lose your mind

location: calypso

@shaemckinley

Willa didn’t know what she expected. She didn’t know what would come of meeting with a psychic. All she knew was that every time she closed her eyes, all she saw was Adam’s empty coffin. She needed answers. Neil needed answers. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, even Amelia and the rest of the Foxcroft family deserved answers. 

There was more to this world than met the eye; Willa knew that much after the night that Neil disappeared and the night Adam was killed. She was with them and then she wasn’t. The world was before her, and then everything was nothing, just an endless grey prison. She didn’t like to think about that place, about no matter how much she screamed she couldn’t escape, and how when she finally got out one of her friends was missing and the other one was dead. 

No, Willa knew there was more, something dark, something almost supernatural to this world she lived in. So who was she to not believe in psychics? She wouldn’t call herself a believer, but she didn’t shut out the possibility. 

Willa stepped into Calypso, not all that sure of what she wanted, and not sure how to ask. Instead of walking up to the counter and ringing the little bell, she walked around the shop looking at all the little trinkets that filled bins, lined tables and hung from above her. Maybe just being here would give her what she needed. 

She had tried ignoring the laugh. Attempted to crack on – nothing if not determined to finish, and finish well. Because that was what the town wanted. Not what Adam wanted, not what her siblings wanted (if they cared, even), not even what Amelia wanted. But this was Foxcroft. This was the youngest son of the Foxcroft family. He bore a legacy that had to be honored in bleak tradition, no matter how dry and impersonal it would be. 

All she was doing was getting things done. Doing what needed to be done. And so she was made a villain by those who just didn’t understand. Who couldn’t fathom what it meant to carry a town on their shoulders. People like Willa Potter and Neil Monroe, selfish and insular in their love for her brother. 

The microphone ripped. The monologue of savagery. Tearing her limb from limb. In front of all these people. In front of all these people. These people. 

Better person, that was what she would be. As much as the raw, vitriolic beast inside her screamed to be let out, to unleash a bitter end of the girl who let her emotions run wild, who thought her pain was bigger, deeper than hers – Amelia couldn’t do it. Because she was a Foxcroft. And if she broke, everything broke. So she just. Couldn’t break. 

Smoothly, impassively, she took the microphone back from Willa’s desperate hands. As if nothing had happened. As if her pain, her being hadn’t been ripped limb from limb by the drunk woman next to her. Amelia took a deep breath, and resumed. 

“Thank you, Willa. I’m glad one of Adam’s friends had the chance to come up and speak. It’s been hard for all of us.” She said. Steely. Focused. Controlled. Do not look her in the eye. Do not give her the satisfaction. “We all loved and knew my brother in different ways. He had a knack for starting a conversation with anyone who –” 

Willa gritted her teeth as Amelia tore the microphone back from her. She was a little curious what Amelia had to say, what she thought would excuse this whole charade she called a funeral. 

Go on then, tell us, Willa thought -- But what Amelia said didn’t make her feel better, it wasn’t some grand apology. It was more excuses, more covering things up, more for the sake of her and her family’s image. Who the fuck cared about image when Adam was about to be six feet under, buried in the same dirt she left him behind in to rot. Why the fuck did it matter? 

“One of Adam’s friends? Oh, so you acknowledge that we’re friends then! Funny how one of -- no both of -- Adam’s friends weren’t even invited to this fuck fest! Fuck, don’t pretend like you fucking knew him, Amelia!”

It was like she blacked out. Everything went red as she glared at the woman who claimed to know her best friend, who claimed that she was doing what was best for him, while the only people who knew what was best for him were her and Neil. Who the fuck did she think she was? Amelia fucking Foxcroft. 

Someone had to knock Amelia fucking Foxcroft down a peg. 

Taking the mic back wasn’t enough, and so, with everything in her, every little bit of anger and frustration and sadness and emptiness, Willa punched Amelia in the face. That’ll shut her up.

