Page 19 of Seasonal Fears

“This is weird,” he mutters.

“It gets weirder,” says Melanie, almost cheerfully. She opens the car door and steps into the night, letting a gust of cold air in. Has it always been this cold in February? Harry shivers.

It has. He knows it has. He’s just never felt it like this before.

Melanie doesn’t walk away from the car, doesn’t leave him. Just shuts the door, puts her hands on her hips, and says, in a perfectly conversational tone, “All right. I’m ready to listen now, if you’ve been following us the way I think you have.”

“You can feel me,” says the little girl he thought he saw before in her front yard, melting out of the shadows of the nearest hedge. She’s short and slight and almost disappears in the dark, but when she smiles, it’s impossibly visible. “That’s a good sign.”

“I couldn’t feel you, I just figured anyone who was willing to break into my house to tell me a fairy tale would probably be planning to ambush us at the school.”

“So I guess if I tell you I wasn’t here until you called me, you’ll call me a liar.”

“Yup,” says Melanie, almost jovially.

Harry gets out of the car and leans against it, watching the two of them warily. “One of you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“You have your own guide, Summer boy,” says the child. “I wouldn’t want to interfere.”

“I promise you, no one has come to guide me to anything,” says Harry.

“If you can help me, you can help him,” says Melanie. “We’re a package deal. He fell down the same time I did.”

“But he still has a heartbeat, right?” asks the kid. “That’s because he’s summer-tied, not winter-bound. He’s not dead yet, and I’m the spirit of the Winter Ascendant. I can’t help him.”

“Then you can’t help me,” says Melanie, and moves to get back in the car. Her back is stiff, her shoulders straight. Harry recognizes her posture. It’s the stance she takes when she’s about to demonstrate the depth and breadth of her rather impressive stubbornness, which has been dazzling him since they were kids and he watched her successfully argue her father into taking them to Disneyland, even though he’d said it wasn’t possible, that her heart couldn’t take the strain. She got to meet Mickey then. She’s going to convince this kid now. He knows it.

Apparently the kid does too, because she sighs and speaks before Melanie can open the car door. “Wait.” She sounds faintly distraught, like this isn’t the way she expected her evening to go, and that’s reasonable enough, since this isn’t the way he expected his evening to go, either. He was supposed to be at the school by now, getting Mel a glass of punch, maybe, or walking her onto the dance floor while some song he only vaguely recognized played over the sound system. Apparently, none of them are getting what they want tonight.

Not even Mel’s father. He’s never seen her blatantly ignore a summons like this before. It makes him uncomfortable in a way he doesn’t know how to articulate, like the world is tilting on its axis.

“I thought you didn’t believe me,” says the kid, a mulish note in her voice. She’s not as stubborn as Mel, he can tell that at a glance—he’s never met anyone as stubborn as Mel, and he’s met a lot of people—but she’s up there.

Harry has never quite seen the point of stubbornness. He’s willing to dig in his heels when he needs to, when it’s important, like he’s done all the times Mel’s father has tried to dissuade him from getting her too worked up, talking like their relationship is somehow the thing that’s going to take her out of the world and not one of the things that makes her willing to stay in it. He’s always known he won’t be enough to keep her here, no matter how tightly he holds on to her, and if sometimes that holding on has become a bit all-consuming, who can blame him? He hasn’t dissolved his own desires in the need to keep her anchored, but he’s buried them from time to time, sublimating who he might have become under the need to be the perfect boyfriend. So perfect that she’ll never die and leave him on his own to figure out who he’s meant to be without her.

Is that what love’s supposed to look like? He doesn’t know. It’s the love he’s always had.

“I didn’t,” says Mel, slowly turning to face the child again. “What you’re saying sounds like a first-class ticket on the train to crazytown, and I’m pretty sure you’re the mayor. But nothing has made sense since I fell down on the football field, and when I got up to get dressed for the dance…” Her voice falters.

For a moment, a long, terrible moment, Melanie is completely silent. Harry, as he’s always done, hurries to fill the gap.

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced, which is funny, since I usually know all Mel’s friends, and I think I’d have noticed if her father decided to let her start babysitting again. He’s always been really opposed to the idea. Something about it being bad for the kids if they have to watch their sitter stop breathing before Mom and Dad get home. I’m—”

“You’re Harry March,” says the girl. “You’re lucky, you know. Not all the Summers start out this close to their Winter. Not all of them even get along. The last Summer hated her Winter. I wasn’t around when they were crowned, but everyone says they hated each other from the start, and the longer things went on, the worse they got. You’re not going to be like that, I can already tell. You’re going to be a proper sitting court, and you’re going to do your jobs.”

Harry frowns. “So you know who I am, and you don’t make any sense, and I support not making sense—sometimes, making sense is a waste of both time and wit on an inferior partner, although I’m a little stung to already be dismissed so fast—but I’d like to know who you are if we’re going to be standing about on dark streets, chatting with one another. It seems polite to make our introductions, don’t you think?”

“You know, when they told me I was the nearest and I’d be making this little speech, they didn’t tell me you’d be hung up on manners,” says the girl, sounding amused beyond her years. “You can call me Jack.”

“Is that your name, or just what you want to be called? I’m happy with it either way, you understand, since ‘Harry’s’ not technically my name—‘Harald’ is what they put on my birth certificate—but I can’t say I’ve ever met a girl named Jack before.”

The girl looks distinctly amused, turning her face toward Melanie. “Is he always like this?” she asks. “He talks a lot more than I expected.”

Melanie shoots him a fond look, lips curled upward at the edges in that way he’s always loved, the way that means she’s really and truly happy. “He’s not always like this,” she says. “Sometimes he’s asleep.”

Harry wants to argue. He doesn’t, because she has him dead to rights, and arguing with Mel currently feels a lot less important than whatever the hell is going on with this weird kid in this strange neighborhood. He can almost feel the eyes watching them through the nearby windows. He clears his throat, and both girls turn toward him in silent inquiry.

“We’re going to be late to the dance if we don’t get moving now,” he says.