Wink Poppy Midnight (8 page)

T
HE
H
ERO DOES
magic tricks. Not real ones, like Mim and Leaf, but the sweet kind that don't have any true magic in them at all. He showed them to me and the Orphans in the hayloft.

Bee Lee stared at him all through dinner. Bee's got a soft heart, like the red-eyed Banshee in
Piety Shee and the Moonlight Dancers
. Piety wandered the earth looking for a lost love, her nighttime wails like willows sighing in the wind.

Bee Lee's been missing Leaf since he left, and Felix doesn't pay attention to her in the same way—they're too close to the same age, Mim says. But Midnight . . . she looked at him all dazzly-eyed and he didn't mind a bit.

The Wolf came to the hayloft again, but Midnight did what
he was supposed to do. He defended me, like a Hero. He drove her away, back into the darkness.

Mim read my tea leaves again, later, after Midnight went home. But she wouldn't tell me what they said.

T
HE
Y
ELLOWS WERE
standing in a semi-circle, eating plump red cherry tomatoes out of a brown paper bag.

Wink and I had gone into town to visit the Carnegie, and our backpacks were heavy with books. We ate olive oil ice cream from the little Salt & Straw stand on one corner, and got Parmesan and butter popcorn from Johnny's popcorn Shack on the other. Dusk was coming on, and the shadows were growing long. The air smelled like wildflowers, and grass, and snow. In the mountains the air always smells like snow. Even in summer.

We walked down the click-clacking cobblestones of Dickenson Rose Lane, waved to my old house, ignored Poppy's, petted a chill St. Bernard through a white fence, and then went through the Green William Cemetery, toward the woods.

The Yellows were blocking the Roman Luck path. The
Roman Luck path was the shortcut that led to the Roman Luck house, and the Bell farm, and it was our only way home, unless we wanted to walk three extra miles out on the regular roads. And it was almost dark.

Buttercup and Zoe popped tomatoes into each other's mouths, bright red lips closing around bright red tomatoes. Their black dresses and striped socks jarred with the lush trees behind them. They both had on matching skull-shaped backpacks, though school was long out. Buttercup's black hair was in a tight, sleek braid and Zoe had slicked down her short curls and looked like a thirties movie star. They gave us the side-eye while they chewed, tomato seeds on their chins.

Thomas and Briggs were standing with arms crossed and heads leaning away from each other. Deliberately. They must be fighting over Poppy. Again.

Buttercup and Zoe both swallowed, and then spoke at the same time. “Hello, Midnight. Hello, Feral.”

They'd never talked directly to me before. I'd never mattered enough.

Where was Poppy? She put them up to this, no doubt, so where the hell was she?

“If you want to use the path you have to pass a test,” Buttercup said, and nodded her oval face, quick, quick, black braid swishing.

“You have to pass a test,” Zoe repeated.

Thomas and Briggs just stared at us, and ate more tomatoes. Thomas was tanned and blond and attractive in that wounded, sad way that girls always liked. And Briggs was lanky and witty and good at sports and rich as hell. They could have had any girl, but they were Poppy's pawns, just like I used to be.

I sighed. “What are you talking about, Buttercup?”

“It's a kissing test. You have to pass a kissing test.” Nod, nod.

“What's a kissing test?” Wink asked, voice low, hands in deep pockets.

“You both have to kiss each other, and then you both have to kiss Poppy, and then we vote. If we like what we see, we let you enter the forest.” Zoe this time. She took Buttercup's hand, fingers intertwining. They both turned to us, twin wicked smiles.

Briggs threw a tomato up in the air and caught it in his mouth, perfect and fluid, like he was posing for an All-American Boy poster. “I don't know why we didn't think of this before,” he said, still chewing. “It's brilliant. Tomorrow I'm going to stand on Blue Twist Bridge and make people kiss before they can pass. And maybe charge them money too.”

“Like the Three Billy Goats Gruff,” Wink said. Softly.

“What do you mean?” Briggs's eyes snapped on hers. “Are you calling me a billy goat?”

Wink just shrugged and looked tranquil.

“I'm not a goat, Feral Bell.
You're
the goat. That's right, Poppy told us about how you and Midnight were up in the hayloft, doing beastly things—”

“It's a fairy tale.” Thomas stepped closer to Wink, almost protectively. And it kind of pissed me off, because wasn't that my job? But I understood it too, because Wink had that effect on a guy.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Briggs cocked his head and flared his nostrils.

“The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a fairy tale about a troll that lives under a bridge and tries to eat anyone that passes. Everyone knows that story, Briggs.”

Buttercup and Zoe nodded, very wisely. “Everyone,” they said together. “Everyone knows it.”

“Who the hell reads fairy tales? Fairy tales are for babies—”

Poppy stepped out from behind a tree. Gray dress matching her gray eyes, black boots to her knees. She smiled the same Cheshire Cat grin as Buttercup and Zoe, but she had her hands up in a submissive gesture.

