Because really, in the end?
I was in way over my head.
The next morning I slung my backpack over my shoulder, just like I would any other day as I prepared to leave for school. I didn’t want my mom to know my plans. I didn’t want some kind of hex being thrown at me to stop me. But even as I followed my normal routine to a tee, my mom appeared on the top step of the stairs between the mudroom and kitchen, calling my name just as I put my hand on the doorknob.
“Don’t do this, Aidan,” she said, holding one hand against the doorway like she needed its support to ground her, holding the other hand out to me.
I turned toward her but kept my hand on the doorknob. “Don’t do what?” I asked.
“Don’t go where you’re going,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“School?” I said, trying to sound normal, hoping I could still fool her.
She smiled down at me, but it was the thin smile she always had for me whenever I disappointed her. “I know where you’re going, Aidan,” she said. “I’ve almost always known what you were going to do before you did it. But, honey, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to go there. The story I told hasn’t completely fallen apart. I can still keep it together. But it will break if you go to Lily Dale, I promise you. It will break if you go, and then I won’t be able to do anything to protect you and Toby.”
When I heard her say “the story” again, I closed my eyes and pinched my bottom lip between my teeth so I couldn’t shout at her in frustration. When I was calm again, I opened my eyes and said, “What story is it you keep talking about? If you haven’t noticed, it’s been a few weeks since you’ve made any sense.”
“The story I told to save you,” she said plainly, without shame, without regret, almost as if she couldn’t believe I didn’t understand where she was coming from. “Some of us—lucky ones, like you and me—we can do that. What about you, Aidan? Can you? Can you tell your own story, or are you being told?”
“I don’t know how to tell stories,” I said. “Not the kind you’re telling. You never taught me how. Or else you did, and then you hid my memories from me, so now I can’t remember.”
“Don’t go to that place, Aidan. Stay with your brother and me. If you go there, I can’t protect you.”
“You have a funny way of protecting people,” I said. “You think that lying somehow protects them.”
“Then let me tell you a truth.” My mother stood above me like a judge announcing a verdict. “You’ll be the one to find me after I’ve passed out of this world,” she said, without tears, without a tremor in her voice. She nodded slowly, holding my gaze with her own, waiting for me to nod in return. And when I finally did nod, she smiled, relieved that I didn’t argue with her like I’d been doing for most of that terrible year. It was the fact of what she was saying—that she would die and that I would find her, nothing more—that she wanted me to prepare for. There was nothing I could do but to allow this foretold death of hers to occur.
What can a person say to something like that when they’re already halfway out the door?
The only thing I could do, really, was to tell her everything I’d been tamping down for months on end.
“You are completely messed up,” I said, spitting out the words like poison I’d sucked from a snakebite. “You’re delusional. You’re a liar. I don’t know how you can even live with yourself after everything you’ve done to us. To Dad, to Toby, to me. Everything about this family is a sham, and it’s because of you and your damned stories. I’m going to do something about it, though. And I hope, if nothing else, you’ll eventually realize your lies have only driven people away from you.”
“You don’t understand, Aidan,” she said, holding her hand out even farther, wanting me to take it so she could pull me back into the house and keep me in the world of illusions she’d constructed around our family. “I told that story to hide you from the curse. But there’s a price to pay for a story that changes things so much. The price meant you’d have to forget some things, yes, and that people around town would have to forget some things too, if it was all going to work. You have to understand. I know it’s hard to believe, but I did this with all of my heart. I did it to save you.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand her. Not then. It was too much to take in, and I’d already decided she was deluded. So finally I turned the knob and pushed out into the open air, breathing deeply, deciding to say no more. If I stayed to argue, she’d get what she wanted. She’d still have me there, in the world she controlled. She’d talk me out of going out into the world to look for answers.
“I’ll see you later,” I muttered, shaking my head, then closed the door behind me.
When I got into the Blue Bomb a second later, I fired up the engine, then turned the car around in the drive so I could gun it all the way up to the road, spinning gravel beneath the tires like I was some kind of rebel. Before I reached the road, though, I had to slam on the brakes, because there, at the top of the drive, was someone standing in my way.
It was Jarrod, of course. It was Jarrod, standing with his backpack slung over his shoulder, blocking me from an easy exit. I could imagine him getting up early, slinging his pack over his shoulder, hoping to fool his mother into thinking he was going to school instead of what he actually went on to do, which was to walk eight miles in the early hours of the morning to get to my place before I took off for Lily Dale without him.
This guy. He just didn’t play fair.
I let the Blue Bomb idle forward, engine sputtering, and stopped when he stood only a few inches away from the bumper. I rolled down the window then, popped my head out, and rolled my eyes before asking, “What do you think you’re doing here?”
Jarrod gave me his most winning smile, which honestly was a winning smile, a smile even better than his fastball. I would have never been able to swing a bat fast enough to hit it out of the park. His smile flew straight at me, knocking me senseless. He didn’t even have to answer my question, and he knew that he didn’t have to.