Amelia stumbled back and Willa kept with her, ready to punch again if Foxcroft’s little miss perfect decided to take off her gloves for once. Amelia backed away from Willa; her back to the crowd now. Willa could have pushed her off that stage -- she would have, had she not seen Neil in the corner of her eye. 

Everyone’s eyes were on Amelia and Willa this entire time, but they should have been watching Neil. He beside the coffin, hands on the edge of the dark wood. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Then he did. Neil opened the coffin. Willa wanted to look away, to avoid seeing the rotted corpse of her best friend, but she couldn’t -- and then, less than a second later, the coffin was open.

Coming up with words on the spot wasn’t possible. A script was required. Why a script, for a sister who dearly loved her little brother? Because she had to claw and scrape through her memories to find the ones that mattered. Because this speech wasn’t hers to give, but if she was giving it she was damn well going to be prepared for it. 

“– Adam held our family together with endless, enthusiastic charisma. As children the four of us were enamored with pillow forts. Adam especially. After the parents went to sleep we’d slip out of our beds and drag our pillows and sheets to the living room to make a castle in front of the fireplace. 

He had such imagination. I loved the curious nature of his mind. We were mere worker-bees in the constructions of his masterpieces. He truly shined as someone gifted with design and architecture as a child. I admit I was sad when he never pursued his talents. He had immense, immense potential. 

When I was nine and Adam was six we read together. He’d sit on my lap, in our father’s chair in the library, and play with my hair whilst I read him whatever I’d brought home from school that day. I remember him squeezing my arm every time we’d happen upon something scary. It’s moments, like today, when I wished I could have kept my promise to him. That I’d always keep him safe.” 

She sat in the back because she wasn’t invited. She sat in the back because no one, especially not Amelia Foxcroft, wanted to see her sitting in the front. Amelia Foxcroft couldn’t look out on the crowd and be reminded that there was someone there, someone right in front of her who knew, and loved Adam better. At least, that’s what Willa thought she must’ve been thinking. Still, it didn’t really matter why she’d been sentenced to the back row in a long line of rows of stiff, white plastic chairs. This wasn’t about Amelia, it wasn’t even about Willa -- it was about Adam.

She wouldn’t have been able to hear Amelia speak from how far she was sitting from the stage had Amelia not placed huge speakers around the rows and rows of seating. Everyone had to hear what the great Amelia Foxcroft had to say about her beloved brother. 

Give me a break, Willa thought, rolling her eyes at the speakers. 

The speakers were one thing. The speakers, she expected. Willa didn’t expect Amelia to make shit up off the top of her head. She didn’t expect her to grasp at straws for some sort of memory that made them seem close. Adam, an architect? Give her a fucking break. Willa laughed. She laughed so loud, that even all the way from the back of the rows and rows of chairs, everyone heard her.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right, Amelia?” she yelled, now, looking right up at the podium. She got out of her seat and started slowly sauntering up towards Amelia. Maybe it was thanks to a mix of alcohol and rage, but before Willa knew it, she was up on stage with Amelia, and all the crowd could do was watch. Who really cared if Willa Potter ruined Adam Foxcroft’s funeral right? No one really knew him like she did -- no one but Neil at least.

In one swift movement she tore the microphone from Amelia’s hands. 

“S’orry for that bullshit, folks! I thought this was Adam Foxcroft’s funeral, not some imaginary friend Amelia thought up. Anyone who knew Adam would know he was much more likely to blow shit up than to fucking build it.”

Just like that, she’d started, and nothing could stop her -- well, almost nothing.

“Why the hell are you even speaking right now, Amelia? Did you even like Adam? Why isn’t Avery speaking? Yeah, she fucking left without a goodbye, but she at least hung around him when she was here. You fucking left and you never cared about him. That’s right! You never cared! Why’d you even throw this thing? For your god damn image? Why do you care ---” 

Funeral. When she said it, the laughter that still lingered on Neil’s lips died. The pause that followed didn’t go unnoticed by either of them: it was cavernous and heavy and thick, and coiled up inside it was everything that they hadn’t yet said, Adam is dead being the first of it. It was almost as though up to that moment they’d just been standing on the street and joking, waiting for Adam to come out of whatever shop they were nearest to and throw his arms around their necks and say so boys (Willa would flick his cheek, then), what next? and Neil would say the stars.

