Page 34 of Paper Ghosts

Clutch was walking around the outer rim of the party as if he were performing an incantation, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Everyone was trying to steer clear of him. They handed him their whole pack of cigarettes when he only asked for one, their whole secret pint when he only asked for a splash in his red plastic cup of Hawaiian Punch. After a while, he finally texted her. Bailey’s phone buzzed and she took it out of the pocket of her skirt.

Baaaaiiiillllly. I’m here.

She angled her phone away from Vanna and responded,

I see you. You’re surprisingly bad at subterfuge for a delinquent. I can’t just disappear right away.

So you haven’t told anyone you’re meeting me? Interesting.

What’s so interesting about it?

That you’re scared.

I’m not scared.

She finally got up from sitting with the Feathers and their boyfriends by the fire. In a setting like this, firelight, laughter all around, it was hard to act like being the odd man out was actually the superior option, the way she did at school. “I have to use the bathroom.”

As soon as she grabbed her purse, an ember popped in the fire, sounding like a gunshot. She turned quickly to see sparks flying into the air, turning to ash. As the ash floated higher, it appeared to turn into bats fluttering above the fire.

“I’ll go with you,” Vanna said, standing.

Bailey spun around. “Can’t I do anything alone?”

Vanna sat back down, looking taken aback at Bailey’s tone. No one had seen Bailey mad before, and the town’s collective unconscious knew that an angry Wester was a thing to avoid. Bailey gave Vanna’s head a conciliatory pat as she passed, trying to make up for snapping at her without actually saying she was sorry. She’d called too much attention to herself as it was.

She walked to the edge of the clearing where she’d last seen Clutch, but he wasn’t there anymore. She reached the hemlocks, their branches nearly white in the moonlight. She got out her phone to text him, and that’s when he grabbed her from behind and pulled her into the woods.

She immediately turned and faced him. His features were all angles and shadows. “I was beginning to think you weren’t serious,” he said.

“You could have left.”

“Not without you.”

They heard some rustling nearby, and someone called, “I found a big one!” Some boys in shirts and ties, their jackets long discarded, were scouring the woods for more logs to throw onto the fire.

“Come on,” she said, taking his hand, acting like she knew what she was doing.

Clutch paused. An interesting pause, she thought, as she tried to pull him with her. It was like he hadn’t expected this to be so easy. He started moving forward. “Just remember this was your idea.”

“You weren’t coming before I asked?” She was walking backward, talking to him face-to-face as she led him deeper into the woods.

“As I recall, you didn’t ask. You commanded.” He gave her one of his devastating smiles. “But it was perfect timing. My grandfather had just told me I had to be out of the house by Monday. So I’m a free man now. I can do whatever the hell I please. And it’s almost poetic, in a way. At a bonfire, I start to burn everything around me.”

“You weren’t free to do that before? That’s not what I heard.” There were many rumors about Clutch, all based on the idea that he did what he wanted, so don’t get in his way. But that didn’t scare Bailey as much as it seemed to scare others, because Mim had taught her that real power came from making someone believe something without ever having to prove it was true.

“I got a free place to live, and a promise of something better if I just held out long enough and behaved, at least as far as my grandfather knew. Lies. All of it.” He suddenly grabbed her and she felt a burst of unexpected alarm, her first clue that perhaps she wasn’t as comfortable around him as she thought she was. “Watch out,” he said, “you’ll fall in.”

Bailey immediately turned to see they had reached the bank of the wide creek. She hadn’t realized they’d come this far. Fog was rolling over the water, lifting and curling.

“People underestimate that current,” Clutch said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. “Ted Mulveney died in it years ago.”

“Who?”

He offered her a cigarette, but she shook her head. He shrugged as he sucked in some smoke. “Just some guy trying to clear a storm drain. I looked it up.”

“Why would you look something like that up?”

“I wanted to be Aquaman when I was a kid.” Bailey smiled at that. “So one day, I jumped in the creek to see if I could breathe underwater. I almost drowned. I couldn’t tell my dad about it, because he’d told me to stay away from the creek. But it made me wonder: Why did I survive? I must be special.” He looked at her, his eyes so light blue that they were like mirrors in the moonlight. “I bet you think the same thing about yourself.”