She set down her pen. “Why don’t you look at the student jobs listed in the catalog? One of them might inspire you.”
I took her advice, and I ended up writing an essay about joining the stables crew, since I knew how to listen to horses as well as talk to them.
With the application sent off, I found myself daydreaming about the future. My father sent me a letter in which he discussed college in the most general terms. He made no mention of me becoming a doctor or a scientist. He quoted W. B. Yeats: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
The quotation struck me as a peculiar choice, considering that earlier that summer we’d nearly burned to death.
Then he wrote: “Speaking of fire, you and your mother had better burn my letters. With so many police around, it’s better that I stay dead.”
I wrote back a long description of Hillhouse and a summary of my essays. I told him I’d asked to live in one of the “quiet” dorms, where loud noise was prohibited after 10 P.M. Finally, I wrote, “We miss you.”
But after I sealed the letter, I thought twice. If I sent it, he’d feel reassured that all was well in Sassa. And it wasn’t.
I destroyed the first letter and wrote a new one. It began: “Dear Father, I have been learning how to smoke cigarettes.” It went on to talk about my persistent sense that someone was watching me, about my vertigo, and about my dreams of the fire. I mentioned hypnotizing a local boy being questioned in the disappearance of a friend. I thought of adding that Mãe was flirting with bartenders, but that seemed cruel, so I simply said, “Mãe and Dashay are prone to crying lately.” I ended with: “Yes, we will burn your letters. It’s really a blessing that you’re not here.”
Then I went to Mãe’s office to find a stamp.
November faded into December—for many, the holiday season. When I was growing up, we celebrated Christmas in a most restrained, secular way: useful gifts for me from my father and his assistants, Root and Dennis. Dennis had made us observe the holiday.
My mother and Dashay told me they celebrated the winter solstice with a Yule feast.
“No presents?” I asked.
Plenty of presents, they told me. They knew I hadn’t received many when I was growing up. And we’d even have our own Yule tree—something I’d only glimpsed through other people’s windows, back in Saratoga Springs.
One mid-December day I decided to use my allowance to buy presents for them. December weather was much cooler (high temperatures in the seventies), and the ride into town went quickly. The streets were busier, now that the search for Mysty had been called off. According to the newspaper, the police said they had no leads.
Sassa didn’t offer many shopping opportunities. I decided that the pharmacy was my best bet.
For Dashay, I found copper-colored eye shadow with glitter in it, two red candles, and a lemon-colored T-shirt captioned SASSY in silver. Mãe was more complicated. I finally settled on crystal-studded hair ornaments: two shaped like dragonflies, two like stars, one like a crescent moon, and one like a honeybee. Having decided the honeybee might depress her, I was sliding it back onto the display pin when someone said my name.
Autumn leaned against a cosmetics display as if she’d been there awhile, watching me. “I need to talk to you,” she said.
I paid for my presents, and she followed me into the parking lot.
“I wanted to come to your house, but I think the cops might be trailing me.” She beckoned me toward a bench under a live oak tree. “If we talk here, it’s like we ran into each other, no big deal.”
She looked thinner than she’d been the last time I’d seen her. Her jeans weren’t so tight now, and her sweater sagged around her waist and hips. Her eyes had shadows under them, but no demon light gleamed from her irises. I checked.
“Listen, you got to help Jesse.” She nodded, as if agreeing with herself. “He’s in a bad way. He’s using something, I don’t know what.”
“Drugs?” I said.
“Yeah, but not like X or crack.” She bent her head, then looked up at me. “You know about that stuff?”
I’d read about it online. I nodded.
“So he’s doing some drug that makes him really stupid. He can’t remember anything. And I figured, since you got him off alcohol, maybe you could help him kick this stuff.” Autumn rubbed her face hard, beneath her eyes, leaving reddish crescents along her cheekbones. “Ari, he screwed up the lie detector tests. And they found some of Mysty’s blood and hair in his car. He respects you. Won’t you help?” Her voice cracked, and that’s when I knew that I would try.
Autumn and Jesse lived in a trailer park. The sign called it HARMONY HOMES MANOR, but it was a trailer park: row after row of mobile homes, some well maintained, with fake shutters on the windows and small gardens near the entrances, others looking as if they’d been abandoned—or should be. As we walked our bikes into the place (the road was too pitted with holes to ride), Autumn told me about the case against Jesse. “All they have is a tiny spot of blood and a few hairs, but they definitely belong to her.”
“She rode in the car quite a bit, didn’t she?”
“That’s what I told them.”
“And that day we came back from the mall, she picked at her arm until it bled.” I had a vivid image of the blood welling on her arm.
Autumn stopped walking. “I’d forgotten all about that. That’s where the bloodstain on the seat must have come from.”
I wasn’t as convinced as she was. For all I knew, Jesse might be guilty.
But when I saw him, I was sure he wasn’t. He was sitting at the kitchen table inside the trailer, his head supported by his hands, elbows braced against the oilcloth table cover patterned with small pink pigs. Pig-shaped salt and pepper shakers stood next to a large bottle of ketchup on the table, and the place smelled like years of fried food.
Jesse looked up when we came in. “Hey,” he said. “Hey…”
I realized he was trying to think of my name. His eyes were bloodshot, and he’d grown a beard. “I’m Ari,” I said.
“Ari.” He smiled.
“I like the beard,” I said. I sat at the table opposite him. “Autumn, leave us alone to talk, would you?”