All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.

ISBN-13: 978-1-942938-01-9

Cover art by Sarah Wathen
Edited by Peggy DeKay and Andrae Lamar
Interior design by Sarah Wathen

www.sarahwathen.com

Give feedback on the book at:
[email protected]

Twitter: @SWathen_Author

First Edition
Printed in the U.S.A

acknowledgements

Special thanks goes to Her Last Boyfriend, for creating a concept album so aligned with my story that one can’t exist without the other. I’d also like to thank my editors, Andrae Lamar and Peggy DeKay, for helping my book become so much more than it would’ve otherwise been. Heartfelt gratitude for experts in their fields, medical examiner Rachel Lange and glass artist Fahan Sky McDonagh: you made my characters authentic and my scenes accurate. Most of all, I’d like to thank my mom, for supporting every crazy artist scheme I’ve had since I was a kid, and my husband, the idea guy and the reason I write in the first place.

prologue

Summer.

“Go on. Get outta here, John.” His grandma shooed him out the door with her broom like he was a stunned sparrow, trapped and ready to defile her sparkly kitchen. He was too polite to scowl, but he should have; his mother never shooed him. His dad had deposited him in Shirley County two nights before, on the first day of summer vacation, and no sooner had Dad pulled away than Grandma Pearl had snapped off the television and claimed the computer was “on the blitz.”

“Set some bugs on fire or make some mud pies, but you aren’t wallowing around in here.”

John had no intention of wallowing anywhere, but he wasn’t sure where to start roaming. The country was so different from the crowded city streets that were usually out of bounds for seven-year-olds. He set his hands on his hips and looked to his right, down a dusty dirt road that wound towards the river to the west. He had never gone that way without his mom or dad, but he knew how to find the key to their private family boat dock overlooking the rapids. The problem was he didn’t want to play by himself.

“Don’t go to the river, just stay around here and find another kid or something,” Grandma Pearl shouted through the screen door, reading his mind.

How does she do that?
It was a skill John wanted to learn. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned his head in the opposite direction, to the neighbors’ house up the road. He knew the McBride family that lived there through stories and vague memories of holiday weekends, but he couldn’t remember anyone by name. There were always plenty of kids around at family gatherings, but the house seemed pretty quiet just then. He looked at the rambling ranch house, wishing he didn’t feel so weird and abandoned, when a glinting light over the white picket fence caught his eye.

Is that water from a hose? No—it was spraying crazy in all directions, like a…like a Wet Willy?

John had seen one in a commercial once. Focused on the place, he could discern faint music blaring from a radio. “Lucy in the sky-y with di-a-monds…”

Then, he heard a loud whoop and the maniacal, high-pitched laugh of a pixie.

“What the f—mmmph?” John sometimes bleeped himself. Even alone, a pottymouth just seemed too wrong. Even though pottymouths felt so good to think.

Feeling less weird, and more curious, John tramped up the road to find out what the fmmmph was going on at the McBrides’s. As he neared the yard and looked through the wooden fencing, he could see a skinny girl, about his age, sporting a bright yellow and white striped bathing suit, and clomping around in red rain galoshes. John couldn’t see much point in the boots; he watched her dive with complete abandon onto a flooded Slip-n-Slide, and the water sloshed out the tops of her shoes when she rose to her feet. Then, as she bounded over to dance a kind of stomping polka under the lunatic rain of the plastic-haired sprinkler, he understood. Obviously, one needed boots for such a dance.

Like a berserker, but not naked.
John made a mental note to find out what female berserkers wore, if there ever were any in the Vikings lore book his dad read to him. Mesmerized by the show, John suddenly vaulted in the air and screamed like a berserker himself when a huge dog slammed against the fence. Jaws snapped and spit flew out of the creature’s mouth. A hellhound!

The girl screamed and leapt across the yard toward the dog. “Randal! Down, boy,” she hollered, pushing her soaked hair out of her eyes and wiping her snotty nose.

John was on his butt, in the dirt, his red Converse tennis shoes like exclamation points at the end of two jutting legs. He couldn’t even think of a word to bleep. The girl shouted over the cacophony of barking dog mixed with Beatles jam, “You better move back onto the street, kid. I taught him to do this if a stranger comes up to the gate.”

