Winterwood

The boys begin to move through the cemetery, passing the bottle of booze among them. Rhett and Lin hop over the low wood fence, laughing to themselves. Jasper staggers behind while Max moves slowly, fidgeting with something in his hand. The watch. The silver pocket watch. The same one I found in Oliver’s coat pocket—the one that broke just before Oliver slipped beneath the water while Max looked on. Air bubbles rising to the surface.

Anger scrapes up inside me, imagining Max standing over the hole in the ice. Refusing to save Oliver’s life. To reach down into the water and pull him up.

He watched Oliver die. He let him die.

I feel the sudden urge to stride across the snow, out of the cemetery, and wrap my hands around Max’s throat. Stare into his eyes and know that he deserves it. Maybe even push him out onto the ice and wait for it to break—make him suffer just like Oliver. Atone for what he did.

But he hasn’t done it yet.

Not yet.

I watch as the rest of the boys scale the fence and tromp through the snow to the lakeshore.

But Oliver is last to the fence, his hands in his pockets, gaze turned away from the blowing snow. He doesn’t realize he’s following them to his death. That when he reaches the lake, they will force him out onto the ice. Max will shove him in the chest, hands coiled into fists, adrenaline in his veins. And in the end, Oliver will break through the surface and sink down down down down into the lake.

That soon, before this night is over, he will drown.

My footsteps are quick through the snow, my breathing heavy, and I reach Oliver before he climbs over the fence after the others. He doesn’t see me, not at first, his eyes squinting away from the wind, but when I’m close enough, he must sense me because he whips around, startled, and his eyes go wide—a verdant, wild shade of green.

“Oliver,” I say softly, my voice terribly small. Terribly, impossibly weak.

He is slow to react, his gaze sweeping over me, stalling at the curve of my lips, the wet strands of my hair, but there is no recognition in his eyes. No flicker of memory. He doesn’t take my hand and pull me against his chest and ask if I’m okay.

He only stares.

The trees surrounding the cemetery begin to shake just a little, and I can’t tell if it’s the wind or my eyes. If things are still trying to snap back into focus—the lake separating itself from the sky.

“Oliver,” I say again, lifting my fingers and hovering them only a few inches from his chest, afraid to touch him. Afraid to know if he’s real or not. Alive or not.

His skin is not pale or sallow, his eyes do not look tormented by his memory of the forest. He looks strong. Different. Not how I remember.

But his face twists when I say his name, arms stiffening at his sides. He doesn’t remember me. He doesn’t know who I am. And the realization breaks me apart. Makes me want to scream. To cry out. To grab him and dig my fingernails into his flesh.

I breathe and each inhale is a rattle.

The other boys are almost to the lakeshore—they haven’t yet seen me. And Rhett is shoving Lin playfully, laughing, their voices muffled by the falling snow.

“We can’t stay here,” I say to Oliver, snapping my eyes back to his. But still, he sways away from me. Just out of reach.

My head begins to clack and drum. My jaw chattering. I know I need to get warm, I need to get inside. My body is too cold. But Oliver only looks at me with the distant look of a stranger. Who won’t reach out and touch me. Who doesn’t remember anything from before, who looks into my eyes and sees only a girl. Nothing more.

But the silence is broken by another voice.

By Rhett, shouting through the snow. “Who the fuck are you?” he calls. My eyes lift only briefly, to see that Rhett has moved back to the cemetery fence—probably having realized that Oliver didn’t follow them out.

I open my mouth, and my lips begin to quiver. Oliver doesn’t know who I am. None of them do. “I’m—” I start, but my voice catches at the back of my teeth. I’m a witch. A witch who might have moonlight in her veins after all. Who jumped into the lake and woke on a night that’s already happened. A witch who has felt time slipping around her, who believed she didn’t have a nightshade. But maybe, maybe, I was wrong. Maybe I can’t bring back the dead—maybe no witch can. But I can do something else.

The wind grows stronger, and it blows my hair away from my neck. Up toward the sky. Wild and woven into knots.