Wink Poppy Midnight - April Genevieve Tucholke Page 0,40

fallen leaves conjures up the smell of it, crystal clear, like I had a mug of it right in front of me.

The jasmine . . . it was like the pumpkin hot chocolate. It was all in my head.

But I dreamed of her anyway. I dreamed she came in through the window and lay down next to me, her silky blond hair spreading across my chest.

THE STORY HAD started in earnest now.

The threads were spinning.

Midnight was shook up. He destroyed the monster. That was always a turning point on the Hero’s journey, like when Peter kills the wolf on the other side of the Wardrobe and the Lion tells him to clean his sword. Like when Elsbeth cuts out Jacob’s heart, and roasts it on a spit, and feeds it to his lover, in Elsbeth Ink and the Seven Forests.

There are Scottish folktales that tell of people who go off into the Highlands, and disappear into the mist, and are never seen again.

That’s what happened to Roman Luck.

That’s what happened to my father. He disappeared into the mist. I thought he was the Hero, but he was just a man.

I told Midnight that I’d held Alexander in the fog the day he died. Alexander was the Hero in A Cloak, A Dagger, A Journey—but he’d been alone when the poison reached his heart, at the end. He fell down on the road, his hands clutching the golden penny whistle that the black-haired princess gave him the day he saved her life.

I’d imagined what it would have been like, imagined it so clearly, with the cold mist on my neck and his eyes going dark and his body going stiff in my arms. It was real. It happened.

Mim came into my room, later that night, after the Orphans were asleep. She asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell her.

I just shook my head and kept quiet.

I WAS STRETCHED out in my bed and staring at the windows. It was raining again. I stayed there so long Dad knocked on my door, a cup of green tea in his hand. I got up, took it, and slid back under my covers.

Her body, slumped and blue in the gray light.

The look in her eyes.

Her screams when the blood came rushing back.

I threw on a jacket and walked in the rain, into town. I went the long way around. I didn’t want to go by the Roman Luck place. I couldn’t.

I stood on her doorstep. Didn’t ring the bell.

I’d done this the last two mornings.

“She’s not there.” Thomas stepped out of the shadows by the lilac bushes, wet blond hair sticking to his forehead. “She’s missing. Her parents are gone at a medical conference and she’s missing and no one is going to answer that door, Midnight.”

My heart skipped a beat. Thomas hadn’t seen Poppy either? I thought she’d been avoiding me, just me. “I need to talk to her, Thomas. Badly. I’m sure she’s around somewhere. She’s probably just down by the river. She likes to have picnics in the rain, bread and cheese and a bottle of wine and cold, fat raindrops on her cheeks.”

“That was the first place I looked.”

“She could be at the coffee shop, the one with the high ceilings and the caramel-colored lattes.”

He shook his head.

“Or at the church—she likes to sit in a back pew and listen to the organist practice.”

Thomas’s eyes were red and he looked . . . smaller, somehow. Almost fragile. “She’s gone. Disappeared. I was scared something like this might happen. That’s why I’ve been watching her house.”

“Something like what?” And my voice started high and went even higher at the end.

“Poppy’s been sad lately. Really sad. Didn’t you notice?”

“Poppy’s not sad. She’s never sad. She laughs at everything. That’s the first thing I knew about her. She always just laughs.”

This was a lie.

I’d seen her crying her eyes out, three nights ago.

Thomas shook his head, wet hair flying. “If you can’t see past all that, past the way she brushes everything off to protect herself, then you don’t deserve to know her.

“It’s all an act, Midnight. It’s an act. She’s been perfecting it since she was a kid, and so she’s really good at it, but it’s just an act.”

Poppy, sobbing and screaming when she realized I was really going to leave her, all alone, in that house . . .

How well had I known the girl I’d been sharing my bed with for a year?

Thomas started talking again.