It had almost been possible, almost tangible, before they both woke up to what it was they were talking about. They lived in that pause, that stumble for a moment – dwelling on it, meeting the other’s eye in a second of mutual understanding – and then Willa carried on, and Neil didn’t dare do anything to address it.

“Very true,” he said instead, his smile a little more lacklustre this time. “And I think that’s a smart move, Potter. Maybe we weren’t VIP enough for the main event, but I’ll be damned if we aren’t the guests of honour at the after-party.” He nodded fervently, confident in his resolve – but at the thought of walking to the Foxcroft Manor alone, finding a seat, feeling the town’s eyes on him, his confidence faltered. “Uh, hey – what do you think of coming over beforehand, too? I’m godawful at tying ties, and we could head over there together when we were ready…”

It was a rare moment of earnest, and an especially vulnerable one considering Willa hadn’t even spoken to him for months, let alone set foot in his house. But it was an opportunity, and he didn’t want to let it slip by – nor did he want to let her slip by, either. After all, he couldn’t lose them both.

"You know damn well I can’t tie a tie,” she laughed, “Don’t worry. I’ll snag a clip-on from my dad’s closet for you before I head over.” 

This was really happening. They were really burying their best friend. He was really gone -- forever. Willa bit the inside of her cheek, an effort to hold herself and this moment together. God, who was she? Amelia? Something about this moment with Neil just felt so fragile. 

They were balancing between a flicker of their old friendship and the possibility of falling into the chasm of emotions between them. They’d been talking for a few minutes now, but still, they stood more than an arms length away, like they were too afraid of what might happen if they got closer. 

Still, this moment needed something to make it feel real, something to cement it in their minds, some kind of initiative. Willa knew Neil wasn’t nearly as impulsive as she was, but she wasn’t nearly as brave as their dead best friend. 

Adam wouldn’t want this, she thought, before walking up next to him. She grabbed his upper arm, squeezed lightly and leaned her chin against his shoulder.

 “We’ll get through this,” she whispered. Willa didn’t believe what she’d said herself. She knew Neil couldn’t have either, but what else was there to say? She wasn’t this person. She wasn’t the person that said everything was going to be okay and that they’d get through it all, but what the fuck were you supposed to say. Willa had no idea. 

“I’m, uh, gonna head home. I’ll meet you at yours tomorrow, yeah?”

The Absinthe Minded was, apparently, supposed to be a secret. Despite that, it hadn’t taken Wells a long time to learn about it. He’d only been in town a few weeks when a customer asked him about it, and from there, it wasn’t long before they told him the password. Evidently Foxcroft wasn’t very good at keeping its secrets. That fit what Wells had learned in other small towns though — people got bored, they got restless, and for some, gossip was a way to pass the time. Wells wasn’t one of those people, but perhaps that was because he never stayed long enough to get caught up in that cycle. When he got too restless, Wells just picked up and left. No matter how agitated a place might make him, he always knew it wasn’t permanent. He’d be back out there soon.  

But for someone who idealized solitude so much, Wells found himself in the town’s speakeasy often enough. He preferred to watch the people around him more than anything else, taking in the noise and chaos of the bar without engaging in it himself. It was a facsimile of socializing, in a way — he could be around people, but he didn’t have to interact with them. Every now and then though, Wells found himself stepping forward, usually when someone was clearly in need of help. 

He didn’t consider himself to be much of a Good Samaritan, but there were a few things that could easily press his buttons. Drunk people were reckless people, and all too often, they got hurt. Or they got someone else hurt. He’d fallen into the habit of calling cabs or offering rides a few years after Whitney’s death, when some kid in a Nowheresville, Montana had been clearly about to get behind the wheel wasted. Wells had taken his keys and called a cab instead. He’d always wished that someone would have done the same the night that car had slammed into his sister.

