Wink Poppy Midnight (6 page)

But her kisses were . . . hunger, and experience, and skill, and
want.

She grabbed my arms and then my hair and brought my face down to hers and when my lips touched her neck, her skin was sweet as sugar.

I
HAD ACQUIRED
the Yellows my sophomore year because people of my caliber need an entourage.

Thomas was so wounded and sad all the time, broken home and a dead baby sister and he was one of those people who felt things deeply, deeply, and Briggs was the opposite, feisty and temperamental and jaunty like the ankle-biting Pomeranians that live across the street. I drove Thomas and Briggs batshit crazy all year and they were just the icing on the cake, after Midnight.

I was the center, the sun, and they were all spinning around me . . .

No Poppy, you're nothing. You're nothing at all.

Leaf's voice in the back of my head, back of my heart, creeping up on me like a wolf in the woods. I liked to brag to him that I wasn't scared of anything, but he knew. He knew that deep down I'm terrified I'll get old and ugly and it will all catch up to me, and my cruelty will echo through my wrinkles and liver spots and everyone will stop doing what I want or listening to me or even worse, forget about me altogether.

But I plan on dying when I'm still young and beautiful like Marilyn Monroe, just watch me.

Buttercup was the daughter of a martial arts movie star who was never around. He left her here in Broken Bridge along with his wife, and only came back for holidays, and Buttercup's mother was tall and beautiful and elegant, long swinging black hair, like mother, like daughter. I'd seen her once at the farmers' market and once in the bookstore, but I don't think she spoke English, not very well.

Zoe was the leader of the two, even though Buttercup did all the talking. Zoe liked to stand in her shadow publicly, but secretly she made all the decisions, called all the shots, people can surprise you that way, if you pay attention, which mostly I don't. Zoe came from a loving family, her parents were loaded and liberal, and let her do and be whatever she wanted, as in, if she turned to them one day and said,
Mom, Dad, I've decided that I want to be a banana, that's who I am,
they'd be like,
We'll pick up some yellow fabric in town.

I half hated Zoe most the time for this, but sometimes I was just kind of enraptured with her too, like how people fawn over the UK royals, scrambling after each tiny golden tidbit of glittering personal info like starving dogs. I basked in her sunshiny life and daydreamed about being a tiny pixie girl with brown curls and parents that didn't give a damn in all the right ways.

Once upon a time Zoe and Buttercup and I were rubbing gravestones in the Green William Cemetery because that's what they wanted to do and I was trying to be more charitable and let them get their way sometimes. The weather had turned and the sun was gone and Leaf found me as I was scraping my charcoal piece over my thousandth
Here lies the body of,
the dark clouds bounding in.

He told me to follow him and I did, dropping the tracing paper and the charcoal without another word to Zoe and Buttercup, I didn't even think of them, they didn't even exist anymore. We went to the woods and I told Leaf how I was trying to be better, how I wasn't so bad, not really, not in my inner deeps, I was only bad when I
wanted
to be at least, I could help it, I could stop anytime. He laughed and said I was hopeless and sad. But when I pressed myself into his bony ribs he pressed back. He put his palms on my cheeks and his lips on my forehead and he just held me
and held me and held me
until the sky cracked and the rain started pouring.

I swore to be better then, to give it all I had, to put my whole heart in it until I felt it straining. I'd be nicer to my parents, try to be what they thought I was, I'd be a better friend to Zoe and Buttercup, I'd stop torturing all the boys and let them move on and find someone who could love them back. I could do it, I really could, keep it up, Poppy, keep it up, keep it up.

It would last a few hours, all the good intents, a few days even, but then I'd snap back, cruel, cruel, cruel, relishing every little lick of it on my tongue.

I
SHOULDN'T HAVE
kissed the Hero. The kissing was supposed to come at the very end. After the monster, and the fight. After the glass coffin and the pinprick of blood. But Midnight was lying there in the hay and his eyes were sad, and his hair was curling on the apple of his cheek. I wanted to hold his heart in my hand, reach into his chest and cradle it in my palm, like one of Nah-Nah's newborn kittens with its frail tiger stripes and its eyes still closed.

