of her neck. She held on to the edge of the sink and stared at her reflection in the medicine cabinet. Other than being a bit pale, she looked the same as usual. Eyes that were too big, hair that was too ashy to hold any luster, and shoulders that were too broad thanks to swimming. Plain and uninspiring, which suited her just fine.
Wendy changed into a white sleep shirt. The air hitting her damp skin gave her a small reprieve from the heat.
The top of her dresser was the only thing about Wendy’s room someone could say was untidy. It was scattered with little treasures she had collected through the years. There was a line of her favorite books, a stuffed seal her grandmother had gotten her from San Francisco, a royal purple swim cap with her school’s mascot—the Fighting Fisherman—on the side, and her silver and bronze swimming medals placed at the corner.
Wendy picked up the swim cap to toss it into her duffel, only to reveal the small wooden jewelry box that had been hidden under it. She paused.
It was a simple box made of old wood. She had found it at one of the little shops on the coast several summers before her brothers were lost. She mostly used it to keep her books propped up, but there were a few little trinkets inside.
Wendy reached down and carefully opened the lid. There was an old necklace made out of cheap metal that had become tarnished and smelled like copper. There were a couple of coins, a small piece of purple quartz, and, tucked in the corner, an acorn.
She pulled it out and let the lid fall shut with a quiet snap. She held it carefully, turning it in her fingertips. The acorn was dark with age and had a polished sheen to it from all the times she had run her fingers over its surface. The cup of the acorn—or its little hat, as she used to think of it—was dried out and had pieces missing.
The acorn had been in her hand when the park ranger found her in the woods five years ago. According to the police report, she had been gripping it so tightly that the small point had bruised her palm.
She hadn’t taken it out of its hiding spot in a long time. Wendy used to turn it over in her hand every night before bed, looking for a secret message or maybe an invisible latch that would open it up, reveal some secret, tell her something about those six months. It was the only thing from that day she had kept. Everything else—her long blond hair, her clothes—had been thrown out for good, but she’d held on to the acorn.
Carefully cupping it in her hands, Wendy walked over to her bed and collapsed onto her back. She sank into the comforter, which gently enveloped her like a cloud. Wendy reached back and turned on the strand of fairy lights that framed the window above the head of her bed, casting a warm glow over her and her shiny acorn.
What a disaster today had been.
No one liked her birthday. Her parents didn’t like it because it reminded them that their two sons were missing. Wendy didn’t like it for the same reason. The only good thing about this birthday was that now she was eighteen, it was summer, and in a few months she would be off to college. Away from the ghosts that followed her.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Benjamin Lane and Ashley Ford. Wendy wondered if the police would start sending search parties into the woods like they did when she and her brothers had gone missing … Could the disappearances happening now be related to what had happened to her and her brothers?
She hoped not. She dreaded it, in fact. Wendy had spent the last five years trying to escape that looming shadow just to be swallowed up by it again.
And then there was Peter.
Was it just an odd coincidence that a boy had turned up next to the woods, unconscious in the middle of the road? Was this somehow all related? Had he been kidnapped? Had he escaped someone just before she found him?
Tilting her head back, she gazed at the small lights. When she was little, her mother had always told her that fairy lights watched over children as they slept and kept them safe. It seemed like a ridiculous idea now as she rolled onto her side,