“Not that I think you’ll need it,” Ryce says. “But just in case.”
Annie closes her hand around the chalky body and swivels on that same bare heel. She must have told Ryce about the dead frog; otherwise he’d have never known. Men, boys, don’t have the know-how. He means for her to grind it into a fine white powder and sprinkle it on the head of whatever boy she sees down in that well tonight. The powder of a dead frog will make the boy love her even if he isn’t inclined toward Annie, which is likely because as hard as Annie tries to say her pleases and thank-yous like Mama is all the time insisting on, and as hard as Annie tries to brush her hair and wear clean clothes and smile the way her sister, Caroline, does, and as much as she tries not to look a person straight on with her black eyes because they have a way of frightening folks, most people are still not inclined toward her. This dead frog will make her intended love her despite her being doomed to turn out just like Aunt Juna.
Squeezing her fist as tightly as she can, Annie crushes the small body and lets the bits and pieces drop at her feet.
“I damn sure won’t be coming to your place tonight, Ryce Fulkerson,” she says, then walks up the stairs, across the porch, and inside without looking back.
2
AFTER THE GIRLS of Hayden County look down into the Fulkersons’ well and walk away claiming to have seen the boy they are of a mind to marry, they begin to comb their hair differently, wear an apron when helping their mamas put out supper, fold their laundry without being asked. And they begin to talk about a first kiss.
Some of the girls, in the weeks after having their fates decided, are comforted to know they’ll not be spinsters like that one great-aunt on their daddy’s side or the cousin they see only at Christmas. Those girls, who fool even themselves into believing they saw a face down in that well, will save their first kiss for the boy they’re destined to marry.
Other girls, in the weeks after looking in the well, start tugging with one hooked finger as if a noose is wrapped around their necks. They want a first kiss from some other boy. And then another kiss from another boy. They want to stall their future because once they say I do, they know there will be no others.
No matter which path a girl takes, all conversations turn to the first kiss once that half birthday has passed, and the girls who don’t manage a first kiss shortly after staring into that hole are questioned daily. If she’s a pretty girl, the boys loiter nearby, hoping to be the face she saw. They roll their shoulders back, lead with their chests, and open doors for her. If the girl is a homely sort, the boys pay her no mind and get on with their tiresome ways. In the very worst case, as with Emily Anne Tylerson, the boys shove one another into her path in hopes of dooming another fellow to the first kiss.
Annie may not be destined for the treatment that drove Emily Anne to tears, or perhaps she is, but she is certainly bound to be a girl who will draw indifference when she returns to school in the fall. While every boy in the county was tripping over his boots to be Lizzy Morris’s first kiss, not a one of them will care to be Annie’s, and that is something she will not risk. Not the looks of pity, the daily questions, the whispers and giggles behind cupped hands, or the dust in her face when the boys run from her path.
AT EXACTLY 11:15, Annie slides her legs over the edge of the mattress, scoots until her feet touch the floor, and holds her breath, because maybe that will stop the springs from creaking. Twice already, Mama has opened the door, letting in just enough light to see that Annie was flesh and bone and not just a pile of pillows stuffed under her blankets. Each time, Annie drew in deep, full breaths so Mama would believe she was asleep.
For the past month, Mama has been talking about the foolishness of looking into wells. Annie agreed straightaway, and that was a mistake. Mama is always suspicious of Annie being agreeable. Next Mama started offering to drive Annie down to the Fulkersons’ place if she was going to insist on partaking in the tradition. When Annie refused, again saying she thought it was all foolishness, Mama reminded Annie there is a perfectly good well right here on Grandma’s farm. No need even to leave home. But it isn’t a perfectly good well. It dried up years ago, long before Annie, Caroline, Mama, and Daddy moved in with Grandma, and the week they unpacked, Daddy covered it over with plywood and stones. No matter how perfectly good that well might have once been, it doesn’t seem likely a person could see her intended’s reflection in a boarded-over, dried-up well.
But Annie didn’t say any of those things. Instead she told Mama she had no need for looking into Grandma’s well or Ryce Fulkerson’s well or any other well. She wanted Mama, and Daddy too, to believe so they wouldn’t insist on tagging along and asking her which boy she saw or was he handsome and strong. Mostly she didn’t want them coming along because maybe there isn’t a future husband for Annie. Maybe, no matter how hard Annie tries to do as Mama says or make herself out to be just like Caroline, Annie is doomed to an evil nature, and maybe there is no intended for a girl with such a future. But Mama has checked on Annie twice, so it’s clear she had not been convincing.
While Mama would have no part of Annie crossing onto Baine property and would certainly forbid it if she knew Annie was considering such a thing, the know-how is what frightens Mama most. Looking down into a well and seeing one’s intended might be foolishness for the other girls, but it’s something else for people like Annie and Aunt Juna. Annie feels things that aren’t hers to feel. Aunt Juna was the same. Surely, she still is. Everything Annie does smells like, sounds like, looks like, tastes like, something she’s done before, and she has a way of knowing how things will end before their end has come. You have done that before, Mama will sometimes say, or we all knew that dog was going to die or that tree was bound to fall with the next rain. Grandma says this knowing settles in at birth, ripens for fifteen and a half years, and on the day a girl ascends, the know-how is fully grown.
“Thought you might decide not to go.”
The springs in Caroline’s bed and her brass headboard creak as she swings her legs over the edge of the mattress and slides her feet into the cloth slippers that await her at the side of the bed.
“Don’t you switch on that light,” Annie says as she opens her nightstand’s top drawer. “Hush and go back to sleep.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Caroline says, flipping on the light anyway. “I want to come too. Please, Annie. Let me come too.”
Annie reaches one hand into the drawer. Feeling nothing, she pats the bottom and squeezes her hand inside until her fingers brush against the back panel.
“Looking for this?” Caroline says.
The light Annie had thought was coming from the bedside lamp is instead coming from a long-handled silver flashlight. It’s the same flashlight Annie took from Daddy’s shed earlier in the day.
“Give it,” Annie says.
“Be happy to.” Caroline waves the stream of light across Annie’s face. Even straight out of bed, Caroline’s long, dark hair is smooth as if freshly brushed. All that moving about stirs up the sweet smell that always clings to Caroline-roses, freshly squeezed lemons, and lavender. “You can have this light right now,” she says, “if you take me with you to the Fulkersons’.”
“I can’t do that,” Annie says, looking straight down that funnel of light. She stands, slowly unfolding her legs. The yellow stream follows her.
Once she reaches her full height, a good five inches taller than Caroline, Annie jams her hands in the pockets of her sweater and pulls them out one at a time. In her right hand, she holds one of Grandma’s white utility candles, its wick brand-new, waxy, and white. In her left, she holds three matchsticks she also took from the shed. This is what Mama must mean when she tells Annie to have some pride in her height. Being taller in this particular instance is pleasing.