August Read online

  It was scary how similar our thoughts were. “I have no idea.”

  “Because it’s two girls and I know Mary wasn’t a swimmer, but she wasn’t stupid either. She wouldn’t do anything dumb like swim out too far. And it was early in the day and she was with her sister; there’s no way she was drinking.”

  “Maybe it’s some sea creature,” I offered hesitantly. “Maybe the Loch Ness monster is real.” No one had mentioned a vicious sea creature as a way to explain what had happened to Katie, but I guess there was always a chance.

  “They did both disappear in the ocean,” said Carley thoughtfully.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look, they haven’t even found her yet. Let’s wait and see what happens. I’m sure the police are doing everything they can and stuff.”

  Carley only nodded. She was in an almost trance-like state, probably from shock, where what I said didn’t really matter.

  She looked at me. “Samuel was right to tell you to stay out of the water.”

  “I guess so,” I said. “Maybe he cares about me more than I thought.”

  “Yeah,” said Carley. “But if it was another accident how will we ever know? How will people ever feel safe to go back in the water again?”

  “Look, Carley, right now there’s no reason to think it was anything other than an accident,” I said. “I’m sure the water is safe. The police would have said something if it wasn’t.”

  “They may not know yet,” Carley muttered. She twisted her hands together, worrying. She sat quietly for a few moments, while I sat next to her. Finally she said, “Did you see Susan?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t tell her that Susan had disappeared when she heard the news about Katie, but I didn’t want to lie. I just decided to leave it out completely. My dad said lies of omission were just as bad as other lies, but he wasn’t there right then. “She was fine. Said she didn’t know where Holt was.”

  “And you believe her?” asked Carley, frowning.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Yeah, I guess I do. I have no reason not to.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t be sad about him, Autumn,” said Carley. “Summer’s so short.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I wanted to scream that I couldn’t help it. That I just wanted to talk to him, to know that he was all right, but that I didn’t even have the chance to do that. I couldn’t say any of that to Carley.

  “I should go to sleep,” she said. She was swaying with tiredness right where she sat. “Hopefully my mom will come home with good news.”

  Even as she said it we both knew that the chances of that happening were very low.

  After Carley had left, I lay in bed for a long time. When I finally fell asleep I dreamed of swimming in dark water, with slimy hands reaching up to grab me.

  Chapter Five

  I couldn’t sleep. Finally, at a ridiculously early hour in the morning I got up and padded quietly downstairs. It turned out I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. Nick and Carley were asleep on the couch, sort of leaning into each other. The blanket was discarded on the floor, probably because it was too hot to use one anyway.

  I peeked out the window and saw no sign of Mrs. Hightower’s car, which meant that she hadn’t come home last night. She would probably call when she thought we would all be awake, but no matter what, it couldn’t be a good sign that she hadn’t come back. I had hoped that I would wake up that morning and someone would yell SURPRISE or APRIL FOOLS, maybe even say that Mary had gotten fall-down-drunk after all and hit her head, but had been found safe and sound. That would have been nice.

  In the living room the TV was on, but no sound was coming out. Even on mute I could tell that the news guy wasn’t talking about Mary, because the picture behind him was of a beach and some sort of drink with an umbrella in it.

  I sat down in the chair that Mrs. Hightower had been in the night before and tried to stay awake, watching the news, but it was too early; I couldn’t do it.

  I woke up who knows how much later to someone shaking me. It was Nick.

  “They’re talking about it,” he said. He’d turned the volume up, and we all sat listening, Carley bleary-eyed on the couch and looking as if she had been crying. As she had.

  This doesn’t happen in small towns, I told myself. This is a sleepy town and here two girls my age have probably died. This doesn’t happen.

  “And twelve hours into the search there is no sign of the missing girl. She has been positively identified as Mary Camden. She went missing while swimming with her sister in shallow waters. Search teams, along with the Coast Guard, have looked for her through the night. The girl’s sister, who was with her, said that no one else had been around, and that Mary was not impaired in any way. It is also believed that she was a good swimmer.”

  The news guy kept talking. He was going to call in some expert on drowning, but Nick shut it off. “I think we’ve heard enough. It’s not like they are going to tell us anything that we don’t know.”

  “They could tell us if they think it was foul play,” I pointed out.

  “They already did,” said Nick. “No one else was even near her. What do you think happened? The Loch Ness monster jumped out of the water and ate her?” Somehow Nick saying what I’d been thinking the night before made my hopes sink.

  “Shut up,” cried Carley. “They could still find her!”

  Nick’s face was tight.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess they could.”

  Carley got up and stormed into the kitchen. A second later we could hear pots banging and dishes clattering.

  “I didn’t mean to upset her,” said Nick.

  “I know,” I said. “Have you heard from her mom?”

  Nick nodded glumly. “Yeah, she got a text from her a little while ago. Apparently she’s staying with Mary’s mom until they hear something. She’s distraught.”

  I felt tired and sad. I rubbed my eyes, but I was sure that only made me look worse.

  “What should we do?” I asked.

