Wink Poppy Midnight(37)

THE CARDS TOLD the whole story, laid out on the grass in swords, wands, cups, coins, queens, kings, knights, and fools. Midnight couldn’t read them, but I could, despite what I’d said.

Peach and the twins saw a girl in the woods, but Bee Lee saw something too.

She was down by the Blue Twist a few days ago. She wasn’t allowed to go to the river on her own, but she loved to watch the fish in the swirling white water and wouldn’t listen to me, not about this.

She came running back down the gravel road, cheeks pink and hair sweaty and sticking to her forehead.

“I saw a girl,” she said, “a girl with long yellow hair and a black dress, like a princess in a story. She jumped into the Blue Twist. And you can’t swim in the Blue Twist, it goes too fast and you drown. You swallow water and your lungs fill up and you drown.”

“Show me,” I said.

I followed her to the spot, a mile away, down the gravel road . . . but there was no trace of a girl in the water. It was just spinning white curls of river.

“I saw her,” Bee said. “I really did, Wink.”

I nodded, because I knew.

That was the first time I felt doubt. Just a twinge, just a little bite, nothing more than the Imps and Plum Babies pinching the Hix Sisters in the bluebell field in The Green Witch of Black Dog Hill.

That night, after Midnight left, and after I’d run my errand, I snuck in through the kitchen, carefully closing the screen door so it wouldn’t slam. I set the basket on the counter and tiptoed upstairs. Bee Lee was sleeping in my bed. She did that when she had nightmares. I crawled in next to her and brushed her hair off her cheek. Her eyes opened.

“Where you been, Wink?”

“Gathering wild strawberries in the forest,” I said. “Wild strawberries picked by the light of the moon have magical powers. I’ll give you some tomorrow, with sugar and cream. And then we’ll see what happens.”

“Will I turn into a frog?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Will I turn into a princess?”

I nodded.

She smiled, and closed her eyes again.





“THERE ARE TWO girls waiting on the front steps for you.”

Dad had just gotten back from his run. Three miles every morning, two every night. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck and his whole face was flushed. “Not the blonde and not the redhead. Two new girls.”

I pushed back the bowl of homemade granola and milk I was nibbling on. I wasn’t hungry anyway. I walked across the kitchen and opened the front screen door.

Stripes.

They turned their heads and looked at me over their shoulders.

“Did you know,” Buttercup said, eyes hooded, voice crisp, black hair dripping down, “that Poppy is missing?”

“Missing,” Zoe said, echo, echo. Her chin moved up and down and her short brown curls followed.

The morning air had a misty quality, hazy and kind of marvelous. It must have rained again in the night. I looked over at the Bell farm. It was unusually quiet. There was a strange car in the driveway, so Mim was doing a reading. But I didn’t see Wink or the Orphans.

Buttercup and Zoe without Poppy and without the rest of the Yellows . . . they seemed less scary, somehow. Almost vulnerable. I sat down on the step next to Zoe and she moved the skirt of her black dress to make room.

I nodded at each of them in turn. “Buttercup. Zoe.” It felt strange to say their names for the very first time without the usual feeling of dread hitting my tongue. “Yeah, I know Poppy is missing. Why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” Buttercup said, and her black eyes reminded me of Wink’s, suddenly. Open and innocent. “I mean, yes I do.”

“Yes, we do,” said Zoe.

Buttercup slipped the skull-shaped backpack off her shoulder and rummaged around inside. She pulled out something thin and black, and held it between her fingertips, gingerly, like it was poison.

“Take it.”

I did. It was a small sheet of lined paper, folded in half. I just looked at it, sitting on my palm.

“Poppy likes to write on black paper with a silver pen,” Buttercup said. “I found it in my backpack this morning.”

I opened it. Silver letters on a charcoal background.

It was Poppy’s handwriting, just like Thomas’s letter. And Briggs’s. I knew the loop of her g. I recognized the plump belly of her b. It was as familiar to me as the blue veins in her lily-white arms.

Buttercup and Zoe,

It’s for the best, I swear it is, and I’m always right, I always am.

Do you remember that time we went apple picking last fall? We stole a bucket of them from that big old tree near the abandoned elementary school and I had you both write down apple poems as I made them up on the spot, and the poems were all about me, about how I was gray-eyed and apple-cheeked, about how I ruled with an iron fist and how I was the apple of everyone’s eye.

How could you stand me?

I can’t even stand myself, not anymore.

You should go talk to Midnight.

He has things to tell you.

“I have a bad feeling,” Buttercup said, and shuddered, quick and gentle like the shimmering leaves of the nearby aspen tree. She rubbed her long, thin fingers up and down over her striped-stocking legs. Her fingernails weren’t painted black, like usual. They were just a plain, natural pink. “I think Poppy did something to herself.”