Chapter 5
ANNABELLE
You are walking back from the convenience store when the car slows at your side.
Your guts bottom out as he rolls down his window. A man. It’s always a man.
“What are you doing out this way?” he asks.
You ignore him, or try to. You can’t help but sneak a glance out of the corner of your eye. He’s an impression. Dark hair. White T-shirt. Blur of a face before you turn your gaze back to the road, your cheeks already burning with shame and interest.
You and Sabrina have been stopped this way before.
Twice, two different men. One slowed and in a gentle voice told you he was lost. Did they know if the parkway was this way or that way?
Oh, weren’t they such sweet girls, such kind girls.
You hadn’t even noticed his hand working up and down or his unzipped pants until Sabrina gripped your forearm so hard that her nails bit into your skin.
Pervert! Sabrina had screamed, and picked up a rock from the side of the road, threw it hard against the passenger’s side door.
You little bitch, the man said, his voice changing then. Deeper, ragged, as though something rough was caught in his throat.
Sabrina didn’t blink, just picked up another rock and sent it sailing, then a third, that dinged the man’s bumper as he sped away.
You had stood still the whole time, stupid and silent as a cow.
Always finding the words for things at least a beat too late.
You envy this about Sabrina, her scalding quickness, her castigating temper.
Her ability to draw up the right words at the right time while you find yourself haunted for days, weeks, by the retorts you could have made, the slights you should have addressed.
The man is still beside you, the smell of exhaust making you a little woozy. His car is creeping along so slowly that you can hear gravel pop under his tires, the creak of the rubber on the road.
“Hey. Come on now, don’t be like that,” he says.
His voice sounds familiar, but there is no reason for a man who is not your father to be talking to you like this unless he is like the others.
You steel yourself to use the words Sabrina did before—pervert, creep—and scan the shoulder of the road for suitable rocks but can’t make out anything bigger than a pebble.
“You giving me the cold shoulder? Really?” A tinge of annoyance in his voice this time.
You stop walking and look, really look. He’s handsome, so handsome that his anger makes sense.
He’s a man used to getting what he wants.
Dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a belt of stubble along his jaw.
White T-shirt fitted to show off the muscles taut across his shoulders and chest. Despite yourself, you feel a flutter between your legs.
The same one you felt the other times, with the other men who pulled over.
You knew enough to be ashamed, to not tell Sabrina, but it didn’t stop the feeling from creeping in, a little fizzle in your veins that lingered even after the men sped away.
Your stupid, traitorous body. The same as Sabrina’s in every way, and yet, Sabrina crouched and gripped the rock. Sabrina found the right words, sharp as arrows.
And then, just in time, you understand. He thinks you are Sabrina.
His voice is familiar because you’ve heard it on the other end of the phone, when you’ve picked up upstairs and tried to decipher your sister’s new life.
The way Sabrina disappears around the curve of the driveway at night, her new habit of spending hours in front of the mirror, turning her face back and forth, her mouth ringed with lipsticks nicked from the drug store or from other girls’ backpacks while they’re busy finishing their homework or gossiping on the bus.
It has been a long time since someone confused the two of you.
You’ve gone to school with the same sixty kids since kindergarten, kids who know that Sabrina is left-handed, that you bite your nails down to nothing.
Sabrina wears her hair down, loose and wild, while you can’t stand the feeling of it on the back of your neck.
You look at the man again. Lock eyes with him.
So much about your life just happens to you, the chime of the bells escorting you through your days at school, the obligations of homework and studying that rule your afternoons.
You and Sabrina shopping for the cheapest cereals every week with the paltry stack of cash your father leaves you, while you eye mounds of fruit or read off flavors of popsicles you can never have.
It occurs to you that you, for once in your life, have a decision to make.
“Okay now. There we go. Is this about last time? Come on, don’t pout.”
And you want to know. Want to know everything Sabrina has been keeping from you.
Where she goes when she disappears down the driveway and waits out of view of the house.