Street?
It was a dirt path, but John scrambled up to stand with his pride in his throat. He stepped backwards a few paces until his sneakers met the packed earth of Riverbend Road. He didn’t like being called a “stranger,” and he didn’t remember the pint-sized, water-soaked redhead. She must be a part of the McBride clan, though. In a small town everyone is tied together in dozens of ways: by a sibling or a mother or a best childhood buddy. The city was different: everyone’s disconnected even though everyone lives close together. That was one of the reasons he felt so out of place in Shirley County—he didn’t know everyone who knew everyone else. John considered backtracking and going to the boat dock by himself.

The redhead was cooing at the hulk of a dog, stroking his back. The mastiff, which easily outweighed her by a hundred pounds, calmed and made low purring sounds in his throat like he was a cat ready to curl up on her lap. She straightened up to appraise her guest, her eyes roaming over him, boldly.

Her eyes were black. Weird.

She was pretty. John felt his cheeks burn and then a weird tingly feeling crept up his crotch. He shifted his weight and scratched places that didn’t itch. She watched him, more comfortable in the country quiet than he could ever imagine being.

“Hi, I’m Candy,” she finally belted out, with a wide, friendly smile. “This is Randal.”

“Uh…I’m John.” He put out his hand, starting to approach the fence again, but he snatched it back when Randal lurched forward with a slobbery warning growl. Candy had a strong grip on his collar and, in no danger herself, giggled confidently. Her laugh was gleeful—contagious—and John grinned despite himself.

“Cherry lollypop?” he asked.

Her brows knitted in confusion.

John gestured to her tangled hair, all twisted up and pinned around her head in long braids. Whoever had tried to tame it that morning had lost the battle. The ends stuck out, higgledy-piggledy, her long bangs framing her face in wild matted disarray. The effect was a perfect half-chewed lollypop on her pale slender frame. “Maybe tangerine,” John reconsidered, pondering the color of her hair and cocking his head to the side—she wasn’t quite a carrot top.

“Huh? Oh—candy. Ha ha, so funny.” Candy mussed her uncivilized head and then pointed to his. “You’re a Lemonhead, then.”

Not bad.
His nicely combed hair was already frizzing and curling up around his temples, rounding out his blonde head, just like the cartoon on a Lemonheads candy box. He could feel it fuzzed around his temples and he hated that. His pressed blue polo, buttoned nearly to the top, completed the look. He unbuttoned a button. They both chuckled; their hilarity gaining intensity as Candy snorted and clapped her hand to her mouth with a loud wet slap.

“Laffy Taffy,” John accused.

Candy let her knees buckle, sinking to the muddy grass, and grabbing her crotch. “Stop, I’m going to pee.”

“Oh—sorry.” John cast around for an adult, an outhouse, something.

“Don’t worry, we can wash off.” She tore off across the lawn towards the sprinkler. “Come on, he won’t be mean if you come through the gate.”

John knew he should get soaked too after the hellhound jump scare. He shoved his hands in his pockets and shifted his damp shorts around.
Whoops.

Randal had settled down and didn’t spare him more than a passing glance as he came through the proper gate. He stripped off his polo, kicked off his shoes, and ran headlong into the Wet Willy before Candy could notice that his shorts were already wet in the one telling spot. She couldn’t have noticed much, already dancing in the sprinkler, closing her eyes and singing at the top of her lungs. John leaned over and sent muddy water flying against her skinny white legs. She tackled him first, and then brought him back up to dance, her cold, water-logged hands insistent. Randal jumped in to snap at the whirling tubing, got sprayed and whipped in the face, and jumped back out ad nauseam. He tired of the water play after a while, and slouched over to blend with the wooden shaded porch. His eyes rolled back in his head and his muscular haunches twitched in a dream state. Guard dog indeed.

Candy suddenly froze, gasped, and grabbed John’s arms. She held him still under the tinkling rain of the sprinkler. “Hey, wanna go look for rubies in the creek?”

“There are rubies in there?” John was surprised, but he already trusted in Candy’s superior country girl knowledge of the great outdoors.

“Oh, yeah. Sapphires, too.” She nodded, wide-eyed, and moved in closer to conspire, “My Uncle Pat told me he found a sapphire this big,” her hands cupped to hold an imaginary goose egg, “when he was my age, and he sold it for a million dollars.”

“Wow.”

“I like rubies better though—they’re red. Hold on, let me go put Randal inside.”

