Winterwood

He scratches at his head, messing up his unwashed hair even more, and he squints—eyes groggy, cheeks flushed. “Doubt it,” he answers, sinking back into the couch. “You’re just messing with me.” And then his eyelids snap open wider and he lifts a finger to the air, like he’s making a point. “Wait, are you that moon girl? The one who lives down the shore?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer, he just assumes I must be. Who else could I be—a girl way out here in the forest? “I heard you curse boys and lock them in your basement.” He laughs to himself, rubbing his face with his palm. “And I’m not going anywhere with you.”

I blow out a sharp, irritated breath and walk back to the door. “I don’t give a shit what you do, but if you stay in here, you’ll die.”

He sucks in his lower lip and looks hurt—a little kid who was told he can’t play in his tree fort anymore. “Wait!” he calls before I step back outside. “Is the road clear?” he asks. “Did the cops come?” His eyes flash to the door still open behind me, the strange biting wind blowing inside, a mix of winter air and ash.

“What?” I turn back to face him, head throbbing—I need to get out of here, there’s no time. I need to find Oliver.

“I mean, did someone come looking for me?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. “You just need to leave.”

He stands up suddenly and looks past me again. He’s wearing green sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt that reads WORLD’S GREATEST FISHERMAN, and I’m almost positive he didn’t bring this outfit with him but likely found it inside the house. Buried in a dresser drawer, mothballs rolling around inside. His expression sinks—a shade of darkness slips across his face. “Did they find the body?” he asks grimly, voice hardly more than a scratch.

“What body?” I ask, afraid I already know what he’s talking about.

He squints at me like he’s sizing me up, trying to figure out my true intention for busting into his hiding place.

“Who are you?” I ask again, something beginning to thread its way along my spine, vertebra by vertebra. Brittle bone by brittle bone.

He hesitates and shifts his jaw side to side like a saw. “Max.”

Max, Max, Max.

“You’re Max?” I ask, and I can feel the color leave my cheeks. The heat slipping out through my toes.

“Yeah.” He narrows his focus on me, his skin pale and sunken. He needs a shower. He needs sunlight.

Max is alive.

Not dead. Not dead at all.

Every inhale burns my lungs, and I clear my throat, blinking. Blinking away the smoke. Blinking away this boy who can’t be Max.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” I say.

His mouth snaps shut. His face corkscrews together.

“They said you were dead,” I continue. “The other boys. They said you drowned.”

Sparks begin to tumble in through the open doorway, blowing across the wood floor—the fire close now, right outside. We can’t stay here.

“I’m not dead,” he answers—stating the obvious—as if I couldn’t see for myself. But his tone is off—something not quite right. Something else just beneath the surface of his words.

My hands begin to tremble. “I don’t understand,” I say. Maybe he’s the wrong Max, I think. A different Max. I slide my shaking hand into my coat pocket, feeling for the smooth surface of the watch, and I pull it out, holding it in my palm. I touch the back, where Max’s name is inscribed into the metal. “Is this yours?” I ask, holding it out for him to see.

He steps forward. “I thought it was gone,” he says, but he doesn’t reach for it, doesn’t try to take it from me, as if he is glad to be rid of it. A memory he didn’t want. A thing he’s been trying to forget.

I close my hand over it. He’s the right Max.

The one who should be dead.

“Where did you find it?” he asks.

I slide it back into my pocket—I’ve grown accustomed to the weight of it, the subtle vibration of the hands ticking forward, the measurement of time. “Oliver had it. He’s had it since the storm.”

But if Max is alive… then Oliver didn’t kill him.

If Max is alive, then Oliver isn’t a murderer. He didn’t let him drown in the lake.

Max raises an eyebrow. “Oliver Huntsman?”

I nod.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He steps around the coffee table, and his jaw is pushed out, his shoulders a rigid slope. I can see the confusion growing inside him, along with something else: anger. “You came here to get me to admit what happened,” he says, his eyes wide and unblinking. “You’re trying to trick me.”

“What?” I don’t understand what’s happening, what he’s talking about. And I take a step back toward the open door. Away from him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, words slicked with spite.

A wave of sparks rolls across the wood floor, pushed by the wind.

Max moves closer to me, his bloodshot eyes refusing to blink, to flinch away.

“I’m not trying to trick you,” I say. But he reaches forward and grabs me by the wrist.