Free Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke Page A

he made the eggs. Luke didn’t have the slightest interest in cooking. He could make a sandwich, and that was about it. So I took it as a good sign. 
    After breakfast I went back to Citizen Kane and took a shower in the large second-floor bathroom off Freddie’s master bedroom. The walls were covered, ceiling to floor, in the square emerald-green tiles Freddie had chosen long ago, and the dusty chandelier cast shards of light across the room that made the dust dance. 
    I changed into an old cotton dress with flowers on it that Freddie used to do her baking in.It made me feel like she was right next to me, making ginger lemonade and keeping all the bad things away. 
    Sunshine talked to me while I got ready. She asked me about River, about being in his bed. I made vague responses, River-style, as my mind ran over all the things that happened the night before. 
    River. River. River. ≈≈≈  
    While I’d gotten dressed, I’d made up my mind to walk into town and help look for Isobel. And I wanted to find Jack, and talk to him too. I was pretty sure no one would be taking him seriously, and I wanted to ask him more about what he saw. 
    About the Devil with the red eyes. 
    Sunshine had nothing to do and wanted to come with, and the next thing I knew, all four of us were heading toward town. 
    Echo was in chaos. Cop cars and people cluttered up the streets around the town square—everyone looked grave and furrowed and defeated in the thick fog that rolled in from the sea. I watched them move around in clumps, hunched under umbrellas even though the rain was mostly still mist. 
    The café overflowed with people, and there was a line almost to the door, but Sunshine and Luke went in anyway. River and I stayed outside. River had put on a clean linen shirt and pants, and looked cool and beautiful as a turquoise sea on a hot day, despite the fog. Behind me, I heard snatches of a tense conversation from a group of policemen: 
    “The whole thing gives me the creeps, all those kids with stakes . . .” 
    “Ideas can be contagious, like the flu . . .” 
    “It spread so fast—I think every kid in town is out there.” 
    “Any word on the girl?” 
    “. . . someone tells a story about a kidnapper and the next thing you know, you’ve got an epidemic on your hands—mass delusion, it’s a documented fact . . .” 
    “Blue Hoffman, that story is still going around—” 
    “What we’ve got to do is get our hands on the punk who started it all. Trust me, it will all come back to one kid. We get him, this whole thing will crumble.”  
    I grabbed River’s hand.“Jack,” I said. He nodded. 
    The cemetery was worse than the center of town. People were lined up outside the fence, thick as mosquitoes on a humid night,and the low buzz of voices made the air feel rigid,like it was wound up too tight.River and I squeezed by a woman with a worried expression and a death-grip on the wrist of a small boy. The boy held a stake of twigs, just like Jack’s, and was pleading for her to let go. 
    River and I slid through the open gate of the cemetery, and my heart froze. Children were everywhere. Everywhere. Girls and boys, up trees and behind gravestones, small gray shadows in the fog. All held stakes. And all were ignoring the calls of parents to come home. Adults roamed around the graveyard like dazed sheep, shouting names like Zach, and Ann, and Jamie, and Charlotte, while kids darted in out and of the mist, not listening. 
    If the night before, the six boys had been serious, and un-kid-like, and scary, well, it was nothing to observing a whole damn army of kids brandishing stakes like guns. And the fact that all of them were united in the Devil hunt felt eerie and just plain wrong . Kids tend to faction out when they play. Some hit the swings, some the jungle gym, some beat up smaller kids, some pretend they’re fighting dragons in a cave filled with gold.But all the kids were hunting the Devil.I couldn’t wrap my