Part 4 (1/2)
In his room, Zach changed into jeans, switched out his sweater for a zip-up sweats.h.i.+rt, and packed a few other random things he thought he might need: twenty-three dollars (twenty of which had come from his aunt in a card for his birthday), a book identifying poisonous plants (in case they needed to live in the wild and eat berries, which admittedly seemed like a remote possibility), and a sleeping bag that was a little too small for him but worked okay as a blanket when completely unzipped. In the hall closet, he found a flashlight, and he picked up a garden spade from beside the back door.
Before he left, he wrote out the note and propped it up on his bed. It read: Got up early. Gone to play basketball. Might not be back for dinner.
Might not be back forever, he thought, but didn't write.
As he left the house, closing the door quietly behind him, he wondered, for a moment, again, if this was a trick. A lie. Poppy's attempt at one last game.
But the ashes had seemed real, he reminded himself.
In the end, he wasn't sure if he went because he half believed in the ghost already or because he was used to following Poppy's lead in a story or simply because leaving allowed him to run away and still believe he could come back.
If he wanted.
CHAPTER SIX.
ZACHARY WAS USED TO STORIES WITHOUT HAPPY ENDings. His dad called where they lived West of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, claiming it bordered Better off Forgotten, West Virginia, and Already Forgotten, Ohio. When Zach was little, those had seemed like magical place names, before he realized they were just sarcasm. Zach's mother had gone to school to be an art therapist, but the only place she could get work was in a juvenile detention center. If she wanted the kids there to do art, she had to bring the supplies and collect them after each session because her supervisor was afraid of the kids jabbing each other's eyes out with markers.
Zach's mother's parents, now living permanently in Florida, would tell stories about how things used to be. About how the big Victorian housesa”the ones built by some famous architect, the ones that were in the center of towna”used to be owned by single families and not divided into run-down apartments. His grandmother told stories about the people she'd known when she was a little girl, people who got out of town and made it elsewhere. The happiest the stories got were when his parents talked about how things were going to get better, although neither one of them really seemed to believe it, and Zach didn't believe it anymore either.
When Zach's dad left three years ago, he said he was going to run his own restaurant in Philadelphia and he was going to Italy to study how pasta was really made and he was getting a late-night spot on a local cable channel and would parlay that into a fortune. But two months later, he moved back and into one of the c.r.a.ppy apartments in the biggest and worst-kept Victorian and drifted in and out of Zach's life, until he finally drifted back to their house. It was as if the town had some kind of gravitational influence on the people who lived there. But even as Zach thought that, he knew it was just another story. Dad was back because he hadn't been able to hack it in the city. That was all.
He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.
The bus stop was cold enough that Zach's breath clouded in the air. The wind had picked up. It washed over them as they huddled together against the brick exterior of the post office. In the flickering streetlight, Zach could see the girls better. Poppy had pulled back her coppery hair into a ponytail and was wearing a dark-green sweater with jeans and tall brown boots. Alice was in a big shapeless red coat. Both of them had backpacks slung over their shoulders.
He felt his gaze going to Poppy's backpack, knowing the Queen was inside and knowing, without knowing how he knew, that her eyes were open. He felt the weight of her stare on his back when he turned away. The hairs on the back of his neck stuck up, tickling his skin and making him s.h.i.+ver.
The bus was already fifteen minutes late, and there was no sign of ita”or any other vehiclea”on the road. A while back they'd seen a police car from a way off and had pressed themselves against the wall of the building. As they hid, Poppy muttered the whole time about the vividness of Alice's coat giving them away and Alice muttered back about how she'd just packed for a sleepover because she hadn't thought they were taking off somewhere harebrained that very night. But the police car had turned onto Main Street and away from them. And the next car that pa.s.sed was a truck. It didn't even slow.
Alice yawned. ”Maybe we should go back. It doesn't look like the bus is coming.”
Zach, impelled by the impulse that makes yawns catch, yawned too.
”Stop,” Poppy said. ”We just have to wait a little longer.”
”You can't be mad at us for being tired,” Zach said.
Poppy was clearly still upset, but she didn't argue with him. ”We'll sleep on the bus.”
Alice bit her lip and looked hopefully at the stretch of empty road. She looked happier the longer they waited. Zach was pretty sure she was betting on the bus not coming and the three of them going back to their beds, having had a nice little middle-of-the-night adventure. He could tell Alice didn't want to be the one who chickened out, but she obviously also didn't want to go. If Alice's grandmother found out about any of this, there would be no more play practice, no more sleepovers, no more chance of hanging out with Zach or Poppy. Ever.
