Dark and Shallow Lies(8)

Could be. But it isn’t.

It’s them. They’ve found us. The rest of the Summer Children come down the ladder one right after the other, like circus acrobats under the big top.

Serafina.

Lysander.

Mackey.

Evangeline.

They’re laughing about something and talking together. And just for a second, I feel like an outsider. Then Mackey takes both my hands and pulls me to my feet. Sera is hugging me and saying how much she missed me, and Sander is batting those long eyelashes of his. And there’s Evie, still barefoot, looking like she isn’t quite sure what she’s supposed to do – as usual.

That outsider feeling evaporates, and I know I’m right where I belong. The only place I’ve ever belonged.

I just wish so hard that Elora was with them. I feel her absence in the burning pit of my stomach. She’s a deep ache in my bones.

But then there’s this voice in the back of my mind saying, even if she were here, she wouldn’t talk to me. She’d just sit there on the railing, glaring in my direction. Or maybe she’d laugh in my face again. Tell me to go to hell.

It hadn’t been just that last night. Things had been messed up between us all last summer. And that was mostly my fault. I know that now.

Mackey throws one arm around my shoulders and gives me a big, warm grin. “It’s good you’re home, Grey,” he says. “We’re all together.”

The others nod and agree, and we all settle into our regular spots. Evie passes out stale gum to everyone. Just another long and lazy summer day, right? It almost could be.

Except when I look over at Hart, he’s staring off at Willie Nelson again, like he’d crawl out of the boat and join him in the pond if he could. He looks lost.

Hollow.

And I feel the echo of his emptiness way down inside my own soul.

Because I know Mackey means well, but it’s not true. We aren’t all together. We haven’t all been together since we were four years old. Not since what happened to Ember and Orli. Without them, we’re incomplete.

And now we’re missing Elora.

Evie asks me some random questions about school. We chat for a few minutes about my classes. Mackey asks about track, and I tell him I ran cross-country for the first time this past season. He grumbles something about how they don’t have enough runners for a cross-country team.

Mackey, Case, and Elora all go to high school upriver in Kinter. There’s a school boat. Evie and Hart and the twins, Sera and Sander, are homeschooled.

There’s no cell phone service way down here. No internet, either. So this is how summer always begins for me, with the catch-ups and the recaps. Occasionally, Mackey might send me an email from school up in Kinter. Or Elora might call every so often from the payphone up there. But mostly, my Little Rock life and my La Cachette life stay separate. Two totally different universes.

When I’m down here, it’s like my friends and my world back in Arkansas don’t exist. It doesn’t work the other way around, though. Even when I’m up there running track and going to the mall and studying, La Cachette always takes up space in my head. It’s like I never really leave the bayou. Not entirely. My feet stay wet. The smell of the swamp lingers in my nose. And when I finally get back down here at the start of every summer, everything is just the way I left it. Like no time has passed at all.

Or at least that’s the way it’s always been before.

“This is total bullshit.” The chitchat stops, and everyone turns to look at Sera. She gazes right back at us. Defiant. “Are we gonna talk about ’er or not?” She gives Sander a look that clearly says, Can you believe this?

Serafina and Lysander are basically carbon copies of each other. Folks around here call them the Gemini. Twins born in late May. Both of them mind-blowingly talented artists and smarter than the rest of us put together. I forget how many languages Sera speaks. Five, maybe? Sander doesn’t speak at all – never has – but he has plenty of other ways to communicate.

The twins come from an old Creole family. Home for them is out on Bowman Pond, about ten minutes away by airboat. But their mama, Delphine – they call her Manman – makes good luck gris-gris and love potions that she sells from a little card table she sets up on the dock most weekends. People swear by them. She tells tourists the charm magic was passed down from her great-great-great-granmè, who was a famous New Orleans voodoo queen. A friend of Marie Laveau’s.

Maybe that part’s true. And maybe it isn’t.

Sera spits her gum into the water. Her hair is the color of rich, wet river sand streaked with copper, and she wears it in a long braid down the middle of her back. Almost to her waist. The madder she is, the more that braid swings back and forth when she talks. And it is really swinging now.

“We gonna sit here all day dancin’ around her name?” she demands. “Not talkin’ about what happened won’t make things different.”

“Don’t be mad, Sera,” Mackey soothes. He’s a little guy. Not much bigger than me. Dark skin and soft brown eyes. An easy smile. He can’t stand for anybody to be upset. “We can talk about her.” He turns to look at me. “We talk about her all the time, Grey.”

“What’s the point?” Hart’s voice has an edge that I’m not used to hearing from him. “We’ve been over that night a million times.”