Wink Poppy Midnight(9)

Poppy.

The Yellows surrounded her like rays around the sun. She wore knee-high boots and a short, swinging yellow skirt that barely covered the parts it needed to cover. She had a blue silk scarf around her slender neck, and her thighs were long and so damn creamy it made me feel sick.

God, I hated her.

I longed to grab Wink and run back the way we’d come.

I shook it off, and kept walking.

The Yellows all looked at me in that pitying way, like usual, but I just gave Poppy a cool nod and marched right on by, Wink at my side, like we were welcome. Like we’d been invited.

The bonfire was now six-foot flames clawing up, almost reaching the sagging roof of the Roman Luck porch, but not quite. We went up to it and the heat hit my skin in a rush. It felt good. I looked down at Wink, and she had her eyes closed, facing the warmth.

I didn’t look back at Poppy and the Yellows.

I saw five or six non-Yellow kids from school. Perfect clothes and perfect shiny hair. The only time the Yellow-wannabes had ever noticed me was when Alabama was around. Then the girls would talk to me in a really sweet voice, to show Alabama how nice they could be to his unpopular brother.

Everyone was whispering instead of yelling and laughing, and there was no music playing—the Yellows wouldn’t stand for it. Poppy liked quiet at all her parties.

A girl named Tonisha was handing out mason jars of frothy, amber-hued beer from a nearby keg. I knew it was probably a micro-brewed IPA, because the Yellows didn’t drink anything cheap, but I declined to take one, and so did Wink. A wind came up out of nowhere and leaves rustled on the trees, whoosh, all at once, in that way that always gives me goose bumps.

Wink’s fingers tightened again. I looked down at her.

The contrast with Poppy was profound.

Straight, blond, shining hair.

Red, frizzy, curly hair.

Tall, thin.

Short, small.

I knew one’s body, every dip, every inch, every toe, every bend.

The other had her hand in mine and it was the first time we’d ever touched.

Both were a mystery.

“Wink?”

She glanced up at me.

“I think I’m going to like having you Bells as my new neighbors.”

She nodded, face very serious. “We’ll be good for you.”

I smiled at that.

“Your brothers and sisters ask a lot of questions.”

She nodded again. “They do that to people they like.”

We were speaking in short snappy statements, and it was nothing like before, on the steps of my house, when Wink was either sweetly talking on and on about The Thing in the Deep or being calmly silent, the breeze in her hair. I supposed she was hating it here, at Poppy’s party. I sure as hell was. What was so fun anyway about standing in the dark, whispering and drinking beer?

Maybe I’d made a mistake, not turning and running back down the path. But damn it, I didn’t want Wink to think I was a coward. I’d been a coward long enough.

“This is a bad house,” Wink said suddenly, looking up, way up, at the sagging roof. “The Roman Luck house is not lucky. It never was.”

The Roman Luck house was a mile from town, and a mile from the Bell farm, right in the middle. It had sat empty for years, and houses went downhill fast when no one was taking care of them. All the bushes were overgrown, the front lawn covered with pinecones. The gravel road that led to the house from town was nothing but a stretch of brown pine needles and saplings, struggling to grow in the gloom.

I joined Wink in staring up at the house. Big and gray and going to ruin. The bay windows were broken, and I could see the shadow of the decaying grand piano that I knew was inside. We’d all explored the Luck house when we were younger. Dared each other to go in, to put our fingers on the chipped ivory keys, to climb up the wobbly, creaking stairs, to lie down on the dusty, rat-chewed quilt that still covered the master bed.

I’d been surprised that Poppy wanted to have her party here. Fearless Poppy, who wasn’t afraid of anything . . . except this, the Roman Luck house. Not even the Yellows knew how much she hated the place. Just me. I’d been with her last summer, right beside her as she’d climbed the porch steps and then refused to go past the doorway, like a dog catching a bad scent. She laughed and said haunted houses were stupid. But her perfectly painted toes in their delicate, expensive sandals never crossed the rotting threshold.

Roman Luck’s disappearance was our town’s greatest mystery. He’d been young, and single, a doctor at the hospital where Poppy’s parents worked now. And when he bought a grand house outside of town, in the middle of the woods, and filled it with grand things, people thought he was going to marry some pretty girl and live happily ever after. But he never did. He lived in the house for two years, and he never threw a party, or invited people over for supper. And then, one morning, he didn’t show up for work. Days went by. When the police finally broke down the front door they found the inside frozen in time, as if Roman had just stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. There was a coffeepot on the table, stone cold, and a plate with a moldy, half-eaten sandwich. The milk had curdled in the fridge. The radio was even still on, playing sad old Delta blues songs . . . or so went the rumors.

“If I told you what happened to Roman, you wouldn’t believe me,” Wink said out of nowhere, like she could read my mind. Her shoulders shrugged up and disappeared into her messy red hair.