Wink Poppy Midnight(11)

“Do you want to see the hayloft, Midnight?”

We stepped out of the trees and back onto her farm. Two of the dogs got up from where they were sleeping in the long grass near the chicken coop. They shook themselves and came over to greet us, soft, warm tongues on my cold hands.

“Yes I do, Wink.”

And she smiled, lips parting slightly, eyes bright. Just like that. Like she’d already forgotten that her dress had been pulled up and her unicorn underwear seen by a dozen kids from school.

How did she do it? How did she not care?

I was in awe of her, all of a sudden.

I used to be in awe of Poppy. All those years ago, laughing at her blood-dripping knees at the edge of my driveway, her bicycle in a heap beside her.

That’s how I used to be.

Wink’s farmhouse was dark and I figured it must be around eleven. The lights were still on in my house across the road, though, which was typical. Dad often read and worked until deep into the night. We were both night owls. Mom and Alabama were morning people.

I walked over to the ladder I’d seen Wink on earlier. I put my hand on a rung, and started climbing. I’d never been a guy for heights—that was my brother, who used to go cliff-jumping at the alpine lake near Kill Devil Peak. But I’d never seen the point of risking your life for one good fall.

Up and up. My hands were sweaty and my right palm slipped. I looked down at Wink’s red head, coming up beneath me, and felt all right again. I got to the top of the ladder and put one knee in the square opening, and then the other, and I was inside the hayloft.

Watery white moonlight streamed between the cracks in the boards, so I could see pretty well. Wink crawled in behind me, quick and easy like she’d done it a million times, which I guess she had.

The hay smelled nice. Kind of sweet and dry like sawdust. There were square bales of it everywhere, all over the big, airy, angled-ceiling room. Most were piled up against one wall, but the floor was covered in a thick carpet of hay too.

Wink picked up something from the ground, and then reached into her pocket with her free hand. I heard a fzzt sound, and then a flame cut through the darkness. She lit the lantern she was holding, and set it back down. The hayloft filled with shadows.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked. “A lantern with all this hay?”

Wink fluttered the fingers of both hands in a sweet-ish dismissive gesture. “We haven’t set fire to anything yet.”

I thought about Mrs. Bell, and how she let all her kids do whatever they wanted, and how they all were still alive and thriving, somehow. My own father was gentle and compassionate but his List of Forbiddens had been a mile long when Alabama and I were kids. He took full responsibility for our staying alive and we hadn’t been allowed to go ice-skating on Troll Lake, or sledding down Alabaster Hill, or hike any lonely forest trails that might be hiding cougars or bears. It bothered Alabama more than me, since he was born with a death wish.

Sometimes I wondered if that’s why my mother preferred Alabama, because he took risks and liked to put himself in danger and was cool and didn’t care about things that didn’t matter. Alabama had his dad’s silk-black hair and high cheekbones and narrow black eyes. And even though neither of us had ever met him, I had a feeling that Alabama’s father was cool, and full of death wishes, just like my brother.

I suppose that’s why my mother fell in love with him.

“It’s for the horses,” Wink said. She sank down on top of a two-foot pile of the thin blond sticks, heaved a great sigh, and looked . . . happy. “The hay, I mean.”

“You have horses?” I saw a small, beaten-up table with two short stools at one end of the barn. There were toys everywhere, balls and dolls and jump ropes and a scattered pack of playing cards and books and an old wooden rocking horse missing his tail.

Wink nodded and tucked her arms behind her head. “They live in a large fenced-in area near the old Gold Apple Mine. Mim bought them off a man in Sleepy Peak—he said they were too old to ride. So now we just let them run wild back there in the summer. Some of the mine’s buildings are still standing, and there’s a little creek, but there’s no road to it and no one ever goes back there. The horses have the run of the place. We round them up and keep them warm in here in the winter. Mim’s got a soft heart for animals.”

I sat down beside her and leaned back, just like she did, putting my arms behind my head. I thought the hay would be itchy, but it wasn’t. “Why do you call your mother Mim?” I asked, since I was really starting to wonder.

Wink turned her head until her cheek rested on her upper arm. Her red eyebrows tilted toward each other. “Why, what do you call yours?”

Her face was two feet from mine but her hair was so big it spread out between us and tickled my chin. “I don’t call her anything right now. She took my older brother, Alabama, and went to France a few months ago. She’s a mystery writer and is setting a series there, something historical about the Cathars.”

I let out a sigh of relief. That hadn’t been as hard as I’d thought it would be.

Wink was the first person I’d told.

“When is she coming back?”

I shrugged. Wink reached out and put her fingers on my right wrist, on the tender inner side. She moved her fingertips back and forth, kind of gentle and soft, sort of like how she petted the dogs earlier, right between their ears. Her hand felt small and warm and really, really nice.