Page 51 of Seasonal Fears

Either he’s going to be dead or he’s going to be the living Summer, and that’s that. One option ends with darkness; the other ends with him and Melanie living happily ever after, and probably not being allowed to go to college, either together or apart. The future is an uncharted country, and he can’t even start to guess at what he’s going to find there.

Melanie taps him lightly on the shoulder. “Want to come back to us, or would you rather keep staring at another girl for a little while longer?” she asks, mild as anything.

Harry turns to blink at her. She’s looking at him with a half-peeved, half-amused expression on her face, and he knows she’s not sincerely worried, just like she knows she has nothing to be worried about. He wrinkles his nose before leaning over and kissing her on the mouth.

Her lips taste like chocolate, like sugar and whipped cream and that ChapStick she uses in ridiculously high quantities. He’s never been able to understand how she can eat anything when her mouth is always covered in a layer of peppermint, but after a while, he supposes it just becomes a seasoning.

Melanie laughs as he pulls away. “What was that for?”

“For you. For me. For both of us, being here, together, and not in a hospital room, or dead in some shady-ass motel.” He doesn’t bother telling her death isn’t his biggest concern anymore; that’s reserved now for frozen silence, and the sight of snowflakes dancing in the air. He doesn’t need to. They’ve been together for so long that some fears don’t need to be spoken to be understood, and she nods, loss and longing in her eyes, before she leans in and kisses him again.

It’s longer and slower this time, like they’re trading sips of their respective drinks, and when they pull apart, Jack is gone. Her cup remains; they didn’t hallucinate her. Harry glances around, finding her by the two teens, talking in low tones. He blinks.

“She’s never seemed prone to making friends with strangers before,” he comments.

“Except for us,” notes Melanie.

“Yeah, but we’re all tangled up in the same big ball of metaphysical hoo-ha, so I’m not sure we count.” Harry picks up his drink and takes a long sip to cover how nervous it makes him to have Jack out of arm’s reach. The last time that happened, he had to kill somebody. He doesn’t think an attack in the Starbucks is likely, and doesn’t have that all-over feverish feeling, but it’s still unsettling, and he’s more relieved than he can express when Jack waves to her new friends and comes walking back over to the table.

“There’s a really nice farmers’ market around the corner, apparently,” she says. “California does them all year round, because they’re weirdoes and they have the climate for it. Mostly they’re weirdoes, though. Anyway, I don’t think there’s a challenge coming here, and we all need to move around a little. We can’t stay cooped up in the car forever.”

Harry wants to say that of course they can; it’s when they get out of the car that people try to kill them. Since he’d rather not be killed, the car is currently his favorite place in the world. The car is also starting to take on that clinging funk he associates with long road trips, and if he doesn’t spend some time in the fresh air, he’s afraid his sinuses might actually attempt to crawl out of his face.

He loves the car. Right now, though, a little time seeing other places wouldn’t go amiss. “Sure,” he says. “Why not?”

Melanie beams. Jack nods, looking pleased with herself.

“Cool,” she says. “Kim says it’s open for another two hours.”

Harry assumes Kim’s the girl of the pair, although this is California, so who knows, really? “Hey, did you happen to ask whether she dyes her hair?” he asks.

Jack blinks. “No. Why would I?”

“No reason.” Too bad. Well, some questions are destined to go unanswered, he supposes. Melanie stands, and Harry does the same, while Jack gathers her assorted half-eaten cookies and follows them to the door, just as the pair who pointed them at the farmers’ market reach the counter and begin to place their own orders.

The farmers’ market is, indeed, only a few blocks away, although it’s not a straight line from here to there: they have to stop several times to ask for directions. Melanie is lightly dressed even by local standards, and after the second person comments that she must be cold while looking meaningfully at Harry, he shrugs off his jacket and drapes it gallantly around her shoulders. Melanie rolls her eyes.

“You’re the one of us who actually gets chilly,” she says chidingly, as they walk along what’s supposedly the last stretch of road and the park where the market is being held.

“Yes, but we don’t want to stand out in anyone’s memory once we get back on the road,” he says. “We’re weird enough as it is.”

“This is Berkeley, California,” retorts Jack. “I’m pretty sure those people in black we just passed are on their way to spend a few hours chasing each other around campus, pretending to be vampires. We are so one hundred percent not going to stand out in anyone’s minds after today.”

“Picking up any candidates?”

“Nary a one. Relax, Summer boy. It’s time to shop.”

The farmers’ market is ahead of them, gaily striped awnings fluttering in front of prefab stalls of wood and plastic. Their counters and tables are laden with less of a variety of produce than they’ll see in the summer, but still a dazzling amount for two kids from Portland. There are even flower vendors, their wares seriously picked over by this time on Valentine’s Day.

Melanie smiles at the flowers but doesn’t approach, and when Harry nods in toward them, she shakes her head and laces her fingers through his, making it clear that she really doesn’t want him to buy her any. He nods and they walk deeper into the market, Jack flitting from one side of the street to the other as she grabs free samples and admires winter melons. The street has been closed to cars, leaving it dedicated to foot traffic and fruit sellers. Melanie pauses to admire a stall selling at least fifteen varieties of apple, and Harry pulls his hand from hers to drift toward a kettle corn vendor whose wares have scented the entire market carnival bright and appealing. He’s always liked kettle corn.

There’s a vendor selling potatoes next to the kettle corn. Harry’s never considered the virtues of artisanal potatoes before, and doesn’t see why anyone would want to spend five dollars a pound on them, but he’s sure there are things that matter to him that don’t make sense to anyone else, and so he doesn’t feel the need to comment on it. There’s a woman looking through the potatoes with the serious air of someone getting ready to perform life-saving surgery.

That’s not what holds his attention about her, though. She seems to stand in the middle of a flickering kaleidoscope of colors, like someone has wrapped her in one of those sheets of plastic that manage to be clear and infinitely iridescent at the same time. It’s not something he’s ever seen before, and he can’t stop himself from staring.

The line for the kettle corn moves forward, bringing him closer to the register, and the woman by the potatoes glances up, catching his eye. Her hair is very red, save for a streak of white that cuts from the crown of her head and down into her bangs, forming a candy cane stripe that hangs just above one eye, and those eyes are a pale, foggy gray, making her pupils seem to float in a sea of white. It makes looking at her directly uncomfortable in a way the rainbow halo doesn’t, and so he glances away. The line moves again. He steps forward, ordering one of the large bags. It’ll give them something to eat in the car once they get back on the road. The vendor asks for ten dollars, and he’s in the process of handing it over when he becomes aware of a presence by his side.

Whoever it is is standing close enough that he assumes it must be Melanie. Accepting the corn and his change, he turns to offer her the bag. “Want some?” he asks, before he yelps, a short, wordless sound of shock.