He leaned in, his mouth parted, and she jerked back, stumbling. She tripped over a root and landed hard on her butt.
Without a word, she jumped up and ran away from him into the forest.
She didn’t stop running until she reached the railroad tracks near the shacks.
Only then did she pause and bend over. Her stomach cramped, and she thought she might throw up. After a few breaths, the feeling passed.
Her body buzzed with the sensation of his touch, and too with the shame of her reaction. She’d run away. She’d never kissed a boy.
Well, twice little Henry Pools, who lived in a house near hers as a child, had kissed her, but both times she’s slugged him in the arm and told him if he ever did it again, he’d have a black eye to show for it.
But Stephen was different. He was eighteen, on the cusp of being a man, and she was seventeen, almost a woman.
Liv’s mother had tried to tell her as much more than once. She’d fussed with her hair or looked at Liv’s shabby clothes and insisted she’d make her new ones as soon as they could afford it. They never could, and Liv had never cared. Except now as she looked down at the frayed men’s shirt, her nipples poking through the fabric, she felt horribly plain. Worse than plain.
Veronica was the kind of girl Stephen was meant to go steady with. Veronica with her coiffed chocolate curls and her pouty red lips.
Liv’s only defining trait was George, and he was a secret. The volva existed in the Stoneroot Forest. Only there did Liv feel special.
The next day, Stephen found her at the pond.
He sat heavily on the dock.
Liv’s feet dangled in the water and she watched a school of minnows nipping at her toes.
“Have you forgiven me yet?” he asked, holding out a piece of chocolate.
She took the chocolate and ate it in one bite, ignoring the flicker in her belly as his hand grazed hers.
“Now I have,” she laughed.
He nudged her with an elbow.
“I’ve missed you, Liv. It’s been weird not seeing you every day.”
“For me too. How’s college?” She hated that Stephen had left for school. She hated returning to her own school and trudging through the halls each day feeling more alone than ever, but she said none of those things.
“It’s great. My roommate is a total cold fish, but I’m swamped with studies, so I’m not exactly looking for a pal. Plus, I’ve been working on our curse. Halloween can’t come soon enough.”
Liv looked at him sideways.
“Working on it?”
Yeah, practicing. We don’t want to screw it up and give her sweet dreams by accident.”
Liv forced a laugh but felt no humor as she envisioned Veronica. The girl had been watching her since school started. Every time Liv passed her, Veronica whispered to one of her girlfriends, and they broke into peals of laughter.
“I won’t see you the weekend before Halloween,” Liv told him. We’re celebrating Vetrnaetr, winter nights.”
“Vetra-nater?” he asked, sounding it out slowly.
“It’s an old Norse holiday. We give thanks for summer, prepare for winter, that kind of thing.”
“So, tell me about it.”
Stephen reclined on the dock, bending his knees. Liv laid beside him, noticing the warmth of his arm pressed against hers.
She gazed into the blue sky thick with wooly clouds and sighed, feeling happier than she had in weeks.
“We feast on winter nights,” Liv murmured, putting a hand on her belly. “George prepares roast deer and hog, sweet apples, and mashed yams. We drink honey mead. It’s the only night all year that George drinks alcohol. And then we stay up late and tell stories by the fire. Our holiday is small compared to the winter nights in Norway. His entire village came together in a big mead hall. There was barely room to rest your hands, the tables were so filled with food. In George’s little village, everyone practiced seidr, or Norse magic, but Amma was their primary Volva. She was the mother of the mountain on their island. She spoke during winter nights and then chose the storytellers. They feasted until dawn, and then slept the following day.”
Stephen rolled to his side.
“Why did George leave Norway? It seems like he was happy there. Why would he come here?” Stephen wondered.
Liv watched the clouds and thought of George’s explanation for why he’d left.
“He was called,” Liv murmured. “One morning he went to the ocean to fetch crabs, and the ocean told him he would sail to America.”
Stephen cocked an eyebrow.
“For what, though? To live in a cabin in the woods?”
Liv traced the outline of a cloud shaped like an arrow with her finger.
“To create me,” she whispered.
Chapter 33
Liv
“I’ve decided what I have to do, Liv. I have to keep you alive, but I can’t risk your destroying all that I’ve created.”
Liv listened, chin resting on her chest, a line of saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth.
Her brain drifted somewhere in the space above her neck. A big cottony thing, unable to follow complex sentences.
“Meet me at the pond?” she asked, trying to lift her gaze, but her head, despite its lightness, stayed put. She tried again, but managed only to crane her eyes upward and find Stephen sitting on a wooden chair beneath a too-bright light.
He studied her; his mouth turned down.
“Shall I read your fortune, Stephen?” she asked, flopping her head to the side and resting her bleary eyes on his face.
He narrowed his eyes.
“I don’t have time for children’s games.”
She laughed and her eyes rolled back in her head.
“You’re going to lose her, Stephen.”
Who?” he asked, a mixture of irritation and curiosity in his voice.
“The woman who speaks with ghosts.”
Stephen stiffened.
“And then,” Liv babbled, “you’re going to lose yourself.”
She laughed a loud, shocking laugh that made Stephen drop the vial of medicine clutched in his hand.
It shattered on the floor, but he didn’t pick it up.
The door cracked open behind him.
“Dr. Kaiser?” A man spoke, and Liv tried to focus on the figure who stepped into the room.
“Is this your-”
But Stephen cut him off.
“Get out, get out!” he screeched and shoved the doctor back out the door.
He fumbled across the metal table, sending bottles and vials skidding to the floor. He plunged a syringe into a glass tube and then stuck it into Liv’s neck.
“I can make you sleep forever if I want, Liv. How would you like that?” He put a hand to his temple.
Liv saw the red blood vessels running through the whites of his eyes, the deep creases in his forehead.
She struggled to keep her eyes open, to watch his unraveling, but his drugs worked quickly. She drifted down.
Mack
“Can I get a pass to go outdoors?” Mack tapped Edmund, the regular orderly in his ward, on the shoulder. The man jumped up and swung around as if he meant to strike Mack.
Mack stepped back and held up his hands.
Edmund, big and burly and hardly the type to scare, looked at him apologetically.
“Sorry, Mack. Everyone’s on edge today. No grounds passes until further notice.”
Mack frowned and wandered over to two men whispering by the game table. One man, a newcomer named Riley, was talking fervently and gesturing with his hands. The second man, a little guy named Travis, with pointed features and a diagnosis of manic disorder, gave Mack a significant look when he approached.