There’s also Sloane, a girl Margot’s age with fierce eyes and light hair. Aisha, with a giant smile. Ingrid Halstead, who, despite disappearing years ago, has a brand-new poster. The oldest, Jerome McCaffrey, tucked away in the corner. Jerome’s poster is half-covered by a flyer for a support group for the families of missingchildren; in another town, such a meeting wouldn’t have enough attendees to fill the chairs, but not in Blackridge.
All the kids were long gone before we moved here for good, but there’s a familiarity about them. My family had stopped coming to Blackridge for the summer three years ago, but I wonder if I ever crossed paths with them. If their faces were etched somewhere in my brain ages ago.
Behind me, the door chimes as someone enters the store, bringing in a cold rush of air that hits the back of my neck. It was balmy and warm yesterday, but the rain this morning missed that memo.
Footsteps squeak on the mat inside the door and a platinum blonde sidles up beside me. Even in my periphery, her blood-red lipstick is visible. In the three weeks I’ve been working alongside the only non-Griffin employee of the Stacks, I’ve learned that, at least on Nora, who graduated this year, red lipstick goes with anything. Including the black leggings and bulky gray sweatshirt she’s wearing today.
Nora is exactly the kind of girl I’d have fawned over before last December. Girls with bright smiles and boys with pretty eyes have always been my kryptonite. Now I feel a surge of anxiety when I see her. I know what she wants. She wants what everyone wants. To talk, to listen, to be let in. And I can’t give that to her.
Nora turns her nose up at the board and huffs. “What kind of person covers up a missing kid’s poster?” She peels a flyer for trombone lessons off the half-covered photo of the blue-eyed boy and crunches it into a ball.
“A horrible one,” I say.
Nora snorts and absently runs a finger across a few of the posters, an unfocused expression pulling on her soft features. Her stark white bob swishes as she shakes her head.
I know the hollow, aching look in her eyes. The grief that collects on your skin like condensation.
I almost ask her if she knows one of them—lost one of them—but hold my tongue. Opening that can of worms might mean opening my own. And I don’t need to ask. No one makes that expression without the pain to back it up.
“There’s so many of them,” I say.
Nora purses her lips. “They’re so young. Some of them practically babies.”
Almost a month in Blackridge, and I’ve seen how the ghosts of the missing kids permeate each inch of town. The playgrounds too empty for the summer. The posters and billboards urging caution. The sunset curfew for anyone under eighteen.
Some towns have scary stories about creatures in the forest. Blackridge’s lore is based in reality, but the Shadow Man who snatches up kids is as much of a legend as any other. A creature who only enters the light to pull someone out of it.
Nora swallows and reaches up to tuck her hair behind red ears.
“Look, I know it’s kind of the worst thing to say, but I’ve been wanting to say…I’m sorry about your friend. If you ever wanted to…” She gestures at nothing and chews on her lip.
It’s an opening, and before I can even consider whether I want to take it, the memory of Harper’s casket being lowered into the ground wraps its vines around my throat, and I shove it—and Harper—away.
“How do you know about that?” My voice is harsher than I mean it to be, but the damage is done too quickly to wipe away.
Nora averts her gaze as she says, “Your aunt. She’s chatty. I swear I didn’t go prying or anything like that, but…” She clears her throat. “It’s a small town. These people feed on gossip.”
Translation: everyone knows about the skeletons in your closet.
Which is why I’ve made a point to avoid the rest of the town. My routine is simple: home, work, and back home. Occasional trips to the store or park with my siblings.
My throat constricts, and I must be making a face, because Nora stammers out, “Wait—Jo, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” I say, shoving my half-smushed paper airplane into my pocket. One of the edges slices through my fingertip, sparking a blaze of heat. “I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you tomorrow. You’re on, right?”
Her shoulders drop again, and the disappointed purse of her lips stirs guilt in my already twisted gut. The constant knot pulls tighter, and if I don’t get out of this store in the next five seconds, I’ll do something stupid, like cry or talk about Harper.
“Yeah.” Nora’s gaze flits around my face as if she’s searching for something, but she’s not the only one who knows how to put up her guard. “See you tomorrow.”
—
Aunt Paige’s house, and now my house, is two blocks off the main street. It makes walking home easy, which is convenient seeing as I’m carless and likely to remain that way for a while. Mom offered to go half with me on a replacement after the accident, but ten minutes into car shopping, I almost threw up behind the wheel. I haven’t been in the driver’s seat since.
So I’ve become a walker. As long as I make it home before sunset, my mom and Paige don’t protest.
Nothing in this town feels like home. The streets Harper and I raced bikes and learned to drive on are hundreds of miles away. The trees here are thicker and taller, and the air smells like pine. The playgrounds are empty. It’s a different world.
The walk is mostly open space and a two-lane road that stretchesinto the endless forest. A handful of homes are scattered on either side of the cracked road, but the streetlights stop at the end of the main block. Everyone has bright porch lights, and two of the houses have string lights woven into their trees, their glow only visible at night through the leaves.
