Wicked Charm(17)

Jealousy.

I have to put a stop to it right away.

I glance at the girl near me who won't take her eyes off my face. And  then I give her a full heart-stopping smile. She takes it as an  invitation to join me. I don't object.

She tells me her name. Blah, blah. I don't care.

I glance at Willow, who is watching me back. I pretend to pay better  attention to the girl in front of me. What was her name again? She moves  in closer.

Five minutes pass. The girl continues to prattle on.

Ten minutes. Charlotte returns and begins talking to her.

I have to get Willow out of my mind.

The guy Charlotte met is part of the same group of friends as the girl next to me.

Twenty minutes. Charlotte invites them all to the house. There's four  total. I don't catch their names because I'm too busy thinking of  Willow.

I don't want to let the words burst free. Go out with me, Willow. A real date. I'll show you that I can be nice.

I'm dangerously close to speaking this out loud.

Damn, Willow. Somehow, she snuck into my mind. Maybe I will actually ask her out. Soon.





15


Willow

My dreams are strangling me, choking the very air from my lungs. I have  somehow gone back a few hours to the pool, the scene replaying in  haunting clarity. Beau leaves with a group of people, one of them being  the girl who seemed to like him. I wonder if he likes her, too. The  scene shifts. From my porch, I watch all six of them lounge in chairs  off the side of his cabin, soaking up the sun until it falls from the  sky. Jealousy burns, singeing my insides.

Creak.

A sound wakes me from my slumber. My eyes crack open enough to see a  figure in my room. I sit up quickly, and then remember that Jorie spent  the night. She stands by my window, arms leaning against the edge. At  first, I think she must have sleepwalked, but then I notice her open,  alert eyes.

"You okay?" I ask.

She startles. "Yeah, sorry to wake you."

I pull back my tangled covers and join her. "Why are you up?"

"Nightmare," Jorie says, trembling. "I had a dream that Beau came for me next, that he was the killer."

I peer outside, drawn to the moon shining off Beau's roof, making it  look like a waxed, slippery thing. Stars claw holes above. Something  howls a nighttime lullaby.         

     



 

The front door opens, and the pool girl exits with Beau at her side. I  don't know what happened between them, only that she obviously isn't  staying the night. Why is he spending time with her in the first place?  Did they do more than talk? Charlotte and the other three friends follow  her.

They get in a car and leave, headlight glare swallowed by the shadows of  the trees. Charlotte and Beau stay. I glace at the clock. It's two  minutes past midnight. The car vanishes from sight. Beau turns toward my  house and tilts his head like he means to find my top-floor window.  Darkness cloaks the room, making it impossible for him to see me. Still,  I feel his gaze.

"Come on," Jorie says, draping an arm over my shoulder. "Let's get back to sleep."

Though I thought it'd be hard to fall asleep while thinking of Beau, I  somehow managed to rest a couple of hours ago. I can only hope for the  same now.

Beau doesn't move from his front porch. The image of him burns my mind  as I close the curtains, and slink back to bed. My sleep is not  peaceful. It feels as though Beau's stare has followed me through the  window and into my dreams.

 …

The news of another murder stuns my family at breakfast Sunday morning.

"A serial killer?" Mom asks, dipping her bread in runny yolk.

"It's a Mangroves Murder, so I suppose," Dad replies with an uneasy look.

I can hardly eat my breakfast. Partially because of the news and  partially because I tossed and turned all night, waking up more tired  than when I fell asleep.

Jorie eats next to me, peering at the police officer in our kitchen.  Neither of us heard anything strange. No telltale noises. No outsiders  in the mire aside from Beau and Charlotte's guests. Nothing.

Now, blue-and-red lights pierce the windows. Cops park in our yard. They take boats out, searching the swamp for clues.

The Mangroves Murderer has struck again.

Same details: reported missing by parents. Found bruised and strangled  alone in the bog. Only my family and the Cadwells for miles and miles.  But one detail is different. This girl was killed earlier in the night,  around ten o'clock instead of at midnight like the other victim.

