The words blew through me like a cold wind. Nursery rhymes always did that to me, even the harmless ones. This one didn’t seem harmless.
“That’s all I can tell you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“What did you just tell me? That wasn’t anything. Why even let me come here?” A lighter clicked beneath the kindling that lived in my chest. “Why write back at all?”
She shrugged, the sharpness gone out of her eyes. Her mind was a blue sky with clouds dashing across it, clarity cut with a mental haze. She sucked in a breath and spoke all at once. “I thought it would change something. Seeing you. Wake me up again, make me care, or feel something. The night in the Hazel Wood was the longest night of my life. I saw things nobody should see. My friend was killed—I should be sad, right? But I’m not. I haven’t felt anything since that night. I’m just numb. Half of me is still there, trapped in that hell. While the rest of me is here, trapped in this room.”
She stood like it took the last of her strength to do it and went to the front door. I thought she’d open it, kick me out, but instead she leaned her back against it and looked at me.
“You might think you have a really good reason, but nothing could be worth this. Nothing could be worth feeling this way. I feel like a changeling wearing someone else’s skin. I can’t remember what I liked, or what I wanted, why I worked or left the house or did anything. It’s all gone.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I think whatever I used to be, it dropped through the binding. I wish the rest of me had gone with it.”
Then she did open the door. I stood on legs I wasn’t sure would support me.
“Just tell me the town,” I said. “The town where your motel was. I’ll figure out the rest.”
Her eyes scanned mine impersonally. I sucked in a breath when I saw her pupils up close—they were faintly ovoid, like the eyes of a goat. Had they always been that way? She smirked so quick I almost didn’t catch it.
“You’re Althea’s granddaughter,” she said. “Go to the woods. If they want you to find them, you will.”
15
Finch was waiting for me half a floor down, sitting on the stairs. He jumped up when he saw me.
“Well? Did you get the address?”
The question seemed so ridiculous I just stared at him, hearing Ness’s creaky voice singing the nursery rhyme. “No. I didn’t.”
“Oh. Shit. So what did you get?”
“Another person telling me to stay the hell away from the Hazel Wood.” As we walked down six flights, I relayed what Ness had told me. But I couldn’t really get the weird bits across—the eyes, the rhyme. The words of it clung maddeningly to the tip of my tongue; I couldn’t quite remember them.
“And her place was full of old newspapers and dust and crafty stuff. Just loads of unused art supplies.” Suddenly the idea of them was breaking my heart. Glitter glue and sequin strings to bring back the soul of a woman who’d lost it in one seven-year night.
Finch didn’t respond. When I looked back, he was biting the inside of his cheek, staring down at his shoes.
“What’s wrong?” I said, nerves making my voice sharp.
“Are we still going?”
I stopped, hard, on the final landing. “What?” When he didn’t respond right away, I charged ahead, into the thin blue light of afternoon.
On the sidewalk, I paced in place. The chilly air felt good on my skin after the close, hopeless heat of Ness’s apartment. Her words had scared me, but they also made me feel relentlessly alive. I felt October sharp in my nostrils, hunger curling in my stomach, the last of that morning’s caffeine jittering through my blood. The pain lodged behind my heart, that wouldn’t come unstuck until Ella was standing next to me again.
“So what’s up?” I asked when he joined me on the sidewalk. “Are you backing out now?”
“You misunderstand me. I’m just making sure you haven’t lost your nerve.” His words were lightly challenging, his eyes bright. “Your mom doesn’t want you to go, Ness apparently lost herself in the woods, we have no idea where to start. I want to make sure you’re not, you know. Changing your mind.” He bounced on the soles of his feet, like he was about to take off.
“And what if I was?” I asked testingly. “What if I think we should turn back now?”
He mulled my words, subsiding back to earth. “Then we will. Turn back. It’s your decision.”
His voice was steady, and he’d said the right thing. But I didn’t believe him. Something in his face made me remember not everything was about me. Maybe Finch wasn’t trying to be the sidekick in my story. Maybe he was trying to start one of his own. The Hazel Wood isn’t yours, I wanted to say. The Hinterland neither. Maybe I should have. But he was standing between me and being utterly alone, so I didn’t.
Ella’s car was trapped in Harold’s garage, so Finch got us a rental, going through his dad’s office to work around the fact that we were both seventeen. We drove to Target first, stocked up on granola bars and water and canisters of pistachios. I bought cheap jeans, a pack of underwear, and a black sweatshirt, and pulled them on in the bathroom. My uniform I balled up and chucked in the trash. I had a feeling my Whitechapel days were done.
Finch was waiting for me outside the bathroom, where he presented me with cop-style aviators. “Road trip classic,” he said.
I slipped them on. They tinted the world a cool disco blue. “You gonna make me play car games, too?”
“Only if you’re lucky.”
I smiled at him but didn’t reply. The strange, rubber-band intensity he’d shown outside of Ness’s had abated, but I was still feeling cautious. I’m watching you, my eyes said when I looked at him.
Right back at you, his replied.
We sat in the Target food court while we planned our next move, eating oil-soaked triangles of grilled cheese dipped in ketchup.
“Anna’s heart would break if she could see this,” Finch said, staring at his greasy hands like they were covered in blood.
“Sorry it’s not Jonathan Finch–approved,” I said, reflexively.
At the sound of his father’s name, Finch’s head stayed down and his eyes went up, holding a black weight I’d never seen in them. For a moment I felt what it must be like for a stranger to lock eyes with me.
“Sorry,” I said quietly, brushing crumbs off my new jeans. “I’m just … we still don’t know where we’re even going.”
“Up north, five hours away, somewhere near a lake and a tiny town.” Finch recited details from the blog. “It worked for Ness.”
“Whatever happened to Ness did not work for Ness.”
“You know what I mean. Let’s just leave the city, drive north, look for signs.”
“Signs like ‘This Way to the Hazel Wood’?”
“Signs like a Polaroid stuck in a book. Or a crow delivering a letter. Unless you have a better plan?” He gave the patented weapons-down smile that shouldn’t have worked on me but kinda did. It almost made me forget that flash of black in his eyes.
Anyway, he was right. That was the best plan we had.
By the time we got on the road, evening was coming down. Sitting in the passenger seat looking out at a sea of brake lights on one side, headlights on the other, felt like an outtake from my life with Ella. We never left town at opportune times. It was always at odd moments, when Ella’s latest job opportunity melted away like fairy gold, or the bad luck threw us one curve too many. Before dinner on a Tuesday. In the middle of the night, after a cigarette Ella swore she’d tamped out ignited a motel-room fire. I propped my temple against the cool of the glass.