She turned off the water. The wiry plastic mini-hoses collapsed to the ground as the last of the water dribbled out the end of each tiny tentacle. She meant to leave John on the porch for the quick dash inside, but her grandma insisted they both come in for a hug and a sandwich, before setting out on their expedition. John was happy to oblige, starting to feel a fondness for red himself.

After lunch, they left the big house through the back door and headed through the yard towards the dense woods. Randal stayed behind, to John’s relief. The kids walked past a wooden play set, complete with slide and clubhouse, which John admired longingly. He wondered where all Candy’s cousins were that day. The place seemed so quiet, not the usual bustling beehive of the large McBride family. As they climbed up a rocky narrow path, into the trees, Candy explained that one of her cousins was graduating from college that weekend and that most of the family were at the ceremony. She had complained of a stomachache, but really only dreaded the lacy dress she would have been forced to wear had she attended the party. Grandma Catherine preferred to stay home and get things ready for the inevitable family celebration at the homestead, which followed all important McBride Family events.

“Somebody has to watch Uncle Tommy, anyway,” Candy remarked with a wave of her hand, referring to her uncle who even John remembered. He was large and kind, probably older than John’s dad, but he seemed like a child in pre-school.

The pair grew hushed as the evergreen forest closed in around them. They stepped carefully over loose earth and around algae-covered boulders, still slippery from a recent rain, and the air felt moist and heavy as they approached the creek. John spotted a patch of bright orange mushrooms sprouting around the base of an enormous pine tree.

“Which alien planet sent those as spies?” he wondered aloud.

Delighted, Candy decided that they must find clues to lead them to the mushroom spaceship, which set in motion a competition to find the crustiest yellow lichen. No rubies or sapphires were discovered that day, but John did find a bright red ladybug that he swore bit his nose, despite Candy’s protestations that “fairies” don’t bite. Candy found a profusion of blue flowers with yellow sunny centers and John helped her thread them into her braids—long since tumbled loose, falling like thick ropes over her skinny shoulders. After hours of searching, they found a scummy brown crawdad that scuttled away into a deep black hole. Almost as good as an alien spacehip. The day grew warm and the afternoon hummed with contentment as the two children picked through woodsy treasures.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, to children lost in their own invented world, the day rushed headlong into sunset. With a despondent look through the trees at the failing sunlight splashed over a nearby field, Candy announced that they had to get back before her grandma whipped her good. Proclaiming the road around would be faster than going back the way they had come, Candy led them through the trees and they emerged on the far side of the woods. Barefoot from wading in and out of the creek and scrambling sure-toed over slimy rocks, John and Candy sat in the grass just outside of the little forest, pulling shoes back on over muddy feet.

“Candy,” said a deep, quiet voice.

John jumped and Candy yelped.

“Oh my gosh. You scared me, Uncle Brian,” she said, grabbing her chest. John turned to see a tall thin man in faded jeans and a worn plaid flannel shirt: cuffs unbuttoned and gaping wide at his wrists. He was walking up the road towards them. “Where’d you come from?”

“Candace, you need to come with me. Right now.” He was gruff and stony-eyed, expecting immediate compliance but not exactly angry.

“Am I in trouble? It’s not dusk yet, we were on our way back home.”

John watched her fidget and guessed she was later than she had promised to be.

“It’s okay if you come now. I can get you home faster in the truck,” her uncle said, smiling and jerking his thumb back over his shoulder where his old blue pick-up idled on the side of the state road, about a hundred yards away.

“In the truck?” Candy stood up and craned her skinny neck to look around him at the waiting vehicle. Its door was ajar. “What’s wrong?”

He held out his hand and flicked his fingers, impatient and distracted. “Just come with me. Now.”

“Okay, I guess. Come on, John,” said Candy, leaning over to haul her new friend to his feet.

Uncle Brian barked, “No. Just you. Let’s go—now.”

“But…” Candy let go of John’s hands, pink blooming across her face. “His grandma lives right next door to Grandma Catherine.”

“We’re not going to Grandma Catherine’s. Your mom wants me to bring you home.” Her uncle clenched his jaw and gestured towards the truck again.

Something was weird. Candy had told John all about staying at her grandma’s house. She would have the whole family room to herself, with her brothers and all the cousins away for the night. They had talked about a sleep-over. She looked uncertainly from John to her uncle, clearly not wanting her fun weekend to end, but also not wanting Uncle Brian to be mad at her. The pick-up’s engine ticked out tense seconds. John strained his vision and could just see the limp figure of another kid asleep on the bench inside.

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