He looks up at me and hastily brushes the tears from his face. “I’m not crying,” he says angrily.
“I didn’t think you were,” I lie.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” he says. “She hasn’t even been dead for that long, and you already forgot that today was her birthday.”
I step back, touching my cheek. So this is why he’s been distant today.
“I didn’t forget,” I say.
“Don’t lie. You didn’t even mention it once,” he continues.
“I didn’t forget,” I insist. “I’m sorry, Miles—?I should have said something. I just didn’t know what.” My knee is almost touching someone’s overturned ice-cream cone that is melting in the dirt. “What happened to your glove, Miles?”
His face fights against crumpling.
“I lost it somewhere.”
“Let’s look for it. I’ll help you.”
I take his hand in mine then. It is cold, like stone, almost as cold as Mother’s always was in the dream I used to have. He lets me hold it for half a minute. Then a sudden burst of applause marks the speech’s end, and he pulls it away again.
We retrace Miles’s steps across the grounds, past the booths of pies and snuffling piglets and confetti left like pieces of gold glinting in the mud. The crowd drifts toward the orchard, settling into seats with glasses of wine and steaming mugs before the concert starts. Beas sits in her chair, glancing over her music one last time. A woman walks over to her, and Beas nods as they speak. I look more closely at the woman, who wears a sharply pressed skirt and has ruby nails and a severe hairdo. I recognize her. It’s the lady from my first day in town. The one who put the note into my bag.
The woman reaches out to tuck Beas’s hair behind her ear, and my stomach curls. It’s the kind of touch only a mother would do.
And then Eliza springs up to them. She is flushed and too giddy to play at being aloof. The beads on her costume hit against one another, shimmering.
“Let’s see if the school has a lost and found,” I say to Miles, edging closer to the orchestra seats. Curious to know what has suddenly made Eliza so happy.
“Guess what?” Eliza clutches Beas’s arm.
“Let’s see . . .” Beas says wryly. “All three of your tournament events have already forfeited to you?”
“No.” Eliza’s voice gets higher. “William asked me to go to the Christmas Ball with him!”
I stop walking. The air thins, and my heart feels like a fist clenching. At any minute it’s going to crumble in on itself and become dust.
Mrs. Fogg turns around and sees me and Miles. I hurry past the three of them, into the darkness of the school, with Miles on my heels.
Just find the blasted glove. Don’t think about anything else.
“Where did you last see it?” I ask, forcing my voice to brighten. Blinking back tears when the guard at the front door tells us that no one has returned a missing right glove.
“I went on the hayride with my friends,” Miles says hopefully.
“We’ll check there next.” We cut through the crowd and to the front of the line. I ignore the displeased mutters and hoist myself onto the wagon. The wooden boards creak, and for one moment I catch myself waiting for the dry, sweet smell of the hay bales.
And then I see it: one black cotton finger, barely visible between the bent tufts of straw.
“Aha!” I jump down from the wagon and hand the glove triumphantly to Miles. His face shines at me, and I resist the urge to smooth his cowlick. “Don’t lose it this time.”
I see Will walking toward us. He smiles, lifts his hand into a wave, but I pretend not to notice. Instead I pull Miles along in the other direction.
“What happens if we make it to midnight and nothing has disappeared?” someone asks to my right. “Does it mean it’s over?”
“Don’t say it out loud,” someone else hisses. “There’s still hours left.”
“Even then—?remember the year the dreams went?” a third voice interjects. “We didn’t realize for days.”
