The Almost Sisters(65)

I was sixteen then. Seeing them had made my cheeks flush pink, and not just with embarrassment. I was an unkissed über-dork, awkward and shy with every boy who wasn’t JJ.

That will be me one day, I’d thought, imagining myself trading tombstone kisses with a boy, each one a spitball in the eye of death. I hadn’t imagined kissing JJ. Never JJ. I hadn’t thought of him that way. He’d been so much more to me than a crush. I suppose that’s why he’d had such power to crush me.

Now I was out in the dark side of night, race-walking toward the cemetery gate to chase his daughter through the tombstones because he was at it again—behaving horribly and then poofing. He had not called Lavender back. If he had, he would have texted me and said so, to get me off his back, if nothing else. He’d abandoned her as if life were just as low-stakes as the movies and this summer’s blockbuster were JJ Is a Shit Part Two: Non-Return of JJ.

At least I’d called him out on it this time. People didn’t take this crap seriously enough, acting like sex was something New York advertisers had invented to sell Coke and soap. Sex was offered up like aspirin to the mildly wounded. You just need to go get laid, pretty folks on television and in movies told each other after breakups, or work upsets, or if anybody acted mildly grumpy. As if sex were as simple a sin as eating a second scoop of Ben & Jerry’s.

In truth it was a force. It was a piece of nature, like the ocean. Living in Norfolk, I spent a good chunk of my summers at the beach with my niece, where we both treated the Atlantic like a private paddle pool. Playing in it, it was easy to forget that it was a mighty thing. It was fun, right up until somebody got sucked out and drowned by riptides or shark-eaten. Sex was the same, such pleasure I forgot its power. I acted like it was something I could own, which was laughable. Sex had picked me up and set me back down different, twice now.

I reached the cemetery’s closest gate. The cemetery itself was directly behind the church, with wrought-iron gates on either side. I glanced back at Birchie’s house, right across the street. It was quiet and dark, the porch light out, and no upstairs windows shining. Neither of us had woken Birchie by sneaking out. Good.

I went inside. The moon was high and full, whitewashing the crumbling tombstones and the crypts. The stones were engraved with all the old names. The first Gentrys and Grangers and Macks all had honor places here, but there’d been no room for fresh graves for a good century now. Only the five families with crypts could rest here when their time came. I paused by the gate, straining to hear rustling or whispered, breathy voices. Nothing.

I wished I’d thought to bring my own cell phone. I could have called Lavender, told her she was busted. If nothing else, I could have texted her over and over and followed the wind-chime sound of her phone. Now all I heard was an owl calling, mysterious and inquisitive.

I checked the hollow between the first two crypts, but it was empty. I crossed to the other side, fast as I could, to check between the Darian and Fincher crypts, though a rock-strewn path between them made it a bad choice. Lastly, I hurried to the Birch family crypt, the largest building, at the very back and center of the graveyard. It was faced with granite, our name across the top in tall, stern letters. The iron door was locked, and stone angels guarded it on either side. I went behind it and found nothing but the other gate. It opened onto the park, behind the gazebo. I peered out between the rails, and the park was empty, too. The town’s shops and restaurants were all closed at this time of night.

Hugh and Lav weren’t here. They were getting farther away from me with every passing minute. Had the make-out spot changed?

I spun slowly, listening, racking my brain for an idea of where to go next. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of movement, all the way across the cemetery, just outside the larger wrought-iron gate. By the time I turned to look, it was gone, leaving me with the impression that a person, or the shadow of a person, had crossed past it in a swirl.

I wasn’t scared, not here in my hometown. I didn’t think of ghosts either, though I was surrounded by the dead. No, strangely, the word that came into my head was “Batman.”

But that was crazy. Birchville was hardly Gotham, and Batman was a fiction. As for my Batman, what possible business did he have here? Our relationship, as far as he knew, consisted of a drunken hookup at a con, some texts, and a datelike night of Words with Friends. If he were here, then he actually had descended way down deep into creepy stalker territory. He didn’t seem like the type.

I couldn’t shake the feeling, though. The shape I’d seen pass by the gate was tall and dark and definitely male. With ears. Little pointy ears, sticking up from the top of his head.

It had to have been the moonlight playing shadow tricks on my eyes. It must have been Hugh, or a dog, or nothing. I started back toward the other gate to see.

Just then, from the opposite direction, I heard a breathy little shriek, high-pitched and full of laughter. I barely caught it, but it was Lavender. She sounded far away, off the square entirely, the sound carrying on the clear summer air.

Whatever dog or imaginary Batman I had seen would have to wait. I let myself out and ran through the park, going toward Pine Street as fast as I could, near silent in Wattie’s rubbery shoes. Pine ended in a T intersection at Oak Street, and I paused there, out of breath, listening for kid sounds. I thought I heard something to my left. Surely they were not heading toward the highway?

These were residential streets, and there was no traffic at this hour. The houses off the square were smaller and boxier. This neighborhood was mostly tidy brick ranch homes that had been added to Birchville in the forties.