The uputdownable debut thriller you will never forget.
Don't believe us? Check out some of the early reviews:
"Holy sh....... Can I just say that? Can that be the review? Technically yes, but I **NEED** to say that this is without a doubt and by far one of 𝘵𝘩𝘦 best books I have read this year!" —Brittney Green
"A freaking INCREDIBLE debut for Sara Walters. I have not felt this pull to a book in a hot minute. PREORDER IT, ADD IT TO YOUR TBR, AND WAIT IMPATIENTLY FOR OCTOBER BECAUSE THIS BOOK WAS ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️" —Tiffany Clark
"Be prepared to be captivated after the first sentence." —Rachel Milburn
"Dark, angsty and compelling. I'd highly recommend this to anyone." —Lydia Thompson
"An addictive, beautifully-written, masterful debut novel that is hands down a must-read." —Kaitlyn Sutey
"Whaaat? This freaking nerve bending, claustrophobic, intense, disturbing small town mystery scared the living daylights out of me!" --Nilufer Ozmekik
"How do I even begin to describe the way this book made me feel? A lot. That, I can guarantee. Walters' debut is brilliant in all its essence. I can't wait for it to be out for the rest of the world." —Netgalley reviewer
“I couldn't put this book down – I needed to know WTF was going on in this town.” --Amber Clark, Netgalley reviewer
"Holy sh....... Can I just say that? Can that be the review? Technically yes, but I **NEED** to say that this is without a doubt and by far one of 𝘵𝘩𝘦 best books I have read this year!" —Brittney Green
"A freaking INCREDIBLE debut for Sara Walters. I have not felt this pull to a book in a hot minute. PREORDER IT, ADD IT TO YOUR TBR, AND WAIT IMPATIENTLY FOR OCTOBER BECAUSE THIS BOOK WAS ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️" —Tiffany Clark
"Be prepared to be captivated after the first sentence." —Rachel Milburn
"Dark, angsty and compelling. I'd highly recommend this to anyone." —Lydia Thompson
"An addictive, beautifully-written, masterful debut novel that is hands down a must-read." —Kaitlyn Sutey
"Whaaat? This freaking nerve bending, claustrophobic, intense, disturbing small town mystery scared the living daylights out of me!" --Nilufer Ozmekik
"How do I even begin to describe the way this book made me feel? A lot. That, I can guarantee. Walters' debut is brilliant in all its essence. I can't wait for it to be out for the rest of the world." —Netgalley reviewer
“I couldn't put this book down – I needed to know WTF was going on in this town.” --Amber Clark, Netgalley reviewer
More about the book:
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Available October 5th
There is something terribly wrong in Wolf Ridge. Every November, every teen is overwhelmed with a hunger for violence…at least, that’s the urban legend. After Wyatt Green’s mother was brutally murdered last Fall, she’s convinced that the November sickness plaguing Wolf Ridge isn’t just a town rumor that everyone ignores…it’s a palpable force infecting her neighbors. Wyatt is going to prove it, and find her mother’s murderer in the process. She digs up every past brutal act she can find from Wolf Ridge’s past – from car wrecks, suicides, and unnamed victims turning up in rivers—and even reaches out to an out-of-state journalist that seems to believe her. But all of her digging leads to nowhere. Everyone in Wolf Ridge accepts that the November sickness is real, and absolutely no one will talk about it. As Wyatt’s best friend Cash turns on her, and her friend is almost killed in a tragic accident, Wyatt panics – how can she keep her friends safe, and find her mother’s murderer, when no one believes her? As the evidence stars to disappear, Wyatt wonders: is she just imagining everything? Is the sickness real, or are the people of Wolf Ridge just naturally prone to doing bad things? Can Wyatt and her friends come out of the Violent Season unscathed, or is one of them going to be the next victim? |
About the Author
SARA WALTERS works as an advocate for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence in central Pennsylvania. Previously, she worked as a reproductive rights advocate and a college instructor. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of South Florida, and studied children's and young adult literature while earning her doctorate in education at the University of Tennessee.
She believes in the power of storytelling as a voice for survivors, and aims to give space to the stories too often silenced. The Violent Season is her debut novel.
She believes in the power of storytelling as a voice for survivors, and aims to give space to the stories too often silenced. The Violent Season is her debut novel.
Read the First 2 Chapters
CHAPTER 1
When Cash told me he wanted to kill Porter Dawes, we were standing on the peak of Lawson’s Bluff, our sleeves pulled down over our hands. It was the first day of November, and winter already had Vermont in its fists. Below us, Wolf Ridge spread out like an open wound, a gash sliced through the mountains. We went up there to smoke the weed we had left from the weekend and to be away from town. Wolf Ridge had a way of closing in on us. The mountains crowded us. Finding higher ground was the only way we felt less suffocated.