About what happens with this man when she gets into his car.
What Sabrina does with him, who she is with him.
You don’t even know his real name. Sabrina won’t tell.
She calls him the Coyote and won’t even say why.
The decision was always about Sabrina.
“I’m not mad,” you say, trying to get the same lilt in your voice as Sabrina has on the phone, tilt your head a little for good measure.
“Good girl,” he says. “Now get in.”
In the beginning you hadn’t believed that he existed.
Sabrina said she met someone at the bait shop where she worked on the weekends.
But then the phone rang at home a few weeks later and she lunged for it, and while she talked you tiptoed upstairs to your father’s room and picked up the other line.
“I’m not that young.” Sabrina’s voice high and fluty in a way you didn’t recognize.
“I bet you still have stuffed animals on your bed.”
A giggle.
“And honor roll certificates on the wall.”
“Merit roll.”
“Well it’s no fun being perfect, is it?”
“Definitely not.”
“I’d love to see that room.”
“Maybe you will someday.”
A groan from the man like he had bitten into something delicious. You lowered the phone back into the cradle, your cheeks blazing, your back prickled with sweat. A flush of shame at your own honor roll certificates taped above your desk, at your stupid, na?ve pride.
He speeds past the turnoff to your house.
You don’t ask where you are going. He’s got the windows down, the radio on.
Do they usually talk, Sabrina and this man whose name you don’t know?
You scan the car for something that will tell you.
A work badge like the one your father clips to his shirt.
A keychain that says John or Lou or Harry.
Nothing. Just the litter of pumpkin seed shells on the floor of the car.
A half-empty roll of wintergreen Life Savers in the cupholder between you, the same ones that you and Sabrina used to crunch in the dark of the bathroom, giggling as the mints sparked in your mouths like a magic trick.
Then, he’s guiding the car off the main road, onto a dirt path.
Past a sign that says PRIVATE PROPERTY. You, the rule-follower, are brimming with questions.
Whose property? His? A stranger’s? What will happen if someone finds out you are here?
You bite your lip and stare out the window.
You pass a cedar swamp, a layer of sphagnum moss dense at the base of the tree trunks—or what looks like the base.
Your mother taught you long ago how the moss can grow in layers so thick that it looks like solid ground, but if you were to step on it you could find yourself in water over your head.
You can’t hear any passing cars from the road where you turned. He’s had to slow the car to a crawl to navigate the tightening path, the trees at the edge of the road brushing against the side view mirrors.
Finally, you stop in a small clearing. Out the windshield, bright-blue water.
You don’t know where you are, but you know that color and what it means: aquamarine, jewel-bright.
The Pine Barrens is known for its cedar water, the tannic creeks and lakes the color of tea left to brew too long.
This water, though, is a Caribbean blue, the beckoning blue of tropical islands.
Of warmer places studded with palms and home to easy, soft breezes.
But here? The color of the water is a warning.
Sinkholes. The woods here are riddled with them.
Blue Hole is the most well-known: Every other year some high school kid or out-of-towner from Philadelphia takes a swim on a dare, having heard the stories but not believing them.
Not believing that water that looks so inviting, so placid, can be home to deadly crosscurrents, that blue holes are really as deep as people say.
One hundred feet to the bottom. The water can be cold enough to cause hypothermia, to make your muscles seize and your lungs tighten and your blood go to ice in your veins.
When you turn to him his eyes are on you, that same play of a smile at the corners of his mouth. The windows are still down but he’s turned the engine off. Without the music there’s just the sound of the woods. The trill of birds from up above and the crack-crack of squirrel patter in the trees.
A second later and his mouth is on yours, the moment shifting so quickly you wonder if you missed something, your brain skipping forward like a stone skimming the surface of a lake.
It is so different from your first kiss, a chaste, dry, spin-the-bottle peck from Gregory Lepone last year.
His fingers are cold up your shirt before he takes it off.