It was late already though, and most patrons had already found their way home. It seemed like it was almost time for Wells to do the same, and he gathered his things, looking out over the bar one last time as he did so.

Closing out the bar was the only way Willa knew how to end a night of drinking. She was by no means a lightweight, and it usually took that long for her to start to feel something ( or nothing ) anyways. After spending too much money on whiskey and putting “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” on the jukebox on repeat until the bartender shouted for last call was the only way she knew how to escape the girl this town had made her. 

Light from behind the bar shined through her hair as she, wiggled around on the barstool to what would be the last song of the night. She sang along, badly, to The Clash, grinning ear to ear for the first time in what felt like years. She’d had drunken nights like this before, smiled like this before, but most of these nights were forgotten when she woke the next morning.

When the bartender announced last call, Willa hopped off her barstool, downed the rest of the whiskey in her glass, and stumbled towards the door, still singing under her breath. She nearly smacked right into a stranger, but with what little composure she had left, she merely brushed his shoulder.

“S’orry,” she slurred, grabbing his shoulder and steadying herself as she headed for the door. Once she was outside, Willa fished around in her cluttered purse for her pack of smokes and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. 

“One for tha books, Foxy,” she said, putting the cigarette between her lips, so gone she forgot to light it. 

Standing in the night-lit street with Willa, smoke curling at his side, it was almost as if a portal had opened and yanked them back through to yesteryear. Even though the very words he was speaking rooted them firmly in the present – the present which Adam didn’t figure in, the present which had ripped them all apart – the way his arms were swinging and her head was tipped back and their white teeth flashed (their bad kid fangs, bared at the world) belonged to another time entirely. 

In another world, a could-have-been world, the fire hydrant to their right was being used as a perch for a rich young delinquent with gangly limbs and a mischievous smile, and Neil’s free hand was tracing circles along the palm of another’s. Another world, a kinder world, a lighter world. Not this one. In this one, there was only empty space to their right, and his hands were cold.

Running his tongue across his lips to wipe away the bitterness that his thoughts had stung them with, Neil tapped his fingers on his jaw in thought. “Fireworks,” he said, “naturally. Liquor, to pour one out – or two. And we’ll need a good old-fashioned sing-song, of course. Oh – and you can’t go wrong with party hats, either.”

Willa laughed at the thought of fireworks at anything put on by Amelia Foxcroft, much less a funeral. She imagined them, drunk, trying to light off fireworks and accidentally setting fire to the hundreds of calla lily arrangements Amelia would inevitably have placed alongside the rows and rows of white chairs. White flowers, white chairs, and the oh-so-immaculate Amelia Foxcroft would stand in stark contrast to Adam’s two devil-may-care best friends. But, then, Amelia wouldn’t know that Adam was just like them.

“As much as I’d love to see the look on Amelia’s face if we set off fireworks at Adam’s funeral --” she paused, the word stung. While it ran through her head on a constant loop, it was one she tried to avoid saying out loud, like as if the second the sound waves hit the air, Adam’s death was final. 

“-- I don’t think we can make much of her hoighty toighty little... event. Some lemons just can’t be made into lemonade, y’know. Plus, Adam would have liked vodka much better,” she laughed at the idea of her best friend, drunk off his ass, steadying himself on one of the street lamps on main street, as he so often did. One of those same street lights shined above them right then. 

“We’ll go, but let’s give Adam the service he would have deserved after, hm? The service he would have wanted. Not this stuffy Foxcroft fuckery.”

His heart had broken a little when they took the shock blanket down from his shoulders and led him out of the holding cell to an empty waiting-room, and he had to pretend that he hadn’t expected to see her lounging over two chairs, rolling her eyes at the moms sitting and weeping over their little delinquents. It broke again when it turned out he hadn’t simply been with her during those two months, sailing away from the pain they both shared with enough drugs and drink to make him forget that it had even hurt – even happened – in the first place. 

