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Saturday, March 31
Pitchford, Vermont
On that early evening in late March, the interior of the Tuppenny Tavern was neat, peaceful, and well ordered — the complete opposite, in other words, of me.
Behind the counter, the barman polished glasses, arranging them in sparkling lines of symmetry — beer, red wine, white wine, cocktail, soda — and a waitress weaved her way between tables, refilling napkin holders, collecting empties, and wiping ketchup bottles. In the corner booth, a young couple sat hunched over their phones. The polished leather seats of the barstools gleamed, the brass fittings shone, and from hidden speakers, Tim McGraw crooned that we should all live like we were dying.
I hear you, cowboy, I thought.
I, too, wanted to get on with my life, make up for lost time, achieve something. I wanted to explore and love and live life to the fullest. So naturally, there I sat in my old haunt in my old hometown, twiddling my thumbs. Or rather, tapping restless fingers on the bar counter. Pitchford was a quaint little town nestled against the foothills of the Green Mountains, in the heart of scenic Vermont. It was where I’d grown up, where I’d run away from at age eighteen, and where, almost four months ago, I had died and been resuscitated back to life.
That evening, I wasn’t alone; Ryan Jackson sat on the stool to my right. As usual, the stool to my left remained empty. Then again, depending on what you believed about the world and the possibility of life after it, the stool might not have been empty at all.
Feeling Ryan’s concerned gaze on me, I stilled my fingers.
“What’s up?” he asked. “You look kind of …”
“Panicky?”
“Well, I was going to say anxious. But panicky is probably more accurate.”
Perhaps the thoughts racing frantically around inside my head gave off an audible buzz.
I took a long swallow of beer and set the bottle back down too hard. “So … this morning, I got a text from our mutual friend at the FBI.”
“Ronil Singh?”
“That’s the one.”
“And?”
“And I called him back.”
“Annnd?”
I laughed. Usually, it was me trying to pry information out of him; it was fun to have the tables turned for a change. “He instructed me not to tell anyone,” I said piously.
“I’m not anyone.”
That was true.
Ryan Jackson was the police chief, and most eligible bachelor, of Pitchford. He was thirty-four years old, funny, intelligent, and inexplicably tolerant of my innate prickliness. He was also attractive — a good six feet tall with a lean build, thick black hair, and slate-gray eyes. When he gave one of his charming smiles, a dimple dented his right cheek.
I, on the other hand, had two differently colored eyes, no dimple, and no charm. I was shorter than him by about six inches, younger by six years, and my shoulder-length brown hair lacked the lustrous shine of his. But I liked to think that I could outdo him in snark and sneakiness any day of the week.
We were something more than just friends, a little less than officially romantically involved. Facebook would call us “complicated.”
“Well?” Ryan pressed. “What did he want to talk to you about?”
“He didn’t want to talk to me at all.” I traced patterns in the condensation on my beer bottle. “In fact, he couldn’t believe he’d contacted me and said I should under no circumstances think this meant he had any confidence in my abilities. It really went against the grain to even consider me, but he wasn’t one to ignore any potential leads, no matter how unlikely, and so what else could he do, given the latest development?”
Ryan’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “What development? Something’s happened?”
“Yup. They found a new body. Or maybe it’s an old one, newly found. He wouldn’t say.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah, ah.”
Special Agent Ronil Singh headed the FBI’s investigation into a series of murders of young men in New England that occurred between 2006 and 2009, but which may have started earlier and continued later. Less than a month ago, I’d gone for a walk in the woods and stumbled onto the skeletonized remains of one of those victims. Singh had come to Pitchford to take my statement and, at Ryan’s suggestion, got me to touch a few objects, one of which — an old wooden button — had sparked off a series of distressing images in my mind.
This was something that happened to me now. Since my near-death experience, I occasionally got feelings or fleeting visions when I touched objects or visited places associated with strong emotions. My mother, who viewed it as a gift from the gods, called it psychometry; I called it freaky and disturbing — as unpredictable and uncontrollable as Boston weather.
Looking up, I caught Ryan’s gaze on my mouth where my teeth worried at the rough edge of one of my thumbnails. He didn’t like me biting my nails but tried not to mention it. I hadn’t yet let him find out about the other ways in which I sometimes attacked my body, and I didn’t plan on doing so.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me to my feet. “Let’s find something for your hands to do.”
I glanced at the empty seat as I left. If it was occupied, I kind of wished it would stay that way for now — I wanted some alone time with Ryan. He led me to a quiet corner of the bar, where a dartboard hung on the wall with a chalk scoreboard beside it.
“Darts?” I said in disbelief. “I’ve never played in my life.”
He handed me a set of three darts with sharp points, black barrels, and a skull-and-crossbones design on the plastic feather bits. The red arrows of his set sported orange and yellow flames on their plastic ends.
I eyed his enviously. “I think red is a luckier color.”
“Do you?” he said, unchivalrously ignoring my hint.
“How come I get the death’s head pattern?”
It seemed like an omen; I was dead in the water when it came to competitive contests.
“Because you and death” — he held up two fingers twisted together — “are tight.”
I couldn’t deny it.
“And you get the ones with fire on their … butts—”
“Their flights,” he corrected.
“You get flaming flights because …?”
He flashed me a single-dimpled smile. “Because I’m so hot, duh.”
“Right.”
I stared longingly at the TV set mounted high up in the corner. I’d much rather watch the news on CNN than reveal the shortcomings of my hand-eye coordination. Ryan, however, muted the volume on the set and had me stand behind the line on the floor, about eight or nine feet away from the board.
“I know you’re better at crossing lines than staying behind them, Garnet, but you’re not allowed to set a toe over this one when you’re throwing.”
I stood behind the line and glared at the multicolored dartboard. I reckoned I’d be able to hit it. With a basketball. I sighed. “I’m not going to be any good at this.”
“You don’t have to be. We’re playing for fun.” At my dubious look, he added, “You get to penetrate a firm surface with small sharp objects. Should be right up your alley.”