Winterwood

“Ignore them,” Suzy says, flicking her hand in the air and brushing a bit of her long wavy hair over one shoulder. “They’re just pissed they have to live way out here in these miserable mountains.”

But that’s not why they call me the moon girl, why they look at me with unease etched into the slopes of their brows. It’s because they’re afraid of me. They believe my blood is the color of the blackest night and my heart is woven with spikeweeds and vinegar. I should be feared. And most importantly, avoided.

They don’t know that unlike my ancestors, unlike the Walkers of the past, there is no nightshade brimming along my edges.

Suzy clears her throat and lifts her chin. “That’s Rhett.” She nods to dimple-boy, and he looks at me but doesn’t smile—a cool, calculating gaze. Like he’s trying to see if the rumors are true. If I could turn his blood cold with a flick of my outstretched finger. And right now, I wish I could.

“That’s Lin,” she continues, glancing to the boy on my left, who nods but doesn’t speak. The oversized navy-blue puffy coat he’s wearing is like a cocoon—hood pulled up, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets. Like he doesn’t plan on taking it off until spring, like he’s never been so cold in his entire life. He must have been sent here from somewhere warm, like California or Florida. Somewhere where the sky is usually aqua blue and the air smells like coconut.

“I’m Jasper,” reindeer-sweater boy interjects, smiling across the fire at me and holding out the bottle of dark liquid, wagging an eyebrow. “Whiskey,” he says, nodding for me to take it. But I ignore the bottle.

I don’t care what their names are; I didn’t come down here to hang out. To drink booze, torch marshmallows, and tell childish ghost stories. “You have to put the fire out,” I say again, sharper this time, my thumb fidgeting with the moonstone ring on my finger, twirling it in a circle.

Rhett sneers and picks up a stick, poking at the fire, sending more sparks up into the overhead limbs. Taunting the trees.

“Maybe we should listen to her,” Lin says, lifting his shoulders in his too-big coat. “After everything that’s happened—”

Rhett raises the stick in the air, a thin coil of smoke spiraling from the blackened tip. “Shut up, Lin,” he says, wrapping his free arm around Suzy, who has inched closer to him. “We’re not talking about that.”

“Who’s she going to tell?” Lin fires back, eyes cutting over to me.

Jasper waves the bottle in the air. “Anyone she wants.”

“This is fucked,” Lin mutters, kicking at a mound of snow at his feet, digging a small trench down to the ruddy soil, mud sticking to his shoe.

Things he wants to say, but can’t, stir behind his eyes.

“The whole thing is fucked,” Rhett agrees, jabbing the smoldering stick into the snow at his feet. And his eyebrows spike upward beneath his fuzzy hat, like he’s giving Lin a warning to stop talking. “But it’s already done.”

I realize now that this isn’t just a few boys who stole a bottle of booze and came down to the lake to get drunk. This is a meeting. They came to talk in secret, in private. About what happened.

“The road will open eventually, and then we’ll have to deal with this,” says Lin, lifting his gaze.

“The Brutes don’t know what happened,” Rhett answers coldly. I’ve heard this name before, the Brutes. It’s what they sometimes call the camp counselors.

“The Brutes are idiots. It’s going to be a lot worse when a detective starts asking questions,” says Jasper, his jaw tensed, the bottle in his hand swaying at his side, spilling little drops onto the snow. “This was my last shot, getting sent here to this camp.” His eyebrows dip together, a weakness there—a flicker of doubt and fear and uncertainty. As if he’s truly afraid of what might happen to him. “If I screw it up,” he continues, “my parents probably won’t let me come home.”

They all fall silent and the trees quiver, wind curling up off the lake and sailing into the surrounding forest, knocking snow from limbs. The wilds of this place dislike our midnight chatter, our rising voices, the flickering flame and the sparks wheeling up through the trees. We have woken it.

“You’re talking about the boy who died?” I dare to ask.

They all seem to wince in unison, recoiling from my words. I swallow hard—feeling too many eyes on me. Feeling suddenly outnumbered. This was a bad idea, coming down here. Even the trees lean in close, listening, stirring awake from their snowy slumber.

My heart clatters. My stomach knots.

But then Rhett looks to Suzy, anger in his eyes. “What did you tell her?”

“Nothing,” Suzy answers quickly, lifting her shoulders, lifting her hands, lifting both eyebrows in a show of innocence. “You never told me anything anyway. It’s only what I’ve overheard.”

“Perfect,” Jasper remarks, his upper lip tugging into a sneer as he sways back slightly from the fire, his balance teetering, no longer sober. “We’re all so fucked.”

I shake my head. “I only know that a boy is dead.”