He still didn’t seem convinced. ‘You’re only blaming them because we haven’t met any other locals.’
‘Ryan, I’m sure it’s them. But even if it’s not, it’s a small town. I bet they know the person or people who are sending us the threats. If we apologise to them personally maybe they’ll spread the word, tell people to leave us alone.’
Ryan got off the swing. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Why? Are you scared of them?’
‘Those freaks? Of course not. I just don’t think it’s a good idea – going to apologise to these . . . freaks. If it really was them who scared the horses, they’ve got a gun, remember?’
‘But they wouldn’t . . .’
‘Wouldn’t what?’
‘Shoot us in broad daylight in the middle of the street.’
‘You think?’
He was confusing her. But surely it would be safe in public? If these kids really were murderous psychopaths, they wouldn’t merely have fired a gun into the air to frighten the horses. They would have done more than leave a dead rabbit outside the cabins. She’d been walking alone when she’d seen them on the path yesterday. They could have attacked her then. They could have shot her when she was lying alone in the woods after falling from the pony.
‘I can always go on my own,’ she said, having no real intention of doing that. Even if she didn’t believe they would hurt her on their own doorstep, there was no way she would go and face those two without Ryan beside her.
She took a step towards the exit, calling his bluff, and his hand shot out, catching her forearm. The swift movement made her gasp.
‘You’re not going alone,’ he said. Thank God.
‘Then come with me.’
He bit his lip. ‘Maybe we should tell our parents.’
‘No. We can’t. I don’t want my dad to know. He’ll confiscate my phone. Stop us from hanging out together. I think this is the . . . the responsible thing to do.’
The way Ryan was looking at her, impressed by her maturity, made her feel the way she did when she went home with a glowing report card, except multiplied by a hundred because it was him and, unlike her parents, he wasn’t predisposed to be impressed by her. She felt proud. Capable. At the same time, though, she was aware that her courage was built on the flimsiest of foundations.
‘I want to go now,’ she said. Before she lost her nerve.
‘Now?’
It was seven o’clock. Still plenty of daylight left. ‘I want to get this over with, Ryan. I won’t sleep tonight if I have it hanging over me. I want to fix this so I can get on with enjoying my vacation.’
‘Okay.’ He shook his head. ‘At least if I die I’ll leave a beautiful corpse. And Glen Troiano might cry at my funeral.’
‘Shut up. No one’s going to die.’ But she laughed.
Five minutes later they were walking fast along the same path they’d taken the first morning here. They passed the clearing where the murder had taken place. Ryan asked her to slow down, but she couldn’t. She needed to get into town before she chickened out. Now they were actually doing this, she felt sick and cold inside. As they passed the spot from which the pony had bolted, the scratches on her back began to throb as if they remembered this place.
They reached Penance and stepped out of the woods, in the same spot as last time. The junkyard was down the road to their left. They headed right, just as they had before. She could hear the wind chimes she’d heard before, somewhere to the east.
They carried on in silence. Frankie wished it could be described as a companionable silence, but the tension between them was as thick as tar. She glanced at Ryan, at his long eyelashes, the fullness of his lips, his fringe flopping into his eyes, and she thought Lucky Glen Troiano.
‘I’m wondering how we’re going to find where they live,’ Ryan said. His voice was jittery, agitated. ‘Do you have a plan?’
She didn’t have a plan. They had reached the entrance to the street where they had seen the twins before. Paradise Loop. There were two smaller kids playing on a front lawn. A man further up the road was doing something beneath the hood of his car. Tinny rap music drifted from the open windows of a house along the street. Frankie looked up at the sky. The sun was beginning to dip and the edges of the clouds were turning pink.
‘Let’s ask these children,’ she said.
She walked purposefully up the street towards where the kids were playing. They stopped their game and looked up at her from the lawn. A boy and a girl, around six years old. They both had the same shaggy blond hair and freckles, and she realised they were probably twins as well. She suddenly had an image of a town where everyone was a twin; a place where all the children were born in pairs, like something from some spooky science fiction movie.