“I know they are.”
“What do you see? Exactly.” His voice is easy. But I don’t buy it. “Or feel? Or whatever.” His jaw is tight. Muscles taut.
Hart is afraid. He’s afraid of me. Of what I know. Of what I’m going to tell him. And I don’t want that kind of power. I’ve never wanted it.
Not over Hart.
Not over anyone.
“I’m not really sure,” I admit. “Dark. And water. The storm. That sudden rain.” I have to make myself say the next part. “She’s running from someone, I think. Somebody’s after her.” I hear Hart’s sharp intake of breath, and I hate myself for being the cause of it. “Mostly, I just feel that fear. Like you said. This awful fear that almost stops me breathing.”
Hart reaches for my hand. His fingers curl around mine. They’re rough and calloused. And they feel like home. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”
“But I still think maybe she’s alive,” I say.
“Greycie –”
“No. Listen,” I insist. “In all those snatches or flashes or whatever, when they come to me, she’s always alive. She’s scared. Lost, maybe. Or hurt, even. I don’t know. But she’s always alive. I never see her . . .” I can’t say it. But Hart does.
“You never see ’er die.”
There are voices and footsteps up on the boardwalk, and Hart and I pull back from each other. He lets go of my hand, and I wipe my sweaty palm on my shorts. Could be tourists looking for Willie Nelson.
Could be. But it isn’t.
It’s them. They’ve found us. The rest of the Summer Children come down the ladder one right after the other, like circus acrobats under the big top.
Serafina.
Lysander.
Mackey.
Evangeline.
They’re laughing about something and talking together. And just for a second, I feel like an outsider. Then Mackey takes both my hands and pulls me to my feet. Sera is hugging me and saying how much she missed me, and Sander is batting those long eyelashes of his. And there’s Evie, still barefoot, looking like she isn’t quite sure what she’s supposed to do – as usual.
That outsider feeling evaporates, and I know I’m right where I belong. The only place I’ve ever belonged.
I just wish so hard that Elora was with them. I feel her absence in the burning pit of my stomach. She’s a deep ache in my bones.
But then there’s this voice in the back of my mind saying, even if she were here, she wouldn’t talk to me. She’d just sit there on the railing, glaring in my direction. Or maybe she’d laugh in my face again. Tell me to go to hell.
It hadn’t been just that last night. Things had been messed up between us all last summer. And that was mostly my fault. I know that now.
Mackey throws one arm around my shoulders and gives me a big, warm grin. “It’s good you’re home, Grey,” he says. “We’re all together.”
The others nod and agree, and we all settle into our regular spots. Evie passes out stale gum to everyone. Just another long and lazy summer day, right? It almost could be.
Except when I look over at Hart, he’s staring off at Willie Nelson again, like he’d crawl out of the boat and join him in the pond if he could. He looks lost.
Hollow.
And I feel the echo of his emptiness way down inside my own soul.
Because I know Mackey means well, but it’s not true. We aren’t all together. We haven’t all been together since we were four years old. Not since what happened to Ember and Orli. Without them, we’re incomplete.
And now we’re missing Elora.
Evie asks me some random questions about school. We chat for a few minutes about my classes. Mackey asks about track, and I tell him I ran cross-country for the first time this past season. He grumbles something about how they don’t have enough runners for a cross-country team.
Mackey, Case, and Elora all go to high school upriver in Kinter. There’s a school boat. Evie and Hart and the twins, Sera and Sander, are homeschooled.
There’s no cell phone service way down here. No internet, either. So this is how summer always begins for me, with the catch-ups and the recaps. Occasionally, Mackey might send me an email from school up in Kinter. Or Elora might call every so often from the payphone up there. But mostly, my Little Rock life and my La Cachette life stay separate. Two totally different universes.
When I’m down here, it’s like my friends and my world back in Arkansas don’t exist. It doesn’t work the other way around, though. Even when I’m up there running track and going to the mall and studying, La Cachette always takes up space in my head. It’s like I never really leave the bayou. Not entirely. My feet stay wet. The smell of the swamp lingers in my nose. And when I finally get back down here at the start of every summer, everything is just the way I left it. Like no time has passed at all.