooth and the muscles create soft lines around a tattoo of a family crest on his back, a shield shape with a tree in its center and the name
Reynolds
beneath it. The entire thing seems a little raised, as though if I ran my finger across it, I could read it like Braille—

Samuel turns around, yanking a newer-looking T-shirt over his head as he does so. I frantically search the room for something to stare at.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Yes,” I answer eagerly. I follow Samuel out the front door and toward the antebellum. The house’s back porch is lined with rocking chairs and citronella candles; pink hydrangeas are planted around the edge. Samuel darts in front of me to rap sharply on the back door.

Nothing, save the screech of the Japanese beetles.

Samuel raps again, harder this time.

“Goddammit, I’m coming!” a voice shrieks from inside the house. Samuel gives me an apologetic look. Behind the door is a series of thuds, a few sounds of cats yowling, and finally, a key in a lock. The door flings open to reveal a short, bent-over woman. She’s covered in age spots and her limbs look like a pile of glued-together matchsticks. The walker she’s leaning on has tennis balls stuck on its feet, and she’s wearing a long turquoise muumuu and a neon pink head scarf.

“What? I got your rent check already,” she says, eyeing Samuel as if she’s ready to clock him with her walker should he try to enter.