Zach understood all that and he felt bad for her, but not bad enough to say anything. Selfishly, he wanted her along.
”Two more minutes,” said Alice, ”and then we go back. I'm freezing.”
Poppy didn't reply.
”One minute, fifty-nine seconds,” Alice said. ”One minute, fifty-eight seconds.”
Looking at the bus stop sign, Zach thought about what it would be like to get off at a place like this in a different town, one he had no idea how to navigate. ”When we get to East Liverpool, you know where we're supposed to go, right? What cemetery Eleanor is supposed to be buried in and how to find the grave. You know all that, right?”
Poppy opened her mouth and hesitated over the answer. Just then a bus turned the corner three blocks away, was.h.i.+ng them with its headlights. He didn't realize how worried Poppy had been that it wasn't coming until he saw how relieved she looked as the bus drew closer. Alice's face froze in an expression of dread.
”You don't have to go,” he whispered to her, deciding he could be only so much of a jerk.
”No,” she said, looking back down the street, away from the bus, and sighing. ”It's not that. I'm just tired. Anyway, if I snuck back into my house when I'm supposed to be sleeping at Poppy's, Grandma would have a lot of questions.”
The last time Alice had gotten busted for staying out after curfew, she'd gotten grounded for a solid month. She'd been to the movie version of one of her favorite musicals, along with some of her theater friends and Poppy. Somehow the parent who was giving them a ride didn't come on time, or maybe it took too long to drop everybody off, but Alice wound up home a half hour late. That was all it took. Boom. She was in mega-trouble. No phone calls. No Internet. No nothing.
So even though he knew that she wasn't telling the whole truth about wanting to go, given that she was likely to get in trouble either way, he figured she might as well have an adventure and hope for the best.
The door opened with a creak of gears. An old man with a short white beard looked down at them. A small gold hoop hung from one of his ears, and he had a face that reminded Zach of a gruff and unfriendly wizard. ”Well, get on if you're getting on.”
Poppy, Zach, and Alice climbed the steps, each feeding cash into a machine beside the driver. It printed three tickets and dispensed change into a bowl with a clatter. Zach shuffled down the aisle, past a knitting woman and three college-age guys asleep in their seats, past a guy muttering to himself and looking out the window.
Zach went all the way to the back of the bus, following Poppy. They sat in the long last seat. A moment later Alice joined them, squeezing in next to the window.
”See,” Poppy said, pulling her legs up, so that she was sitting on her feet in a weird yoga pose. ”Everything's going according to plan.”
”I can't believe the bus actually came,” Alice said faintly.
Zach looked at Poppy's backpack resting on the floor and wondered whether Poppy had reattached the Queen's head or whether it would roll around in the bottom of her bag when the bus turned corners. He thought he could see a few threads of her blond hair peeking out from where the zipper wasn't fully closed.
The bus lurched forward, pulling away from the bus stop, and despite everything, Zach started to grin. They were leaving home by themselvesa”going on a real adventure, the kind that changed you. He felt a thrill run through him.
”You never really answered me before,” Zach said. ”Do you know where the cemetery is? Do you know where we're going, Poppy?”
”The grave is under a willow tree. Eleanor will tell us the rest.”
”Eleanor will tell us?” he asked in a quiet, urgent voice.
”She told me this much, didn't she?” Poppy answered, and then in that way she had, where Zach was sure she wasn't right yet somehow she seemed right, she added neatly and unanswerably, ”If you didn't believe me, why did you come?”
Exasperated, he mimed banging his head against the back of the seat. Poppy ignored him.
Alice leaned against the window and pulled her legs up onto the seat, resting one shoe against Zach's leg. She looked exhausted, but no longer unhappy. ”I'm going to try to sleep.”
He rested a hand on her ankle so it wouldn't slip.
”We should take s.h.i.+fts,” Poppy said. ”Keep watch. Like you're supposed to on a quest. So we don't miss our stop.”
”Okay,” Zach said, sticking out a fisted hand. ”Rock, paper, scissors.”
Alice held out her hand and blinked muzzily, like she was trying to stay awake. She still beat him, throwing rock to his scissors. He stuck with scissors and tricked Poppy, who threw paper, expecting him to change moves. And then Alice beat Poppy, sticking Poppy with first watch, Zach with second, and Alice, third. Zach rested his head against his own backpack and closed his eyes.
He didn't think he'd be able to go to sleep, but he must have dozed off, because it seemed like moments later he awoke to Poppy's sharp yelp.