Was this part of the game?
“Get in,” she said, before she could change her mind.
The boy walked around the car and opened the door. The rusty hinges creaked, and it reminded Edie of the first time Wes opened the garage door and invited her inside.
The garage was humid and dark, palmetto bugs scurrying across the concrete floor for the corners. Two crooked pine tables were outfitted with vises and tools Edie didn’t recognize. Wire and scrap metal littered the floor, attached to homemade-looking machines that resembled leaky car batteries. There were other salvaged and tricked-out contraptions—dials that looked like speedometers, a portable sonar from a boat, and a long needle resting on a spool of paper that reminded her of those lie detectors you saw on television.
“What is all this stuff?”
Wes and Trip glanced at each other before Wes answered, “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
Edie took another swig of Easy Jesus, the liquid burning its way down her throat. She liked the way it felt going down, knowing it would burn through her memories just as fast.
“Cross my heart and hope I die,” she slurred.
“It’s hope to die,” Trip said, kicking an empty beer can out of his way. “You said it wrong.”
Edie stared back at him, her dark eyes glassy. “No, I didn’t.” She tossed the empty bottle at a green plastic trash can in the corner, but she missed and it hit the concrete, shattering. “So are you gonna tell me what you’re doing with all this crap?”
Wes picked up a hunk of metal with long yellow wires dangling from the sides like the legs of a mechanical spider. “You won’t believe us.”
He was right. The only thing she believed in now was Easy Jesus. Remembering every day to forget. “Try me.”
Wes looked her straight in the eye, sober and serious. He flicked a switch on the machine and it whirred to life. “We’re hunting ghosts.”
Edie didn’t have time to think about hanging out with Wes and Trip in the garage. She needed to focus on the things they had taught her.
She was driving slower than usual, her hands glued to the wheel so the blue-eyed boy wouldn’t notice how badly they were shaking. “Where are you from?”
“You know, you really shouldn’t pick up strangers.” His voice was light and teasing, but Edie noticed he didn’t answer the question.
“You shouldn’t get in the car with strangers either,” she countered. “Especially not around here.”
He shifted his body toward her, his white ribbed tank sliding over his skin instead of sticking to it the way Edie’s clung to hers. The cracked leather seat didn’t make a sound. “What do you mean?”
She felt a wave of satisfaction. “You’ve never heard the stories about Red Run? You must live pretty far away.”
“What kind of stories?”
Edie stared out at the wall of trees closing in around them. It wasn’t an easy story to tell, especially if you were sitting a foot from the boy who died at the end of it. “About twenty years ago, someone died out here. He was about your age—”
“How do you know how old I am?” His voice was thick and sweet, all honey and molasses.
“Eighteen?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Good guess. So what happened to him?”
Edie knew the story by heart. “It was graduation night. There was a party in Black Grove and everyone went, even Tommy Hansen. He was quiet and always kept to himself. My mom says he was good-looking, but none of the girls were interested in him because his family was dirt-poor. His dad ran off and his mother worked at the funeral home, dressing the bodies for viewings.”
Edie saw him cringe in the seat beside her, but she kept going. “Tommy worked at the gas station to help out and spent the rest of his time alone, playing a beat-up guitar. He wanted to be a songwriter, and was planning to leave for Nashville that weekend. If the party had been a few days later, he might have made it.”
And her brother would still be alive.
Edie remembered the night her brother died, his body stretched out in the middle of the road. She had stepped too close, and a pool of blood had gathered around the toes of her sneakers. She had stared down at the thick liquid, wondering why they called the road Red Run. The blood was as black as ink.
“Are you going to tell me how that kid Tommy died?” The boy was watching her from under those long eyelashes.
Edie’s heart started racing. “They had a keg in the woods, and everyone was wasted. Especially Katherine Day, the prettiest girl in school. People who remember say that Katherine drank her weight in cheap beer and wandered into the trees to puke. Tommy saw her stumbling around and followed her. This is the part where folks disagree; in one version of the story, Tommy sat with Katherine while she threw up all over her fancy white sundress. In the other version, Katherine forgot about how poor Tommy was—or noticed how good-looking he was—and kissed him. Either way, the end is the same.” Edie paused, measuring his reaction. At this point in the story, people were usually on pins and needles.