The Dead and the Dark(13)

Brandon laughed, quiet and dismissive. “Nope. I’m committed to the hunt.”

Logan groaned.

They made their way to a small section of art prints. Logan paused at a canvas photo of a rural road. It was a bit country for her taste, but it tugged at her. She pulled the canvas from the shelf and brushed her thumbs over the stitching. It was the kind of picture she would’ve made fun of someone for having back in LA—generic and impersonal—but its loneliness spoke to her now.

“I like this one.”

Brandon stepped to her side and admired the photo. “Not what I would’ve picked. How much?”

“Twenty-five,” Logan said. She tilted the photo and narrowed her eyes at it. “I don’t know—is it ugly?”

“No.” Brandon took the photo delicately and looked it over. In his sweater and glasses he looked like an art critic appraising a masterpiece, not a manufactured print from some random store. “What do you like about it?”

“Um, I don’t know, I just feel like I get it,” Logan tried. Brandon was so casual now, like shopping together was a normal thing that they did. Logan pursed her lips. “It reminds me of when we lived on the road. I mean, it sucked. But there were moments. I remember Dad took me down to this river for an afternoon. I used to think…”

Logan clenched her jaw. She used to think that home wasn’t a place, it was family. But the family she had then—their strange, broken trio of misfits—hadn’t felt like home in a long time. They were still three lost things, but they were infinitely far apart. Home wasn’t family now. Home was nowhere.

Brandon looked at her, but his gaze was distant. He looked beyond her.

“It doesn’t matter,” Logan said. “I want it.”

She took the canvas print from Brandon’s grasp and tucked it under her arm. They carried on through the store, methodically working through Logan’s list of aesthetic improvements. In a few months, she would be loading this same haul of decorations into boxes before she left Snakebite behind.

Brandon paused next to a shelf of tattered dolls.

“Do you feel … safe in Snakebite?” he asked.

“I don’t love it,” Logan mused, “but I haven’t seen any pitchforks yet.”

“I mean more like…” Brandon stared into the cart wistfully. “I think about memory sometimes. How our mind rewrites our memories from scratch every time we think something up. If we wanted, we could forget a piece of our lives completely. Just … write over it.”

Logan unloaded her pile of artwork with a scowl. “I hope I forget Snakebite when I leave.”

“Fair enough.” Brandon was quiet. “Sometimes I wish I could forget it, too.”

The gift shop front door rang. Logan stood on her toes to see over the shelves. A group of kids around her age wandered into the store, laughter following them from outside. It was three girls and two boys, all clad in summer dresses and cargo shorts and sunglasses, shoulders sun-kissed, hair damp with what Logan assumed was lake water. They weren’t like the kids from LA, but a sharp pang of longing still struck Logan at the sight of them.

Next to her, Brandon’s expression darkened.

“Someone you know?” Logan joked.

“We should probably buy these and get home.”

The group of teens rounded the nearest shelf, each of them idly touching items without really considering them like wandering through this store was just a standard part of their day. Logan couldn’t blame them—on her brief trip through Snakebite’s “downtown,” she hadn’t seen a single thing for kids her age to do for fun.

A boy at the front of the group paused when he spotted Brandon. Sunlight filtered through the dusty store shelves, streaking the boy’s pale face sickly yellow. His lips twisted into a grimace.

“They multiplied,” the boy said. He motioned to Logan, unnervingly square jaw clenched. “What’re you doing here?”

Logan looked to Brandon for an explanation, but Brandon only stared. He adjusted his glasses, then turned like he meant to leave.

“Hey,” the boy said again. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

The other teens gathered around the boy were silent. Logan recognized them from the vigil the day she’d arrived. This was the same group of kids who’d stared at her and Alejo like they thought their glares could kill. Logan began to understand Brandon’s quick retreat, but she wasn’t one to run away.

“We’re shopping,” Logan said. “What’s your problem?”

The boy’s glare shifted from Brandon to Logan. “My problem is this guy shows up here and my friend goes missing. I wanna know why.”

Maybe she’d spoken too soon on the pitchforks. Logan looked to the front of the shop for backup, but the woman behind the register only watched the argument unfold with vague interest, like it was a bit of theater on a slow afternoon. Truck engines stammered outside, voices trickled in through a crack in the door, and Snakebite carried on. No one was coming to their defense.

“How about you mind your own business?” Logan snapped. She adjusted her art prints under her arm, but she didn’t budge.

The boy at the front of the group took a step forward.

Before he could say anything, another of the teens slipped in front of him. Her bright blond hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, cheeks dappled with freckles, eyes unnervingly wide. She’d been standing at the edge of the cemetery on the day of the funeral; Logan recognized her same blue-eyed stare, like the girl was trying to pull her apart.