“She loved you, too.”
Dammit.
I correct myself. “She loves you, too.”
“Bullshit.” Case shakes his head and leans against the doorframe. “Don’t play dat game, Grey.”
“What do you mean?”
He laughs, but it’s the kind of laugh that’s splintered around the edges. Like a thing that’s been dropped. Or stepped on. “Elora was in love, yeah, but it sure as shit wadn’t wit’ me.”
“Who?” It’s the only word I can choke out.
Case strikes another match, and for a second I see his eyes. They’re green, like mine, but in the match’s orange light, they glow hard and bright like the night shine of some nocturnal animal.
“No clue,” he says. “I figured if anybody was to know, it’d most likely be you.”
But I don’t have any idea, and right now, the fact that Elora might finally have been in love – really in love – and I didn’t know anything about it is just one more deep wound.
“How do you know there was somebody else?” I ask, and Case laughs again. Then he turns his head to spit behind him into the mud.
“Didn’t take a fuckin’ psychic to see it. Trust me.”
Suddenly I’m thinking back to last summer. How Elora started pushing me away, almost as soon as I got here. I was suffocating her, she said. She needed some space. Time alone. Things she’d never wanted before. At least, not from me. And I’d been angry. Hurt and ugly. So I’d latched on harder – refused to give her what she needed – instead of taking the time to figure out what might really be going on with her.
What if she’d been hiding a secret romance?
“I don’t know anything,” I tell Case. He blows out the last match, and darkness sweeps over his face again. “I need to get back inside. Honey’s waiting for me.”
Case steps out of the doorway, and I move to squeeze past him. But just as I’m about to step out on to the boardwalk, he grabs me by the arm and jerks me back. Hard. He moves like lightning, raising the frog gig and bringing it down with a stabbing motion in front of my feet. I gasp and try to pull away, but when Case lifts the gig, there’s just enough light to see a thick black snake squirming on the end of it.
“Whoa dere,” he says. “That’s a cottonmouth, sure.” And I recoil like I’ve been bitten. “Gotta be careful pokin’ round out here in da dark.” His voice is thick and slow as bayou mud. “Dat sucka nearly got ya.” Case shakes the dying snake off the gig into the long grass beside the boardwalk. “Careful where ya steppin’， chere.”
Chere. Pronounced like sha. It’s a Cajun word. A term of endearment. Like darlin’。 Sweetie. Sugar pie. Nobody ever calls me “chere” in Arkansas. Only in La Cachette, and usually it makes me smile.
But not tonight.
“T-thanks,” I stammer. My heart is beating ninety miles an hour. I look back down at the boardwalk, and I can make out a trail of ooze and mud standing out against the fresh white paint. Marking the places where the snake has touched.
When I look back up, Case has vanished into the dark. Silently. Like he came.
I follow the boardwalk around the side of the house to sit on the front steps again. I can’t stop shaking, and I don’t want Honey to see me like this.
Across from me, on the dock, I catch another glimpse of dark red hair. Seems like Case didn’t go far. Now I’m more angry than scared. What gives him the right to come skulking around here trying to freak me out? It’s an asshole move.
“I know you’re over there,” I call out. The safety of the well-lit front steps is making me brave. “You planning on staying out here all night?”
Nobody calls back, but someone steps out from the shadows and into the light.
Dark red hair. But not Case.
It’s Wrynn, Case’s little sister.
Wrynn is nine, but she seems way younger. Scrawny and bug-eyed, she always looks startled. Like life has taken her by surprise.
“Comment ?a va, Grey?” she says. How’s it going? A question that doesn’t need answering. She gives me a little wave with one hand. I wave back, and she hurries over to sit beside me on the steps. Like I invited her for tea.
Wrynn’s barefoot. She has on cutoff shorts and a ratty old camouflage T-shirt, probably a hand-me-down from one of her brothers. Her hair spills across her shoulders and down her back.
“I was catchin’ lightnin’ bugs,” she tells me, and she holds up a glowing jelly jar.