I read the Orphans a fairy tale once called Giant, Heart, Egg. It was about a troll who kept his heart hidden in an egg in a distant lake, so he couldn't be killed. I wished Midnight's heart was hidden far away in a distant lake. I wanted to stand guard over it. I wanted to cast magic spells and train dragons to protect it. I wanted to make sure it would be safe until happily ever after.

Leaf said that reading a book out of order was dangerous, because things were supposed to happen one, two, three, four,
five. And if they didn't, if four went before two, the whole world spun upside down and bad things came in the night.

What would happen now that I had put the end of my story in the beginning? Would my world spin upside down? Would Midnight's?

Leaf never talked. Almost never. He was like Pa. He was like the great horned owl with bloody talons in
The Witch Girl and the Wolf Boy
. He rarely spoke, and when he did, you listened.

Leaf once told me that there was absolutely no difference between the Orphans' fairy tales and the nose on my face, because both were only as real as I thought they were.

S
UNLIGHT ON MY
cheeks.

The windows in my old bedroom, back at the house in town, faced west. So I woke to dim light even when the sky was blue.

But my creaky new bedroom was two big windows of full, dead east. I lifted my fingers and spread them out in the warm yellow sunshine, one behind the other, like I had superpowers. Like I was shooting sunlight laser beams.

My old bedroom had muted green carpet and white walls and a sensible closet.

My new bedroom had a warped old wardrobe that came with the house, a working fireplace, and a slanting hardwood floor that made a nice slapping sound when my feet hit it.

I'd taken down the dusty yellow curtains the day before and left the windows bare. So my room was just the bed, the bare windows, two black bookcases (full), and one dresser. Plus the aforementioned wardrobe. Nothing on the walls. I thought I might put up the map of Middle-earth that Alabama got me for Christmas, right over the bed, maybe. But nothing else. I liked the open space.

Mom used to say I was a minimalist. But Alabama was a pack rat like her, and their endless boxes of pack-rat things were now sitting in the musty brick basement, filling it to the brim. I wondered if they would ever come back for them, or just start acquiring new pack-rat things in France.

Dad didn't seem to mind the boxes. He didn't mind much of anything, concerning Mom and Alabama.

Dad loved my half brother just as much as he loved me . . . and maybe this should have pissed me off, since Alabama got most of my mom's love, and half my dad's as well. But I was sort of awed by my dad's capacity for loving a son who wasn't his blood. I think Alabama was too. He and Mom were of the same mind about pretty much everything, but
with Dad . . . he always gave in, even when he didn't agree.

I used to catch Alabama standing in the doorway of Dad's office, watching him as he huddled over his rare books. He would have this soft look in his eyes, this small smile on his face, and the whole scene was kind of beautiful.

I missed my brother.

I went to the windows and put my palms on the sill and breathed in the green-smelling summer air, grass and dew and pine. The leaves on the apple trees twinkled in the morning sun like stars.

The light hit my bare chest, and I leaned into it.

I liked being out in the country. It suited me better than town.

Three red-haired kids were running around the Bell farm. The dogs were barking happily at a brown-and-white goat, and one of the kids had climbed on the goat's back and was shouting,
Tally-ho billy, tally-ho . . .
but the goat was just ignoring everyone, standing still and eating some wildflowers growing near an old red water pump.

I didn't see Wink.

I closed my eyes. That girl made me feel like I was dreaming. Broad daylight dreaming.

She would make a good Sandman, I guess.

After the hayloft kissing, Wink had cuddled into me, trusting and easy, like she'd been doing it her whole life. Her skinny legs nestled between mine, her palms spread open over my chest.
Her face pressed into my neck so tight I could feel it when she blinked, soft lashes on my skin.

I'd only ever kissed Poppy, before the hayloft. Poppy did everything flawless, perfect. She knew right where to put her lips, and yours.

And yet, Poppy's kisses were flimsy and soft, like butterfly wings or fresh bread crumbs.

But Wink kissed . . . deep.

Deep as a dark, misty forest path.

One that led to blood, and love, and death, and monsters.

She kissed with
yearning
.

I'd felt that yearning before. I'd yearned at Poppy all year, so hard I thought I might burst into flames, spontaneous yearning combustion. But I'd never felt any yearning back.

I stretched into the fresh air bouncing through my window, and smiled.

Who knew there was so much going on inside a small, red-haired girl with strawberry-buttoned overalls.

