Fall in Foggy Hollow is a magical time any year. But this year, we’re celebrating our bicentennial. Not its birth, but its rebirth, when the town rose from the literal ashes of a devastating fire. Which means all the festivities will be bigger and better. The reenactment, the lantern ceremony, the Phoenix parade, the fire festival, the masquerade ball. Not to mention Halloween, which will occur under the blaze of Dante’s comet—an astronomical event that only comes once every two hundred sixty-eight years. There’s a distinct possibility Iwon’t be here for any of it, which makes me want to stand up and scream into the void.
My rage toward Evergreen Landscaping Solutions swells.
Due to the company’s mismanagement and mounting debt, they went under. And my dad’s paying the price.I’mpaying the price. Seven years as a faithful employee, and not even a severance package to show for it. Bills are piling up on our kitchen counter and our landlord keeps lurking like a vulture. Yesterday, I offered Dad my car money. I’ve been working extra hours at Evermore Books to save up. It’s not much, but it could buy us some time. Pay some of the bills.
I should have kept my mouth shut. The offer only seemed to make Dad more desperate, because tonight, after dinner, I overheard him conversing with his cousin on the phone.
He needs a job.
His cousin offered him one.
In Illinois.
I bite my lip and scan the tops of the tombstones.
“Think, Selah. Think.”
But my brain boycotts. It’s done nothing but frantically think for the past few weeks, ever since Dad came home with the awful news. Now it’s exhausted and desperate and filled with panicked static. A hard lump settles in my throat as a red-eyed glow bounces through the fog.
Not the Woman of the Woods, but Twig with aheadlamp on his forehead. The red light bobs up and down in rhythm with his tall, gangly frame as he weaves his way toward our hiding spot in the ruins. His face materializes beneath the headlamp’s glow, which turns his brown skin into molten copper.
The lump in my throat tightens.
I can’t bear the thought of leaving him. Twig Calloway has been my best friend since my first day at Riverbend Elementary.
A book brought us together.Scary Stories to Tell in the Darkby Alvin Schwartz. Not the tattered copy I had at home, with my mother’s name scrawled inside the cover. But a newer version from the school library. All the fourth graders were selecting books for silent reading after recess, and we were the caboose in a very long checkout line. Me, the new girl in Ms. Lyman’s class. Him, the Black kid in Mr. Brunson’s.
He kept casting furtive glances from my hair, which had been cut painfully short two days earlier, to the book I clutched in my hands. Perhaps, if a group of girls hadn’t taken cruel turns making fun of my hand-me-down clothes at recess, I would have introduced myself. Instead, I was trying very hard to keep the tears at bay. To this day, I can still remember how lonely I felt, how very out of place. Perhaps this was why I’d opted for a book I already had—the familiarity of it brought a sense of comfort.
Sometimes I wonder how things would havepanned out if I’d chosen a different book, one that wouldn’t have caught his eye so determinedly. As shy as he’d been back then and could still be to this day, would he have struck up a conversation if I’d been holding a copy ofNate the Great?
Whatever it was, whether the book or destiny, the next time our eyes met, he pushed his glasses up his nose and blurted out, “My name’s Spencer. But everyone calls me Twig.”
The nickname was unusual enough to distract me from the mean girls at recess. When I asked why everyone called him Twig, my chin only wobbled a little.
“Because I look like one,” he said, looking down at himself. And it was true. Twig was as stick-thin then as he is now, with knobby elbows and ashy knees.
“Do you like to be called Twig?” I asked. “Because if you don’t like it, I can call you Spencer.”
He seemed to seriously consider the question, as though nobody had ever asked him before. After a moment, he gave his head a singular, decisive nod. “I like the way it sounds.”
I introduced myself then, officially with a handshake. His was a bit noodle-like, but I didn’t hold it against him.
As we shuffled forward, he peeked at my book. “Do you like scary stories?”
“I love them.”
That’s when he told me all about the Womanof the Woods, and when he finished, he told me he liked my hair, too.
Normally, I didn’t mind my hair. But something about the haircut made it look extra red. I looked around at my new classmates—the ones in front of us still waiting in line, and the rest quietly scrambling for the limited selection of bean bag chairs. “I think I’m the only ginger in our whole grade.”
“I’m the only one with brown skin,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t match anyone. Not even my family.” At my puzzled expression, he told me he was adopted. And as we made our way to a table—by then, all the bean bag chairs had been taken—he invited me to ride bikes with him after school.
He brought me to the Vandenberg Estate.
I remember peering through the wrought iron bars of the black gate, beholding a home that might as well have been a castle while he told me about the family that went missing. When he finished, I told him about my mother.
A sting pinches my temple.