I slid my lighter into my back pocket and crushed the last nub of the joint we’d been sharing. Cash stared at his feet, inching the tips of his shoes closer to the edge of the bluff.
“I mean it,” Cash said. “I’ll do it.”
My skull felt too small for my brain. When I looked at Cash, it took a moment for my eyes to focus.
“Shut up, Cash.”
He pulled a crumpled pack of smokes from his jacket pocket. Caught a filter between his lips. I handed him the lighter.
“I even know how I’d do it,” he said, talking around the cigarette. He took a hard pull, the cherry lighting his face orange.
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded and said, “Would be messy, though.”
“Messy?”
“Maybe too messy.”
I tried to imagine it—Porter Dawes with all of his blood on the outside.
I knew better than to encourage Cash. The last time he’d gotten an idea like that and I’d played along, he’d ended up on probation. When I played along, he only got hungrier.
But I was hungry, too. He offered me his half-spent cigarette, and I took it, thinking of Porter Dawes in pieces.
“Messy how?” I asked. I rolled the cigarette filter between two fingers and watched him. I was always watching him. I was always waiting to see his face change, to see his lips move. I memorized every half smirk and every crease that gathered in his forehead when I said something wrong.
“Too bloody. Hard to clean up after.”
It was already almost dark. Winter in Wolf Ridge meant making sure you were off the mountain before the sun dipped behind it. Before the cold wrapped itself around the town and pulled tight. My lips tingled with nicotine. My fingers were numb, but I felt warm. Somehow, I was certain I could feel Cash’s warmth beside me. He burned and glowed like the lit end of my cigarette.
It took me a second, but I realized I was grinning. Grinning about Porter Dawes, insides on the outside, bright and red and angry.
It happened every November—the people in Wolf Ridge were suddenly overwhelmed with a hunger for violence. No one was sure why or when it started, but we were plagued and delighted by images and dreams of murdering strangers and friends and ourselves. Everyone knew it was real, but we all pretended it wasn’t, just a boogeyman story you tell kids to keep them from getting in trouble when they’re older. Our parents lied to us and said it was an urban legend, but we all knew they dreamed about slitting their own parents’ throats. We all knew.
As if it were a sickness, some kind of seasonal virus like the flu, there were those of us who ended up coming down with it harder than others. Cash was pretty much patient zero this year. I could almost see his urges radiating off of him.
“Why Porter, though?” I dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out with the toe of my shoe.
Cash slid his hands into his pockets. I could see his cheeks were turning pink, cold-bitten. It was getting darker. We needed to leave.
“Because he deserves it the most.” Cash watched the city below us. The streetlights were popping on in rows.
I didn’t know what Porter Dawes had done to make Cash mad. But it was November, so it could have been nothing. It could have been that Porter looked at him wrong. Our November Sickness had infected Cash to his core. He must have carried the virus from birth, sleeping inside him, but now it was awake. And it was hungry.
I looked over my shoulder at the car, parked a few yards back, behind the dead end sign nailed to the fence blocking the rest of the dirt road. The fence was new. Last November, Kristen Daniels smashed through the old one in her dad’s truck. I remembered my pulse quickening when the news made its way through the school hallways. My mouth watering. Cash skipped school that day and came up here to see the crime scene tape laced through the tree limbs, to peek over the edge of the bluff and see the mangled remains of the truck at the bottom. It took them days to remove it. A few of us stood along the tree line smoking cigarettes as they brought the crane in to lift it out of the twisting branches and underbrush. There was a constellation of blood splatter across the spiderwebbed windshield.
Cash’s hands were still tucked into his pockets. I wanted to slide my fingers around his wrist, inch my hand between his arm and hip bone. I didn’t. I looked down at Wolf Ridge, watched the headlights moving down Getty Street. Sometimes I could see my house from the bluff, but that night, it was too dark. The lights must have all been off. No one was home.
“Maybe I’ll just burn the whole place down.” Cash flicked the lighter on.
Even in the glow of the flame, his eyes still looked black.
CHAPTER 2
No one was home when I got to my house. Cash dropped me off, and I shuffled across the cold-burnt lawn with my hands shoved deep into my jacket pockets. He was on his way to a shift at the diner, the only restaurant in Wolf Ridge that stayed open past eight. If you wanted the chain places, you had to take the interstate a good fifteen miles into the city. We hardly ever did.
I pushed the door shut behind me with my foot, dropping my backpack on the floor. The house was quiet. Only the small lamp in the living room was on. Dad left it on for me when he was going to be late—just one of our many unspoken codes. As I moved through the house, I flicked lights on. Being there alone in the dark made me anxious. When Dad got home, he’d probably make a joke about the electric bill.
