“Oh, what the hell, I’m so sorry.” The boy bent down to pick up the paper bowl and runaway fries. Hannah knelt beside him. “You know, it’s not the first time I’ve done that. Not even the first time this week.” He gave her a funny smile, half-raised on his left side, and she realized suddenly that he was older. Sixteen or seventeen, maybe? But still.
“You’d think they’d fire you,” Hannah grumbled but grinned back, teasing. She could flirt too. Take that, Julia.
“Nah, not too many people want to work the fryers on the hottest days of the year with a pool only feet away. Besides, then they’d have to give me a job as a lifeguard.” He pointed to his arm, pale and freckled. “Everyone would go blind. The place would go out of business.”
“Oooor else they could just, I don’t know, fire you for good?” They were both still kneeling, teasing.
“Nah, my dad’s the owner,” the boy said, standing up. He dusted off his shorts and raised the boat of dirty fries in her direction. “Take a seat. I’ll be right back, okay?” Hannah sat at one of ten wooden picnic tables under the pavilion.
He returned five minutes later with a new, hot order of fries and a Popsicle for her trouble. He parked next to her, straddling the bench.
“Can someone really own the public pool?” Hannah asked, unwrapping the ice cream first and taking a bite. Creamsicle was her favorite. How did he know?
“Sure. I think a lot of them are owned. It’s a business like anything else.” He paused and plucked a fry from her plate. “I’m Wyatt, by the way.”
“Hi, Wyatt, I’m Hannah.” She swatted at his hand. “So first you spill my food; now you steal it?”
“I told you about my dad, right? I do anything I want around here.” He nudged her with his elbow and laughed. “So listen: I know everyone in Rockwell, and I don’t know you. What’s the deal with that?”
“Everyone? I doubt that.”
“No, it’s true. There are only about two thousand people in this town. I’m related to half of them. But I’ve never seen you before, and I gotta be honest—people don’t just move to Rockwell. It’s not . . . a highly desirable place to live.” His voice had an edge of bitterness, but it could have been Hannah’s imagination.
“I’m staying with my aunt and uncle at the top of the hill. My sister and I come every summer, actually.” She picked imaginary dirt from her fries and kept her head low, avoiding Wyatt’s gaze. His intensity made her nervous, which was rare. People never made her nervous.
“You mean Brackenhill?” Wyatt’s eyes widened. Hannah realized they weren’t brown, as she’d originally thought, but brown flecked with green.
“Yep, that’s it.” She nodded.
“You live at Brackenhill?” Wyatt asked again, his voice edging higher. He sounded excited.
“Yes. Why? Is that bad?” Hannah started to feel weary. This was why she didn’t want to come here, meet people, deal with their hang-ups. She knew she and Julia would be a curiosity and that interest would be a distraction. She wanted to go back home, up the hill, like Julia had promised her they could.
“No. It’s amazing. I love that place. Would you ever let me see it?” He leaned closer to her. He smelled like sunscreen and something boyish, laundry left in the washer. “Is it haunted?”
Hannah paused. “Maybe?” She watched his mouth and wanted to touch it, run a fingertip along his bottom lip. She’d never just looked at a boy before and wanted to kiss him.
“Maybe what? It’s haunted, or you’d let me see it?” Wyatt’s leg bounced up and down, vibrating the bench. “Do you live with the witch?”
“She’s not a witch. She’s my aunt,” Hannah snapped. Aunt Fae had made comments about the things people said. How people didn’t understand her life, her and Uncle Stuart’s choices. But Hannah had never heard anyone directly call her aunt names before.
“Well, whatever, are they as weird as everyone says? She almost never comes down off that mountain. Once she was in Norton’s—the store on the corner—and I swear everyone talked about it for days after.” His eyes glittered, and he gave her a crooked smile. She studied his face, close to hers, and could see the outline of light-brown stubble along his freckled cheeks. He was definitely older, but by how much? He had the confidence of a popular boy, a class clown, someone who would never normally have paid her any attention. She softened.
Hannah wasn’t ugly, but she knew she wasn’t beautiful like Julia. In the right light she might be pretty. Sometimes. She had wavy dark hair and blue eyes. Long lashes and a slightly too-large nose with a bump that only she seemed to notice. Her eyes were maybe a bit too close together and her chin a bit too pointy, but these were self-criticisms. She was, she supposed, average. Even though she flew under the radar, boys were scared of her. Her tongue was too sharp, her wit too quick. Things she thought were funny came out mean by mistake. She’d never cared until now.
“So which was it? Maybe it’s haunted, or maybe you’d let me see it?” Wyatt leaned toward her, his breath sweet like mint gum and cool against her cheek.
“I don’t know. Both?” Hannah stood, her head spinning. “I have to go. But . . . I’ll be back tomorrow. Are you working?” She didn’t know if that was true, if they’d come back.
Wyatt reached out and touched her arm, almost spilling her food a second time. “I’ll be looking for you, Hannah-Banana,” he teased.
“How original. No one has ever called me that before.” Hannah tapped into the smart-ass corner of her brain again.
Wyatt didn’t flinch. He didn’t seem to mind her edge. And that, if nothing else, rattled her. She wanted to ask him how old he was but didn’t dare. His hand rested on her forearm; he still grinned at her in a way that made her whole insides feel as slippery as butter.
Hannah made her way back to her sister’s towel, where Julia stood with a group of four girls clustered in a circle, and felt a stab of something nasty. Julia got what she’d wanted: new friends, other teenagers, summer crew. A bright redhead was talking, gesturing dramatically with her hands, and the whole group laughed. She pulled her hair off her neck, twisted it into a bun, and let it unspool against her back. She was the center, this girl. The only girl whose name Hannah knew so far: Ellie. She turned, spotted Hannah, gave her a wicked smile.
It was fine. As Hannah licked salt from her fingertip, she felt like she, too, had a secret.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Now
“Hannah,” Wyatt said again. And smiled—all teeth and dimples—and for the love of God, he looked exactly the same.
“Wyatt.” She hoped she sounded composed or at least less ruffled than she felt. “You’re a cop now?”
When Hannah had left Rockwell, she’d left. She hadn’t looked back; she hadn’t kept in touch. It was like Brackenhill had never happened. It was like her sister had never existed. Within two years her stepfather had been gone and her mother had been a shell and Aunt Fae and Uncle Stuart had just vanished into thin air, like Julia. She’d finished high school, moved away from Plymouth, and shut off that part of her life, her whole childhood, as easily as one licked an envelope shut. She’d pressed her fingers against the glue, held all the memories, the smells, the sounds, wonderful and awful and unthinkable, shut tight in a sealed place inside her heart.