The Vanishing Season Page 5

  Maggie wrote it all down in the proper columns. “That’s . . . nice,” she said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Hairica said. A small, shy smile grew on her lips.

  “Okay, it’s hideous,” Maggie admitted. Hairica laughed. Maggie opened her mouth to say something more, but Hairica blushed, turned, and walked back to her booth.

  “Do you know Pauline and Liam, out on Water Street?” Maggie asked, turning to Elsa.

  Elsa nodded. “I know everyone.”

  “They’re my neighbors. They took me canoeing.”

  Elsa nodded, seemed to try to hold her tongue, but of course she didn’t manage to succeed.

  “I wouldn’t put too many eggs in that basket if I were you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Liam and his dad are weirdos. They make me nervous; at least the dad does. And the Bodens, they’re just . . . into the Bodens.” Maggie took this in, not knowing quite what to make of it. “You know pretty girls like that, with all that money. They just get used to everything revolving around them. Her mom’s the same way. Self-absorbed. They think they’re entitled to everything.”

  Maggie guessed so, but to her it seemed like the opposite. It seemed to her that Pauline was on the outermost edge of things.

  But in a moment Elsa had moved on to talking about Matt Damon. In her eyes, Matt Damon could do no wrong.

  Maggie spent the afternoon after her shift at the Coffee Moose, trying to make a dent in Moby Dick. That night, as she drove home, she saw that all the lights were on at the Boden house, and the sounds of a large party drifted out through the windows.

  She felt a pang that she hadn’t been invited, but she guessed she didn’t know Pauline that well. Or maybe Elsa was right; maybe Pauline only wanted to hang out with her when she was bored. She was ruminating on this thought as she walked inside to find her parents poring over a box of financial records on the living room floor, doing their budget.

  The house was coming along; that week her mom had spent her nights staining the floors on the first level so that they didn’t look so scratchy and decrepit anymore. Maggie popped some clothes in the hamper. She read Isabel Allende in the living room until after her parents had gone to bed.

  Upstairs her room was stuffy; she could almost see the heat puffing out of the old radiator. She cracked open the window to let in the cold air, then stood and shivered and looked up at the stars, which seemed to get brighter every night as the weather got colder.

  She noticed some movement in the grass between the two houses.

  It was Pauline, standing in the moonlight. She was perched on a fallen tree that was propped at a sharp angle against another tree, walking up and down the incline with her arms spread wide to balance herself, wearing a knit hat and no jacket. She was so high that if she fell, she could have easily broken something, and Maggie sucked in her breath. Pauline happened to look up at Maggie’s window at that moment and waved wildly, going off balance slightly before righting herself. Maggie closed her window, went downstairs, and walked outside and across the grass in her socks, the cold seeping into the soles of her feet.

  “Are you practicing your balance-beam routine?”

  Pauline didn’t falter. “Oh yeah. I’ve been working on my dismount.” She looked down, let her arms drop, sighed, then descended onto the grass. “I hate parties.”

  “Why?”

  “Everyone wants to talk to me.”

  “That sounds terrible,” Maggie said sarcastically. “You’re, like, the opposite of a wallflower.”

  Pauline smirked. “I’m serious. I hate it. It makes me want to scream.”

  Maggie could picture it, how Pauline would draw people to her in a room, not just because of how she looked but because of her vibrating, infectious energy.

  “Why does everyone talk about stuff that they only pretend to be interested in?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just the way people are.” Maggie shivered, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, shaking her legs to keep her feet warm.

  “My mom’s that way. But I think it’s just because she’s not that happy. Because she misses my dad. I won’t be that way.” Pauline sighed, a thin trail of white steam rising from her mouth, then studied her. “I wish I were more like you. You seem so calm.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I’m not calm, I’m just . . . hesitant. I always think things haven’t started yet, but that they’re about to. It’s, like, I always think pretty soon my life will be this great story, as soon as it starts.”

