A half mile down the train tracks, we reach a rarely traveled dirt road overgrown with blackberry bushes and cattail reeds—no cars have passed down this way in a decade—and we walk the length of theroad until it dead-ends, a star-lit clearing opening up ahead of us.
At the edge of the meadow, an abandoned farmhouse stands against a line of evergreens, windows boarded, the interior dark, crowded with cobwebs and long-neglected ghosts. But at the other end of the meadow, where the ground slopes away, sits a clear, crescent-shaped pond with a view out to the rolling hills in the distance.
We make our way through the knee-high grass, the ground turning soft at the shore of the pond. Oak watches me, and I can feel the question in his eyes.
“I swim here… sometimes,” I explain.
He hesitates, and the air feels tight in my throat. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought him here. He looks uneasy, a flicker of doubt across his face. We’ve already spent too much time together—I’ve risked too much by bringing him here.
“The tulips…,” he says suddenly, not looking at me—like his thoughts have carried him far away from here. “I’ve seen them. In town. People are… They’re acting…” He doesn’t finish.
“I know.” I rub my hands up my arms. “The flowers were never meant to be in the hands of anyone outside of my family.”
He glances at me. “Why?”
I keep my eyes on the surface of the pond, unsure how to answer. In Cutwater, locals tell their own stories, their own legends about why the Goodes should be avoided. And now I feel strangled by my own thoughts, searching for the right answer. “The tulips are responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened to my family. And now that someone has stolen the flowers, passed them around, I don’t… I’m not sure what will happen.”
A cricket chirps from the far side of the pond, the night air brushes across my flesh, but it does nothing to cool me.
“It makes them feel like they’re in love…,” he says. “The tulips.” But I can’t tell if this is a question or an observation. He’s witnessed the tulips in town, and maybe he’s trying to understand what they are—what I am. If any of the rumors are true.
“It’s a lie,” I explain, pulling in a breath. “It’s not real love.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my family has been tormented by love my whole life.” Each word stings to say out loud.
But he falls quiet, the meadow a soft hush around us, until he finally says, “We’re all tormented by something.”
In his face I see the same hurt that I often find in my own reflection: anger and doubt and dread—a feeling that desperately wants to become a scream. “What are you tormented by?” I ask.
His eyes cut to me, and I wish so bad I could see his thoughts—understand all the things he won’t say. Won’t let me see. Understand why I feel a strange, biting ache inside me when I’m close to him. Why he can occupy the air only a few inches from me and not confess his love—not beg me to spend the rest of my days with him.
“The past,” he answers, a bluntness to his words—as if this is all there is to say about it. I swallow, wanting to ask him what he means, what happened to him that he refuses to say aloud. But his eyes are sinking through me, steady and unblinking, in a way no one has ever looked at me before. He stares at me like I might already have the answers to my own questions. Like I am the riddle, not him.
Like he is the one searching for clues in my face.
Like the silence is its own kind of unraveling. Its own truth. Likethe words we say won’t reveal a thing. It’s his eyes that tell me what I want to know. My heart battering in my ears that makes me want to be someone else.
A girl like any other.
Who doesn’t fear the look of curiosity in a strange boy’s eyes.
And this idea spreads like poison down my veins, making me feel lightheaded and wild. I pull my tank top over my head, peeling away my clothes. Because if I’m leaving tomorrow, I truly have nothing to lose. I’ll never see Oak again. This is my last night in this town. A night to be reckless, a night to forget who I used to be, and start unraveling the layers of who I will become.
I stride down toward the water, and I can feel Oak’s eyes watching me: silent, green and alive, as if he’s watching me shed my skin.
The ground is soft and silty beneath my bare feet; the water laps against my legs, my waist, as I wade into the shallows. I skim my fingertips along the surface, glancing back at him. But he stands motionless on the shore: a boy made of the unknown. I’m certain this will all end badly, but right now I want to press this night into my chest and hold on to it for as long as I can. I want to let myself believe I can swim with a boy who has lightning in his eyes. Who seems indifferent to who I am. Who, maybe, won’t fall in love with me. “You coming in?” I ask.
He doesn’t move; he is a watercolor silhouette set against a darkly smeared sky. For a long second I think he’s going to turn and walk away, too afraid, like he’s realized how close he’s strayed to a monster. And I swear I can see the conflict tugging at his features as he tries to decide if he should stay or run. If he’s made a mistake in following me here.
If it’s already too late.
But he pulls his gray T-shirt over his head in one quick stroke, as if to prove a point—he’s not afraid of Lark Goode. And the air gets tangled up in my throat as he moves through the grass, striding down into the water.
The pond ripples around us, two bodies beneath the cloudless, starry sky.
“The water’s warm,” he says, barely above a whisper.
