Archer shakes his head, smiling, the light returning to his eyes. “You know I’d never survive outside of this town. This is where I belong. But you…” His smile pinches together. “You’re better than this place, I’ve always known it. You know it too. I’m glad you’re finally doing it—escaping.”
I stand up from the bed, but Archer holds up his palm to me. “No goodbyes yet. Let’s save them for the morning. You know I hate sentimental shit.”
I laugh. “Okay, tomorrow.”
He walks to the doorway, then stops and looks back at me over his shoulder. “Happy birthday, sis.”
The air inside my bedroom feels heavy, humid, even with both windows open and a breeze sailing from the back garden, across my bed, then out through the front window facing the road. I crave the numbing quiet of sleep, but I blink up at the ceiling—knowing that this is my last night in this room, this house.
A faint tap-tapping enters my ears.
I hold my breath, listening into the dark of the room, but there is only the sound of the creek rushing beneath the floor. Nothing else.
I force my eyes closed, willing sleep to take me under, when I hear another sound.
But this noise is different: softer, muted, like footsteps on wet soil.
I fling my eyes open and look to the front window—where I can see something resting on the sill. Something foreign.
The breeze tugs softly at the edges of the thing, and I feel a sharp twinge at the base of my neck—the part of my brain that tells me this isn’t right. I force my feet to slide to the floor, then cross the room, while a chill scratches down my spine.
At the window I stare down at the thing.
A book has been placed on the windowsill.
Left here. Out of place. Where it doesn’t belong.
In the moonlight I can just barely read the title:Peter and Wendy, by J. M. Barrie. I run my fingers across the black cover, the gold lettering—it looks old, a book that’s been read many times over the decades. I lift my eyes to the open window, peering out into the dark, and catch a shadow slipping away through the tall grass toward the road.
“Hey!” I call.
The silhouette stops, seems to melt in with the dark, but when I blink again, he starts to turn, pushing back the gray hood of his sweatshirt, tilting his chin so his forehead and nose catch the soft moonlight, revealing his face.
He stands that way for a second, then another, as if deciding whether to run the rest of the distance out to the road or turn and walk back to my window.
Slowly he strides toward me.
Oak.
“You’re trespassing,” I say when he reaches the window, my voice hushed, eyebrow lifted, while my heart thuds strangely.
He is quiet and beautiful and almost otherworldly in this late, watery light, the spring air against his dark skin, the trees swaying behind him. “I’m sorry.” His eyes are soft, and he seems different, bold, preternatural, as if he’s emerged from the woods across the road like a storybook creature. “I wanted to leave you something… for your birthday.”
I slide my finger down the spine of the book, feeling the subtly raised letters.
He watches me, and there are questions in his eyes, a paradox he’s trying to unravel—a boy who has strayed too close to a cursed girl, standing in the moonlight, Forsaken Creek churning only a few feet away. He should leave, back away from the window. But I don’t want him to… not yet. I like being close to him, a boy who still shows no sign of delirium.
A boy I don’t understand.
“I wasn’t sure if you already owned a copy,” he adds, shoulders dropped, easy, his hands sunk into the pockets of his jeans.
I shake my head and smile. The books I’ve read are always borrowed, a library stamp on the inside flap stating the date it must be given back. “It looks old,” I say, turning it over in my hands.
“My father has a library of rare books.”
My eyes flick to his. “Does your father collect them?” I ask, hoping to extract any kernel of information about who Oak is.
“Yeah, and other things.”
