“Here’s the deal. You get your heirloom back as soon as you take the dare and jump in the water,” Tara says. “We’ll count to ten and T-Beau will fish you out. That’s a better deal than anybody else ever had.”
I think about Larissa and start really wondering what happened to her. Wonder about that awful scar. Wonder about the truth.
“Never took swimming lessons,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “What if my head cracks on all them rotted planks?”
Then I glance down, trying to hide the tears, and make eye contact with Jett, who suddenly glances away.
“Aw, come on, Tara,” Jett says, not looking at me. “That dumb bracelet might be worth some money. What if the police come and arrest us for stealin’ the dern thing? Let’s go back to shore and go wadin’ instead.”
Tara lays the charm bracelet across her legs, and I almost throw up as it slips and slides across her shorts, nearly falling right into the muddy water. Tara looks up at Jett, and the expression on her face wavers. Obviously, he has influence over her.
That’s when it hits me. This is my chance.
Do it, do it, do it, my brain chants. Before I lose my nerve, I scoop the bracelet off Tara’s lap, jump to my feet, and tear straight down the middle of the bridge, trying not to fall over the edge as the wooden planks shudder and shake.
Leaping over the steps to the soft muddy banks, I keep running. Straight up the slope, down the road, until I reach the cemetery wall. Hoping no one’s following me, I race along the perimeter of the graveyard until I run smack into the gates. A graveyard’s gotta be the perfect place to hide out for a while. Nobody’ll think I’ve come here.
Quick as I can, I dart inside and fall to the ground, gasping like I’m gonna pass out for sure. Overhead, the clouds jump and whirl, my eyes go dark, and then clear again as I gulp in air.
Catching my breath, I lie there in the prickly grass listening, hoping nobody saw where I ran to, prayin’ hard as I can that they’ll think I’d never have the guts to actually go inside the cemetery. I stare up into the big old oaks and watch the flat green leaves whisper back and forth in the breeze. It’s quiet and peaceful and my heart quits jumpin’ so crazy. It’s for certain that a cemetery, even an old scary one, is nowhere near as bad as getting pushed off that bridge.
Finally, I roll over and kneel at the old stone wall, dark green with moss. I peek over the edge and see that the road is clear. No voices or kids. Not even any cars in sight. Am I safe? Was Larissa tellin’ the truth after all? Is the bridge where she got that terrible ugly scar?
I imagine her falling into the water, the long rusted nails tearing at her face as she hits those slimy boards. I picture Larissa bleeding, rushed to the hospital.
The drops of blood on the pier. Maybe that blood is actually hers. Maybe that whole story of the girl who got struck by lightning is just something they made up to scare me. Scare all the new kids while they try to get you to jump in or fall in. Scare you forever just so they can keep a hold on you. Like they did to Larissa. She’s still afraid of them, all this time later.
I lean against the rough stone wall and slowly unclench my fingers holding the charm bracelet tight in my fist. I count the charms, all eight of them. Safe, the silver clasps intact.
Can’t help shuddering, thinking about how close I came to losing it. What would Mirage have done if her antique family bracelet had sunk to the bottom of the bayou? She’d send me away forever, maybe to an orphanage or somewhere horrible until my daddy got back. Maybe she’d pretend I never existed or tell Daddy I’d run away.
It could happen. She left me once already. I take a swipe at my eyes, thinking about how I may not be worth as much as a charm bracelet, especially an antique heirloom from the Civil War.
I hold the silver loops up to the sunlight and study the charms, thinking about how I should have left it at home like I was supposed to. If Mirage knew I’d secretly worn it, she’d probably hide it away permanently. Keep it hers forever and I’d never get it.
The sunlight moves, catching the blue bottle just right. My heart does a handstand, backflip, and somersault all at the same time inside my chest.
The little blue bottle charm has something inside.
It takes a minute to get the miniature piece of cork out, but finally I do and lay it carefully on the stone wall so I don’t lose it in the grass. The tiniest piece of paper has been rolled tight, tight, tight inside. Someone was very careful when they rolled it perfectly round, perfectly snug, so it would fit.
