Free Mistwalker by Saundra Mitchell Page B

was the angel of death around these parts, it was up to me to keep the conversation rolling.
    I held out my hand for the next pass and asked, “Anybody else starving?”
     
    The night drifted on. Our buzzes faded, and there was nothing left in the bake. Slowly, we knotted back up by the fire. It was too cold to stay at the cliffs, even if you did have somebody to hang on. I didn’t; Seth never showed up.
    Our parties on Garland Beach usually ended with music. Instead of pulling out his guitar, Nick plugged his laptop into an external battery and let GarageBand do the honors. Songs he’d written with Levi—Nick never stopped smiling, but it was a tell. Without my brother there to sing, it wouldn’t have been right to play.
    “You’re quiet,” I said.
    “Tired,” Nick said. He tossed his paper bowl into the fire and slid to sit on the rocks. That had to be all kinds of cold, I thought. He arched his back, stretching his arms, then slumping. “You drive?”
    Picking out a piece of sausage, I shook my head. “Walked.”
    The fire popped, full of mussel shells and sweetened with burning corncobs. Nick turned, resting his elbow next to my hip. His hair fell back when he looked up at me, a rare glimpse of his entire face. “I can take you home.”
    “You finished my six-pack,” I replied. “I’ll walk you.”
    “You should stop being a bitch to Seth.”
    At first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. My fingers stilled, no longer searching the bottom of my bowl for more scraps. Since everything was uneven, and I was buzzed, I blinked down at him. “What?”
    With a sigh, Nick slumped against the driftwood. “He’s trying to
help
you, Willa.”
    “Who asked you?”
    “Nobody did,” he said. “I’m the only one who’s going to tell you. ’Cause I’m not your friend. You’re my friend’s sister. My best friend’s girlfriend. I like you, but they’re . . . Get past it.”
    On my feet, I threw my trash into the fire and turned on him. “It’s not done, you dickwad. How am I supposed to get over it?”
    Nick leaned back on his elbows. “Over it, that’s something else. I said get
past
it. It’s not July twenty-third anymore. I don’t think you noticed.”
    Replies surged in my throat, hot like bile. Terry Coyne hadn’t even been indicted yet. There was a house payment my father wouldn’t let me make. A boat I wasn’t supposed to fish from, a whole life that wasn’t going to happen.
    Whether I needed to get past it or not, he wasn’t the one who got to tell me to do it. He wasn’t from Broken Tooth. He didn’t get to judge me.
    “I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” he said.
    Zipping my jacket, I backed away from him. Maybe my voice broke. My throat was tight, my face hot, but I wasn’t going to cry for him. None of the things in my head came out.
    Instead, I said, “You can’t make me feel anything.”
    “Sorry I called you a bitch.” Knitting his brows, Nick draped his arms over his knees. He looked small, but not young. Not even a little; the dark eyes he kept hidden behind his hair were wells, endless and empty and deep. “It’s true, though.”
    I left him there, staring into the fire, because he was right.
    He wasn’t
my
friend.

 
     
    SEVEN
Grey
    I watch her move through the village. She’s distinct from the rest. Her light has shape now. It outlines the fall of her hair and the sway in her step. The others simply gleam, so many fireflies in the dark.
    She’s seen me. Recognized me. But she doesn’t come.
    Why doesn’t she come? Is there some trick I’ve never learned? Some secret that Susannah kept when she trapped me here? Standing on the cliff, I try to be a beacon. It’s foolish; wishful thinking. Even if she could make me out at this distance, I’d be a firefly, too.
    If I were a siren, I could sing to her.
    If this were a fairy tale, I could send a tainted apple.
    But this is a curse, and curses come with torment. I’m supposed to suffer, and this is a