Free Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell

anybody once. The Ondine grapevine was working full-time, though, because Collette flew up on me as soon as I got outside.
    She dug her nails into my arm and hauled me around the building. “What happened? I wanted to call last night, but Mama told me to let it be!”
    “Dang, Collette, leave some skin,” I said. I peeled her claws out of my arm, then groaned when I saw Ben come out the back.
    He heaved a bundle of boxes into the trash, then wiped his hands on his apron. When he saw us, he brightened, leaning over quick to shove a block in the back door.
    A perfume of spoiled milk and hot, ripe cantaloupe tainted the air. There were probably worse things in the world to smell than a grocery’s Dumpster, but I couldn’t think of any right then.
    “Are you hiding from us?” Collette asked me.
    “No,” I said, and raised my bag. “I just wanted to drink this before it got hot.”
    Everything went quiet, except for the cicadas. Collette shot a dubious look in Ben’s direction. “So drink it already. Nikki was all up in the diner this morning saying you got a death threat and the FBI was probably gonna come, and all I could do was go, ‘Well you don’t know everything, so keep your mouth shut.’ ”
    I’d meant to keep the note Elijah had written a secret. My chest felt full of cold lead weights when I thought about it. Nikki lived way out in the trailer park—if she knew enough to get it that wrong, I figured I should clear it up for Collette, anyway. Then, if she got to punching anybody, at least it would be over the truth.
    “I don’t want y’all to yell at me,” I said.
    “Why would we yell?” Collette asked.
    Ben shook his head. “We won’t. I won’t.”
    “I’m just saying, promise.”
    Exasperated, Collette swept her fingers across her chest. “There.”
    Wrapping both hands around my soda, I dragged my lip through my teeth and made myself say it. “It was Elijah.”
    Collette ticked her head forward. “ ’Scuse me?”
    “He was in my house. He filled my bed with rocks and tore everything all up.” Hunching my shoulders up to my ears, I looked from Ben to Collette. “He left a note, too. All it said was, ‘Where y’at Iris?’ so I knew it was him.”
    “The police did not come to your house over a ghost!”
    “See?” I told Ben.
    “I’m not yelling,” Collette insisted. “I’m just talking loud.”
    “You still got the note?” Ben sounded hopeful.
    I shook my head. “The police took it.”
    “Course they did,” Collette said.
    Taking a slug of my soda, I wheezed when the bubbles hit the back of my throat just right to make my nose burn. “They did. We’ve been looking for Elijah all summer. How come you don’t believe me?”
    “Maybe ’cause it’s just playing.” She took my soda for a drink. “Nothing came up out of the lake when we called, did it?”
    I could have stood stark naked in the street and felt less bare than I did right then. How funny was it, how awful, that Collette had stopped believing right when something real finally happened? She had to believe me, and I figured the only way to get that was to tell the whole truth, no matter how bad it made me look.
    “I lied about the lake.”
    Ben stared at me. “How’s that?”
    “I pushed, on the witchboard.”
    “Aw, Iris,” he said.
    Ashamed, I slumped against the wall. Splaying my arms, I looked toward the sky. They probably weren’t gonna give me any Hail Marys, but I had to confess.
    “I saw him in the graveyard that first time; that’s true. And he moved my spellbook and wrote in it when I wasn’t even home. There was a dream and this. But the witchboard wasn’t working, and y’all wanted it to, so I pushed. All up till the end; then he did the last part. I’m not lying about anything else. I swear to Mary and Jesus and God and everybody.”
    “What dream?” Collette asked. Like she couldn’t help herself. Or maybe like she believed me.
    Peeling the label off the bottle, I stared at it