  Nick shrugged. “What can we do? We can’t look for her. We didn’t even really know her. They don’t seem to think that it was something in the water, just that it was a freak tide or something like that. The news people haven’t made drawn any connection between what happened to Katie and what happened to Mary. They didn’t hang out with the same people, they weren’t swimming at the same place along the coast, they disappeared at different times of the day. The only thing we can do ourselves is to stay out of the water until they know more.”

  “But they might never know more,” I said, thinking that it would be a long time before I ever went swimming again.

  “Right,” said Nick, biting his lip. “We’ll see what Carley wants to do. Do you have plans for the rest of the day?”

  I shook my head. It was still early, despite the fact that I’d managed to fall back to sleep. I had nothing going on until work that night. I would have liked to talk to Samuel about why he’d told me to stay out of the water, because he must know something. There were too many coincidences. First a girl disappears in the water, then I see Lydia, Leslie, Logan, and Susan at the beach, then Samuel tells me to stay away from the water. After that I see Susan and Samuel together like they are actually friends. And Susan comes close to hinting that she knows I have to stay away from water. It almost makes me angry. If they know what happened to Katie and now Mary they should have done something about it. How many more girls would have to go missing before they came forward?

  “I kind of wanted to see Samuel,” I said. “I might text him.”

  “Oh, he’s coming over,” said Nick, running fingers through his own sleep-tousled hair.

  “When?” I asked, jumping to my feet.

  “Not for a few hours,” said Nick, laughing. “I didn’t know you cared.”

  I glared at him. “I don’t. I just don’t want to entertain company in my bath robe.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Nick, still grinning.

  Carley came back into the
living room. She carried a tray with milk, two kinds of cereal, and three bowls and spoons.

  “Everyone eat,” she ordered, brandishing a spoon.

  “You really like your food when you’re upset, huh?” Nick asked.

  He got a ferocious glare for his curiosity.

  “Look,” she said. “I realize I didn’t even know her very well and I’m really upset anyway, but… I don’t know…I just feel so close to them somehow.” She frowned, trying to think of the right words. “I just want to know what happened to her,” she finally said.

  We all ate in silence. I wasn’t really hungry, but I knew that if I didn’t eat breakfast I’d be crabby for the rest of the day, and Mrs. Fritter thought that people who weren’t friendly got less in tips than the cheerful sort. So I always tried my best to be in an upbeat mood when it was time to go to work.

  After I finished my cereal, I went up to my room to shower. Since the day looked overcast and I had felt chilled ever since I’d gotten up, I put on a hoodie with my jean shorts.

  When I made it back downstairs, Carley had also gotten dressed. She wore a white tank top, a blue cardigan, and shorts. Nick sat there, still looking frumpy. I was yet again reminded that guys could look good without even pretending to try.

  “There hasn’t been any news,” said Carley. She was reading a book, while Nick, as usual, was playing some game on his phone.

  Just as I sat down the doorbell rang. Carley got up to answer it and Samuel followed her back into the living room.

  He looked tired and worn. I wondered briefly if he had been a friend of Mary’s, because he looked upset. But I knew that was silly. He didn’t talk to anyone but other Cheshires and apparently the Roths.

  Every time I saw him I felt odd. There was always that attraction towards him and supposedly I was destined to be his queen, and I really had no idea how to act around him when I wasn’t even dating him. We had never even kissed. My first reaction was to run and hide, but as long as he ignored me I didn’t have to worry. I’d told him that accepting his Rose wasn’t what I wanted and he had said that he would respect that. Part of me thought that he was even relieved to hear it.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked. In his hands he held two white roses. He handed the first to Carley and for the barest second I thought I saw designs engraved on the petals, but almost as soon as I looked they disappeared. I frowned as I accepted the rose that he handed me. It felt cool in my hands, like it had been in a freezer. Of course, since it was from Samuel it probably had been.

  Carley took hers and gave Samuel a dazzling smile. “Thank you so much. It was very thoughtful of you. Let me see if I can find something to put it in.” She disappeared into the kitchen while Samuel greeted Nick and sat down.

  Carley quickly reappeared carrying a small clear vase. Her flower was in it, but when she sat back down on the couch next to Samuel, she kept the vase clutched in her hands. I was relieved to see that some of the color was returning to her cheeks and her face looked a little less puffy.

  You could say a lot of things about Fairies, I thought, but they sure were good with flowers.

  “How are you?” Samuel asked her, although his eyes flicked to me. I wondered if he could tell I was pissed. I was tired of not knowing what was going on, and he knew it.

  “I’m doing fine,” she said. “It’s silly, really. Her family must be just devastated, and she wasn’t even a good friend of mine. I can’t imagine what I’d be doing if she had actually been someone I spent a lot of time with, like if it was someone I was as close to as I am to Autumn.” She glanced at me, but I wished she hadn’t. I didn’t want Samuel to be any smugger than he probably already was for telling me to stay out of the water.

  “It’s okay to be sad,” Samuel said quietly.

  “I guess so,” said Carley. “But we don’t even know anything yet. Like, they haven’t found her or anything.”

  Samuel looked troubled.

  “How did you hear about it?” I asked Samuel.

  “The news,” he said, a little too quickly.