  Pauline put one foot in front of the other, staring at her toes. “I can’t picture that at all for me. You never know when you’ll . . .” She stuck out her tongue to pretend she was dead. “I can’t picture staying in Door County, and I also can’t picture leaving. I can’t picture the future.” She grinned slyly. “Do you think that means I’ll die young?”

  “Probably.”

  Pauline laughed her scraping laugh that practically hurt the ears and climbed back onto the felled tree. “Maybe this is the way I go. On the dismount.”

  There was the squeak of a door opening onto Pauline’s back deck and the sound of chattering and dishes and glasses clinking inside. And then Mrs. Boden’s voice, calling to her.

  Pauline stepped back down again, her shoulders slumping like a three-year-old’s, her whole body curling over in disgust. “My mom always makes me hang around at these things because I’m her security blanket. Argh. Bye.” She flung up her hand, wagged it, and started walking. “Oh wait, I’m sorry I didn’t ask. Do you want to come over? It’s really horrible.”

  Maggie suddenly felt guilty about what she’d thought earlier. She looked back toward her house, then back at Pauline, hugging herself tighter. “It sounds appealing, but no. I’m gonna read.”

  “Smarty-pants.” Pauline turned and half slid, half walked across the lawn, as if she were on her way to the gallows.

  Maggie couldn’t concentrate on Moby Dick, and she couldn’t sleep. She wandered the halls, padding along the smooth, wooden floors. The house felt huge and silent. Finally she crawled back into bed and stared at the ceiling. She didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until, around 4:00 a.m., she awoke to a woman’s voice in the yard. At first she thought it was a real person, wailing. Then the noise separated itself into words. It wasn’t wailing after all, but singing.

  I heard church bells ringing

  I heard a choir singing

  I saw my love walk down the aisle

  On her finger he placed a ring

  All I could do was cry

  It was a beautiful voice drifting up to the windows from the side porch. Maggie tiptoed downstairs and emerged wrapped in an afghan onto the wooden deck. A light came on behind her in the kitchen, and she was joined by her mother.

  “That’s Etta James,” her mother said.

  They both stood there staring at the instrument plugged into the porch outlet—a swirling, antique gramophone.

  * * *

  I drift into the gray morning air, and follow a snowflake down to the Larsen porch. The earth seems hushed as the first snow of the year falls on Maggie Larsen and her mom—just a light, thin covering, as if the winter were dipping in a toe. Their hair is soon sugar-dusted. I rise to the sound of Etta James.

  I’ve started floating high above the peninsula to look for other ghosts like me on the land below, thinking they’ll glow and give themselves away, because I remember that ghosts should glow. (Though maybe, I wonder, only to each other? Or not at all?) Besides the glare of electric lights, the peninsula is dark: large swaths of woods; long, dark shores.

  Still, below, in the early dawn, something runs rampant through Gill Creek. It tips over garbage cans, taps against windows, breathes onto people’s necks. The residents think it’s animals, or the wind. But I think it’s fear itself.

  I return to Maggie, who’s now alone on the porch. She feels it too, the icy cold down her neck, the sense of something threatening just beyond her reach. I try to ima
gine I’m her guardian angel—I try to send her strength, but she doesn’t feel it.

  She shivers in the cold, and the moment is gone.

  * * *

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  6

  MAGGIE WAS DRINKING COFFEE OVER HER TEXTBOOK AT THE GLASS KITCHEN table Tuesday—taking notes for a comparative-lit paper while her mom sat across from her, on the phone with her boss—when they heard a scratching at the door.

  Maggie looked out the window, and no one was there. But when she placed her nose to the glass and looked down, she saw Abe sitting on the porch landing, tail thwapping against the slatted wood, a tiny slip of paper sticking out from under his collar. She opened the door and pulled the paper out of its spot.

  Snow day, we’re off. Didn’t want to wake you. Gone to Liam’s. Come over.