He taught history at the high school, but with all the budget cuts, he’d also had to pick up some extra tutoring jobs over in the city. Most people in Wolf Ridge had to go into the city to find better jobs. During the day, the streets in town were practically empty. Our little blip on the map was quiet most of the time. There was one stoplight in the whole place, and Cash and I liked to lie in the middle of the road underneath it when he got off late shifts at the diner. The road was so quiet at that hour that we could hear the click of the stoplight changing from green to yellow to red.
I turned the corner into the kitchen and flipped the light on, heard it pop to life overhead. The fluorescent buzz lit up the mess on the countertops—half-drunk mugs of coffee, the pile of unwashed dishes in the sink, crumbs from microwaved breakfast sandwiches eaten in a hurry. Dad’s favorite mug was beside the sink, stained with a dried drip of coffee down one side. I’d painted it for him when I was three or four and my grandma took me to one of those pottery studios in the city. Wyatt loves Daddy was written messily across it in bright purple paint, with pink hearts filling up the rest of the empty porcelain space.
The magnetic whiteboard on the fridge had my dad’s slanted handwriting scrawled across it. Wy—home late, leftovers in fridge. I wrinkled my nose at the idea of congealed spaghetti and opted for the pint of banana chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. Even though I was headed upstairs to my room, I left all the lights on downstairs. I checked the front door twice—pulled hard on the handle, made sure the bolt was in place. Some people in Wolf Ridge never locked their doors. We were not those people.
The stairs squeaked as I walked up them, and I gave little more than a sideways glance to the photos that lined the wall. It was more like a shrine than a display. All of the mismatched frames were occupied by photos of my mother. A summer afternoon at the edge of the river, grinning as she watched my dress billow out on the rope swing. Christmas morning in that old purple robe, coffee in one hand, toddler me wrapped up in the other arm, all of her dark brown hair piled on top of her head. The lace of her wedding gown, and that bright, goofy smile on my young father’s face. I didn’t look at them because if I did, I’d have to remember that they were the only place I’d ever see her again.
I hurried up the rest of the steps, urgently reaching for the light switch at the top. In the dark, I felt the same sensation as always—something cold and wet on the carpet soaking into my socks. A puddle of black at the top of the staircase. The faint outline of a smeared handprint on the wall.
My hand was shaking by the time it found the switch. The light came on, and the carpet was dry again. The wall was clean. Another photo of my mother grinned brightly at me from a simple brown frame.
In my bedroom, I was free of her gaze. There were no photos of her in here. I’d taken them all out—plucked the photo booth strips from my mirror, replaced the photo in the frame on my bedside table with one of Cash and me at the lake that summer. I could erase her from my room, at least, even though my dad wallpapered the rest of the house with her memory. In here, I could pretend she still existed outside of framed photos and a few boxes of clothes out in the garage. In here, I could shut the door to all the ghosts that filled our house. Even as empty as it was, it felt crowded.
Dad would be home by ten, and at midnight, Cash would get off work and wait for me outside. He would get a bottle of something with his fake ID and park his car on the next street over from mine. We would walk out past the high school and climb up into the bleachers by the football field and drink, and Cash would eventually get drunk enough to let me kiss him. When we were sober, we pretended I wasn’t in love with him. It was easier for both of us that way.
My dad would fall asleep on the couch watching sports highlights, and when I came in the front door at four a.m., he’d wake up and see me, but he wouldn’t ask me where I’d been. Sometimes, he’d make a joke like, “Ah, I knew I had a daughter.” And I’d lean over the back of the couch and kiss the top of his head and trudge up the stairs to my room, ignoring the Mom Shrine in my peripheral vision. For my dad, the whole house was a shrine. The whole town. All of Vermont.
It was barely after six, but it was pitch black outside my bedroom window. I pulled the curtains closed, keeping all that darkness out of my warmly lit room. The pint of ice cream was sweating in my hand, and I set it on my night table, the spoon clattering down beside it. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I crawled under my blankets, still in my clothes, wishing my dad would come home, or that time would speed up and Cash would get off work.
When I was home alone, it was just me and the ghosts. They were everywhere. One in a worn-out purple bathrobe. One in a wedding dress trimmed with lace. One chasing an unruly toddler around the upstairs hallway, their laughter and footsteps so loud sometimes I could barely sleep. Most of them were harmless. Most of them smiled at me when I saw them, even opened up their arms, offering to hold me. But there was one I was afraid of. It stood at the top of the steps some nights. Walked up and down the hall to my dad’s door and back, steps dragging over the carpet. This one seemed to show up the most when I was home alone. I stared at my closed door and pulled my covers tighter around myself.