“Fine,” I said a second later, shaking my head, knowing this wouldn’t go anywhere but where he wanted. “Get in.”
He quickly slid into the seat beside me and slammed the door, then turned to plant a fast kiss on my cheek. “Hit it,” he said after he pulled away. Then he slapped the dashboard.
I pushed down on the gas and turned onto the road, hoping the Blue Bomb would get us to our destination without any mishaps. It was a good car, but it had come by its family name honestly.
Then we were off, kicking up dust on the back roads of Temperance as we drove east across the Pennsylvania border.
We were silent as we drove through the winter-barren fields, where old graying barns sat along the horizon like remnants of a lost civilization. And as the fields began to drop away and the hills of western Pennsylvania grew around us, Jarrod turned to ask a question that must have been sitting inside him since the night before, when I’d told him about the photograph. When I’d told him about my family having some kind of connection to Lily Dale.
“What do you think we’ll find there?” he asked.
I shrugged, said, “I don’t know. I suppose we’ll find some people like my mom and me there. At least, that’s how it seems from what I found online.”
“But some of the things you found also said the people up there are just, you know, fakes. Con artists exploiting people who are grieving or unsure of how to get on with their lives.”
“Yeah,” I said. “So?”
“So what will you do if you don’t find what you’re looking for? If it all turns out to be just a village full of supernatural hucksters?”
“I’m sure there are a lot of fakes,” I said. “But there have to be some who are the real deal, right? Otherwise, why was my mom up there with Seth visiting this Aunt Carolyn? There has to be something there to find. There has to be something that will explain things.”
“What do you mean?” Jarr
od asked. “What would it explain?”
“My mom, for starters. It would explain how she can do the things she does.” And then, with a little reluctance, I looked over and said, “And, you know, maybe it will explain who I am too. What I am, that is. Why I’m this way.”
Jarrod reached across the space between us and put his hand on my leg, squeezing gently. “You don’t need to be explained, Aidan,” he said. “At least, not to me.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid he’d laugh at any moment after saying that, and then I’d look like a complete idiot if I’d said anything that indicated I believed him. He didn’t laugh when I looked over at him, though. He just met my eyes and kept his hand on my leg for a long time after, squeezing harder.
He was so much more prepared for this thing between us. One night, a few weeks after my dad died, when I’d started to feel weird about us being together, especially after my mom started to imply that my dad wouldn’t have liked it, Jarrod said, “If you could remember all the things you told me back when we were kids, when you could see the future clearly, you’d understand there’s nothing wrong here. You’d understand this is our destiny.”
Now, when I glanced at him in the passenger seat and saw again how much he loved me, all I could do was look down at his hand on my leg and say “Thank you” before turning back to the road and driving us farther toward our destination.
Two hours after leaving, we turned off I-90 into a town called Cassadaga, where the land was soft and gently rolling and the grays of the landscape back in Ohio had turned into browns and greens as spring soaked into the soil. Split-rail fences stood along the border of every field we passed. Grape orchards grew in clusters, just like grapes do, and wineries, it seemed, came into view at every other bend of the winding roads. The sky was bluer than I’d seen in a long while, since before winter, since before what happened with my dad down in Marrow’s Ravine. I even rolled down my window for a while. Just to inhale the crisp air, just to breathe something new and clean. It was only a few minutes of driving through that small town, though, before Jarrod pointed out a road sign and said, “Looks like we’re headed in the right direction.”
I looked to where he pointed. LILY DALE, the sign read. And beyond it, a gravel road snaked off the highway into an old forest, thick with its new leaves starting to unfurl. That was where we had to go, then.
After we’d driven down that road for several minutes, with the tires crunching against gravel the entire way, we came to a large gated arch with the words CITY OF LIGHT etched on it. Beside the arch stood a small shack, where another sign was posted, stating how much it cost to enter for the day, the week, or the month, as if the place were a campground instead of a town you could come to and go from freely. No one was waiting inside that shack. It must still have been the off-season, I figured. So we drove through.
As we rounded a bend in the road, a glint of sunlight on water suddenly flashed through a keyhole opening in the woods, revealing a path down to a lake beyond. Then we passed by an old diner, which from all appearances seemed closed: the doors chained, the row of front windows battened down with peeling shutters. Up ahead, though, through the branches of trees hanging over the road, the roofs of houses finally sprouted into view, and when we passed under those trees, a village appeared before us like a mirage in the distance.
I slowed the car to a stop, the brakes squealing a little right there in the middle of that old gravel road, and said, “This must be it.”
But “it” wasn’t much more than a small network of streets no more than three or four blocks long, each lined with tiny Victorian houses painted in a variety of pastel colors: pink, yellow, blue, grass green. “It’s an Easter egg town,” I said as we peered out at it, and Jarrod agreed.
For a while we just sat there, looking at the place as if one of us might suddenly say “Well, that’s it, let’s go,” and then we’d back the car up and head home without really taking a look around. I wanted to do that, actually. I wanted to leave now that I was here, rather than face whatever it was I had to find. Eventually, Jarrod said, “Seems like this place is just nine or ten streets on a grid at most. At least we won’t have to look too hard for the house in that photo. Are you ready to do this?”
