The Children on the Hill(35)

“I only work mornings. Clean up the sites before new campers come in. Clean the bathrooms. Cut the grass. All the glamorous jobs. The owner, Steve, he’s my uncle.”

“Nice,” I said. “There are worse summer jobs.”

“No doubt,” Skink said.

“So what do you do when you’re not working for your uncle? You in college somewhere?”

“Nah,” he said, settling on the stool beside me. “Not yet, anyway. I just graduated from high school in June. Gonna take some community college classes starting later this month. Do that for a year or so and think about what I might want to get a degree in, maybe apply to a college somewhere far away. Get outta this town for a while.”

I nodded. “That’s smart. You’ll save money doing community college for a year. And I think it’s good to take some time to think about what you really want to study.”

“That’s exactly what my dad says.” He smiled at me, then eyed my books. “Looking into local history, huh?”

He picked up Unexplained Vermont, flipped through it, then held it out to me. “Look, she’s got her own entry. ‘Rattling Jane, Chickering Island.’?” He showed me the drawing next to the short entry: a woman-shaped figure made of fish skeletons, bird skulls, feathers, rocks, even pieces of trash. In the drawing, she was holding open the palm of her hand to show a small round stone. He read out loud from the entry. “?‘Where did Rattling Jane come from? What, or who, is she looking for when she ventures out onto the land? Some legends say a lost love. Some say she’s searching for her sister. Whatever or whoever she’s looking for—watch out! She’s known to take those unlucky enough to meet her back down to the bottom of the lake.’?”

“Hey there, Skink,” said the bartender, who appeared so suddenly that I jumped. “You here for lunch?”

Skink shut the book. “Nah, just a Coke, please, Sam,” he said. When she brought his Coke, he added excitedly, “Do you know who this is?” I shook my head. No. Don’t do this. The last thing I wanted was for word to spread. “This is Lizzy Shelley. She’s got this sick podcast: The Book of Monsters. But she’s most famous for the TV show!”

“TV?” This got the bartender’s attention. “You an actress?”

I shook my head again. The bell in the kitchen dinged.

“Monsters Among Us!” Skink said. “You must have seen it—Lizzy and these two other researchers going all over the country. There was one episode where they went into this old silver mine in Texas looking for a chupacabra! Man, that one scared the crap out of me.” He smiled at me. “The way you belly-crawled through that tiny tunnel… and the scratch marks on the stones—all those animal bones you found. A monster lair for sure!”

I nodded. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the scratches and bones had been put there by the production team.

The waitress smiled. “Never seen it, but it sounds cool. Hey, I think your food’s ready.” She sneaked back to the kitchen.

“Skink,” I said as kindly as I could manage, “I appreciate your… support and enthusiasm, but I was really hoping to kind of lie low here. Not let people know who I am or what I do.”

He grinned. “I get it! Incognito! I totally get that.”

“In my experience,” I went on, “people can be a little more… forthcoming when they think I’m just a regular stranger asking questions. At least at first.”

“Forthcoming,” he repeated. “Totally. I get it. Listen, I was thinking, maybe you’d like to meet some of the kids Lauren was hanging out with, the ones who saw the stone and heard her stories about meeting Rattling Jane.”

“Absolutely,” I said, as Sam set my burger down.

“We’ll take a walk after you eat,” Skink said, stealing a fry off my plate. “I’ll show you the exciting sites of Chickering Island.”

I nodded and went to work on my food, both bothered and intrigued by the new information I’d gleaned, feeling like it held a secret message just for me:

Rattling Jane was looking for her sister.





Vi

June 17, 1978




IRIS WAS PERCHED on the back of the banana seat on Vi’s bike, her arms wrapped tightly around Vi’s waist.

Vi called her bike The Phantom. It was a red Schwinn Sting-Ray, one-speed, with chopper-style handlebars and a long white banana seat.

Eric followed on his Huffy BMX bike that he’d named The Hornet.

Gran didn’t let them ride into town very often, which was okay because there wasn’t much to do there. They didn’t go to the public school. Gran said they were better off learning at home because the school in town was abysmal and “no place for exceptional children” like they were. She’d sent Vi there for one day back in kindergarten, not long after she’d taken them in, and the teacher had yelled at Vi for already being able to read and write and for asking to be allowed to read on her own. Vi didn’t remember any of it, but Gran got outraged all over again each time she told the story. She’d never even tried to send Eric when he was old enough, she just taught him at home the way she’d been teaching Vi. Gran took a hands-off approach, mostly letting them explore their interests and work independently. “You, my lovelies, are clever enough to know what you need to learn and how best to go about learning it,” Gran said. They read a great deal, wrote reports and essays, did experiments, and filled out pages in math workbooks. Each night Gran went over their work, making corrections and suggestions, and helping to plan out the next day’s studies. Gran told Vi that she was reading and writing at a college level already. Vi planned to go to college when she turned eighteen: premed, then medical school, just like her dad and Gran. And Gran had promised her she’d be well ahead of the other students by then.