I remembered an evening last year when I’d come home past curfew yet again. My mother had stayed up waiting for me, and as I kicked off my shoes in the foyer, she appeared in the hallway from the living room. I watched her slowly fold her arms over her chest, and I knew she was probably vacillating between anger and trying to be gentle—lately, her irritation unleashed something in me that wanted to cut into her with curse words and promises to disappear. I think by then she was scared of what I might do to myself in a backward attempt to hurt her.
It was always Cash who made her confront me. He was always the reason her daughter came home late, smelling of smoke and his cologne. She was my mother, and she wanted me safely behind locked doors once the streetlights came on. But I was sixteen, and I wanted Cash. I wanted to lie in the middle of the football field smoking with him until all my limbs went heavy and I could pretend for a moment that we were somewhere else. Alone together, anywhere but there.
That night, I swayed a little as I got my second shoe off, the high still thick in my head. She watched me, face fixed in a frown, but one that looked more sad than angry.
“Wyatt,” she started, and my shoulders fell. Her frown seemed to deepen.
“Are you happy with the choices you’re making?”
I didn’t know why I was always so ready to rip her to shreds just for loving me. I didn’t see love; I saw control. I saw her laying another brick in the wall she wanted to build between Cash and me. And I hated her for it.
I let out a laugh. Started up the stairs.
“Who fucking cares, Mom?”
I spent so much time wishing for her to leave me alone, to let me destroy myself in peace. Later, I wished for just one more night of her waiting for me, wanting me to love myself more than I loved a hand grenade in the shape of a boy.
When the front door opened and closed, I suddenly jolted awake, unaware I had even fallen asleep. My body ached from being curled up so tightly, my knuckles white and stiff from clutching my blankets. I uncurled myself, releasing my grip on the blankets and pulling them down. The clock on my bedside table read 9:33—it was Dad getting home from the city. The pint of ice cream I’d brought upstairs sat in a puddle of water, the cardboard soggy. I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up, listening for more sounds from my dad downstairs. But it was quiet. I picked up the wilted ice cream container and walked to my door, opening it and moving out into the hallway. The lights were all still on.
I stood at the top of the steps, listening, but I still couldn’t hear anything. From where I stood I could see the front door, and the bolt was pointing up, unlocked. I swallowed the sudden clench of unease in my throat.
“Dad?” I called down the steps.
Nothing.
“Dad, is that you?”
The door that led out to the garage creaked open loudly, the sound startling me so much that I gasped, jumping back from the edge of the top step and into the wall behind me. I wanted to call out again, but my voice was stuck in the sharp, sudden panic that had formed in the center of my chest. Footsteps moved from the garage door into the kitchen. My jaw clenched, and my eyes locked on the bottom of the stairs, waiting to see who emerged into the foyer. Maybe it wasn’t Dad. Maybe it was one of those fucking ghosts, unlocking and opening doors, taking another hard stab at my sanity.
The footsteps got closer. I was starting to shake with fear and panic. I was losing it—I knew I was. I was just hearing things. Seeing things. Ghosts. Unlocked doors.
A set of wide shoulders turned the corner from the foyer and stood at the bottom of the steps. There was my dad—his messy dark hair, salt-and-pepper stubble, and the sudden glow of his straight, white grin.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
“You scared the shit out of me.” The words came out of my mouth in a rush of air. “I called for you.”
“Sorry, honey,” he said, leaning on the end of the railing. “I was taking the trash out to the garage.” I must have looked irritated, because he laughed. “It’s just me, Wyatt.”
I started down the steps, giving him a light shove as I went past him at the bottom. He chuckled and followed me into the kitchen, where I tossed the cardboard ice cream container into the sink along with the spoon.
Dad started looking through the cabinets, twisting up his face. He towered over me at six feet and change. His presence alone felt safe, protective. His hair stuck out wildly in a few places, and his unshaven face made him look a little older and even more tired than usual. He had on his black-framed glasses, but he still squinted into each cabinet he opened. I leaned against the counter and watched him, one eyebrow raised. I never said so, but the quiet moments we shared were the ones I loved the most. He didn’t expect anything from me—I didn’t have to talk about Cash, or the fact that all my coats on the hooks by the front door were steeped in the scents of weed and cigarettes. In those moments, I got to just be the little kid who’d made that mug for him.
He gave up on looking through the cabinets and picked up the mug, stepping around me to rinse it in the sink. He set it back on the counter and got to work putting on a pot of coffee, despite the fact that it was nearly ten. Dad could drink shots of espresso and still pass out twenty minutes later in front of the TV.
