FOR DEBORAH WOLF
CHAPTER 1
IT WAS HOT IN TAMPA, even in April.
No one else seemed to notice the heat, but every morning when I put on shorts and a T-shirt for school, it struck me as odd. If I were at home in Willow, I’d still be wearing sweaters at that time of year. Possibly even a winter coat. Whenever my thoughts drifted toward life back in Wisconsin, my throat grew tight, and I had to blink away tears. Being a new student with no friends in an unfamiliar town wasn’t at all how I’d imagined my junior year of high school back in September. Although I did my best to hide my disappointment about my circumstances, I walked around Florida feeling like an anvil in my chest was weighing me down.
So it was better for everyone—mostly me—not to think about things happening outside of the neighborhood where I’d been sent to live with my dad and his wife. And it was definitely for the best that I not allow myself to get caught up in imaginary scenarios about what might be unfolding in my hometown. There wasn’t much I could do about it, and the little I could do, I’d already done.
Aside from my constant discomfort from the unrelenting humidity, I’d become accustomed enough to my routine in Florida that sometimes—just for a minute or two—I’d forget everything that had led me there. I’d be focused on trying to determine the value of a cosine, or join in on a discussion in my Federal Government class and forget all about Olivia Richmond’s birthday party back in September. The game, Violet, all of the death—everything would drop from my thoughts as if it had never happened.
But then, with a jolt, it would come back to me. A familiar sensation of dread would rush in, and my heart would ache at the thought of how much I’d left behind. My mom. Our little house on Martha Road. The friends I’d known since I was born. Trey… When I thought about how much time had passed since I’d last seen him, and how much more would pass before I’d see him again, it felt like a knife slicing through my heart. My daily existence was like having a nightmare about knowing I was supposed to be somewhere else, doing urgent other things, except I was awake.
Dad and his wife, Rhonda, kept encouraging me to make new friends and “create a life for myself.” But I had to admit, I wasn’t trying very hard at that. I was eager to get back to the life I’d left behind, even though in a few small ways, I was clinging to fragments of it as best I could. One of the ways in which I was desperately hanging on was by FaceTiming with Henry Richmond every morning.
“So, what is it that you do at your job?” he asked. He was standing out on the small balcony of his studio, and I could see the sparkling teal waves of the Mediterranean behind him. Henry had been teaching private tennis lessons as one of the staff instructors at Château du Mouton d’Or on France’s Cote d’Azur since February.
“Whatever they ask me to do,” I replied. “I mean, I’ve only worked there a week, so I’m still kind of learning.”
The last time I saw him in Wisconsin, I didn’t expect to see or hear from him again. But he’d surprised me by calling during my first week in Florida. His lunch break just happened to coincide with my morning alarm clock setting. Even after weeks of this routine, I hadn’t gotten over how simultaneously comforting and weird it was to be able to see his face in real time from five thousand miles away. Mom and I FaceTimed often, but seeing Henry in France was a million times more magical. Even though he wasn’t physically in Willow, he knew that all of the traumatic, paranormal things I’d experienced over the better part of the last year had been real. Since I couldn’t talk freely with Trey on the phone, and Mischa didn’t remember the details of how we’d broken the curse on Violet in January, Henry was the only person with whom I could regularly communicate who truly understood the complexity of my life.
And although he never said so, I think he felt the same way about me. It wasn’t like he could tell his coworkers at the hotel that he’d spent his winter break chasing a bunch of high schoolers around Michigan to avenge the death of his sister. Secrets were burdens, and secrets like the ones we kept were walls that separated us from people who would never, ever understand the things we’d witnessed.
“What kind of things?” Henry pressed. “You said you’re working in a assisted living facility, and you’re in Florida. So are you yelling at people for not wearing enough sunscreen at the pool? Organizing shuffleboard tournaments?”
“No, it’s not like that,” I said with a smile. “I bring the patients their mail, sometimes help them open it and read it. I clean up around their rooms, bring them dinner. Mostly it’s just…” I paused, not wanting my job to sound as sad as it sometimes was. There was one resident, Ruth, who rarely said more than five words a day to me, but she never failed to whip out a deck of cards and challenge me to a quick game of War when I stopped by her room. At work, I was simply known as the new girl. No one at the assisted living facility thought of me as a troublemaker with mental problems, which was unfortunately my reputation back at home in Wisconsin. It was enormously satisfying to make such a big difference in people’s lives with small gestures like remembering who liked tapioca pudding and who needed to be reminded when Jeopardy! came on, especially after I’d felt like such a colossal failure for months while trying to figure out how to save Mischa from becoming Violet’s next victim. “It feels nice to do kind things for people who appreciate it.”
I’d been begging to be allowed to take a part-time job since arriving in Florida, wanting my own source of income and a reason to get out of my dad’s condo after school for a few hours a day. It had been tough convincing my dad that I could keep up with my schoolwork and hold down a job. But he’d caved when I was offered a part-time position at Oscawana Pavilion Assisted Living Facility. I guess he figured I couldn’t get into much trouble surrounded by senior citizens. There was no way he ever would have let me work at Shake Shack or Starbucks with people my own age.
“Do you have to wear a uniform?” Henry asked. His uniform at the hotel was a light blue polo shirt and a pair of white shorts. I frequently teased him that it made him look like he’d just stepped out of a chewing gum magazine ad from the 1980s. The truth was that he’d gotten very tan in the last few weeks, and he looked so hot that I was sure he was receiving plenty of attention. Something about the probability of women in France noticing Henry made me anxious, although I knew I shouldn’t have cared about his romantic endeavors. I would have forfeited my morning chats with Henry in a heartbeat if it had been an option to instead talk to Trey every day. But I still sensed that I might have felt more than a twinge of jealousy if the morning conversations were to stop because Henry had found a girlfriend.
“Not really a uniform. Just pink scrubs. The nurses wear blue ones.”
“Scrubs, huh? Send me a picture.”
Back in February, I would have blushed, but we joke-flirted back and forth with such frequency now that it didn’t even occur to me to be bashful.“Why do you need a picture? You know what I look like. You’re looking at me right now.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but it’s not like I can see you. You’re practically in the dark.”