PROLOGUE
THEO
SIXTY YEARS EARLIER
The first thing I taste is dirt, dark and gritty and metallic. The weight of the earth presses down on me, threatening to crush the air out of my lungs, and the dirt pours into my mouth. But my body reacts as if it knows what to do, and I can feel myself surging upward, clawing desperately through the black loamy soil toward the surface.
I thought I was dead. I remember dying. I remember the hot spark against my temple when I hit the edge of the pier and the sharp, terriblecrackthat I thought was wood and then realized, a second before I sank into the inky darkness of Hanging Lake, was actually my skull.
But I’m not dead, because I erupt out of the ground, sputtering dirt and breathing in the sweet, cedar-scented air of the mountains. I cough and choke, wiping the dirt away from my tongue, and then I slap my hand against my head, feeling for the wound. It’s not there.
I cry out, although words don’t come. They never have for me, and it seems whatever happened in the lake hasn’t changed that.
So I heave myself up, dirt cascading over my body. I’m wearing the stiff grey suit that Mom said belonged to my father. I don’t understand why. I wasn’t wearing it when I?—
When I died.
I roll sideways until I’m lying on my back, and I blink up at the tangled net of tree branches overhead. They’re sparse and spindly, just starting to bloom out. I’m not sure how I can see that, exactly, since it’s nighttime. The forest is dark and filled with the usual night sounds—the hooting of owls, the soft hum of crickets. And the moon is full behind the trees, bright enough to cast silvery light over everything.
I take deep breaths, filling my lungs. I’m alive. I’m wearing the suit, the one Mom insists I put on for church services at Christmas and Easter, the only time we go. I can feel my body working beneath my skin: my blood pumping, my lungs filling. It had stopped, though. I remember that. I sank into the lake, and for a moment, I saw my blood ribboning past me, and then there was a terrible flooding feeling in my chest, and then everything stopped.
Because of Kenny Hickman. Everything stopped because of Kenny Hickman.
Rage slams through me, out of nowhere. A hot, violent, all-consuming rage.
He shoved me.
I sit up, moving faster than I expect. My skin is hot and itchy. My fingers clench. The moon bears down overhead.
It wasn’t just Kenny Hickman, though. It was all of them. Jack Cooley. Fred Parrish. Maggie Stone.
The rage swells through me again, and this time I jump to my feet, my muscles moving with some grace I’ve never had before.When I land on the soft, mulchy ground, my chest heaves, and all I can do is remember.
Kenny pushed me, but Maggie was the reason I was there at all. She cornered me while I was at the grocer’s, her expression guileless.
Some of us are having a party, Theo. Wanna come?
Her big cheerleader’s smile. Her glossy ponytail, curled at the ends. Her big pink bow.
Her loud, braying laughter as I toppled sideways over the pier, as my skull shattered, as the lake swallowed me whole.
I stumble forward and slam my shin against something, a bright burst of pain that, just for a moment, calms the rage. It’s a rock, silver in the moonlight.
No. Not a rock. It’s too carefully placed, jutting up out of the ground like a tooth.
A tooth among dozens of teeth. I’m in a graveyard.
My rage is swallowed up by something else. Fear. Because somehow I know what I’m going to see on that gravestone as I crouch down, and still it’s a shock to find my name emblazoned in the moonlight, carved out in a jagged, unsteady hand:
Theodore Shorn
And beneath it:
1943 - 1960
For a long time, all I can do is stare at those dates. Then I lift my gaze, blinking at the rest of the graveyard. I know it, I realize. This is the little graveyard near my house, where the graves are marked with stones from the ravine nearby, and where Mom likes to come and pick wildflowers in the spring.
Mom.