He noticed me studying him and lifted his eyebrows as he spooned coffee grounds into a clean filter. “Do I have something on my face?” he asked, smiling.
“Just that neck beard you’re working on.” I folded my arms. He grinned and ran his fingers over the stubble on his chin.
“What, you don’t like it?”
I tried to look unamused, but he had this habit of making me smile, just exuding goofiness and an ever-present wide, glowing grin. I couldn’t help but let myself smile back at him.
“You look like an old man.”
“I am an old man.”
“Oh, bull.”
In the time we’d been on our own, we’d developed our own language. If he could get me to tease him, could get me to smile a little, he felt reassured, and we didn’t have to talk about anything serious. It was when I didn’t return his jabs, when he came home and I stayed in my bedroom, that he gave me his best serious face and asked what was wrong.
Right then, though, we were both okay. Coffee was brewing and Dad was grinning at me and I was rolling my eyes at him and we were both okay. We didn’t have to talk about the ghosts that night.
Mom watched us from a photo taped to the fridge. The kitchen smelled like coffee, and Dad reached up to the top shelf of the pantry to pull down the stash of cookies he thought was secret, but definitely wasn’t.
“Coffee and cookies?” he offered, the cookie package crinkling as he shoved one hand inside. “I’ll even let you have the last macadamia nut.”
“Nah, I think I’ll go let Cash feed me bad diner food.” I pushed off from the counter, and before I could walk past, he leaned down in front of me, offering one stubbly cheek. I wrinkled my nose at him but gave his cheek a kiss anyway.
“Do you want a ride over there? It’s getting cold.” Dad spoke around a mouthful of cookie.
“I’m good. A little fresh air won’t kill me.”
I stopped at the front door to bundle up—sweater, jacket, beanie. I pulled my ankle boots on and tugged my socks up over the bottoms of my jeans. I could feel my dad peeking around the corner at me. I knew he wanted to ask me to stay home. I knew he wanted to tell me he hated when I was out late with Cash. But my dad was already too full of pain and grief. There was no room left in his body for another ounce of negative emotion.
As I grabbed my keys from the hook by the door, I heard the ghosts upstairs.
One of them was crying.
When Cash told me he wanted to kill Porter Dawes, we were standing on the peak of Lawson’s Bluff, our sleeves pulled down over our hands. It was the first day of November, and winter already had Vermont in its fists. Below us, Wolf Ridge spread out like an open wound, a gash sliced through the mountains. We went up there to smoke the weed we had left from the weekend and to be away from town. Wolf Ridge had a way of closing in on us. The mountains crowded us. Finding higher ground was the only way we felt less suffocated.
I slid my lighter into my back pocket and crushed the last nub of the joint we’d been sharing. Cash stared at his feet, inching the tips of his shoes closer to the edge of the bluff.
“I mean it,” Cash said. “I’ll do it.”
My skull felt too small for my brain. When I looked at Cash, it took a moment for my eyes to focus.
“Shut up, Cash.”
He pulled a crumpled pack of smokes from his jacket pocket. Caught a filter between his lips. I handed him the lighter.
“I even know how I’d do it,” he said, talking around the cigarette. He took a hard pull, the cherry lighting his face orange.
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded and said, “Would be messy, though.”
“Messy?”
“Maybe too messy.”
I tried to imagine it—Porter Dawes with all of his blood on the outside.
I knew better than to encourage Cash. The last time he’d gotten an idea like that and I’d played along, he’d ended up on probation. When I played along, he only got hungrier.
But I was hungry, too. He offered me his half-spent cigarette, and I took it, thinking of Porter Dawes in pieces.
“Messy how?” I asked. I rolled the cigarette filter between two fingers and watched him. I was always watching him. I was always waiting to see his face change, to see his lips move. I memorized every half smirk and every crease that gathered in his forehead when I said something wrong.
“Too bloody. Hard to clean up after.”
It was already almost dark. Winter in Wolf Ridge meant making sure you were off the mountain before the sun dipped behind it. Before the cold wrapped itself around the town and pulled tight. My lips tingled with nicotine. My fingers were numb, but I felt warm. Somehow, I was certain I could feel Cash’s warmth beside me. He burned and glowed like the lit end of my cigarette.
It took me a second, but I realized I was grinning. Grinning about Porter Dawes, insides on the outside, bright and red and angry.
It happened every November—the people in Wolf Ridge were suddenly overwhelmed with a hunger for violence. No one was sure why or when it started, but we were plagued and delighted by images and dreams of murdering strangers and friends and ourselves. Everyone knew it was real, but we all pretended it wasn’t, just a boogeyman story you tell kids to keep them from getting in trouble when they’re older. Our parents lied to us and said it was an urban legend, but we all knew they dreamed about slitting their own parents’ throats. We all knew.