It broke again when she didn’t call round with cigarettes, look him square in the eye and say this is shit, but we can survive it. It broke the most when he saw her in the street, twenty paces ahead, and couldn’t find the courage to call her name.

His heart broke again now, as he listened to her say the right words and make the right expressions to take him back in time. A simulacrum of the past, a resurrection of the times they both knew to be irretrievable. But his fingers would scrabble for them nonetheless, grabbing onto her attempt at laughter as though it were a life jacket and he was drowning.

“The only invitations I’ve had lately are from the Foxcroft P.D.,” he said drily, looking at Willa from the side of his eye. Neither of them invited to their best friend’s funeral. Who else would Adam have even wanted there? He scoffed. “Fuck Amelia Foxcroft, we’ll have our own goddamn service and we’ll do it right. Make a speech! Set the casket on fire! Beats sitting next to Aunt Mildred in her moth-eaten black veil and listening to people pretend to know who he was.”

His lips were wet with the ardour of his words, and fire fizzed and sparked in his eyes. Bringing his cigarette to his mouth he gave Willa another long look and shook his head, indignant. “We’re fucking going.”

For a moment, things seemed almost back to normal. The cigarette between his fingers, the spark in his eyes. Willa missed this Neil; she hadn’t seen him since that night, but even now she could tell he wasn’t all the same. He always had the brightest ideas, it’s what Willa loved most about him, and here that same boy was in front of her. He was the same boy she’d make escape plans from grocery stores in the next town over when they planned to steal liquor, chips and some food that would last him. He was the same boy that climbed up on her rooftop where they lit fireworks off on the Fourth of July, or just because they felt like it. For a second they were back where they’d always been, and Willa didn’t want that second to end.

“Of course we fucking are. We’re his best fucking friends,” she said, more like they were going to a party held by Adam instead of his funeral. 

They couldn’t just show up. Willa knew that. The murderer and the girl whose name was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. What a scene they would cause. What looks they would get. No, they couldn’t just go. They had to make the scene themselves before someone else made it for them.

“So, in what spectacular way are we going to honor our best friend?”

march 28, 2017   closed to: @willapotter

It was the damned cop car again.

She had the plate memorized, not that the white-and-black shell was hard to miss. Shae wanted to crush it under her heel like the cockroach that drove around in it. Red, blue, red, blue, red– how long had he been haunting her dreams? Wide dark eyes, white around the rims– the creak of sagging wood, the sound of laboured breathing, and the damned cop car. 

Absinthe Minded made a half-decent Alabama Slammer, not that the Lockwood boy would stop judging her for ordering off the menu. (Boy, because that’s what most of them were– a few choice beating hearts aside, none of the creatures in Foxcroft had lived long enough for Shae to take them as seriously as they may have deserved.) If she were being honest, she’d admit that perhaps the only reason she’d hauled her tiny ass up on to the bar in front of Logan was in hopes she’d run into Levi again– but no such luck. The little silver acorn she carried in her wallet was good for nothing, but so was most of the shit she dragged around in her colossal purse. (So was most of the shit she packed into the shelves of her shop, too, but by the time witching hour ticked near, she was too buzzed to care.) 

The only thing real enough to burst her bubble was Marcus’. Fucking. Cop. Car. 

“I should– kick that thing. Right in the fucking tires.” 

It’d been a long day. She was still wearing the same coffee-stained clothes she’d been wearing since that morning when Jonah Graves decided to be so kind and spill all over her. No fucking way was she going back into the suburbs when she’d already made it out here. It wasn’t far. Willa just knew that if she went home, she wouldn’t come back out. Stepping out the door that morning was hard enough. She couldn’t do it again.

Two cups of coffee, a confrontation with Jonah, and a few shitty girly drinks at Absinthe Minded  -- some broody bartender had insisted she try one, and then another, and then another -- and here she was. A strange mix of emotions had surfaced. Anyone who knew Willa knew that she kept her real feelings hidden behind a mix of alcohol, a bad attitude and impulses. 