  Maggie went to the fridge and rolled up a piece of ham for Abe, who chomped it and ran off. She checked with her mom, promising to come back in time to get a full day’s schoolwork in, and then pulled on her boots and hat and coat and trudged across the fresh field, her tracks punctuating the white expanse behind her. Only about an inch of snow was on the ground, but it was enough to cover the whole field in a layer of white, making the features of the yard vanish. She breathed the cold air in deeply, and instead of taking the road she cut through the sparse woods, swinging by the sauna in the glade to check Liam’s progress. (The roof was up, but the one wall was still missing, the empty space draped in a blue, plastic tarp.)

  Liam’s house was a low, long, one-story wood cabin butting right up near the edge of the lake and surrounded by thick trees. A thin thread of smoke was rising through the chimney into the air and filling the woods with a delicious, smoky smell. A cardinal crossed Maggie’s path and she remembered her mom saying cardinals were the spirits of those we loved watching over us, though Maggie had never really lost anyone she loved. Maybe it was Pauline’s dad.

  The infamous VW Bus was parked in the driveway—it was old and rusty but painted a bright yellow. She could see the slogans “If Jesus is Inside me, I hope he likes Fajitas because that’s what he’s Getting!” and “Viva La Evolución!” painted across the side in purple. A vivid red devil was painted just behind the rearview mirror, hanging out with what looked like Bigfoot and the tooth fairy, and a slogan underneath that said “Scientists for Satan.”

  Liam answered the door in pajama pants and a button-down flannel shirt that hung half open, and Pauline lay draped on a thick rug in pajamas too, in front of the fire with a stick in her hand, roasting a marshmallow. Liam buttoned his shirt self-consciously while Maggie took in the house. It was full of handmade touches, like a cupola lined with copper above the living room and intricate woodwork around the windows.

  “Where’d you get that?” Maggie asked, pointing to a model ship hanging from a corner of the ceiling. She’d never seen anything quite like it.

  “I made it,” Liam said sheepishly, looking upward. He stood with his hand on the couch.

  “Liam can make everything. He built this house, pretty much,” Pauline said, from the rug, lifting up her legs into the air so that she was shaped like an L.

  Liam shrugged. “I helped. My dad and I remodeled it. It was kind of a shack before this.”

  They sat on the rug next to Pauline. “That must have taken forever,” Maggie said.

  “Four long years.” Liam reached out his hand to receive a graham cracker from Pauline.

  “S’mores for breakfast,” Pauline said blissfully. Liam stoked the fire.

  Maggie stared up at the ship, marveling at its tiny windows and little doors. How many hours had Liam spent working on it? There were other ships scattered about the house and carved wooden animals and rustic-looking furniture. Maggie loved everything about the place. It reminded her of where the elves lived in The Lord of the Rings.

  “Come meet my dad,” Liam said.

  He led her through a cozy, wood-paneled hall toward the back of the house. Walking behind him, she smelled cedar and fire smoke and maybe Liam’s soap. It was like she’d entered the Land of Men.

  He turned right, and she followed him through a door and out into an attached garage. Its shelves were stacked with saws and carving tools. A man sat hunched at a worktable against the wall to the right and didn’t look up to greet them.

  “Dad. This is Maggie, our new neighbor.”

  Mr. Witte was still for a moment, as if absorbed in his task, and then he swiveled in his seat and looked up. “Hello, Maggie, our new neighbor,” he said. He was bearded, and his eyes were blue and they twinkled. He looked like a Scandinavian villager in the 1800s. He wasn’t what she’d been expecting.

  “What are you working on?” she asked.

  “Well, see for yourself.” He had a dim hint of an accent.

  Maggie edged closer. It was a model ship. He’d carefully and painstakingly painted the hull with black-and-yellow stripes. The whole thing was so tiny and intricate, it boggled Maggie’s mind to think how it could have possibly been done.

  “That’s really nice, Mr. Witte.”

  Mr. Witte shrugged.

  “Not something teenage girls are interested in.”

  “No, it’s really interesting. It’s really cool.”

  “What are you interested in?” he asked, sizing her up.

  “Um, I like to read.”

  “Who’s your favorite author?” he asked abruptly, cutting her off.

