Jonas had never met a swan, and so he did not know about their surly dispositions.
“Yes?” called a voice from within.
He pushed into the room.
You could tell a lot about a person based on the things with which they surrounded themselves—Matt’s puzzles and star charts, Sara’s carefully sculpted topiaries, Cesca’s resuscitated old toys. Noemi’s room was half-painted: deep purple from the hardwood floor until partway up the walls, where it tapered off in haphazard streaks left behind by a roller, as though someone had soured on the color before finishing. Photos hung from clotheslines everywhere—portraits of girls wearing plain dresses outdoors, strange photos in which girls’ limbs faded from sight like ghosts’ appendages, where their hair floated above them as though they were drifting underwater when they were not. In one corner of the room a featureless mannequin wore a deer skull where the top half of its head should have been.
Jonas had never entered a girl’s bedroom before, and he did not know whether this one was usual or unusual, or if there were such a thing as usual.
In seventh grade, he had “dated” Melanie Nelson for two weeks, during which time neither of them spoke to each other or even made eye contact, until she dumped him for being too invisible. He had not seen her outside of school and certainly had never seen her room.
In ninth grade he dated Abby Pierce for one and a half months, and he had seen her outside of school, but only at the movies or other public places and always with other people around. She texted him photos of herself in a new bathing suit once, and he could see part of her bedroom in those: a cork board covered with birthday cards her friends had made for her, inscribed with messages he couldn’t make out. It was not where he’d devoted most of his attention.
He dated Katie Simms for four months (his record) last year, and he’d gone to her house when he picked her up for homecoming, but he didn’t make it past the living room before she came downstairs in a sequined dress. They skipped homecoming and went to a party at Emma Little’s house, but that was in the basement, not a bedroom. They got tipsy on Keystone Light and kissed on the love seat until their mouths felt the way raw chicken looked, but even then he couldn’t have guessed what Katie would keep inside her room.
At the center of Naomi’s room was a canopy bed, and she had drawn the nearly sheer, white curtains so that Jonas could see only her shadow like a slim imperfection in milky quartz. He wondered if it would be strange to approach the bed, if she meant for him to. He knew nothing about this person with whom he would now live, eat, and attend school. She liked purple, presumably, though not wholeheartedly, and she maybe took photographs and was at ease with strangeness. She did not seem as eager or friendly as her mother.
“I’m Matt’s son,” he said to the bed. “Jonas. My room’s across the hall.”
The canopy parted to reveal the half-moon of a small, angular face that looked little like Cesca’s. The face was olive and covered with as many freckles as a sidewalk at the start of a storm. Its owner did not smile or rise to meet him. She shook her long hair from her eyes and surveyed him as though just spotting a halo of mildew that had sneakily formed on the wall beside her door. Her gaze was heavy and her posture defensive.
Jonas felt like a trespasser. She said “Hi” and then nothing more, and somehow it gave him the sense there might be no place in her life where he would not be trespassing.
“You have a cool house,” he said.
“My mom would like to hear that.” She pulled her lips into an asymmetrical smile, a dimple forming on only one cheek. She had full lips, barely a hint of a cupid’s bow. They looked soft. They probably would not feel like raw chicken. Her hair was dark brown and very curly.
Jonas stood by the doorway, unsure of what to do with his arms. He folded them, but it didn’t feel right. Had he always folded his arms in this way? One over the other. Where did his hands belong? His body had become unfamiliar, almost hostile, a desert that would not let him get comfortable, and he second-guessed the work of every muscle.
“Do you need something?” Noemi asked. Her voice was low and husky. Jonas didn’t know what she normally sounded like or if she had a cold. She didn’t look ill, but he had no basis for comparison. Regardless, he liked the timbre of her voice.
“No,” he said. “Just thought I’d say ‘hi.’”
“Well, have a good night.” She released the canopy and disappeared from sight. He had been formally and unmistakably dismissed.
• • •
Matt treated Jonas to dinner, just the two of them, at a diner called Hilda’s where the staff greeted Matt by name, knew his order in advance, and asked after Cesca. His father snagged a tourism brochure from a display near the register, and once they were settled in their booth, he slid it across the table to Jonas.
Shivery, Minnesota, was a small town in the southern part of the state. It was technically an “unincorporated community,” which meant the students—Jonas soon to be included among them—attended high school in the neighboring town of Galaxie. Jonas, while thumbing through the pamphlet between bites of his breakfast-for-dinner, felt vicariously embarrassed that the place might ever hope for tourists. It was home to a popcorn factory, which kept the local cinema well stocked with more flavors than it had theaters: one theater, precisely, boasting only seventy-five seats, courtesy of adjacent, mismatched couches. Also calling Shivery home was an artists’ and craftsmen’s supply store where Matt Lake—who put his philosophy degree to use building custom doors and furniture—bought some of his supplies, and a hardware store where he bought the rest of them.
Shivery was, according to its own tourism bureau, most famous for its lupine flowers in varying shades of pink and purple that had apparently chased most other wildflowers out of town. An entire field of them was featured on postcards sold at the diner’s register.
Finally, there was a river that bisected town and flooded “roughly all the time.” Matt’s words, not the brochure’s. The riverside storefronts were slick, window-high, with stubborn algae during bouts of rain. Matt had heard that once, the postal workers had to deliver mail from canoes. Jonas would have thought he was spinning a tall tale, but Matt wasn’t the type, unless Cesca had instilled his practical father with a sense of romanticism.
“Sounds unlikely,” Jonas said. “I don’t believe you believe it.”
“Well, here’s an odd thing I do believe,” Matt said. “A few months ago—and this is after I moved here, so it’s not exactly hearsay—some local kid was found drowned in the middle of the forest out by Lamplight.”
Jonas frowned. “Does the river go down that way?”
“No. Which is what was weird.” Matt cut his bun-less hamburger into neat, bite-sized pieces. “Ten thousand lakes, and someone managed to drown where there wasn’t so much as a puddle.”