She was angry because she didn’t get an invite to Adam’s funeral. Sad for the same reasons. Angry that Foxcroft P.D. couldn’t find Adam’s killer. Terrified because whoever it was, was still out there. She was scared because she still didn’t understand what had happened that night, and it didn’t seem like Neil did either. What the fuck was she supposed to do? 

Stumbling down the street, taking her and Adam’s shortcut to the suburbs, Willa saw a figure ahead. Even with how far she was, Willa could tell it was Shae. No one had braids like that in Foxcroft except for her. 

Willa was tipsy, but it seemed Shae had a few more drinks that night than she had -- or she couldn’t hold her liquor as well. ‘I should– kick that thing. Right in the fucking tires.’ Willa’s eyes darted to the cop car sat outside Shae’s shop. Willa knew messing with Foxcroft P.D. wasn’t a good idea -- especially with a killer on the loose an the police desperate to find someone, anyone to bring in for Adam’s or Hazel’s death.

“Oh fuck no,” she murmured under her breath. “Shae! Hey Shae! Shae!”

After all these years, he’s gotten used to people looking past him. It followed a predictable pattern: someone would look at him, and then they’d focus on a black eye or a split lip, and then they would look away, and they’d never really look back. If they did, it was something furtive, looking away the second they were caught, like he was doing something wrong, just by being there. A secret hiding in plain sight, his family’s dirty laundry aired in public. In small towns, good fences made good neighbors, and he was the one who took something that happened behind closed doors, made it public for all to see and whisper about behind his back—but never to his face. 

For so long, it had infuriated him. Now it seems like an unexpected blessing. He isn’t black and blue anymore, or he is much more rarely, but now he’s got something that he’s taking much more care to hide than he ever did the bruises, and he doesn’t want anyone to look. Doesn’t want anyone to see.

But, of course, when he basically runs over Willa Potter’s table in a middle of a coffee shop, there’s not much he can do about it. He doesn’t care that she’s sharp with him—he probably deserves it but, more than that, it snaps him out of the place he’d gone in his head at the sight of the headline. He can’t afford that—with the whole town talking about Hazel and Adam and the trail gone cold, if he froze every time he heard their names he’d never move again.

And so he trades sodden newspaper for dry napkins, dropping a stack of them in front of Willa without ceremony—his gratitude is an abstract thing, a flicker kept down deep; on the outside, he’s as sullen as ever. “Sorry,” he says, though it’s clear from his tone he’s anything but. His next words, too, are not sympathetic: a loaded question, a kneejerk deflection. She’s snared in the net of the town’s suspicion; he didn’t do anything to place her there, but it’s in his best interest that she stays there. “Planning on paying your respects?”

Willa’s eyes were flashed to the newspaper -- now crumpled up in Jonah’s hand, drenched in coffee. She could see the ink being lifted from the paper onto his skin. Her best friend’s name had vanished from the front page, just as he had from this town. 

Still fixed on his ink-stained hands, Willa was almost too distracted to hear Jonah’s question. Her eyes flicked back up at him as she grabbed the napkins on the table and began to pat down her legs, a sad attempt to dry her pants. 

“What do you think?” she said bitingly. She shouldn’t have gone out. She should have known this would have happened. She was the girl who’s name was at the tip of everyone’s tongue but they were too damn afraid to say aloud. “You’ve read the papers? The exposés? Hear the rumors they whisper when I’m not around? Unless you’re deaf, you’ve gotta know he was my best friend.”

Willa stood up, looked right into his eyes, almost like she was sizing him up. She ripped the paper from his hand, nearly tearing it in half in the process. Her blood was boiling; she knew it was the headline, but she didn’t care. Jonah Graves spilled coffee on the wrong person -- a person who hadn’t been invited to her best friend’s funeral.

