Wink Poppy Midnight(10)

I took the bait. “Yes I would, Wink. I’d believe you.”

Wink shook her head, but she was smiling.

“Let me guess. Ghosts drove Roman Luck screaming into the night, and now he’s off in an asylum somewhere, stark raving mad.”

She shook her head again. “The house is haunted, but that’s not why Roman left. Sometimes people just leave, Midnight. They realize they are on the wrong path, or that they are in the wrong story, and they just go off in the middle of the night and leave.”

Here was my chance. Here was the opportunity for me to say that I knew all about people leaving, that my mom took my brother and left, not in the middle of the night, but she left all the same.

The moment was slipping by, slipping, and I was letting it . . .

Wink gave me a searching kind of look, like she knew what I was thinking anyway. “Mim once read cards for a very, very old woman who used to live in Paris. She told my mother that she had an apartment there, on the Right Bank, still filled with her furniture and dresses and everything. She hadn’t been back since World War II. She said that one day she decided she was done with Paris, and the war, and she never went there again.”

“Is that true, Wink?”

“Of course it’s true. All the strangest stories are true.”

And then we both abruptly stopped talking. We just stood next to each other and didn’t talk.

It was coming back, the feeling from earlier, the calm, peaceful feeling . . .

Laughter.

I looked up.

The Yellows were staring at us. Poppy too. She said something and they laughed again. And then she repeated it. Louder.

“I bet Feral Bell has little-girl underwear on. I bet she still wears white cotton panties with polka dots or butterflies. What do you say, Yellows? Should we find out?”

“Shut up, Poppy.” And I tried to say it cool, say it how Alabama would say it, but I must have done it wrong, because Poppy just smirked at me, long and slow.

I looked at Wink and her face was serene. Calm.

“Grab them,” Poppy said.

And the Yellows were on us. The guys held my arms and I couldn’t move. Buttercup and Zoe went for Wink, and she didn’t budge, didn’t even flinch. Just stood there, looking peaceful. Almost like she’d been expecting this all along, and was glad to get it over with.

The non-Yellows gathered around. Watching. Waiting to see what Poppy would do next. Tonisha and Guillermo and Finn and Della and Sung. Rich shiny hair. Rich shiny clothes. Rich shiny faces.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t, Poppy. Please.” I didn’t even try to sound like my brother this time.

But her arms shot out and grabbed the edge of Wink’s green dress, and yanked it up.

Wink’s skinny white legs, red socks to her knobby knees.

Wink’s underwear. White, with little unicorns on them.

Just as Poppy had predicted.

Poppy pointed. “See?” she said.

And laughed.

And laughed.





LEAF GRADUATED AND left. I was sixteen and I wasn’t sure I had a heart, until it f*cking broke in two, ripped shreds and veins and blood everywhere. He didn’t even tell me where he went, just up and off and I even saw him the day after graduation, standing on the road at the end of my street, waiting for the bus, the sun setting behind him, green duffel bag over his shoulder. I would have thought he did it on purpose, caught the bus where I was bound to see him, except that would have meant Leaf thought about me, and I knew he didn’t.

He gave me a nod as he climbed the steps, that’s it, like I was a f*cking postman or a stranger in the street. I tried to reach him, ran all the way, I was as good at running as I was at everything else. I tore, strained, but the doors shut, and the bus pulled away, and that was the last time I saw him.

I’d sworn that I’d never let a boy steal me, steal my heart, my mind, any single part of me. I’d sworn it over and over since I was old enough to know the difference.

But my knees hit the pavement with a crack anyway, and I lost it, I totally lost it, one second, two seconds, head hanging, eyes gushing, but people could see, they might be watching. I got back up, and left two bloody scrapes on the sidewalk where my kneecaps had been.

I thought about finding Zoe and Buttercup and spilling my guts and telling them my secrets. I could see them in my head, black dresses and striped socks, patting my shoulders and graciously tolerating my new vulnerability while losing respect for me with every tear that slid down my face.

I went over to the Hunt house instead and lost my virginity to Midnight.





I BARELY EVEN noticed when the Wolf did what she did at the Roman Luck house. My head was all caught up in the unforgivables, who were bothering me, even with the sugar, so I’d started thinking up a plan to get rid of them for good.

I decided to show Midnight the hayloft. The hayloft is where events happen and plots unfold and I wanted events to happen and plots to unfold.





WINK DIDN’T CRY or anything. I don’t know why I thought she would. The Bells never cried. That’s one of the reasons they were impossible to bully.

She was quiet as I walked her back home, but then, she’d been pretty quiet the whole night. And I didn’t know her well enough to know if that’s how she usually was anyway. She didn’t talk in school, but neither did I, and it didn’t prove a thing.