Wink Poppy Midnight(32)

The look in her eyes.

Her screams when the blood came rushing back.

I threw on a jacket and walked in the rain, into town. I went the long way around. I didn’t want to go by the Roman Luck place. I couldn’t.

I stood on her doorstep. Didn’t ring the bell.

I’d done this the last two mornings.

“She’s not there.” Thomas stepped out of the shadows by the lilac bushes, wet blond hair sticking to his forehead. “She’s missing. Her parents are gone at a medical conference and she’s missing and no one is going to answer that door, Midnight.”

My heart skipped a beat. Thomas hadn’t seen Poppy either? I thought she’d been avoiding me, just me. “I need to talk to her, Thomas. Badly. I’m sure she’s around somewhere. She’s probably just down by the river. She likes to have picnics in the rain, bread and cheese and a bottle of wine and cold, fat raindrops on her cheeks.”

“That was the first place I looked.”

“She could be at the coffee shop, the one with the high ceilings and the caramel-colored lattes.”

He shook his head.

“Or at the church—she likes to sit in a back pew and listen to the organist practice.”

Thomas’s eyes were red and he looked . . . smaller, somehow. Almost fragile. “She’s gone. Disappeared. I was scared something like this might happen. That’s why I’ve been watching her house.”

“Something like what?” And my voice started high and went even higher at the end.

“Poppy’s been sad lately. Really sad. Didn’t you notice?”

“Poppy’s not sad. She’s never sad. She laughs at everything. That’s the first thing I knew about her. She always just laughs.”

This was a lie.

I’d seen her crying her eyes out, three nights ago.

Thomas shook his head, wet hair flying. “If you can’t see past all that, past the way she brushes everything off to protect herself, then you don’t deserve to know her.

“It’s all an act, Midnight. It’s an act. She’s been perfecting it since she was a kid, and so she’s really good at it, but it’s just an act.”

Poppy, sobbing and screaming when she realized I was really going to leave her, all alone, in that house . . .

How well had I known the girl I’d been sharing my bed with for a year?

Thomas started talking again. He was staring off toward the gazebo and rambling, like I wasn’t even there.

“. . . Briggs and his temper, the things he said, that last time he caught me and her together. Poppy just laughed them off, like always, but they were so mean, so mean. He said she was a liar and a spoiled brat. He said no one would ever really love her, and she didn’t deserve love, she deserved to die alone. But no one deserves that, no one . . .”

Thomas put his hands over his eyes, and pressed. The rain started up again, and the drops hit his fingers and ran down his wrists and forearms. I zipped my jacket shut, and waited.

He moved his hands away from his face and looked at me, red, red eyes. “I’m scared Poppy might have run away. She did that once, last year. She was gone for three days. Did you know that?”

I did.

“We have to find her. We have to help her, Midnight.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, Thomas.”

“So you’ll help me? You’ll help me look? I don’t trust Briggs. I don’t trust any of the other Yellows. I don’t want them to know. They hate her. They follow her around, and do what she says, but they all hate her.”

I looked at the wet grass, and the edges of the lawn blurred, a blurry green swirl. I felt sick again for a second. I put my hand on my heart and took deep breaths.

Was Thomas right?

You must all really hate me, she’d whispered to me there on the sofa in the Roman Luck house. You must really, really hate me.

“What don’t you want the Yellows to know? That she’s missing?”

“No, they already know she’s missing. I don’t want them to know about the letter.” Thomas reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out a black piece of paper. “I found this last night in our hiding spot. Mine and Poppy’s. It was in the hollow of one of the Green William Cemetery trees. No one knows about it except us.”

He handed it to me, and his eyes were kind of pleading.

I opened the letter, shielding it from the rain with my arm.

Silver letters, silver on black:

I’m scared, Thomas, I’m scared of myself, I’m scared what I’ll do.

When the time comes, I’ll jump, I know I will.

Don’t tell the other Yellows, they won’t understand, tell Midnight, only Midnight.

Remember when we hiked up to Three Death Jack at night and watched the skiers on Mount Jasper and the ski lift was lit up like Christmas? We felt like Greek gods, sitting on Mount Olympus. You said I was a natural, laughing at all the mortals and their maudlin, trivial lives . . .

This life, my life . . .

It’s not trivial.

It’s . . .

Mine.

Mine, mine, mine.

I held the paper up to my nose. It smelled like jasmine.

“It’s a clue,” Thomas said. “She meant it as a clue. We can use it to find her.”

And there was something about the way he said that, something in his voice, that made me doubt.