Carefully, I unroll the paper and suck in my breath. The black ink writing is intact, not even smudged. All my fears of being chased by the kids from school, of falling in the bayou, getting eaten by a gator, fly right out of my head.
The note is terrifying.
She’s dead. She’s dead! I’ll never forgive myself long as I live.
CHAPTER TEN
SURE AS HECK MY EYES ARE NOT PLAYING TRICKS ON ME.
“She’s dead?” I whisper, reading the words. My voice seems to echo over and over again in the silent graveyard.
Who wrote this? It sounded like they killed her.
I’ll never forgive myself long as I live.
This charm bracelet belonged to Mirage. Did she put the note inside the tiny blue bottle? I can’t picture her writing this. Maybe it was written by my swamp witch grand-mère and not by Mirage at all. If that was true, this spooky note would have been inside the blue bottle charm for decades.
No, that can’t be right at all. Mirage told me that my grand-mère put away her own charms when she gave Mirage the bracelet. All the charms on the bracelet right now belong to Mirage.
Plus the rolled-up piece of paper wasn’t faded and falling apart like it was sixty years old. Maybe the blue bottle charm came with the note. Maybe it was put there by someone else.
The afternoon is so muggy it’s like the air is sweating, but I feel cold.
Now I wonder … is the blue bottle charm note connected to the blue bottle tree notes? I’m pretty sure this tiny, rolled-up note is in the same handwriting as the second bottle note I found. I can’t wait to get home to double-check. But why did someone put notes in the blue bottles in the first place? Is there a secret story behind them?
Guess I could ask Mirage … but she’s not the kind of person who would put notes in a bottle. Besides, who’d she be writing to? Nobody else lives near Cypress Cove. All them notes were meant to be read by someone. They were heartfelt, like someone afraid or heartbroken. Mirage couldn’t have written them since she didn’t have many heartfelt feelings of her own. If she did, she wouldn’t have left me and my daddy. She would have stayed in New Iberia with us. With me. She would have told Grandmother Phoebe that she was the mamma, and not let her run everything. She wouldn’t have disappeared into her bedroom soon as she got home. She wouldn’t have stopped talking to everyone, or acted like she was irritated and angry all the time.
All them months before Mirage ran away from home, she did it all wrong. Even if Grand-mère was sick. Kids ran away from home, not mammas.
My eyes feel hot and scratchy. When I glance up, all of a sudden I can’t see too good.
Most of all, Mirage should have wanted me more than she did.
I take a gulp, trying to hold it all in. Maybe I’m thinking too much because my head hurts. My heart hurts. And now my whole body does, too.
Mirage should have taken Daddy and me with her. She could have asked us to run away with her. And my daddy should have gone after her and stopped her car from driving away instead of locking himself in his room for a week.
My chest gets a funny sharp pain, right under my ribs, and I press my fingers against the spot. I’m in a graveyard wanting to cry my eyes out, but I feel stupid. And I want my pillow.
Falling back to the grass, I press the little blue bottle charm note to my chest and hold the bracelet against my eyes, wondering who the she is that died, wondering where she’s buried. Right here in this graveyard?
r /> The grass tickles my neck and I roll over, spooked, as I look out over all them graves. Where are her bones — the she from the note? How long has she been underneath the earth in her coffin?
I lurch to my feet, feeling dizzy, and chew on the fat, hard blister inside my cheek that always hurts. Wiping the dew on my palms across my jeans, I glance around and try to get my bearings.
The cemetery sits inside a low stone wall, but there are rows and rows of headstones, angels, stone slabs, small markers, and big family granite plots with names engraved in fancy lettering.
Now that it’s past noon, it’s not so spooky. The trees rustle overhead like they’re chattering back and forth with one another.
In the back of the graveyard, the cut grass slopes downward and I’m pretty sure there’s a little creek inside the cypress cluster at the bottom of the cemetery. Somebody mowed recently.
