Winterwood

Because death is coming for me. Tiny black spots of doom—just like her smeared mascara—always just beyond my vision.

Suzy and I stare at each other, neither of us breathing, looking for the truth in the other’s face. In the lines around our eyes that often reveal when someone’s lying.

Never trust anyone who blinks too often: a note—a warning—within the spellbook.

“I didn’t know anyone was missing that night,” she says flatly when I don’t answer her. “I don’t keep track of who sleeps in which cabins.”

Anger boils up inside me now, wings thwapping against my ribs—the certainty that she knows something she won’t say—and I take a step closer to her. “But you heard them talking about it—that someone had died?”

She lifts both shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, her perfect dark eyebrows raised like little tents. “I guess,” she answers. “I wasn’t really paying attention. I was more worried about being stuck up here.”

“A boy died, and all you cared about was being stuck?”

She sets her jaw into place and uncrosses her arms, looking suddenly rigid. “You think I had something to do with it?”

“I just want to know what happened.”

“And you assume I’m lying?”

“I don’t have any reason to believe you aren’t.” The words should probably sting, but I’m beyond that now. Beyond caring what she thinks. I feel like I’m losing control. Like I can’t see what’s right in front of me—everyone is hiding something and I want to scream. This is my forest, the place where I’ve always felt safe, yet I have no idea what’s happening.

I am a Walker who can’t see the truth.

Suzy moves her hand too quickly, and she knocks one of my mother’s honey jars off the counter onto the floor. It lands with a loud shatter, the glass breaking on impact, and the sticky amber liquid spills into the cracks. She stares at it, like she might apologize, but then she lifts her eyes and says, “Why would I lie?”

The honey pools along the wood floor, following the divots and lines, filling in the scrapes like mud. Slow and mercurial. “To trick me,” I say at last, my ears ringing louder now. “To make me look like an idiot. Because that’s what people like you do—find ways to torment the Walker witch.”

People like you, I think. People who only pretend to be nice but say awful things about me behind my back. People who form circles that no outsiders can enter. Who like to watch others squirm while rumors are passed ear to ear.

Her mouth hangs open for a second, and then her eyebrows dip back down. “I thought you were my friend,” she says, her voice thin as paper, tearing slowly along a crease. Like she might sink into a crack and disappear. Just like the honey.

But I refuse to feel bad for her. “We were never friends before this,” I point out, my voice bitter and quick. I don’t belong in her world, among her circle of friends. I am lost in that gray in-between. Not quite normal enough to have friends, not quite powerful enough to summon real magic like the Walkers before me. “You’ve never talked to me at school, you’ve never even smiled at me in the hall.” The words are tumbling out. “I’m just a convenience for you. Because I’m all you have right now—because you have nowhere else to go. You’re just using me.” The words have left my mouth before I can even regret them. Before I can feel their full weight slam down inside my skull.

Suzy’s round lips snap shut.

And the anger I felt dissolves on my tongue just as quickly, turns to nothing. And I’m left feeling empty—as hollow as an acorn husk.

Suzy crosses the room to the couch without even looking at me, grabs her bag from the floor, and walks to the front door. As she passes, the air has the hint of stale rose perfume—the last of whatever she dabbed onto her skin days ago. She pauses and flicks her gaze back to me. And for a moment I think I should say something, a string of words to undo what’s been said—a balm for the wounds I’ve just caused. But she speaks before I can. “I always thought everyone was mean to you at school for no reason. I defended you to Rhett and the others, I told them you were nice and that all the rumors weren’t true.” She pulls her jaw back into place. “But maybe I was wrong.”

She yanks open the door and ducks out into the snow, slamming it shut behind her before I can say anything else.

Gone.

The honey sinks and settles.

I pick up the shards of glass one by one and toss them into the trash. Feeling just as broken. Just as worthless as honey smeared onto the floor.

Upstairs, the loft is empty—no sign of Oliver—just like Suzy said. And I sit on the edge of the bed.

The house feels oddly vacant now, only echoes and exhales and settling floorboards. I’m all alone. And the guilt folds over me like an old blanket—torn fibers and threads unraveling and stinking of mothballs. I never should have said those things to Suzy. Even if I don’t believe her, even if she knows what happened that night but isn’t saying, I never meant to be so mean.