But instead I only want one thing: to get out of here.
I want freedom from this town and everyone in it.
Across the lawn, voices resume their muttering, a few side-glances are shot my way—but quickly; they never allow their eyes to linger for too long. For fear I’ll ensnare them. I’ll bewitch them like poor Tobias Huaman, who nearly stumbled closer, compelled by a feeling he didn’t understand.
The bell rings, lunchtime over—third period about to start—and the horde of students begins the slow, reluctant shuffle back toward the double doors of Cutwater High.
I stuff my notebook into my backpack, then brush away the grass clippings from my pale, bare legs and the blue summer dress embroidered with forget-me-not flowers that was once my mother’s—one of the few things she left behind in her closet.
She must have thought she wouldn’t need it. Or it wasn’t good enough to take.
Left behind: worthless and meaningless.
Just likeme.
Just like the name she gave us: Goode.Herfamily name. Not our father’s.
But I wear her things because I long for her in a marrow-deep, aching part of my chest that I wish I could scrape away. I wish I didn’t miss her. I wish I didn’t think of her every day.
I wish I could just fucking forget her.
I stand up, sling my bag over my shoulder, but I wait before heading toward the school. I’ll be the last one to step through the doors—the last one to pass down the nearly empty halls, where only a few stragglers retrieve textbooks from lockers or hustle from bathrooms—then I’ll slip into my economics class just before the final bell tolls, skirting down the edge of the room to the back, eyes on the floor, careful not to look at anyone. This is how I get through the day.
But as the last of the students swing through the doors, the noise of footsteps and murmuring voices fading into the walls of the brick building, I notice something.
Someonewho wasn’t there a moment ago.
Out in the school parking lot.
I pull my headphones off, slinging them around my neck, and blink through the midday sunlight—eyes narrowing on a boy standing in the shade of a crooked elm, long branches tilting in the breeze, not far from the weedy, overgrown soccer field. One hand is slid into his jeans pocket, the other holds a paperback book. His eyes are lidded and soft, settled on the pages like he hasn’t heard the bell at all.I watch him a moment too long—and his eyes tip upward, finding mine. A cool, clement green. Or maybe blue. It’s hard to tell at this distance. But they reflect the sunlight strangely, beautifully, as if he were some rare creature awoken from a storybook, whose eyes are meant to be seen only by the one who finds him, rescues him, who digs him up from some underground catacomb. But I don’t know who he is: I’ve never shared a class with him or seen him in the halls or at assembly or crowding out of school at the end of the day.
Either he’s new, a transplant from some faraway city, or he’s a boy who doesn’t go to Cutwater High.
I blink again, knowing I need to look away—if I stare too long, he’ll find himself shuffling closer, pulled by some strange thread in his chest, aneedhe didn’t know he had until this moment, as if caught by some indefinable longing. But before I can cast my eyes away, he turns suddenly—unaffected,unfazed—and strides casually out across the parking lot toward the street, the paperback book now slid into the back pocket of his jeans.
He walks away.
Away.
As if he felt no pull toward me, no sickening, undeniable enchantment swirling in his gut, no thread of need in the center of his chest. He looked Lark Goode dead in the eyes, met her stare, then walked away. As if,as though, he felt nothing.
An impossibility.
I swallow, feeling strangely unsteady, like my knees want to hinge, sink down to the dirt.
But the boy is already gone. A phantom, a chimera, slipped from the shadows back into the daylight.
I can hear the sounds of lovesickness as soon as I drop my bag onto the couch: the rustling fingertips, the laughter that is moredesperationandneedthan the ease of real love. Through the back screen door I see Archer out at the edge of the garden, at the border of the woods—where he’s pressed a girl up against a swaying birch tree, her hair knitted between his fingertips, kissing her neck while she giggles uncontrollably, teeth smiling up at the cloudless afternoon sky. Tulip season is almost here, and the girls are already fretting over him, besotted, bending themselves closer, hoping they catch the light, catch a Goode in the palm of their hand. Although I’ve always thought they’d love him even if he weren’t a Goode. Even if he were a boy by another name, they’d spill into his arms like milk down a drain.
It makes me cringe, a bitter prick along my spine—that love can be so foolhardy and false, contorted by old, misunderstood magic. By a garden of tulips.
Love, I’ve always known, cannot be trusted.
Finally Archer slips away from the girl, flushed cheeks and lips, fingertips lingering against hers, arms reaching long, before at last they release each other, and Archer strides idly through the tulip garden toward the house, the girl following, brushing her palms down her cheeks as if she could wipe clean the dizzying lust she feels when she’s near him.
She doesn’t know that the garden of flowers where she walks is partly to blame for the desire she feels for my brother.
But Archer doesn’t bring her up to the back porch—he knows better. Knows I’m tired of the nameless girls he brings home, thennever sees again. Knows it’ll start an argument between us—and starting a fight with your twin is like fighting with yourself. No one wins. Instead he walks her to the side of the house, where I can just see a sunshine-yellow bicycle leaning against the toolshed. He kisses her one last time before she pedals away up the driveway, then turns toward town. Five miles. Uphill. All to spend a few moments pressed against Archer.
