The root beer is ice cold. I take a long drink while Gwen spoons up a big heap of vanilla ice cream.
Suddenly, Gwen puts down her spoon. “Have to go. Been here too long.”
“What do you mean? It’s not even noon yet. I gotta lot of time before school’s over.”
Gwen scrapes her chair against the floor. “I have to get back.”
I gulp down my root beer. There’s so much I need to talk to her about and she’s running off already.
I hurry to catch up to her outside on the sidewalk. She’s walking fast, fast, fast.
“What’s wrong, Gwen?”
“I just can’t stay away from the graveyard very long.”
We dart down the sidewalks, cross the street, and head down the road back to the cemetery. She’s real hard to keep up with and her golden hair flies straight out behind her like a flag. I dodge rocks, panting like I need an oxygen tank. Once she sees the stone wall and the gates of Bayou Bridge Cemetery, we finally slow down.
I sprawl on the cool grass, exhausted, and stare up at the sky while she circles the headstones and tramps up and down the rows. She looks upset and more lost than ever.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Gwen. Why did we have to leave town so suddenly?”
Gwen stops pacing, but her eyes look wild. “I think maybe my best friend might have died. There is this terrible ache in my chest that never goes away.”
I know who her best friend is, but I can’t say anything yet. I’m afraid of what she might do. Afraid the shock will kill her. That she’s sick in her body — or her head — and don’t even know it. “Wouldn’t you remember something so awful? How she died — or the funeral?”
She gets more agitated. “It’s like that part of my memory is gone. Like somebody picked it right outta my head. I can’t seem to leave my house or the cemetery for very long, either. They’re the safest places. If I go too far from here, I find myself disappearing. Like I’m nothing. Like I don’t exist anymore. There’s something I have to do, but I don’t know what it is!”
I chew my lips, getting sorta creeped out. And I’m losing my nerve. She keeps looking off across the water like she’s searching for answers — or searching for someone.
“I gotta leave Bayou Bridge, I gotta leave the cemetery, but I don’t know how! I want to find my family, but I’m stuck here, stuck on the water. Sometimes I make it to Cypress Cove and the blue bottle tree, but I can’t never stay very long.”
She’s starting to panic. “I keep thinking about her, that I have to help her, but I don’t know how to do that neither!”
“Who’s her? Who you talking about?”
She stares at me like she’s finally figuring it out. “My best friend. She needs me. I made her go that night! I shouldn’t have, but I did! I been looking for her ever since.”
I nod my head like I understand, take a deep breath, and plow ahead. “You mean Mirage?”
She steps back like I just shoved her away. “How do you know her name?”
I chew on my cheek, afraid that if I say anything else, she’ll go off the deep end, run away, or tell me never to come back. I realize how fragile she is, and I know it’s more than just her family disappearing. “Let’s go wading. My toes are ready to burn up my shoes.”
She doesn’t look too sure, but follows me back to the water anyway.
“I should have stolen a picnic lunch from home,” I joke, rolling up the bottoms of my jeans and testing out the water temperature.
Gwen sits on the edge, hugging her knees to her chest.
“We’ll pretend we have our own private river beach.”
She gives me a hesitant smile. “I’ll pretend I’m eating chocolate cake. Been a long time since I had my mamma’s chocolate cake.”
I hold out my little finger and flounce my imaginary skirts. “Lady Gwen, do you see that mansion behind them big ole trees? My daddy gave it to me for my birthday. Wonder if the maid has finished making the beds.”
Gwen’s smile grows bigger.
I offer her an imaginary plate and fork like we really do have a picnic. “Would you like seconds on the cake?”
“I’m stuffed,” Gwen says, patting her stomach.
“You mean you don’t want another piece of this delicious feather-light chocolate fudge cake? It only has two calories a slice and vitamins just like broccoli.”
She finally giggles as I find a log to sit on and dip my feet into the cool water. Then I get braver and squish the mud between my toes. “See any gators?”
