Winterwood

But no memories skip through me, and I release my hand, lowering it to my side. If I were any other Walker, I might be able to glean some hint of the past, conjure some speck of moonlight to show me what I cannot see. But instead, I feel only the cold air against my neck. The snow beneath my feet. Nothing of worth.

Still I wonder, why did Oliver come here? What was he looking for?

What does he remember?

My hands tremble, and I feel an odd swaying sensation in my chest, like the trees and the charcoal sky are wobbling, rolling like a ship about to capsize. It happened last night in my room, this morning on the porch. And now again. Like the world is teetering along the edges of my vision, about to slip out of alignment.

I blink and force the sensation away.

Beside me, Fin’s nose twitches in the air and he skims past my legs, back out through the cemetery gate—trailing the footprints that circle back around to the lake. Oliver didn’t wander any deeper into the cemetery; he didn’t linger. He came to Willa’s grave and then left.

Maybe he hated it here as much as I do.

The sad-looking graves and the bones resting beneath the soil. The constant wind coiling along my neck. The fear that I might see one of the dead, loping among the dying trees, unaware of what they are. Gray, rotted fingers reaching out for me. Pleading. Trying to draw me farther into the cemetery. Don’t be afraid, my grandma would tell me whenever we passed by here. All Walkers can see the dead.

But I don’t want to see one tonight, so I stand and walk to the cemetery gate.

Fin starts up the shore again, toward the boys’ camp, but I call him back.

Oliver didn’t try to walk down the mountain to town. He came to the cemetery, then went back to camp. And maybe it was all part of some stupid trick. Some prank. Maybe he only pretended he needed somewhere to stay last night; maybe the other boys dared him to stay in the house of the witch girl. To see if he’d survive another night. Usually the boys at camp leave me alone—they’re just wary enough to avoid the Walker house. But maybe they thought Oliver could talk his way back in. That I’d be foolish enough to let him. And I did.

The thought makes me angry.

That perhaps none of what he’s told me is true. That he remembers more from that night than he’ll admit.

I leave the cemetery before I see any shadows, any figures between gravestones. Ghosts trapped in the in-between.

But Oliver was here. He was here, at Willa Walker’s grave, and I don’t understand why.

OLIVER

I round the lake, past the marina.

Smoke rises from the chimney of a small cabin set back from the lake, and there is movement at one of the windows—a man peering out from inside. For a moment I think he sees me, but then he steps away and the curtain falls back into place.

The shoreline cuts sharply to the right, the banks grow steep, and large rocks rise up from the edge of the frozen lake. It’s deceiving, the calm surface, the layer of ice that seems solid and safe. Nothing to fear here. And I wonder what the lake looks like in spring, thawed and glistening under the lemon-yellow sun.

Docile and inviting. A place to cool the sweat from your skin.

I arrived at Jackjaw Camp for Wayward Boys just as autumn settled over the mountains, as the temperature began to drop and the lake started to freeze. I came later than most of the boys, who had been here for the whole summer—or longer. I was the new kid.

I was the one who didn’t belong.

But in truth, I don’t belong anywhere. There is no bedroom waiting for me when I leave these mountains. No one to write letters home to. No front porch or garden gate with the smell of mint and laundry drying on the line.

And without a place to call home—to call my own—I don’t have anything to lose. No one to disappoint. No reason to fear what might come next. I’m on my own. And in books, those with nothing to lose often become the villain. This is how their story begins—with loss and sadness that quickly turns into anger and spite and no turning back.

I wish I could see the memories lost somewhere inside me. I wish I didn’t feel bitter and frustrated. Alone. I wish this buzzing would stop grating against my skull.

I never wanted to be the villain, I never wanted to wake in the woods with the cold weaving its way along my bones, and a certainty that something bad has happened click, click, clicking against my eardrums. Something I can’t take back.

But it’s not always a path you choose—becoming the villain—it’s a thing that happens to you.

A series of circumstances that lead you to a fate you can’t escape.

Ahead of me, set back in the trees, sits the cemetery with its crumbling headstones and overgrown greenery and dying trees. It’s an old graveyard, and I wonder if it’s even still used. If locals still bury their loved ones here.