I roll the small note up tight and slide it back into the blue bottle charm. After stuffing in the cork, I clasp the bracelet around my wrist again. The charms make a tinkling sound as I walk up and down the rows, checking out names.
Ten minutes later, I come on a newer grave. The grass is growing back in clumps, and the marker is small and made of wood, like somebody who don’t have much money. Simple block letters with the name ANNIE CHAISSON and a recent death date.
A peculiar emotion rushes up to my heart and closes up my throat. That’s my grand-mère. Small and insignificant. ’Course she’d be buried in Bayou Bridge Cemetery. I’d missed the funeral. Grandmother Phoebe wouldn’t let me play hooky from school for it. I wonder how much Mirage cried when her mamma passed, after taking care of her all them months. I wonder if she misses her. I wonder if she was mad I didn’t come to the funeral. Now I wonder if anybody came to it besides Daddy and the priest.
I stand on the lumpy ground where the sod is pieced back together and feel a little guilty. My stomach is hollow, but maybe I’m just hungry.
I start walking again, glancing back at the little gravesite, my conscience pricking me in the center of my chest.
When I reach the last row of headstones, I start to hear music.
Someone is humming, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. I head closer to the sound and suddenly a girl steps out from behind a white angel and leans against one of the angel’s beautiful white wings. She stares at me with the darkest brown eyes I’ve ever seen.
All the air leaves my lungs and I have to stop fast so’s I don’t skid right into her.
“I didn’t see you!” I stammer. “I’m sorry —”
“How you do?” she says, real friendly. Her blonde, wispy hair floats around her head even though there’s no breeze down here under the last big oak tree. “Been waitin’ for ya.”
I gulp past my dry throat. “You have?”
“Saw you coming up the grass,” she says. And then she smiles.
Her smile is like a sunbeam floating down from the sky. Her golden hair hovers on her shoulders, falling into place after a moment. Her smile is so different from Tara’s bossy smile, or even from Alyson’s smile that watches to see who’s gonna do what so she can follow the most popular person at the moment.
“I — I was just walking,” I say, wondering if she can tell I’ve been crying. “Actually, I was just leaving. Sorry to bother you.”
“You ain’t bothering me. It’s real lonely out here. Not many people live on the edge of Bayou Bridge. And there hasn’t been a funeral in a few weeks.”
“Really? You go to all the funerals? You must really be bored.”
“I’m partial to the music, especially that song ‘Goin’ Up a-Yonder.’ I keep waiting to see what it’s like to go up a-yonder.”
“Hey,” I say. “That’s the song LizAnn’s mamma sings when she does the dishes. Practically tears out my heart. But why would you want to go to heaven? You’re only a kid.”
She lifts her shoulders. “I’d rather go to heaven than, you know, that other place.” She stage-whispers, “H-E double toothpicks!”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I agree wholeheartedly, then kick myself when I hear Grandmother Phoebe correcting me inside my head. Isn’t, not ain’t.
The girl looks at me from under her wispy bangs. “Saw you up there, sittin’ on the grass by the gates. You ain’t happy, are you?”
I’m embarrassed she was watching me when I didn’t know it. Then I wonder if she’s truly being friendly — or if she’s one of the Truth or Dare gang that just showed up late.
“Why you so sad?”
I’m chewing so hard, I can taste blood again. “Because I don’t want to be here.”
“In the cemetery? Me neither.”
“No, I mean, Bayou Bridge.”
“How long you lived here?”
“Just a couple weeks. My daddy brought me and left me while he went off to some country by Russia.”
The girl’s eyes widen and I can see tiny flecks of green inside the black of her irises. “He left you all alone?”
“No. I mean, I just got here — to live with my mamma. She’s the real person who left me.” I pause. “It’s complicated.”
She nods sympathetically. “Know all about that. It’s hard to move someplace new when your heart is in your old home. That happened to me, too.”