As if it were a sickness, some kind of seasonal virus like the flu, there were those of us who ended up coming down with it harder than others. Cash was pretty much patient zero this year. I could almost see his urges radiating off of him.
“Why Porter, though?” I dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out with the toe of my shoe.
Cash slid his hands into his pockets. I could see his cheeks were turning pink, cold-bitten. It was getting darker. We needed to leave.
“Because he deserves it the most.” Cash watched the city below us. The streetlights were popping on in rows.
I didn’t know what Porter Dawes had done to make Cash mad. But it was November, so it could have been nothing. It could have been that Porter looked at him wrong. Our November Sickness had infected Cash to his core. He must have carried the virus from birth, sleeping inside him, but now it was awake. And it was hungry.
I looked over my shoulder at the car, parked a few yards back, behind the dead end sign nailed to the fence blocking the rest of the dirt road. The fence was new. Last November, Kristen Daniels smashed through the old one in her dad’s truck. I remembered my pulse quickening when the news made its way through the school hallways. My mouth watering. Cash skipped school that day and came up here to see the crime scene tape laced through the tree limbs, to peek over the edge of the bluff and see the mangled remains of the truck at the bottom. It took them days to remove it. A few of us stood along the tree line smoking cigarettes as they brought the crane in to lift it out of the twisting branches and underbrush. There was a constellation of blood splatter across the spiderwebbed windshield.
Cash’s hands were still tucked into his pockets. I wanted to slide my fingers around his wrist, inch my hand between his arm and hip bone. I didn’t. I looked down at Wolf Ridge, watched the headlights moving down Getty Street. Sometimes I could see my house from the bluff, but that night, it was too dark. The lights must have all been off. No one was home.
“Maybe I’ll just burn the whole place down.” Cash flicked the lighter on.
Even in the glow of the flame, his eyes still looked black.
CHAPTER 2
No one was home when I got to my house. Cash dropped me off, and I shuffled across the cold-burnt lawn with my hands shoved deep into my jacket pockets. He was on his way to a shift at the diner, the only restaurant in Wolf Ridge that stayed open past eight. If you wanted the chain places, you had to take the interstate a good fifteen miles into the city. We hardly ever did.
I pushed the door shut behind me with my foot, dropping my backpack on the floor. The house was quiet. Only the small lamp in the living room was on. Dad left it on for me when he was going to be late—just one of our many unspoken codes. As I moved through the house, I flicked lights on. Being there alone in the dark made me anxious. When Dad got home, he’d probably make a joke about the electric bill.
He taught history at the high school, but with all the budget cuts, he’d also had to pick up some extra tutoring jobs over in the city. Most people in Wolf Ridge had to go into the city to find better jobs. During the day, the streets in town were practically empty. Our little blip on the map was quiet most of the time. There was one stoplight in the whole place, and Cash and I liked to lie in the middle of the road underneath it when he got off late shifts at the diner. The road was so quiet at that hour that we could hear the click of the stoplight changing from green to yellow to red.
I turned the corner into the kitchen and flipped the light on, heard it pop to life overhead. The fluorescent buzz lit up the mess on the countertops—half-drunk mugs of coffee, the pile of unwashed dishes in the sink, crumbs from microwaved breakfast sandwiches eaten in a hurry. Dad’s favorite mug was beside the sink, stained with a dried drip of coffee down one side. I’d painted it for him when I was three or four and my grandma took me to one of those pottery studios in the city. Wyatt loves Daddy was written messily across it in bright purple paint, with pink hearts filling up the rest of the empty porcelain space.
The magnetic whiteboard on the fridge had my dad’s slanted handwriting scrawled across it. Wy—home late, leftovers in fridge. I wrinkled my nose at the idea of congealed spaghetti and opted for the pint of banana chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer, grabbing a spoon from the drawer. Even though I was headed upstairs to my room, I left all the lights on downstairs. I checked the front door twice—pulled hard on the handle, made sure the bolt was in place. Some people in Wolf Ridge never locked their doors. We were not those people.
The stairs squeaked as I walked up them, and I gave little more than a sideways glance to the photos that lined the wall. It was more like a shrine than a display. All of the mismatched frames were occupied by photos of my mother. A summer afternoon at the edge of the river, grinning as she watched my dress billow out on the rope swing. Christmas morning in that old purple robe, coffee in one hand, toddler me wrapped up in the other arm, all of her dark brown hair piled on top of her head. The lace of her wedding gown, and that bright, goofy smile on my young father’s face. I didn’t look at them because if I did, I’d have to remember that they were the only place I’d ever see her again.