Alabama dated a lot of girls. A
lot
of girls. Girls went to him like flies to honey, like kids to puddles, like cats to shafts of sun.

I once asked him if he liked any over the others. If any of them meant anything. We were walking home from a late-night horror movie. I remembered Alabama's boot heels click-clacking on the cobblestone street that led to our old house.
My brother stopped walking and looked at me. He always wore his hair long, past his shoulders. He sometimes tied it back with a thin strap of leather, but not that night. It was blowing free in the summer breeze, flickering black then blue then black again in the yellow streetlight.

“Midnight, do you know Talley Jasper?”

I did. Talley was a puzzle. She had waist-long brown hair and played the cello—she was always lugging that big instrument around. She sat by herself at lunch, reading a book while she ate an apple. She was always eating apples. Her parents owned some overpriced clothing company, but she never acted like the other rich kids, spoiled and aggressive and entitled and loud. She was nice to the unpopular kids, and prickly with the popular ones. She once smiled sweetly at me when I accidentally stepped on her foot in the cafeteria. She said, “It's okay, Midnight,” and then walked away, and I remembered being really pleased that she knew my name.

“Talley has more going on inside her head than anyone I've ever met. And someday I'm going to find out what. Meanwhile I'm just biding my time.”

We started walking again, turned down our block. We reached Poppy's big house, perfect grassy lawn, perfect white pillars, perfect gazebo off to the side. I slowed down. Alabama slowed too.

“How do you know that, about Talley? How can you tell?”

“I just have a feeling.” Alabama smiled. “Plus there was the time I ran into her late one night near the Blue Twist River, where it curves at the edge of town. She was just standing at the edge, watching the stars. She turned, caught me watching her, and then . . .” Alabama's eyes flashed the same way our mom's did when she was talking about a new idea for a book. “And then she grabbed me with both hands, clenched my shirt in her fists, reached up, and kissed me. And she never said a word. Still hasn't said a word to me. I once passed her in the hall at school, and I brushed her arm as I walked by. She looked up at me, and smiled, but kept on walking. That's it. So I wait.”

Alabama chuckled, cool and lazy, and then mom called down from the upstairs window, wanting him to come help her with a bit in her story. He opened the door and went to her.

I was still full of Poppy-love when Alabama told me about Talley. It was last summer and I was caught up in her like a soft, white cloud in a black thunderstorm. I'd no idea what my brother was talking about.

Now I knew, though.

I wondered if Alabama missed Talley, in France. I wondered how long he was going to wait for her.

I
FOU
ND MY
dad in the attic. He'd taken it as his new office/library, which meant that he'd had to move six million heavy boxes of books up two creaking flights of stairs the day before.

Dad liked to collect things, like Mom and Alabama did, but collecting was his business, so he had the excuse.

I gave him a mug of green tea. Mom and Alabama drank coffee and nothing else. And my dad drank green tea, and nothing else. I wasn't sure what I drank yet.

Dad took the tea, and sipped, and smiled. He was unloading old wrinkled-looking books and auction catalogs. Everything was a mess, which drove me kind of crazy. I liked things clean.

The angled ceiling meant my dad had to duck whenever he walked to the corners of the narrow, rectangular room. Exposed beams and dust. But he seemed to like it.

I noticed that he'd put up his wedding picture on his antique desk. My dad wasn't giving anything away about his true feelings regarding my mom leaving with my brother. So I looked for hints where I could.

I put my palms on the polished wood and leaned in closer.

My dad in a brown suit, looking big-eyed, deer-in-headlights. But my mom was wearing her wide, beautiful smile, the one that made her eyes go soft and twinkly.

And if sometimes I thought her smile in that picture looked genuine, but a bit strained, well, I was probably just reading into it.

“So you were talking to the oldest Bell girl yesterday,” Dad said, not looking at me, his eyes on the green leather book in his hands.

“Yeah.”

“I like her,” he added.

But what he meant was,
I like her better than Poppy.

My dad knew what Poppy was the moment she first walked through our door. He would have put her on the List of Forbiddens if he could have. Eli Hunt respected maturity like he respected privacy. He let us, both me and Alabama, make our own rules after we turned sixteen. For better or worse, I was in charge of my own life now.