“You’re supposed to be dead,” I say.
His mouth snaps shut. His face corkscrews together.
“They said you were dead,” I continue. “The other boys. They said you drowned.”
Sparks begin to tumble in through the open doorway, blowing across the wood floor—the fire close now, right outside. We can’t stay here.
“I’m not dead,” he answers—stating the obvious—as if I couldn’t see for myself. But his tone is off—something not quite right. Something else just beneath the surface of his words.
My hands begin to tremble. “I don’t understand,” I say. Maybe he’s the wrong Max, I think. A different Max. I slide my shaking hand into my coat pocket, feeling for the smooth surface of the watch, and I pull it out, holding it in my palm. I touch the back, where Max’s name is inscribed into the metal. “Is this yours?” I ask, holding it out for him to see.
He steps forward. “I thought it was gone,” he says, but he doesn’t reach for it, doesn’t try to take it from me, as if he is glad to be rid of it. A memory he didn’t want. A thing he’s been trying to forget.
I close my hand over it. He’s the right Max.
The one who should be dead.
“Where did you find it?” he asks.
I slide it back into my pocket—I’ve grown accustomed to the weight of it, the subtle vibration of the hands ticking forward, the measurement of time. “Oliver had it. He’s had it since the storm.”
But if Max is alive… then Oliver didn’t kill him.
If Max is alive, then Oliver isn’t a murderer. He didn’t let him drown in the lake.
Max raises an eyebrow. “Oliver Huntsman?”
I nod.
“What the hell are you talking about?” He steps around the coffee table, and his jaw is pushed out, his shoulders a rigid slope. I can see the confusion growing inside him, along with something else: anger. “You came here to get me to admit what happened,” he says, his eyes wide and unblinking. “You’re trying to trick me.”
“What?” I don’t understand what’s happening, what he’s talking about. And I take a step back toward the open door. Away from him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, words slicked with spite.
A wave of sparks rolls across the wood floor, pushed by the wind.
Max moves closer to me, his bloodshot eyes refusing to blink, to flinch away.
“I’m not trying to trick you,” I say. But he reaches forward and grabs me by the wrist.
“Why do you really have my watch?” he presses, squeezing my wrist tighter, stopping the flow of blood into my hand.
“I told you,” I say, tugging against his grip. “Oliver had it.”
His fingers dig deeper into my skin, and he pulls me closer, his face only a few inches from mine. “You’re lying.”
With the spellbook tucked beneath my arm, I manage to push my other hand against his face, his chin, and force him away. “I’m not lying,” I spit, yanking my arm free from his grasp and starting toward the door.
“So they did find his corpse?” he asks, his voice hollowed out, thin and strained.
I stop and look back at him. “What?”
“In the lake?” he says, as if this clarifies it, raising a single blond eyebrow. “They recovered Oliver?”
“Oliver isn’t dead,” I say, a sour taste forming at the back of my throat.
A quick bark of laughter escapes Max’s lips. And when his mouth falls flat, he leans in close to me again, brows slanted, his teeth grating together. “I watched him sink beneath the ice.” His upper lip curls into a disgusted grin, his nostrils flare.
I shake my head. “You’re full of shit,” I say, but still, I reach out for the edge of a chair, my knuckles turning white where they grip the striped, navy-blue upholstery. “Oliver didn’t drown.” But even as I say it, the room begins to spin, the watch inside my pocket begins to tick impossibly too loud, beating against my skull.
One boy missing. One boy dead.
Which boy is which?
Max shakes his head and says something, but his voice feels too far away, the room tipping on its side, the merry-go-round moving too fast and I want to get off. I need to get out of this house. I dip my eyes to the floor to keep the walls from spinning, and I stare at a beetle turned up on its back near a couch leg—dead. I feel myself cracking apart, little tiny fractures in the shell of my skin. And once the first fissure splits open, the rest will shatter.
Max didn’t die that night.
Max didn’t drown in the lake.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he says now. His face sways just out of focus, a blur of hair and bloodshot eyes and a cruel grin, but he’s still too close, and I release my hold on the chair. I step away from him, reaching for the open doorway, feeling bits of ash sticking to my skin. Like they will never be washed off. Like I will never escape these flames.
But then there’s someone in the doorway, blocking my path. Hands reaching out for me. I look up into his too-green eyes and I feel my pupils narrow to tiny pricks.
Oliver.
Oliver is standing in the doorway.
I choke back a strange, terrified sob. Relief flooding through me. “What are you doing here?” I ask, gasping for air, ash spilling down into my lungs.
“I’ve been trying to find you,” he says, his voice urgent, panicked. “I saw the fire. You have to get out of here.” He holds out a hand to me, but I don’t take it.
“I thought you were here,” I explain, “in this house. But—” But instead I found Max. I swivel back to face Max, and Oliver’s gaze lifts too, seeing Max for the first time. His expression sinks, fury and hatred seething behind his eyes. Forming a line that runs from his temples to his chin. I want to ask him what’s wrong, what he sees when he looks at Max that makes his jaw constrict.
But I wheel my gaze back to Max. “I told you he’s alive,” I say, the words choked out. Like a part of me doesn’t believe them.
Max’s face softens and he looks from me to the doorway. “What?” he mutters.
“You were wrong,” I say. “You didn’t watch Oliver drown.”
Max rakes his hands through his hair, as if pulling out the strands from his scalp. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he barks, eyes scanning the doorway where Oliver stands, anger thudding through him. “You’re just as strange as everyone says you are,” he adds, his grin turned sour. “They say you should be locked up, that you’ve lived in this forest too long—that no one can stay sane in these woods.”
I scowl at him. “I’m not insane,” I answer, wishing I had a better comeback, wishing my head wasn’t so full of smoke. “Oliver’s not dead,” I snap, but when I turn back to look at Oliver, his expression has changed. He’s no longer looking at Max—he’s looking at me, his mouth flattened, eyes pouring through me with the deepest kind of sadness. With guilt and regret and maybe even pity.
“Nora—” Oliver begins.
But he’s cut off by Max. “There’s no one there, witch girl,” Max says, pointing to the door. “You’re talking to yourself.”