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Matt stares harder at me. “Are you really a Durand?”
“No, I just forged a whole license,” I snap. “Yeah, I’m a Durand.”
“So you’re like really fucked,” Matt says.
I don’t know how to respond to that. Luckily, Lucas hands me back a five. Parry’s quick to head towards the double doors.
“Don’t forget to fill the comment card on your way out!” Lucas yells at us. Their snickering is the last thing I hear as the doors clank shut behind us.
“Horrible,” Parry says once we’re inside.
“The worst,” I agree. “I forgot how much I hated high school until this moment.”
His gaze softens on me. “You know Colt and I wish we were in your grade…or at least in school when you went.”
“I know,” I breathe. “It’s okay. I had October.”
He considers this for a long moment. “Sometimes I don’t understand her. She wants to protect you fully, yet she’s embedded herself with the people who shit on you.”
“They’re her family,” I say, defending her like it’s the natural thing to do.
“Amelia Roberts isn’t her family.”
I struggle to find a rebuttal. “I’d…I’d never ask October to reject her friends for me, Pear, and I wouldn’t want her to make that choice.”
Parry mutters something about how I shouldn’t have to ask. How I should come first. But I know October did her best when we were in high school. She did more for me than anyone else.
And… “Since I’ve been back, she’s repeatedly put me first,” I realize out loud. “She snuck me into her shed for a place to sleep. She dropped work to check on me at the Harbor Inn. Plus, she literally just left the Lock Ceremony with me and ditched her friends.” And she held my hand. In front of everyone.
Parry eases. “Yeah, you’re right.” He stares off in thought, then focuses on me. “Anyway, I think she wants to be all-in.”
“Really?” I perk up. “Like all-in with me? Did she tell you something or…?” I’m distracted as we reach the very center of the museum where a massive sailboat is on display. Capturing all of my attention. “What. The. Fuck?”
Vini Vidi Vici is painted along the hull.
Parry glances between me and the sailboat. “Shit, I forgot you’ve been gone this long. You haven’t seen the cursed boat?”
“The cursed boat?” I frown and walk closer to the thing. A placard explains the misfortune that occurred on the sailboat, but I don’t bother reading the tale. I turn to Parry. “Aren’t there like hundreds of those?” Lots of accidents happen on boats in Mistpoint Harbor.
“Yeah, but this happened five years ago. Mr. and Mrs. Varga were taking a sail to Cherry Island. They crashed into the ferry. Injured ten Mistpoint residents. The boat didn’t sink, but Mr. and Mrs. Varga died on their way to the hospital.”
“Damn,” I breathe out.
“Yeah, it’s probably one of the worst accidents to date since…” His voice trails off.
“Brian,” I realize. “The car crash.” I shudder, remembering since the accident happened before I left. I was fifteen at the time, and I remember how pissed Brian was when he learned the town was going to put the singed steering wheel behind a plexiglass display in this museum. It wasn’t his car though—so he didn’t have much say.
In the end, Sheriff Carmichael agreed to it.
“He still doesn’t talk about it,” Parry tells me.
“Can you blame him? He crawled out of the broken window seconds before the car caught on fire. If that happened to me…happens to me…”
I’m not cursed yet, and if this museum is anything of an indication, I could be really fucked. I could die.
Or I could survive like Brian and just have the weight of others’ deaths on me. Brian had been out having beers with his old football teammates. He was thirty. On the ride home, one of the sheriff’s three sons had too much to drink.
Emmett Carmichael was behind the wheel.
As Brian told the cops, a deer leaped into the road. Emmett swerved. Slammed directly into a tree. He died on impact along with his brother Josh.
Liam Carmichael, the resident firefighter/EMT, is really the only Carmichael brother left.
I still can’t believe my freshman drama teacher had been in the backseat with Brian. Mr. Owens. One year after I had him in class, he was gone.
I’ve never heard Brian explain what happened, but I read the report on our online newspaper. Mistpoint Daily Gazette. Mr. Owens was pinned behind the driver’s seat, and Brian couldn’t pull him out in time.
He died in the fiery blaze.
Some days, I wonder if Brian wished he’d died that night. His life only got harder after the accident, and the town wasted no opportunity to remind him that he didn’t deserve to be the sole survivor. They’d give The Drunk Pelican fake one-star reviews on Yelp. Teenagers vandalized his catamaran. As the hostess of the Pelican, I remember the bar’s phone going off and off and off. I’d answer each time only to receive the ass-end of a cruel prank. “It should have been you,” a robotic voice would say before the line clicked.