“Peace, everyone. Peace. The next thing we know, we'll all be so distracted fighting that we won't notice when these two sneak off right underneath our noses, like they're the
cunning, tricksy heroes and we're the simpleminded villains in a children's book.”

She looked at me.
Glared
at me.

“And I'm not going to let that happen, because I want to see how your little unicorn underwear girlfriend kisses, Midnight. I want to make sure she's good enough for you. The Yellows are going to watch us all and then help me decide if I can allow a past lover of mine to be with this freckled little barnyard girl.”

My mind started racing with all the fighting things Alabama had told me:
Stay relaxed, bend your knees, kicking isn't sissy, be prepared to run . . .

“Five against two, I don't care. We're not doing it, Poppy. I'd let your Yellows beat me bloody before I'd make Wink kiss you.”

But suddenly Wink's hand was on my arm, and she was moving it back and forth in that gentle way she had. “It's all right, Midnight. Let's just do it and move on.” She got on her tiptoes, lips to my ear. “They want you to fight them. Don't give them what they want. Let's just play along and act like we don't care.”

She put her heels back on the ground, turned, and walked up to Poppy. She placed her freckled hands on Poppy's flawless cheeks, ran her thumbs over Poppy's arched blond eyebrows, pulled her face down . . .

And kissed her.

No one had ever taken Poppy by surprise before. Not ever.

One second . . . two . . .

And then Poppy's shoulders relaxed, her eyes closed . . .

Her lips started moving under Wink's . . .

The kiss went on. And on. Soft and slow and lips and girl, girl, girl.

Thomas and Briggs stopped eating tomatoes and looking sulky and aggressive. They leaned forward, shoulders almost touching.

. . . the kiss . . .

Buttercup and Zoe held hands and stared. Zoe's mouth was open a little bit.

. . . the kiss . . .

The light was now an eerie twilight blue, and the forest had gone dark, and we'd promised Mim we'd be home an hour ago.

. . . the kiss . . .

Wink pulled back. Just like that. Snap. She put her hands back in her pockets, spun around, and came back to me.

“Your turn,” Wink said, and gave me her ear-popping smile.

I didn't do it.

I just took Wink's hand and walked right past the stunned-looking Poppy and the stunned-looking Yellows, right into the dusky black woods, not another word.

No one tried to stop us. No one said anything at all, except Poppy, who called out my name, just once. But I didn't turn around.

T
HAT PERT PERT
pert little redhead.

Things were starting to get a little out of control, but I knew I could handle it, I'm Poppy, for fuck's sake. I never give up, ever, I don't have it in me.

I told Briggs to meet me at midnight in my backyard between the lilac bushes and then I told Thomas to come to my bedroom at eleven and we were both mostly naked when Briggs found us, just as I'd planned, Thomas with his hands sliding up my bare back and me with my face in his blond hair and my knees gripping his hipbones, just as he liked.

Thomas's younger sister died, she drowned in the Blue Twist River when she was eight years old, and Thomas was supposed to be watching her when it happened. Their father went crazy, he's in an institution and is considered dangerous to himself and others, and Thomas, oh how sad he is, how he worries about me whenever I hang out at the river, worries
I'll slip in and disappear in an instant, just like his dead baby sister, and I like his sadness, I do, but it's not enough, not enough to stop me.

Briggs swore revenge on Thomas, like a character in a book, and I laughed out loud and asked if they were going to duel at sunrise because I'd like to place bets on who would kill who . . . and then Briggs turned his anger on me, and my
god
I had them both wrapped around my damn finger, it was
too
easy. Briggs said I was going to get what was coming to me, that I'd led them both on, and turned their friendship to ash, very dramatic, especially for Briggs, and it was all so perfect, I wouldn't have wished for more if I'd done it on a falling star.

Thomas started crying then, soft, quiet tears down his tanned cheeks, and I will say this, he was hot even when he cried, just like Midnight, and I felt a twinge in my heart then, just a twinge, just a flicker. Thomas didn't swear or make threats like Briggs, but then, the quiet ones are the ones you have to watch out for.

T
HE
H
ERO ATE
dinner with us, and afterward he asked to see my bedroom, but I shared it with Peach and Bee Lee, so I didn't take him there. Mim had a late-night reading and the twins were camping in the woods. Felix had a girlfriend already, he was like Leaf in that way, and the two of them had claimed the hayloft. His girl was pretty and gentle, with rosy cheeks and bashful eyes, but Mim had given Felix the Bliss and Baby talk recently, so I wasn't worried.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff boy had dark hair and two different-colored eyes. Blue and green.

Different-colored eyes meant a lot of things.

A curse.

Bad luck.

Madness.

A withered soul.

A pact with the devil.

A family secret.

A lie.

A changeling.

A promise, un-kept.

I brought Midnight to the garden, and he stretched out down in the dirt with his head in the strawberries while I spelled out my secrets on his naked back, my fingers drawing the letters up his spine.

He asked me about my father again.

And Leaf.

He tried to get me to talk about my kiss with the Wolf.

But I wouldn't say a word.