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“You’re lying,” Sarah Beth said. “You’re a liar. Nobody likes liars.”
The girl ran off into the yard toward Isaiah, who was painting the fence. Evie sank into the chair, shaking. What just happened?
“Look what I found,” Sarah Beth said, startling Isaiah. She had a way of sneaking up on a fella.
“Hey-o, Sarah Beth,” Isaiah said, laying the paintbrush in the grass and wiping his brow with his wrist.
From behind her back, Sarah Beth produced a mason jar. Inside, a tiny frog hopped, desperate to be let out.
“It’s a chorus frog. They come out in the spring and sing. That’s how the lady frogs know it’s time to mate.”
Isaiah blushed at the word mate. He put his face up to the jar. The frog’s huge eyes blinked. It pressed webbed fingers against the glass like it was begging.
“We should put him in the river,” Isaiah said.
Sarah Beth yanked the jar away. “He’s mine. I caught him.”
“He’s scared. I can feel it. Maybe he’s got a family that’s missing him.” The kittens. He still ached for them.
Sarah Beth thought it over. “Okay. Come on. Let’s go to the river together. I have a surprise.”
Evie couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling in her gut about Sarah Beth. Yes, she was immature—she lived on a farm, isolated from others her age. But there was a cunning about the girl that Evie had seen in girls back in Zenith. The way they’d snipe or pinch when they thought no one important was looking their way. How they’d spread all manner of spiteful gossip, then go big-eyed and innocent, even blubbery, if they thought it would get them out of some trouble they’d caused. The truth was, Evie hadn’t been able to warm to Sarah Beth. She kept trying to talk herself out of that feeling. After all, the Olsons were so nice to let them stay, and Mrs. Olson had brought Evie soup and tea while she was recuperating—had treated her like a daughter. Sarah Beth’s birth had been difficult, and Jake Marlowe’s serum had clearly damaged her. She was lonely and strange, and that needy, petulant oddness isolated the girl further. But no matter how much Evie’s heart and head tried to strong-arm her gut, her gut got the last word: There’s something not right about this girl. There’s a reason you feel uncomfortable in her presence.
Of course, there was a way to know. Evie knew that to read an object without a person’s permission was considered a violation of privacy. It was a violation; Evie couldn’t deny that. But she remembered her third-grade teacher saying once that if keeping a secret was harmful, then it was right to tell it. Evie needed to know. From her bedroom window, Evie had seen Sarah Beth loping across the yard toward Isaiah. Evie stole into Sarah Beth’s room. What to read? It needed to be something Sarah Beth used every day. The dolls. They sat in the rocking chair, staring back at Evie. She lifted them into her arms and pressed into their history—into Sarah Beth Olson’s secrets.
She could feel the girl’s loneliness first, and that struck a chord with Evie. Her anger was in there, too. Sarah Beth wanted more than this small life on a dying farm in the middle of Nebraska, and Evie understood that viscerally. It was the first time she’d felt a true kinship with the girl. She had half a mind to stop right then. This was terrible, what she was doing now.
Then something pricked.
Evie could feel it scratching inside her, begging to be let in.
Something about the night Sarah Beth died.
“No. Oh, no, no, no,” Evie moaned as the hidden life of Sarah Beth Olson began to scream its horrors.
The rains had swelled the river to the very edges of its banks. The water rippled and swirled across nearly submerged rocks that two days earlier could easily be seen. Where it sprayed up and caught Isaiah’s arm, the water was still very cold.
Sarah Beth marched right up to the bank, though, unafraid. Isaiah hung back. The frog was starting to tire in the jar.
“Let him go now,” Isaiah said.
Sarah Beth clamped a hand on top of the lid. “I will under one condition. You got to share some of your moon glow with me first.”
Isaiah didn’t want to do that. Every time he did, he ended up feeling kind of sick, and really tired. “Just let him go, Sarah Beth.”
She bunched up her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Moon glow first.”
Isaiah looked at the frog, so desperate to be let out. He couldn’t bear it. Not after the kittens. “Fine,” he growled. He let her take what she wanted, but it felt like a lot this time. More than the other times. When he surfaced, he was tired. A deep throb troubled his muscles; a touch of fever haunted his blood, as if his power had not been shared with Sarah Beth so much as it had been drawn from his body.
True to her word, Sarah Beth let the frog out of the jar. It plopped into the mud, unsure, and then hopped away into the grass.
“So long, Froggy,” Isaiah said. He was a little wobbly, and sick to his stomach. All to save a little frog who might get eaten by something in the tall grass anyhow. But the frog needed saving. Isaiah could sense its misery and fear as it gasped for breath in that jar. And if he hadn’t saved the frog, well, then, who would?
Crows had taken up residence in the trees. It was like they were watching. They started in on their cawing, and Isaiah got that bad feeling in his stomach like he sometimes did before a vision came on. But ever since he and Sarah Beth had been sharing moon glow, he’d been having a harder and harder time seeing those visions. It was like a dream he half remembered but couldn’t quite get back to sleep to finish.
The current was swift. Rapids foamed across the smooth black rocks near the bank. Isaiah could only think of the kittens. His kittens. It was unbearable. He wanted to go back and join the others.
“Aren’t you coming?” Sarah Beth called.