“Nope, no gators out this way for a long time,” Gwen says, adding her shoes and socks to my pile. “Mostly on the other side of the island.”
The water’s only a few inches deep, but when she finally takes the plunge to join me, she squeals and rolls her pants even higher.
I walk out farther, my feet sinking into the cool, slimy mud. Hot sun blisters my back and dragonflies dart past my nose. The air is absolutely motionless.
Seconds later, Gwen screams and grabs my arm, a horrified expression on her face.
“What is it?”
“Look!”
Water is lapping over her ankles. The water level is starting to rise and she’s panicking. In a few more minutes, the water is almost to our knees. It’s the most peculiar thing. And getting more frightening. Good thing we aren’t too far from the shore.
“I gotta get out of here! The water’s gonna get me!” She starts breathing like she’s going to hyperventilate, then lurches back to the bank, slipping and sliding and splashing muddy water everywhere.
After Gwen grabs her shoes and socks, I watch her race all the way back to the cemetery, not even looking behind her.
It all happens so fast I’m still standing in the bayou, about ten feet from shore. The low places are now covered and every second I watch, the water level rises higher. My head feels muddled with heat and sun, but somewhere along the Teche it’s storming and sending water this direction.
Fear finally gets me moving, but in just minutes the water is moving faster and deeper, past my knees, and the mud is so slimy I keep slipping and staggering around, trying not to fall over.
The water level sucks at my ankles, drags like hands on my legs. Finally, I reach the shoreline, pick my way around the cypress knees, grab my shoes, and run for safety.
Gwen is sitting on one of the granite headstones, her shoulders shaking.
“You okay?” I ask, cleaning off the mud between my toes with damp grass.
She buries her face in her knees. “You saved my life.”
“I didn’t save your life, silly. You ran out of the bayou yourself. The water was barely to your knees.”
Sometimes I wonder if she really is a teensy bit crazy.
“I could have drowned, Shelby. I think I’d rather die any other way than by drowning.”
Her words make me shiver even though it’s so hot. “Don’t talk like that. I don’t want to die any way at all. Maybe old age in my sleep. Painless.”
“I think drowning is supposed to be really painful, right?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her, searching for a way to change the subject.
Gwen keeps talking, her voice ominous. “I keep dreaming about drowning every night. I think it is. Very painful.”
The hair on my neck rises like fingers are tugging on the strands.
“When you drown, there’s only muddy water all around. You can’t see nothin’. Your throat and lungs fill up with cold, slimy water until you think you’re gonna burst. All of a sudden, you start breathing water until you swell up like a balloon. And then you’re dead.”
“Gwen, stop it. That’s so creepy. You’re not going to die like that. Anyway, how does anyone know what it’s like? Everybody who’s ever drowned can’t come back and tell people about it.”
“You think that’s what happened to my parents? To Maddie? And nobody knows? What if the whole town thinks they moved, but they really drowned? And maybe my best friend drowned, too.”
“No, Gwen, no,” I tell her, squeezing her hands between mine. She feels icy cold, like a draft of freezing air. “I’m sure that’s not true. You gotta stop thinkin’ such awful thoughts. Make you go crazy thinkin’ that stuff.”
We look at each other for a long, peculiar moment. I know I need to tell her. Ask her my questions. Figure all this out. Even if I don’t want to.
“Gwen,” I say softly, “I know who the girl in your locket is.”
Her eyes fix on to mine. “My best friend. But I already told you that.”
My hands are shaking. “I know her name. It’s Mirage, right?”
She stands as still as the angel statue at the bottom of the cemetery. “You said that before, but how do you know that?”
“I figured it out in my family photo albums. I know because, well, because Mirage is my mother.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A BREEZE RUSTLES THE LEAVES OF THE CYPRESS AND GOBS OF hanging moss sways like it’s dancing to its own silent music.
“That’s impossible,” Gwen whispers.
My heart pounds in my ears. “Gwen, I have to show you something.”
I pull out the very first note I found in the blue bottle tree and unfold it.