Both were high school students. I didn't know this one, a girl named  Julie Lore. I study the picture the officer has placed on our kitchen  table. It's disturbing, to say the least, to be looking at a dead girl  who was once so alive. Her short brown hair is pinned to one side by a  flower clip. Her thin lips sparkle with gloss. The life still shines in  her doe eyes, which stare right into the camera.

"Did you see her at your neighbor's house at any point in time?" the officer asks.

"No," I answer. All I saw was the girl from last night, who doesn't happen to be the one in the picture.

"No," Jorie echoes. She absentmindedly rubs the hem of her pink shirt,  which matches nice-like with her pink-and-white-striped pajama bottoms.

"You sure you didn't see anything at all, not even the smallest clue?"

"Nothing," we reply.

"Did you know that the girl was once involved with the Cadwell boy?"

"Of course she was." I wince because that's jealousy talking. "He's involved with a lot of girls. So that's no real surprise."

The officer makes a note on his pad before pulling out a card. "Call if  anything comes up, if you suddenly remember anything unusual, if  something seems odd to you."

"Will do," Dad says, taking the card.

When the officer leaves, Dad turns to me. "I'm not sure I want you hanging out with that boy alone anymore."

"He didn't kill anyone," I say. "He and his family have been out looking  for the killer, too. I've seen them. Plus, I know for sure he wasn't  the one."

"How do you know that?" Dad asks.

"Because until about midnight, there were guests at his house," I say.  "He couldn't have been out in the mire when he was home with them."

"In that case," Mom says, "maybe you're better off being with him or  Jorie when you're in the swamp. I don't want you going out alone. I  think you ought to stay in the waters close to the house."

Thankfully, Mom understands that I can't be cooped up all day, that I  need to get out sometimes. I know she wouldn't be able to handle staying  indoors constantly, either.

I nod. "Okay."

This morning is as good as any for a large pitcher of sweet iced tea,  and since I need something mechanical to do, I begin banging in the  cabinets for tea packets. I always do mechanical things when upset to  distract my mind-cleaning, laundry, studying. Today, tea.         

     



 

"What are you doing, honey?" Mom asks.

"Making tea."

Mom nods like this makes perfect sense. Hopefully I can distract my mind from the murders.

I find the tea bags. When the water begins to boil like bubbles coming  to the swamp surface, I drop the tea bags in and wait. I make sure to  double steep it. My hand is extra heavy when adding sugar, the way Gran  taught me. I line up five clear glasses and fill them with ice that  practically topples over the rim because that's the right way to make  Southern tea, thank you very much.

Tea pours smoothly from the pot to a pitcher, and then into the glasses.  I stop halfway to add more ice when the boiling tea melts the towers I  made. I hand out the glasses and take a seat again, placing a sliced  lemon in the center of the table.

I take a refreshing sip. The tea washes away my worries, and I pretend  for a moment that I've not heard of a single murder. That everything is  normal. Perfectly normal.

 …

The chill of the murders returns to me at night when I'm alone in my  bed. I leave the window open. The curtain billows like a ghost on a  breeze. Warm air pools around my body, braiding through my hair and  attempting to slide beneath my sheets. The sky is filled with broken  clouds, and the ground is filled with eyes I can't see, creatures that  peer into the dark. I wonder if the killer is one of them. I suppress a  shiver.

I walk to the window in nothing but my pajama shorts and a tank top. I  spot Beau's cabin in the darkness easily enough. I make for the stairs  and out the front doors. I need to feel humidity on my skin, a  splintered deck beneath my feet.

It's past midnight. No one is awake but me, the crickets, and the stars.  I stick close to the front door, just in case. I don't dare wander with  a murderer on the loose.

The creak of a door makes me squint into the darkness. Beau steps out on  his porch, the moonlight catching in his hair. Shadows cloak me. He  shouldn't know I'm here, but somehow he does.

Beau cuts across the path and stops at the dividing line.

"Willow," he says.

I make not a sound.

"Are you still riding with me tomorrow?"

I don't know if anything happened between him and the girl from the  pool, and he must understand that the situation doesn't look good from  my point of view.