I hurried up the rest of the steps, urgently reaching for the light switch at the top. In the dark, I felt the same sensation as always—something cold and wet on the carpet soaking into my socks. A puddle of black at the top of the staircase. The faint outline of a smeared handprint on the wall.
My hand was shaking by the time it found the switch. The light came on, and the carpet was dry again. The wall was clean. Another photo of my mother grinned brightly at me from a simple brown frame.
In my bedroom, I was free of her gaze. There were no photos of her in here. I’d taken them all out—plucked the photo booth strips from my mirror, replaced the photo in the frame on my bedside table with one of Cash and me at the lake that summer. I could erase her from my room, at least, even though my dad wallpapered the rest of the house with her memory. In here, I could pretend she still existed outside of framed photos and a few boxes of clothes out in the garage. In here, I could shut the door to all the ghosts that filled our house. Even as empty as it was, it felt crowded.
Dad would be home by ten, and at midnight, Cash would get off work and wait for me outside. He would get a bottle of something with his fake ID and park his car on the next street over from mine. We would walk out past the high school and climb up into the bleachers by the football field and drink, and Cash would eventually get drunk enough to let me kiss him. When we were sober, we pretended I wasn’t in love with him. It was easier for both of us that way.
My dad would fall asleep on the couch watching sports highlights, and when I came in the front door at four a.m., he’d wake up and see me, but he wouldn’t ask me where I’d been. Sometimes, he’d make a joke like, “Ah, I knew I had a daughter.” And I’d lean over the back of the couch and kiss the top of his head and trudge up the stairs to my room, ignoring the Mom Shrine in my peripheral vision. For my dad, the whole house was a shrine. The whole town. All of Vermont.
It was barely after six, but it was pitch black outside my bedroom window. I pulled the curtains closed, keeping all that darkness out of my warmly lit room. The pint of ice cream was sweating in my hand, and I set it on my night table, the spoon clattering down beside it. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I crawled under my blankets, still in my clothes, wishing my dad would come home, or that time would speed up and Cash would get off work.
When I was home alone, it was just me and the ghosts. They were everywhere. One in a worn-out purple bathrobe. One in a wedding dress trimmed with lace. One chasing an unruly toddler around the upstairs hallway, their laughter and footsteps so loud sometimes I could barely sleep. Most of them were harmless. Most of them smiled at me when I saw them, even opened up their arms, offering to hold me. But there was one I was afraid of. It stood at the top of the steps some nights. Walked up and down the hall to my dad’s door and back, steps dragging over the carpet. This one seemed to show up the most when I was home alone. I stared at my closed door and pulled my covers tighter around myself.
I remembered an evening last year when I’d come home past curfew yet again. My mother had stayed up waiting for me, and as I kicked off my shoes in the foyer, she appeared in the hallway from the living room. I watched her slowly fold her arms over her chest, and I knew she was probably vacillating between anger and trying to be gentle—lately, her irritation unleashed something in me that wanted to cut into her with curse words and promises to disappear. I think by then she was scared of what I might do to myself in a backward attempt to hurt her.
It was always Cash who made her confront me. He was always the reason her daughter came home late, smelling of smoke and his cologne. She was my mother, and she wanted me safely behind locked doors once the streetlights came on. But I was sixteen, and I wanted Cash. I wanted to lie in the middle of the football field smoking with him until all my limbs went heavy and I could pretend for a moment that we were somewhere else. Alone together, anywhere but there.
That night, I swayed a little as I got my second shoe off, the high still thick in my head. She watched me, face fixed in a frown, but one that looked more sad than angry.
“Wyatt,” she started, and my shoulders fell. Her frown seemed to deepen.
“Are you happy with the choices you’re making?”
I didn’t know why I was always so ready to rip her to shreds just for loving me. I didn’t see love; I saw control. I saw her laying another brick in the wall she wanted to build between Cash and me. And I hated her for it.
I let out a laugh. Started up the stairs.
“Who fucking cares, Mom?”
I spent so much time wishing for her to leave me alone, to let me destroy myself in peace. Later, I wished for just one more night of her waiting for me, wanting me to love myself more than I loved a hand grenade in the shape of a boy.
When the front door opened and closed, I suddenly jolted awake, unaware I had even fallen asleep. My body ached from being curled up so tightly, my knuckles white and stiff from clutching my blankets. I uncurled myself, releasing my grip on the blankets and pulling them down. The clock on my bedside table read 9:33—it was Dad getting home from the city. The pint of ice cream I’d brought upstairs sat in a puddle of water, the cardboard soggy. I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up, listening for more sounds from my dad downstairs. But it was quiet. I picked up the wilted ice cream container and walked to my door, opening it and moving out into the hallway. The lights were all still on.