Was I ready to do this? My knuckles had turned white from my tight grip on the steering wheel, and that was probably an indication that I wasn’t ready for anything. But I didn’t answer Jarrod. Not at first. I stared out the windshield as the engine occasionally shuddered from all the miles I’d forced the Blue Bomb to take us in one go. Somehow, that ancient heap of a car kept humming while we sat there. If the old wreck had made it this far, I figured I had to do right by it. I had to finish the journey. I had business here. I just wished I knew what to expect from the business.
Was I ready? No, not really. But I made myself nod in answer to Jarrod’s question, then pressed down on the gas, allowing the Blue Bomb to crawl forward.
It only took us ten minutes of driving up and down the narrow roads of Lily Dale before we spotted a yellow house with the same kind of spindled front-porch railing I’d seen in the photo from Seth’s memory album. Jarrod spotted it first, actually, and then I said there were probably ten other yellow houses around here just like that one, and that we wouldn’t find the right one until we came to the very last house. But he was right. As we pulled closer, I took my foot off the gas and let the car idle in the street so I could get a better look. Was there a number posted above the door that sat in the shadows of the porch?
Yes, there was. The number four hung over the front doorway, like a sign from some jerk of a god who was leading me to this place, probably just to hand me some more trouble to deal with, as if I didn’t already have enough.
And just being in this place, thinking about a sign from some jerk of a god, so far from home and with Jarrod beside me, made me shiver from this weird feeling that maybe there really were gods all around us—in the trees, in the bushes, in the sky, and in the water of the lake beside us—waiting, watching to see what we would do next, wondering how I would deal with whatever they were about to throw at me.
If that was true, then I hated them. I needed gods who would throw me a miracle for once in this brief life of mine. I’d had enough of dealing with all the trickster types.
At the last moment, I turned the wheel and pulled up the drive of the yellow house. And when I killed the engine, the sounds of that forest-hidden village invaded the vacuum of our silence. Birdsong, the water lapping at the lakeshore, the tinkling of wind chimes that hung from every porch I’d seen as we passed by the old gingerbread cottages that lined these gravel streets. The same kind of wind chimes that hung from my mother’s porch back in Temperance. Great, the place was home to a cult, I thought. And my mother was a member. That would explain all of my misfortunes.
I looked over my shoulder again, stalling for time, and also waiting to see if a horse-and-buggy would come trotting around the bend, as if it were still the turn of the twentieth century, when this town was probably a pretty big deal. When no horse and cart appeared, though, I turned back to Jarrod, the vinyl covering of the seat rumpling with my movement, and said, “I guess we have to get out of the car now, don’t we?”
Jarrod threw his head back against the seat and laughed, shaking his head, which made me feel a little bit better about having him here with me. To break the tension, to help me laugh instead of getting stuck in my own head.
After he collected himself, he left his head resting against the seat but turned his face in my direction, brushing locks of hair from his brow. “Aidan,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen—not in the next few weeks, not in the next few days, not in the next few hours or even the next few minutes—but whatever does go on, I won’t let anything bad happen to you if I can help it. And even if we discover that you’re actually a demon or a werewolf or a vampire, or something equally unlikely, I’ll still love you. Okay?”
He put his hand out and plu
cked one of mine from the steering wheel to squeeze. I gave him a halfhearted grin, but even with his words of encouragement, I couldn’t help but worry. I didn’t say it, but I kept wondering, What if it’s not you I have to worry about after I find what I’m looking for? What if I’m the one who can’t deal with the truth?
As I got out of the car, my stomach began to pitch a little, the same way I’ve always suddenly grown anxious whenever I’m riding a roller coaster, that part where you climb slowly to the top of a high curve, then the rush of wind on your face as the train curls over and sends you plummeting to the bottom with your screams streaming behind you. What would I find when I knocked on that door? Who would answer? And what would they have to tell me? I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know any longer.
As we stepped onto the porch a minute later, the front door was already opening to reveal a tall, elderly woman wearing a flowered housecoat and silver-framed glasses, which she adjusted on the bridge of her nose before opening the screen door. She had her hair bound up behind her in a long white braid, as if she were still a young woman. Or a hippie, I could hear my father saying, if he’d been there with me.
“Well, hello,” the old woman said, giving us a warm smile. “What can I do for you boys on this fine day?”
I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, the woman blinked and took off her glasses, and the smile she’d been offering like Halloween candy disappeared in the blink of an eye. “You’re the youngest,” she said. Just that. Just at first. Then: “Three boys. Am I right? Three brothers. And you’re the youngest of them?”
I turned to Jarrod for a second, a little afraid, but he only shrugged, eyebrows arched in a way that said This isn’t mine to answer.
“Yeah,” I said as I turned back to the old woman. “I’m the youngest. Three boys. But one of us passed away a long time ago.”