Gwen looks at the note and then looks at me, her face going red, her eyes looking hurt. She starts tearing up clumps of grass, breathing hard.
When I set the paper down, the black ink looks stark, even as the sky overhead turns darker with clouds I hadn’t even noticed until now.
“Where did you get that note?” Gwen whispers.
“From the blue bottle tree,” I whisper back.
Her eyes get so big I think they’re going to pop right out of her skull. “But it’s mine. That note is mine.”
“I know it’s yours. I recognize the handwriting from your scrapbook.”
“You’re snooping in our blue bottle tree!”
“The first one was an accident,” I tell her quickly. “Then I found more. I wanted to see what they said. Wanted to find out who wrote them.”
“You should have left them there! You shouldn’t have taken them out! Now I’ll never find her! Never! I’ll be lost forever!”
“You’re not lost, Gwen! You’re right here with me.”
I move closer to her and try to take her hands, but she flings me away, and her breath comes in little whimpering gasps.
She shakes her head so hard her hair whips against my face. “But everybody left, they’re gone. They don’t want me. They forgot about me.”
“That’s not true! Your house is still here; you’re still here. I’m here.” I’m trying to reassure her, but I’m doing a terrible job.
She starts to cry, tears falling like rain down her cheeks. “But I haven’t seen them in so long. They must not love me to leave like that.”
“You mean your parents? When did they leave, Gwen? How long’s it really been?”
“My parents left the night of the storm. The big storm. Biggest storm ever in my life.” I can tell her brain is zooming ahead as memories come back to her. “They had to go to New Orleans to do the house paperwork.” Gwen jerks her head up like she just remembered. “They bought a house there. My daddy’s job moved him. Can’t remember what his job was, though. Sort of remember my mamma packing boxes.”
“It don’t matter,” I tell her. “Why didn’t you go with ’em?”
“It was a school night and I had play practice — and some other stuff,” she adds vaguely. “And they said they’d probably be late. They took Maddie and never came back.”
Her eyes are so stricken, my heart wrenches inside my chest. I thought Mirage abandoned me, but I think I’d go crazy if my whole family just up and left one day. What if I never saw my daddy again? Or Grandmother Phoebe? Or even Mirage. And Miss Silla Wheezy and that Mister Lenny flitting around the house? I’d miss ’em. I know I would. And that makes me happy and sad all at the same time.
I wish I was wearing the charm bracelet, and that it truly did have magical powers and could give me the answers I need. Ever since Mister Lenny stole it, I’d been leaving it at home so Mirage didn’t catch me wearing it. It’s too boiling hot to wear long-sleeve shirts every day to hide it. “Then what happened?”
“After I ate the supper my mamma left me in the fridge, I met my friends on the bridge. We’d jump off and swim and have races from one end a the pier to the other.” She looks up at me and almost smiles. “I always won. Even beat the boys.” Then she pauses and glances away. “We weren’t supposed to be on the bridge at night though. Especially not when my folks were gone. It was gonna be the biggest dare of all. We’d planned it for weeks.”
A disturbing prickle rises along my arms. Gwen was talking about the time when the bridge was still whole. Before it cracked apart and broke. Before the empty pilings and the sharp, rusty nails. A group of kids who met on the bridge. Played games. Before the blood.
“Was your best friend — Mirage — there?” I ask, taking a gulp because it’s hard to even say her name to Gwen.
Gwen thinks for a minute. “She was busy after school with her mamma so I couldn’t find her right off. Nobody answerin’ their phone neither. So I rowed real quick and left her a note in the blue bottles to meet me at the pier.”
“Then what happened?”
“I knew she didn’t want to go that night. That she was scared. But I kept pushing her. And I left her a message in the blue bottle,” she repeats and then glances down at my cupped hands at the note I’d just showed her. “That note.”
All at once, Gwen snatches up the scrawled-on note and runs for the riverbanks.
“Aah!” The sound rips from my throat as I stare at my empty hands.