I stood at the top of the steps, listening, but I still couldn’t hear anything. From where I stood I could see the front door, and the bolt was pointing up, unlocked. I swallowed the sudden clench of unease in my throat.
“Dad?” I called down the steps.
Nothing.
“Dad, is that you?”
The door that led out to the garage creaked open loudly, the sound startling me so much that I gasped, jumping back from the edge of the top step and into the wall behind me. I wanted to call out again, but my voice was stuck in the sharp, sudden panic that had formed in the center of my chest. Footsteps moved from the garage door into the kitchen. My jaw clenched, and my eyes locked on the bottom of the stairs, waiting to see who emerged into the foyer. Maybe it wasn’t Dad. Maybe it was one of those fucking ghosts, unlocking and opening doors, taking another hard stab at my sanity.
The footsteps got closer. I was starting to shake with fear and panic. I was losing it—I knew I was. I was just hearing things. Seeing things. Ghosts. Unlocked doors.
A set of wide shoulders turned the corner from the foyer and stood at the bottom of the steps. There was my dad—his messy dark hair, salt-and-pepper stubble, and the sudden glow of his straight, white grin.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
“You scared the shit out of me.” The words came out of my mouth in a rush of air. “I called for you.”
“Sorry, honey,” he said, leaning on the end of the railing. “I was taking the trash out to the garage.” I must have looked irritated, because he laughed. “It’s just me, Wyatt.”
I started down the steps, giving him a light shove as I went past him at the bottom. He chuckled and followed me into the kitchen, where I tossed the cardboard ice cream container into the sink along with the spoon.
Dad started looking through the cabinets, twisting up his face. He towered over me at six feet and change. His presence alone felt safe, protective. His hair stuck out wildly in a few places, and his unshaven face made him look a little older and even more tired than usual. He had on his black-framed glasses, but he still squinted into each cabinet he opened. I leaned against the counter and watched him, one eyebrow raised. I never said so, but the quiet moments we shared were the ones I loved the most. He didn’t expect anything from me—I didn’t have to talk about Cash, or the fact that all my coats on the hooks by the front door were steeped in the scents of weed and cigarettes. In those moments, I got to just be the little kid who’d made that mug for him.
He gave up on looking through the cabinets and picked up the mug, stepping around me to rinse it in the sink. He set it back on the counter and got to work putting on a pot of coffee, despite the fact that it was nearly ten. Dad could drink shots of espresso and still pass out twenty minutes later in front of the TV.
He noticed me studying him and lifted his eyebrows as he spooned coffee grounds into a clean filter. “Do I have something on my face?” he asked, smiling.
“Just that neck beard you’re working on.” I folded my arms. He grinned and ran his fingers over the stubble on his chin.
“What, you don’t like it?”
I tried to look unamused, but he had this habit of making me smile, just exuding goofiness and an ever-present wide, glowing grin. I couldn’t help but let myself smile back at him.
“You look like an old man.”
“I am an old man.”
“Oh, bull.”
In the time we’d been on our own, we’d developed our own language. If he could get me to tease him, could get me to smile a little, he felt reassured, and we didn’t have to talk about anything serious. It was when I didn’t return his jabs, when he came home and I stayed in my bedroom, that he gave me his best serious face and asked what was wrong.
Right then, though, we were both okay. Coffee was brewing and Dad was grinning at me and I was rolling my eyes at him and we were both okay. We didn’t have to talk about the ghosts that night.
Mom watched us from a photo taped to the fridge. The kitchen smelled like coffee, and Dad reached up to the top shelf of the pantry to pull down the stash of cookies he thought was secret, but definitely wasn’t.
“Coffee and cookies?” he offered, the cookie package crinkling as he shoved one hand inside. “I’ll even let you have the last macadamia nut.”
“Nah, I think I’ll go let Cash feed me bad diner food.” I pushed off from the counter, and before I could walk past, he leaned down in front of me, offering one stubbly cheek. I wrinkled my nose at him but gave his cheek a kiss anyway.
“Do you want a ride over there? It’s getting cold.” Dad spoke around a mouthful of cookie.
“I’m good. A little fresh air won’t kill me.”
I stopped at the front door to bundle up—sweater, jacket, beanie. I pulled my ankle boots on and tugged my socks up over the bottoms of my jeans. I could feel my dad peeking around the corner at me. I knew he wanted to ask me to stay home. I knew he wanted to tell me he hated when I was out late with Cash. But my dad was already too full of pain and grief. There was no room left in his body for another ounce of negative emotion.
As I grabbed my keys from the hook by the door, I heard the ghosts upstairs.
One of them was crying.