  “Um.” Maggie felt nervous, as if she were on a job interview. She looked at Liam, who widened his eyes at her apologetically. “I like the Brontës. Um, I’m reading Moby Dick right now.”

  “Pah. Melville was a plagiarist.” He blew out through his lips and turned back to his work, unimpressed. “What about Tolstoy?”

  Maggie shrugged. She hadn’t read Tolstoy.

  “Thomas Mann?”

  She shook her head.

  Mr. Witte sighed as if she’d disappointed him and resumed his work as if they weren’t still in the room. Liam gave her a helpless look, as if to say, That’s about how it goes and then led her back to the front room, where they sank onto the soft rug by Pauline. “I think he likes you,” he said.

  “Ha.”

  “No, seriously,” Liam said, rubbing his jaw, embarrassed. “That’s him being friendly. Sorry. He’s grumpy and also convinced of his own superior intellect. But he’s sweet underneath it all. He’s a great dad.”

  Maggie told them about the gramophone she’d found on her porch, and about Gerald from the Emporium, and they were both equally horrified.

  “I told my mom it had to be one of you guys. I don’t want to worry her.”

  “You should tell her. You should have him arrested,” Liam said.

  “They can’t arrest a guy for leaving a gramophone on your porch.”

  “Littering,” Pauline offered hopefully.

  “I don’t even know if it was him. I called Elsa, and she said she’d have one of the guys at the Emporium talk to him. She won’t talk to him herself, because she thinks he’s the killer.”

  Pauline let out a loud groan. “Everybody thinks everybody is the killer. The lady at the 7-Eleven says it’s that guy Sam from the Gill Creek Maritime Museum, because he has sinister eyebrows. I think it’s Liam.”

  Liam stared into the fire. “I did it with s’more sticks.”

  “Anyway, the killings weren’t anywhere near here. Sturgeon Bay is all the way down the peninsula. The whole thing will die down eventually,” Pauline said.

  “Well, the people of Door County can rest easy now that we have your expert opinion,” Liam said flatly.

  Pauline rolled her sock into a doughnut and threw it at him, and he caught it with one hand and gave her a look—they both looked angry and like they were going to laugh at the same time. There seemed to be this permanent electric tension between them—like a thread stretched fro
m one to the other, pulling tight and loosening and pulling tight again.

  “Do either of you want it?” They turned to look at her, confused. “The gramophone.”

  “I’d love it,” Liam said.

  “He’ll take it apart, and it’ll never go back together again. Like Humpty Dumpty. He disembowels everything to see how it works.” Something vibrated, and Pauline pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. “You get a signal around here?” Maggie asked.

  “Hardly ever. Sometimes around Liam’s house. It’s basically just for telling time. Bleh,” She looked at the screen.

  “What is it?”

  “This guy from school, James Falk. He doesn’t notice that I don’t think he’s as amazing as he does.” Pauline tucked her phone away and turned back to the fire. She ignored Liam’s dark look and held her hands out in front of her contentedly. “The fire’s so nice and warm. Wouldn’t you love to live somewhere that’s warm all the time? I’d love to live in Austin, that’s my dream. I’d love to be one of those singer-songwriters who perform in all the bars and wear sparkly pants.”

  “Are you moving there after you graduate?” Maggie asked.

  Pauline wagged a hand in the air. “Eh. I don’t know.”

  “Pauline’s doesn’t believe in planning.” Liam turned to Pauline with a chastising expression.

  “But getting the things you want takes planning, if you really want them,” Maggie offered. This was her exact area of expertise.

  “Yeah, but how can you really plan anything?” Pauline took another bite of s’more and spoke through her food. “Everything turns out totally different than what you plan.” Maggie begged to differ. Planning was her religion.

  Liam kneaded one hand in the other, clearly frustrated with Pauline. “Well, I doubt someone’s going to come along and say, ‘Hey, come sing at my bar in Austin, and by the way here’s an apartment and a plane ticket.’”

  “Are you so eager to get me to leave?” Pauline shot back, looking at him with a mock frown.