The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(49)

I shrugged. “The world is dark.”

“The world is whatever you want it to be.”

? ? ?

“Tell me a scary story,” I said to Enzo.

“Real or fake?”

“Real.”

It was just before dusk, and we were walking through the woods. It was cold and windy and felt like the start of a horror movie. I loved it.

“Have you ever heard of the brazen bull?” Enzo asked.

“No. But it doesn’t sound scary.”

“Give me a chance, kid.” He stopped to light a cigarette, using his body to block the wind. “It was invented in ancient Greece. A hollow bull, made out of bronze. For kicks, they’d lock people inside and light a fire under them. The person would roast to death, obviously. The creepiest part is, there were tubes inside that turned the person’s screams into bull sounds. So these rich assholes would be gathered at a party, and there’d be this bull statue making noises, and everyone would act like it was entertainment, not the sound of someone being tortured.”

“OK, you win. That’s terrifying.”

“Wanna know something else?” Enzo grinned. “The guy who invented it was the first person roasted inside.”

“My mom would call that karma,” I said.

? ? ?

There were no more official searches for Lizzie, just small ones organized by her family. There were no more articles in the paper. No one at school whispered theories about where she’d gone.

“Why’d you stop caring about Lizzie?” I asked Rush.

He was standing at the counter, eating a bowl of cereal. The spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. He seemed thrown by the question, which made me wonder if maybe he hadn’t realized he’d stopped caring.

“What? I still care.”

“Not like you did when she first went missing.”

Rush finished taking his bite and chewed for a long time. “I care. There’s just not much to talk about anymore. There’s no news. Nothing is changing.”

“So out of sight, out of mind?”

“What do you want me to say, Hawthorn? That you were right? That I was upset over a girl I didn’t know anymore, then realized I was stupid to care so much?”

“Is that what happened?”

“No. I just got over it.”

It was so easy for Rush. Everything had always been easy for him.

I wasn’t ready to get over Lizzie. Neither was Enzo. Everyone else might have given up hope, but we kept searching for her. We combed the woods and clipped articles from the newspaper and made lists of any information that might be relevant to the case.

Pretty much, we spent all our free time together.

? ? ?

“She’s spending all her free time with him.”

I stopped in my tracks. My dad was speaking. He and my mom were in the kitchen. If I’d been able to find my keys, I’d have already been on my way to Enzo’s and wouldn’t have overheard my parent’s conversation at all. I really needed to keep better track of my keys.

“She needs a friend, James.”

I crept closer to the kitchen door, unable to stop myself from listening in, even though I didn’t think I’d like what I heard.

“There’s an entire high school of people she could be friends with” my dad said. “What happened to Emily?”

“Rush says they had a fight.”

My insides twisted with anger and embarrassment. I couldn’t believe how they were talking about my personal life. It was no one’s business but mine.

“I’m sorry, but I’m just not comfortable with their relationship. What do we even know about him? Look what happened to his last girlfriend!”

“She says they’re just friends.”

“Off in the woods all the time, looking for werewolves. This is your daughter too, Sparrow. How can you sit there like this is normal?”

Even my dad was calling me weird now.

I’d heard enough. I stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind me. I hoped they noticed.

? ? ?

As the month progressed, I knew I faced a lot of Halloween parties I wouldn’t be invited to. I hadn’t been invited to a Halloween party since kids had moved from bobbing for apples to spin the bottle—at least, based on what I’d seen in movies, that’s what I imagined they were doing.

I was also well aware that homecoming was the weekend before Halloween, which meant another chance for me to be pitifully dateless.

Despite this, I didn’t feel like I was missing out. I didn’t need loud, obnoxious parties and dances packed with people I hated. I had Enzo. I had his dark, art-filled apartment where I could let down my guard and be myself. I had walks through the woods and werewolf lore, which was worth more than any high school event.

We spent the middle of October watching werewolf movies on TV, making fun of the parts that had been badly edited to take out the gore and sex and cursing. We decided there was no such thing as a great werewolf movie. They always came out cheesy. My favorite was about a teenage girl werewolf, because it reminded me of Lizzie. Enzo’s favorite was the original The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney Jr. He thought all the old movies were better than any that had been made in the past twenty or thirty years.

“There’s a magic to the old films that new movies can’t capture. The filmmakers try to hide it with special effects, but no one really buys it.”