“So, what the fuck do you think?” 

the smell of LIQUOR and FUN filled the room. hands stained with whisky and bitters as he put the finishing touches on the whisky sour in front of him, before he hands it to the customer at the left corner of the bar. a wink given when he takes the credit card, swipes and returns it with a compliment oh you look like a million dollars tonight and then he turned around, went over to the next customer. logan had a perfected routine as draining thoughts left his body, becoming an older version of the young golden boy he had been at high school. this was were he felt at HOME. creating new concoctions for the bar’s visitors and charming them with charismatic nature. & now his eyes focused as he created something special as ordered, playing with the liquors behind the bar and adding secret ingredients. this was logan’s favourite part of the job ––– the creation of something completely new, and something that would most likely be impossible to replicate if asked to do it again. that was the beauty of it. something new each time, something special. as he places it in front of the one who asked for it, he gives a golden smile and instead of a compliment it is a question that leaves the tip off his tongue.

           “ ––– penny for your thoughts? ”

Willa was simple when it came to her alcohol. Whiskey neat. Vodka shots. The cheapest beer you had with the highest alcohol percentage. The last time she’d had a “girly” drink was when she and Neil accidentally lifted a bottle of peach schnapps from the liquor store instead of the vodka they’d wanted. So when the bartender set down a drink in front of her that looked more like a Carmen Miranda hat than an actual drink, Willa couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s gonna take more than a penny for my thoughts. How about a real drink?” 

Fight or flight. It was a process his body was more familiar with than it ought to be: choose now, which do you want least, the hunger pangs or a night spent at home? The drunk tank was preferable to the parental shouting match, or the sickly-sweet smell of screwdriver cocktails at five in the morning. Brawling with the shopkeeper, the police officer, the drunken biker who wanted to bruise his knuckles for kicks was the fastest route to a night in the cells, but Neil had to ration those nights carefully, since it was the fastest route to juvy, too. 

Fight or flight wasn’t so applicable here, though. However sharply that voice sliced through him, however much he didn’t want to turn around and face her, he couldn’t resort to either option: all he had in his arsenal was freeze. He thought back to nights spent helping her sneak out of suburbia, to screaming at the top of their lungs in the manor because all sound died before it even reached the limits of the family’s grounds. Now, he could barely muster up a whisper.

Slowly, surely, trying to mask the tremor in his fingers, he slid a cigarette out from behind his left ear. Still without facing her, he cupped his hands around it to set it alight, leaning forward slightly to shelter the flame. He dropped the lighter back into his pocket, and hoped the orange glow of the cigarette’s tip would disguise the pallor of his phantom face as he turned to meet eyes with another ghost mired by the past.

“Boo,” he said bitterly, hoping to sound more collected than he did. He took another drag of the cigarette, watching her with sharp eyes, the silence burning between them. Then, even though he hated himself for it – “I thought I’d be seeing you again over my dead body.” He glanced at the paper curled tightly in her fist, and tried hard not to choke. “Guess it’s over his.”

She almost smiled. Seeing his face almost brought up some semblance of a real, raw emotion from Willa. It was like she died that same night Adam was murdered, the same night Neil went missing. She was six feet under, but she wasn’t dead, it just felt like it. Seeing Neil’s face -- for the first time in months -- gave her a dose of willpower to scape at the sides of her coffin, to try and escape from the emotional tomb she’d put herself in. She was the girl who knew them both, and so she had to become the girl who said nothing. 

“Neil.” She said his name again. This time it came out a little easier. “Did you get an invitation... I heard Amelia was sending out invitations?” 

It was in the paper --- “open service, front seats reserved for invited guests.” If not Willa and Neil, Willa wondered who’d be taking the front row. Were Avery and Arthur coming back into town? Were his parents flying out? Willa half expected them not to. Arthur and Amelia were the children they’d drop everything for -- never Adam, never Avery. 

“I didn’t... if you were wondering,” she half-laughed, “I don’t think Amelia likes me. I’m a little too wild for her, y’know? She probably thinks I’d drink the whole open bar and make a speech or something. Scratch that, Amelia would never have an open bar, who I am I fucking kidding?”

