Days and nights dissolved, and it wasn’t until the Saturday before Labor Day that Gracie said, “Mosey’s talking about applying to NYU.”
Eli leaned back on his elbows. They were lying on a blanket at the cove named Chuck, the sun making jagged stars through the branches of the oaks and birches. “Will she?” he asked.
“Probably. She’s smart enough to get in.” Eli said nothing, and Gracie added, “It might be fun to work in the city.”
The furrow appeared between Eli’s brows. “Sure,” he said. “That’s a big change, though.”
Don’t say anything, she told herself. Leave it be. But the knife was right there. She had to walk into it. “Do you not want me there?”
Eli shifted forward and tossed a pebble into the lake. “You should go wherever you want.”
The hurt that flowered in her chest was a living thing, a plant out of a science fiction movie, all waving tendrils and stinging nettles.
“Sure,” she said lightly.
There was nothing wrong with what he’d said. This was a summer thing. Besides, he was right. She should go where she wanted. She didn’t need Eli waiting for her to move to the city. She could crash on Mosey’s couch until she found a job. Did dorm rooms have couches?
“Gracie—” Eli said, reaching for her hand.
She hopped up. “I’ve got to go meet Mosey and Lila.”
He stood then. Sunlight clung to his hair, his skin. He was almost too bright to look at.
“Let’s meet early tomorrow,” he said. “I only have one more day to—”
“Yup.”
She had her bag on her shoulders and she was on her bike, determined to get away from him before he could see her pride go rolling down her face in big fat tears. She pedaled fast, afraid he’d come after her. Hoping so hard that he would.
She didn’t go to work the next day. It wasn’t a decision. She just let the minutes drain away. Eli wouldn’t come to her house. He’d never seen her room or watched TV on their sofa, just hovered outside in the driveway with his bike while Gracie went to grab a sweater or change her shoes. She’d never even met his parents. Because that was real life and they were something else.
You’re being stupid, she told herself. He’ll be gone in two days. Enjoy it while it lasts. Let it be fun. But Gracie wasn’t good at fun, not the kind of fun that other people had. The person she liked best didn’t like her enough to want more of her, and she didn’t want to pretend that wasn’t awful. She was cherry dip cones, all those old paperbacks, records stacked on dusty shelves—something to hold Eli’s interest, maybe even something he really liked, but a summer thing, not quite real when the weather turned.
She read. She watched TV. Then the weekend was gone, and she knew Eli was gone with it. That was okay. Next summer she wouldn’t be waiting at the Dairy Queen or working at Youvenirs. She’d graduate, and she’d go to New York or Canada or wherever. But she wouldn’t be in Little Spindle.
A week after school started, Gracie went to see Annalee. She hadn’t known that she meant to, but she ended up in the fluorescent lights of the Dairy Queen just the same.
She didn’t order. She wasn’t hungry. She slid into the booth and said, “How do I get better? How do I make this stop hurting?”
Annalee set down her crossword. “You should say goodbye.”
“It’s too late. He’s gone.”
“Sometimes it helps to say it anyway.”
“Can you tell me… Did he ever feel the way I did?”
“Ah, tsigele.” Annalee tapped her pen gently on Gracie’s hand. “Some of us wear our hearts. Some of us carry them.”
Gracie sighed. Had she really expected Annalee could make her feel better? This town was full of sham monsters, fake witches, stories that were just stories. But anything was worth a try.
Though the weather was still warm, the main road was quiet, and as she turned onto the narrow dirt path that led to her cove, the woods seemed almost forlorn, as if they were keeping the last watch of summer. She felt guilty. This had been her cove, nameless and comforting before Eli. Where have you been? the pine needles whispered.
She leaned her bike against a tree at the clearing and walked down to the shore. It didn’t feel like sanctuary anymore. Hadn’t Mosey said the lake was haunted? The cove felt full of ghosts she wished she could banish. She had so many good memories with Eli. Did she have to lose all of those too?
That was when Gracie heard it: a single, soft exhalation that might have been a breeze. Then another—a rasping breath. She peered past the shady banks. A body lay slumped in the shallows.
She didn’t remember moving, only that one moment she was standing, stunned on the shore, and the next she was on her knees in the water.
“Eli,” she cried.
“You came.”
“What happened? What is this?” He was so pale he was nearly blue, his veins too close to the surface of his skin.
“I shouldn’t have waited. I get three months. That’s the rule.”
“What rule?”
“I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Eli—”
“I was selfish. I didn’t want you to go to the city. I needed you to look forward to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Gracie. The winters get so long.”
“Eli, I have my phone. I can call—”
“I’m dying now, so I can tell you—”
“You’re not dying,” Gracie shouted. “You’re dehydrated, or you have hypothermia.” But even as she said it, she realized the water was warmer than it should be.
“It was me that day. You were skipping stones. You’d skinned your knee. I saw you just for a second. It was the last day of May.” His eyelids stuttered open, shut. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, but I wanted to for so long. It was better than ice cream. It was better than books.”
She was crying now. “Eli, please, let me—”
“It’s too late.”
“Who says? Who says?”
He gave the barest shrug. It became a shudder. “The lake. Three months to walk the land. But always I must return to her.”
Gracie’s mind flew back to that day at the cove, the creature in the water. It was impossible.
“There are no books, below,” he said. “No words or language.”
No Dairy Queen. No bicycles. No music. It couldn’t be.
Gracie blinked, and Eli’s form seemed to flicker, ghostly almost, part boy and part something else. She remembered Annalee tapping her hand with the pen. Some of us wear our hearts. Some of us carry them.
Gracie’s eyes scanned the beach, the tangle of brambles where the woods began. There, a dark little hump in the leaves. She’d never seen him without it—that ugly purple backpack—and in that moment she knew.
She scrambled for it, fell, righted herself, grabbed it open, and split the zipper wide. It gaped like a mouth. It was full of junk. Skee-Ball tickets, minigolf scorecards, a pink-and-gold lip-gloss tin. But there, at the bottom, glinting like a hidden moon…
She pulled it from the bag, a long, papery cape of scales that seemed to go on and on, glittering and sharp beneath her fingers, surprising in its weight. She dragged it toward Eli, trailing it behind her, stumbling through the shallows. She pulled his body close and wrapped it around him.
“Here,” she sobbed. “Here.”
“Three months,” he said. “No more.”
“It was only a few days—”
“Leave Little Spindle, Gracie. Get free of this place.”
“No,” she shouted at the lake, at no one at all. “We can make a trade.”
Eli’s hand gripped her wrist. “Stop.”