“Really? I never moved to a new place before. And the kids from school — well — they — you know.” Since I have to go back to school tomorrow, I don’t want to be known for tattling or gossiping so I stop talking.
The girl nods her head and I notice that her eyes look older than her face. Old, like she’s full of knowledge or wisdom or something.
“Those kids’re always there. Hanging around on that broken bridge, playing jokes, getting into trouble.”
“I got that impression. Um….” I break eye contact and stare at the angel statue instead. “Did you used to be one of them?”
She pauses, like she’s wondering how much to tell me. Finally, she says, “Don’t know those kids I saw you with today, but that pier is a terrible place. Wish they’d tear it down and throw all them rotten boards and pilings away for good.”
I’m confused. “Why don’t the town just fix it?”
She sort of glares at me. “Because that pier ain’t no use no more! It’s supposed to go out to the island, but it don’t. All those broken planks and nails staring at you from under the water. Empty pilings rising out of the water like ghosts.”
“That’s exactly what I thought!”
“Never did like that bridge,” she adds. “Going by boat is much better. I should know. That island is where I live.”
“You live on the island?” I ask her. “Those kids said it was deserted.”
“Not no more. My family left, but I’m back. Those kids should pay better attention.”
My mouth lifts in a smile, thinking about Tara and Ambrose and T-Beau and their cruel games. “I guess they should, huh?”
Then we both burst into giggles and suddenly I’m bent over laughing. After a while I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard, it’s been so long.
A hazy memory barges right into my brain. Me and Daddy and Mirage driving somewhere, just the three of us, laughing in the front seat of the Chevy. Daddy was telling a corny joke and Mirage was teasing him. Me, I was curled up under the crook of her arm. Where was Grandmother Phoebe? A strange feeling comes over me as I realize part of the reason the joke was so funny. We’d escaped Grandmother Phoebe’s house and were off on an adventure, our own family, just us.
Up until now, I never remembered doing anything that didn’t include Grandmother Phoebe.
I shake my head and realize that the girl is watching me, her head turned to study my face. She’s wearing yellow shorts that match her yellow hair. Her smile is the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
Without thinking, I reach out and touch a finger to her hair. The golden strands feel like spring sunshine, warm and soft.
Words pop out of my mouth. “Are you real?”
>
She pats her arms, laughing softly. “I think I’m real.”
“I was just thinking about a girl I saw a few nights ago in the moonlight. By the edge of the swamp near our house. That wasn’t you, was it?” Even as I say it, I know it’s crazy. Who’d be out so late at night?
“Might a been me. I like to paddle my boat. Not much else to do. Other side of my island is the deep swamp. The Bayou Teche and the inlets and coves all curve around together and sometimes it all connects. I know all the shortcuts.”
“I figured you were a trick of the moon, maybe just a shadow from the tree bottles.”
“You have a bottle tree?” she asks.
“Hundreds of blue bottles. It’s gigantic.”
“I do know where you live! And yeah,” she says, glancing off toward the bayou, “probably me on my way back home. I love that tree, that house. Makes me not so lonely to go visit that swamp house.”
“Why would you be lonely?”
She puts a finger to her lips and her eyes dart around the cemetery, but the only sign of life is the oak tree branches swaying in the breeze. “My parents disappeared a while back. But don’t tell nobody! I could get in trouble. Kids aren’t supposed to live by themselves.”
My eyes feel like they’re bugging right out of my head. “Your parents disappeared?”
“I’m sure I’ll find ’em soon,” she says. “But the house with the blue bottle tree is comforting. My best friend used to live there.”
She keeps surprising me with practically everything she says. I didn’t figure nobody else had ever lived in Mirage’s swamp house.
“Why are you livin’ there?” she asks.
I roll my eyes. “My mamma lives there and I gotta live with her.”
“Well, my friend lived there a long time ago.” Swinging her arms, she starts walking up the hill toward the road.
A big shiver snakes down my arms, curling all the way to my toes.
The girl looks back over her shoulder. “You wanna come on to my house? My boat is over there at the bank.”