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No, if I had to guess, the Davidsons have been working on these for months. Skeletons sit at the tables, a few more balanced precariously in bent over positions meant to resemble the wait staff. There’s a chef skeleton near their living room window, and though the power to the display is off, I know for a fact that when he’s plugged in, the skeleton continuously stirs the barrel labeledhuman wastethat he’s leaning over, hands clutched around a long stick that serves as the spoon.
I could stare at their display forever, and when I was a kid, my parents had to physically pull me away from some of their more lifelike decorations. The carnival they’d set up, for instance, had made every kid in the neighborhood shrivel in jealousy of the actual, working Ferris wheel that took ghosts, goblins, and skeletons six feet into the air, then back down.
Mom had told me that if I got my butt into one of them, I’d break it, and that I was not allowed to bother their decorations. Even Daisy—
The lump in my throat is immediate, as is the hand that closes hard around my heart.Daisyhad loved the Davidsons’ displays. She’d adored coming over and had begged my mom to take us walking around the neighborhood to see the decorations in the daytime, when things weren’t so scary.
It’s hard, and becomes almost impossible very quickly, to sweep the memories out of my head as they play out in my face.
Daisy,who had found the path between the houses that I use now whenever I don’t feel like going all the way to the end of the street.
Daisy,who had ranked the houses on the streets around mine and demanded her brother drive us around when he was old enough, and when he wasn’t, he’d had to pedal after us on his bike, reminding us not to go too far.
And it’sDaisywho I can’t get out of my head this year, no matter how hard I try.
It’s obvious why. But that doesn’t make things any better when my dreams consist of things I’d like to forget.
A loud sigh escapes me, breath drawing my chest tight for a few seconds before I release it in a visible puff, thanks to the morning’s downright chill. It’s not going to get warmer until April, with us being in New York, but I love the cold; so it’s fine.
Leaving the Davidsons’ house behind is always such a disappointment. No one in Hollow Bridge can live up to the senior couple’s decorations, though a lot of other residents of Oak Leaf give it their best shot. Another cemetery full of ghosts and animal skeletons looms, but it’s nowhere near as meticulous or impressive. There are too many store-bought decorations for it not to look a bit campy in my eyes. Hell, I can almost smell the plastic of the Halloween store from the opposite sidewalk.
A house at the end, closest to where houses start morphing into small businesses, does the best job without really trying to be similar. Instead of plastic skeletons, blow up ghosts, or loud and large decorations, the people that live here have gone for a huge display of lights.
Even in the daytime, without any of the patterns illuminated, I see the outlines of tombstones and eyes across the yard. Lights wrap around the trunks of trees, and across windows on the two-story colonial that looks a lot like every other house in our neighborhood.
While we may be considered the ‘rich end’ of town, we certainly aren’t the creative side of it, when it comes to house shape and individuality.
Though I see a spider web stretching from the top of the garage down to the grass, and I make a mental note of where I am as I shove my hands into the pocket of my loose hoodie. I want to see this place when it’s dark, to see if it lives up to what my mind builds as an image of what it may look like.
I don’t have anywhere I’mgoing, exactly. Except that I want to stay out of the house for another hour or so if I can. Mom and Dad are no doubt talking about me, about what they can do to help me, and I don’t need to be in any part of that.
Especially becauseI don’t need any help.
I don’t realize I’m glaring at a small shop next to a taller, older house until a familiar mask catches my attention. Edging closer, my feet nearly silent on the pavement, I can feel my cheeks flushing, and heat rising up the sides of my neck like reaching fingers.
The feeling reminds me too much of last night for me to chase it away, but hell. So does the mask hanging at the top right of the display. It’s white and nearly featureless, just like the ones from my, uh, friends I’d met the night before. Right down to the slightly pearlescent color, and material that looks like it would slide smoothly under my fingers, or my mouth—
Someone walks behind me, visible in the reflection of the shop, and I blink, straightening at the familiarity of the hair and the posture. I know that slouch, just like I know that permanently tousled hair.
My mouth opens as I turn, and I almost say his name, catching myselfjust in time, so that instead, I only let it whisper through my mind.
Phoenix.
Daisy’s brother hasn’t even noticed that it’s me, but that’s not exactly surprising. Half of me wonders if it’s because he doesn’twantto recognize me, and doesn’t want me to recognizehim.Hell, ever since what had happened to Daisy and me, he’s barely said two damn words to me.
And one of those was probably an accident, all things considered.
He doesn’t look back as I stare, my hands flexing around my forever scarred palms as I look at him. It’s so easy to think of the frigid, sharp pain of the water and the ice. Of the anguish when I’d found Daisy, when I look at her brother who shares so many of her features.
But it’s also…more than that. I had been so head over heels with Phoenix as a little girl that I’d written him damn love notes that, thankfully, Daisy had mostly intercepted. The rest I’m still working on forgiving my thirteen-year-old self for, instead of cringing over the memory every time it surfaces.
But the fact that Phoenix is really here makes my brain whirr.
I can’t help it, and it’s not a physical decision when my feet start to move, steps mirroring his as I do what I shouldn’t do.
I follow him.
“This is certainly a choice, Bailey,” I murmur, the fall air brushing across my already red cheeks. Belatedly, I check behind me, just in case his friend from the carnival is here, and I hadn’t waited long enough to start walking. There’s still time to make this look unintentional. Still time to break off onto my own path and pretend I was never following Phoenix at all, it’s just some coincidence.