Jumping up from the grass, I race after her, pumping my arms hard as I can, but she runs faster. While I watch, Gwen jumps into the boat and begins to paddle toward her house.
“Gwen!” I shout. “Stop! Let me go with you!” The wind snatches my words and throws them away.
I keep shouting, but she doesn’t turn around. The way her head is bowed, I can tell she’s still crying, but she rows and rows and rows without looking back.
There’s no way to get to her without a boat.
But Mirage has a boat.
Do I have time to get to the town docks, row out to the island and back, before Mirage arrives? I think she’s in town today running errands, but I can’t remember. If she is, then the boat is sitting at the docks. I hope.
I run past the cemetery and the broken-down pier and down the long, lonely road until I reach Main Street and head to the Bayou Bridge docks.
When I pass the school, I notice that it’s empty and deserted. Everyone is gone. What time is it? I have no idea.
My mouth is so dry by the time I get to the dock pilings, I can’t even swallow. I stop short and chew on my lips.
Mirage is there, sitting on the dock reading a book and tapping her foot like she’s impatient. I must be late and I wonder just how late I am.
Gwen has the blue bottle note and I feel an emptiness, a nagging worry, like I’ll never see her or the note again.
Mirage looks up as I stand there, panting, and I realize that I left my backpack somewhere. The cemetery? The café? The bayou bank when the water started rising?
I can’t remember.
“You missed going to the library with me,” Mirage says.
“Bayou Bridge has a library?”
She nods, frowning at me. “Startin’ to wonder what happened to you. You’re missin’ your school pack, too. Where’s it at?”
“Um, I’m not sure … maybe school? Gym?”
“You got homework?”
I don’t know how to answer her because I have absolutely no idea. I haven’t been in school for at least two days. Mrs. Daigle and Tara and Alyson feel very far away and not quite real.
“Shelby Jayne?”
I get into the boat, pretending everything is okay. “No, I don’t got any homework.” I cross my fingers and plan to work really h
ard to make it up tomorrow. Assignments and grades don’t seem very important, not when Gwen is upset and has disappeared. Not when everything about her is turning upside down. I don’t want to think about it. She’s real, she’s real, I keep telling myself. If she’s not then maybe I’m the one who’s gone crazy.
Maybe Mirage just gave Gwen a picture of herself when she was eleven years old so the pictures in the two sides of the locket matched. Maybe that’s the simplest explanation. They met somehow and became friends. Bayou Bridge is a tiny town. Everybody knows everybody else. Nothin’ to be jealous about.
I want to pull out all the blue bottle notes and look at them and piece them together, but I have to be patient and wait until we get home.
I listen to the water shushing against the sides of the boat as the wind rises, blowing moss through the trees and bending the cypresses. I sneak a glance backward and Mirage has a pained look on her face.
“Storm’s comin’,” she says as we turn the last bend in the bayou and see the swamp house up ahead. “Thought it was just some rain blowin’ through, but it’s gonna be bigger. Watch out for snakes and gators; they tend to be on the move when it’s gonna storm. Jest gettin’ to their favorite hiding places so they’re safe.”
I chew on my cheek and just nod, then jump out as soon as we touch land and throw the rope around the piling.
I want to steal the boat and go find Gwen, but now I can’t. With every second, I’m getting more and more worried about her taking off like that. I wonder when the coast might be clear to leave and go out to Gwen’s island. Probably just enough daylight if I leave in the next hour.
While Mirage gathers her pack from the bottom of the boat, I run up to the porch. At the front door, I look back. She’s not following very fast.
She doesn’t even glance at me as she throws her stuff on a patch of scraggly grass, then turns back to the boat again. From under a piece of canvas, she hauls out a wooden stake. Next I see a square, red-lettered sign from Bayou Bridge Realtors. HOUSE FOR SALE.
I stand at the top of the porch and watch Mirage pound the sign into the front yard. She trudges the rest of the way up the slope of yard, gusts of wind throwing old cans and nets and traps around the place. Mirage chases after them, but I think she’s tired because she gives up easily and then stomps up the porch.