Wink Poppy Midnight - April Genevieve Tucholke Page 0,46
her neck. I moved the key with my nose and kissed her collarbone.
“Midnight, what are you afraid of?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you afraid of anything, like how Poppy is afraid of the Roman Luck house?”
“I don’t know. Falling, maybe.”
“Falling?”
“Falling. I have nightmares about it sometimes.”
“Lots of people have nightmares about falling.”
“They do?”
“Bee Lee wakes up screaming sometimes. She dreams that she’s fallen asleep on a cloud, but then a storm comes up quick and the thunder shakes her off and she falls.”
I nodded. “I dream that I’m running through a forest, or a field, and I don’t know why. I’m just running from something, and suddenly there’s a cliff in front of me, and I don’t see it, and then I’m falling down a deep ravine, down past walls of rock and stone, and then my body is breaking, and I can hear the bones all snapping, right before I wake up.”
Wink sighed softly. “Mim thinks dreams can foretell the future. But I don’t know. I think dreams are just dreams, mostly.”
“Well, I think my dream is trying to tell me to stop being a coward. Alabama isn’t afraid of heights. He isn’t afraid of anything. Not heights, not cliff-jumping, not dying.”
“Everyone is afraid of dying, Midnight.”
And she didn’t say it, and I didn’t say it, but we were both thinking of Poppy, tied up in the Roman Luck house, crying, screaming, scared out of her mind, knocking at death’s door.
“MIDNIGHT.”
My dad, calling down from the attic. I went up the narrow stairs, slow.
He was sitting at his desk, surrounded by books, like always. He looked kind of sleepy.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, Dad. Of course it is.”
He took off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes. He moved his hands away and looked at me again. His light blue irises looked naked without the specs.
“You seem different, Midnight. I know the sound of your step like I know the feel of my own heartbeat. It’s heavier this week. And I haven’t seen you wear that expression since your . . . since last winter. What’s wrong?”
I considered it. Telling him everything. But he wouldn’t know what to do about Poppy. He wouldn’t know what to do at all. I understood this, suddenly, loudly, like someone had shouted it from a rooftop.
It was something Alabama had always known about him, I think.
“It’s all right,” I said. I forced a smile and made sure it hit my eyes. “Just girl trouble, Dad. No big deal.”
He nodded and put his glasses on. His shoulders relaxed a little. I wondered if he’d been worried I would ask about Mom. About how long she was staying in France.
My dad went back to his books. I went downstairs, to the old black rotary phone in the kitchen. The white tiles felt good under my feet. Cool. The number was on the fridge. I called and it rang and rang. No one picked up. What time was it in France? I didn’t know.
I went back upstairs, unbuttoned my shirt, slid off my pants, and climbed into bed. I sunk my face into my pillow, right next to Will and the Black Caravans. I breathed in deep. I smelled books, and jasmine.
THE CARDS TOLD the whole story, laid out on the grass in swords, wands, cups, coins, queens, kings, knights, and fools. Midnight couldn’t read them, but I could, despite what I’d said.
Peach and the twins saw a girl in the woods, but Bee Lee saw something too.
She was down by the Blue Twist a few days ago. She wasn’t allowed to go to the river on her own, but she loved to watch the fish in the swirling white water and wouldn’t listen to me, not about this.
She came running back down the gravel road, cheeks pink and hair sweaty and sticking to her forehead.
“I saw a girl,” she said, “a girl with long yellow hair and a black dress, like a princess in a story. She jumped into the Blue Twist. And you can’t swim in the Blue Twist, it goes too fast and you drown. You swallow water and your lungs fill up and you drown.”
“Show me,” I said.
I followed her to the spot, a mile away, down the gravel road . . . but there was no trace of a girl in the water. It was just spinning white curls of river.
“I saw her,” Bee said. “I really did, Wink.”
I nodded, because I knew.
That was the first time I felt doubt. Just a twinge, just a little