The average American newspaper cost somewhere between seventy-five cents and a dollar and, given the small readership in Foxcroft, it was nearer the dollar. Neil knew this in the same way that he knew the prices of everything, and could reel them off in a list: Milk, one litre, eighty-eight cents. Bread, one steaming white loaf, two fifty-five. Domestic beer, two dollars for a half a litre. Imported beer? Too bourgeois for me, but if you must know, it’s two fifty-two for a third. Fucking scammers. His checkout clerk impression had been a funny bit for his friends, when they’d all still laughed, when they’d all still breathed – but even then, the laughter was bittersweet. No child’s primary mathematics education should be based on how much the nickels in his hand added up to, and whether that would be enough for him to eat that week.

It was no surprise, then, that Neil had never been a subscriber to the ninety-six-cent Foxcroft Post, even though his name had driven up its sales fivefold in the last few months. WHERE IS NEIL MONROE? DID HE DO IT? DID YOU KNOW HIS DAD WENT CRAZY, DIED IN JAIL? DID YOU KNOW HIS MOTHER IS A DRUNK? Maybe they didn’t before, but now they do. And now he knows they do, too, since they tell him in their hate mail – God, he hopes the bowling alley renovations get finished soon, since these people clearly have no better way to fill their recreational time – and the bricks through his windows. Who needs to pay for air conditioning when you’re a suspected double-murderer? Sometimes, the kind souls of Foxcroft even leave him their copies, with all the good bits circled and red-marker-expletives added in for his reading pleasure.

They’d left him a copy of the morning’s edition that evening, once they’d had time to fill out the crossword puzzles. An update on his life delivered promptly to his doorstep. The headline this time? ADAM FOXCROFT TO BE LAID TO REST NEXT SUNDAY, Neil’s name underneath graffitied with red marker pen reading ‘KILLER’, the pages reeking of cat piss. He’d picked it up and read it anyway, in lieu of an official invitation. Then he’d thrown on a coat, tucked a cigarette behind each ear, and headed downtown. He didn’t venture near Main Street by day, not if he wanted to stay alive, but at night he still liked to find a rooftop to sit on, to listen to the street noise and wonder whether to throw himself off. He was somewhere past Absinthe Minded, head down, hands in pockets, when he heard her voice, clipped and strained: 'Neil.' He stopped still. Fuck.

Despite her better judgement, Willa had stayed on Main Street all day, even after Jonah had spilled coffee all over her. There was something almost unreal about the street, almost like a movie set. It was the facade that Foxcroft put up to hide all the horror stories the town had to tell -- and it had many. 

She gripped one of them in her hand, a crumpled up, coffee-stained front page of the Foxcroft Post. The headline ran through her mind on a loop -- ADAM FOXCROFT TO BE LAID TO REST NEXT SUNDAY. Her best friend was dead, and all she had to remember him by were tainted memories and newspaper clippings. That’s all she deserved. 

Amelia was back in town. Willa knew she was planning his funeral, but she didn’t know much else. Amelia didn’t share any details Willa, or anyone else it seemed. Even the paper seemed like they were in the dark, publishing little else but the date of the funeral. Willa wondered if Amelia would speak, she wondered what she would say. Adam was her best friend, and she couldn’t even think of a proper way to say goodbye to him -- how would the sister who barely knew him do it? How would she honor his memory when she barely shared any memories with him herself?

The funeral was just another horror story this town had yet to tell, just another ghost that would hang around the town long afterwards. 

Willa was just about to turn a corner, heading away from the Main Street and back towards the suburbs, when she saw another ghost. 

She hadn’t seen him since he’d disappeared. Her bedroom was littered with newspaper clippings of a murder and a disappearance. She’d meant to make a board with clippings and pictures, to find Neil herself, but Willa was too broken after Adam’s death to find the motivation to do it. 

Now, the ghost she was meant to find stood in front of her. The ghost she’d hid from for so long because she didn’t know what to say. Her lips cracked and dry, her throat tight, as if it was begging her not to speak, Willa only managed to get out one word --- his name.

“Neil.”