The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(67)

The headband, a scarf really, had been my own touch, not an accessory from my mom or Sundog or the rest of the hippie crew. I wondered if I’d become so connected with Lizzie in the recent months that I instinctively made the same choices she did and if that would bring me closer to her, maybe close enough to find her.

“Look,” Enzo said after another long pause. “I know I shouldn’t have left you hanging the other night. It’s not because I don’t care about you. I do. More than anyone else in my life right now, if you want to know the truth.”

He was saying all the right things. And I really didn’t want to go home after my shift and sit alone in my room. Not on Halloween, when it felt like magic could be willed into existence. The one night of the year witches and goblins and ghosts come to life. You could practically feel the air crackling with magic, with everyone’s desire for something extraordinary to happen—not just me.

So that’s why I forgave Enzo. I didn’t push him to the back of my mind until he disappeared. He apologized, and I accepted, and just like that, everything was OK again.

“I have something for you,” Enzo said. He slid the package he was holding onto the nearest table.

“What is it?”

“Well, kid, the way this usually works is you unwrap the gift and find out.”

I laughed, and Enzo smiled, and we made peace, the way other people might signal a truce with a handshake.

Then my curiosity got the best of me, and I moved over to the table to open the present. Enzo hovered anxiously behind me as I peeled back layers of paper, one after another. The gift seemed to be fragile.

Eventually, I got to the final layer of paper and carefully pulled it away.

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of more to say. A million thoughts and feelings crashed around inside my head, and I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Do you like it?” Enzo asked, looking over my shoulder.

It was a painting. His painting, the one he’d been working on for weeks, the one he told me I couldn’t see until it was finished. And it was perfect. As good as the painting of Lizzie that hung by his bed, maybe better, because this one was so intricate and detailed, like a puzzle. No matter where I looked, I saw something new.

The painting showed Griffin Mills almost like it was in real life. But the perspective was distorted. A building leaned slightly to the left. The road was bumpier than it should have been. The colors were wrong, bright and cheerful in some places, washed out in others, the way the horizon looks when you’ve been out in the sun too long and all the shapes start to bleed together. Enzo’s painting made me question if I was really seeing the canvas right, if the issue was with the painting or with my eyes.

The main street meandered out of the town and into the woods, up to a hill with a tiny version of the Griffin Mansion. Only it wasn’t Griffin Mansion exactly. It also resembled the farmhouse that Enzo and I found in the woods. The door of the mansion was open, and I could just make out a shadowy figure in the doorway, looking out over the town below him.

The more I looked, the more other details jumped out at me. Two ghost suns flanked the real sun, a sundog, just like Edward the IV supposedly saw on the battlefield. A hand, humanoid except for the hair and claws, reached out of a coffee shop.

There was something dreamlike about the painting but the sort of dream that can quickly turn to a nightmare.

“It’s, ah, about you. How you see the world,” Enzo said.

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept staring at the painting. There were references to all sorts of things I’d told Enzo, never really thinking he was listening to me. For the first time in my life, someone really understood me.

“It’s meant as a compliment,” Enzo said. “I’d climb in your head if I could. Painting the way you talk about the world was as close as I could get though. I wanted you to have it so, you know, if you’re feeling down about being different, you can look at this and remember that being different is good. My whole life, all I ever wanted was to be unique, but you never had to try.”

I finally tore my gaze away from the painting and looked into Enzo’s dark-blue eyes, eyes that really saw me. Not because he missed his girlfriend and needed a distraction but because of who I was. Just the thought made me feel like I could float away.

“This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”

Enzo’s grin lit up his face. We stood there like that, looking at each other all dopey, until Vernon cleared his throat and spoke up from his place at the counter.

“Can yinz turn off this jaggin’ music?”

The spell was broken. I laughed and rolled my eyes.

“Can we hang out when you get off work?” Enzo asked. “It’s been weird not seeing you this week.”

I told him we could. Of course we could.

? ? ?

An hour later, Vernon wandered out of the diner without saying good-bye. I didn’t know where he went when he left the Sunshine Café or whether he went by car or bus or on foot. For all I knew, he stepped out the door at ten thirty every night and simply disappeared into thin air. If I’d learned anything in the past few months, it was that disappearing is very possible.

With Vernon gone, I quickly closed up the diner, even though we were supposed to stay open for another half an hour. We wouldn’t be getting any other customers. It was Halloween. And if I had to listen to “Monster Mash” one more time, my head would explode.