Chapter 35
Then
Casey’s ankles were bony, even thinner than I’d have thought. I should’ve known, though. One Halloween we’d thrifted together Jack Skellington and Sally costumes.
He has Jack Skellington’s ankles.
It was a weird thought to have as I pulled him toward the trees, but what wasn’t weird when burying your crush?
The boy who liked me—my only friend—was dead.
It was my fault. My fault my fault.
Rotting willow
Roots so deep
Searching for some rotting meat.
I come to the garden alone.
My fault. My fault. My fault.
My mind somersaulted. My arms and shoulders screamed as I tugged Casey through the dirt and grass, his head bouncing over tree roots and rocks.
I’d told him to come. I’d told him my secret. And now he was dead.
There’d been that flash of Sight.
Your beloved doomed to become your cursed thing.
And I’d loved Casey. Why hadn’t I told him I loved him?
Did I ever? Did I once?
My face crumpled, and I felt hate course through me. I hate you, Milly Waters, I said.
Somewhere far away, through the woods toward the house, I thought I heard the screen door slam.
If we die
That is fine
I grabbed Casey’s ankles and again began pulling him along the creek trail. I tried not to look at his face. But maybe I could just count his freckles? Like soot flecked on a bed of snow. Blue ringed his lips. Still pretty, my best friend.
I pulled him between two trees, toward the place I’d prepared. The place whose sandy earth was beneath my fingernails.
Casey’s head got stuck among the roots. Inhaling, I let loose a growl and yanked so hard I tumbled backward. His head dislodged from the tight spot, and his body slid as I fell.
The ground that caught me was soft.
This was the place. Not far from the burbling creek. A place he loved. I was once a mermaid here. He was a dragon. Remember that, Casey? How you refused to be a mermaid?
Frances and I’d spent hours in this place, carrying water from the creek to stir up soups and potions in a pilfered soup pot that had been our cauldron. I’d bullied Casey into tasting our potion.
Now here you’ll be forever, Casey. You hadn’t known it was a sleeping potion. Now you’re tucked away for a long, long rest.
It’s nice here, Casey. Don’t you want to rest somewhere nice?
I dropped his legs, and they landed with a thump. My thoughts swam and dove and leapt and refused to line up into something making sense. They were muddy soup in my head. Like mine and Frances’s creek water potion, slipping and slurping and turning everything to fizz.
I squeezed my hands and felt it. The ring. This isn’t mine? Silver like the moon and so cold cold cold.
Cold like a knife in my gut. Someone had whispered, Take this. Keep it.
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
Casey gave it to me—I loved him, a flash of something cold—but I can’t because now he’s gone.
Cold belongs with cold. A cold metal against a cold finger. I slipped it from my knuckle. Sleep well.
What next?
His dirt bike.
I need my aunts.
No.
Ashes to ashes
Nourish and live
How many years
Will my corpse give?
What to do what to do what to do first…
Bury him or move his bike?
Casey was hidden from view, but if Aunt Hattie woke up and saw the bike, I’d have to explain. I can’t I can’t can’t.
She’d think something was wrong with me. Maybe she’d send me away.
Something is wrong with me. I should be sent away.
I raced to the yard. To his bike.
The sky still glowed a hazy pink. What time is it?
I pushed it down our long, twisting driveway, past Ruth’s wards. Useless wards. Useless bones.
Useless death.
One of the bones—a tiny femur, maybe?—had come loose and fallen to the ground. Without thinking, I bent and scooped it up, shoving it in my pocket.
I pushed the bike to the bend in our road, not far from the house.
There was a drop-off where kudzu devoured everything below.
As I shoved the bike over the edge and watched it get swallowed up, there was a blink of clarity.
Oh, how Casey loves that bike! He’d worked so hard that summer at the feedstore.
Saved every penny, hid his money in a jar at my house so no one at his could drink it away.
Now it’s gone.
The front door was shut tight when I made it back to the house: No Hattie-May sitting on the porch with her morning coffee. No Ruth walking to her truck to go to work at the gas station. Would they do those normal things?
Will they come make potions at the creek? Will Frances?
Will Casey join?
No. Casey is asleep, asleep, asleep.
I wiped my nose on my sleeve and kept going.
A shovel was propped against Ruth’s shed. Dark, rust-colored stains covered its tip and part of the handle.
I grabbed it, ignoring the dried blood. Ignoring the familiar way it fit in my hand and the phantom pain that shot up my arm.
The memory of that unnerving zap of power shocked me back into myself.
Then, excruciating, painful lucidity.
Oh God, what had I done? A scream pushed against my ribs, and I thought for a moment that if I didn’t let it out it would burst through me. I couldn’t, though. Couldn’t draw attention. I shoved my fist against my mouth and bit down, swallowing the eruption of pain.
Tears slid down my cheek as I buried my best friend in a shallow, unmarked grave in the woods behind my house. When I was done, I put the shovel back where I’d found it and knew I was completely alone.
I was walking down the greenhouse path when it hit me.
There was someone who could understand. In that moment, I was a kid, and wanted nothing more than what any kid wants when their world is turned upside down. I wanted my mama.