  “Oh,” I said, shifting in my chair to smell the flower. The sweet fragrance of rose wafted around me. I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t want him to know that. I couldn’t interrogate him in front of Nick and Carley anyway.

  “Seen any friends recently?” I asked. I wondered if he would tell me he’d seen Susan.

  Samuel looked at me in surprise and said, “No – I mean, just you guys. Do you mean about Holt?”

  I felt like I’d just been punched in the stomach.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “I see,” said Samuel. He didn’t look sorry for mentioning him.

  “Well, I wanted to say thank you for listening to me about not going in the water,” he said. “All of you.”

  Carley blushed and looked down. Nick fidgeted with his phone. “Well, we actually went swimming yesterday,” said Nick.

  I wouldn’t have thought Nick could get paler than he already was, but I was wrong. His face turned the color of freshly fallen snow.

  “Autumn, I told you to tell them,” said Samuel harshly. He genuinely looked upset.

  “Well, I…” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to throw Carley and Nick under the bus, but I had told them. It had just been a ridiculous thing to have to say. I stuck out my chin defiantly.

  “She did tell us,” said Carley. “We just didn’t listen. Sorry. You were right.”

  Samuel relaxed a little. “Please listen to me,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t serious.”

  Carley looked ready to ask Samuel to explain himself, which was just what I wanted. But instead, she just smiled and said, “Whatever you suggest.”

  I should have known Samuel wouldn’t give Carley or Nick the chance to question him. Carley was normally pretty nosy. I wondered if Samuel was using a little Fairy magic on them to keep them from wondering how he knew about the water. I didn’t want to think about that, even his warning them was dangerous, and he couldn’t have a good explanation for wanting them to stay away from the water that didn’t start with, “I’m a Fairy Prince...”

  Just then a flash of movement out the window told all of us that Mrs. Hightower’s car had come into view.

  “Mom,” Carley squealed. She jumped up and raced out the door with Nick following close behind. And there I was, just where I hadn’t expected to be: alone with Samuel.

  “If they don’t stay out of the water… I’ll make them stay out of the water,” he said, looking at me as if I were the problem.

  I was incredulous. Was he threatening my friends?

  “How dare you say stuff like that about them? You can’t tell any of us what to do,” I said hotly. I’m pretty sure I’d already said that about a million times, but apparently I needed to say it again.

  Samuel stood up and came over to kneel next to my chair. His eyes were a more brilliant blue than usual. His hands, on the armrest, were inches from my arm. Suddenly it was hard to breathe.

  “I wouldn’t lie,” he said. Never breaking eye contact. “You have to stay out of the water.”

  I felt slightly dizzy from his nearness, but I nodded. “Okay,” I told him. “I’ll stay out of the water if you want me to. I already have been, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Alright,” he said. “And do you think they’ll stay out this time too?”

  “I’m sure of it,” I told him. Carley was too upset to go swimming. She was too upset to do much of anything except cry on Nick’s shoulder.

  Slowly Samuel sat back in his chair. Mrs. Hightower came into the house looking exhausted. Nick and Carley trailed closely behind her.

  She sighed when she saw me. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had company,” she said when she noticed Samuel. I was relieved that Samuel wasn’t still kneeling next to me; that would have been hard to explain.

  “Of course you did, Mom; Nick’s here,” said Carley.

  Mrs. Hightower sco
ffed. “Nick’s always here. He’s like family now.”

  Nick tried to hide his grin.

  I got up from her chair and let her sit there. It left me sitting next to Samuel on the love seat. Awesome.

  Out of Samuel’s pocket he pulled another flower. I didn’t recognize it, but it was light blue and beautiful. Without a word he handed to Mrs. Hightower and said, “Thank you for having me.”

  Smooth.

  Mrs. Hightower actually blushed.

  Carley let her mother stick her flower in the same vase where Carley’s sat, almost glowing, and finally Carley let it out of her hands, setting it on the coffee table next to where she was sitting. I noticed a change in Mrs. Hightower’s appearance almost instantly. This must be pretty simple Fairy magic, I thought. In fact, after seeing what the Winter Queen had done at the Solstice party, I knew it was. Samuel could be spending all his time going around and cheering people up. The ridiculousness of that idea made me smile. What I was learning about Samuel was that instead of spreading himself thinly to a lot of people, he focused on a few, and he would care about them until he died.

  “Mom, this is Samuel; Samuel, this is my mom, Mrs. Hightower,” said Carley, making the introductions.

  “And does Samuel have a last name?”

  “Cheshire.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Hightower. “I see. Well, nice to meet you, Samuel, and welcome.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was a pause, then Carley asked what we all wanted to know. “Mom, what’s going on? Where were you all night?”

  Mrs. Hightower sighed. “When I left here I went over to the Camdens’ house. Lots of people were already there, getting ready to go out in search parties, but Mrs. Camden has a five-year-old and she needed to stay with him, so I stayed with her. It was the longest night of my life and my child wasn’t even missing.”

  “Was there any news?” asked Carley hopefully.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Samuel flinch.

  Mrs. Hightower sighed. There were tears gathering in her eyes. “No, they haven’t heard anything. The police are still looking, but she got lost so close to dark it has been difficult even to know where to search.”