“So?” I asked as the conversations around us started up again.
Joaquin turned and pressed his hands into the side of my bench, leaning all his body weight into it. “So Lifers don’t get sick, remember?” he said through his teeth. “We can get hurt by, like, falling off a bike and scraping our knees—”
“Has to look authentic for the visitors,” Fisher interjected.
“But we don’t cough, we don’t sneeze, we don’t even hiccup,” Joaquin finished.
“Maybe it was just a random itch,” I suggested.
Fisher shook his head. “Doesn’t happen.”
I shakily folded my napkin in my lap. Another facet of Juniper Landing life gone awry. Another hitch in the system that was supposedly hitch-free.
“Do you think that she’s really…sick?” I asked quietly, looking up at Joaquin. “I mean, do you think that’s why she wanted the tea?”
Realization swept over Joaquin’s face. “That’s why she’s been so weird. She didn’t want to tell me.”
“Poor woman’s probably terrified,” Fisher put in.
Joaquin laced his hands behind his head, his elbows out like wings, and took a deep breath. “I’m going after her.”
Fisher looked toward the door, and his face dropped. He rose slowly from his seat. “You guys, the fog.”
I turned around in my seat, pushing myself up on my knees. Sure enough, the fog had slipped into town lightning fast, blotting out the park and the library and all the buildings on the other side. The room grew hushed as everyone stopped to watch.
Joaquin walked toward the door. The rest of us followed. Some visitors eyed us curiously as Joaquin shoved open the door, making the bells ring, and stepped out into the mist. Krista, Fisher, and I joined him one by one, huddled close together under the general store’s striped awning. The fog was so thick it instantly wet my skin and hair and clogged my lungs.
“What do we do?” Krista asked.
“We wait,” Joaquin replied.
He stepped to the edge of the sidewalk and looked to the left, in roughly the direction of Tristan’s house. My breathing was shallow as I silently recited the entire periodic table. Then I counted to one hundred, then counted again. And again. Fisher tapped his fists against one of the pillars holding up the awning while Krista paced behind us. After what seemed like an eternity, the gray cloud all around us began to thin.
“This is it,” Joaquin said, staring at the retreating wisps of fog. “If the weather vane turns south, there’s definitely something wrong with it. There can’t have been four evil souls in a row. There’s no way.”
“If it turns south I’ll climb up there myself and fix it,” Fisher said grimly.
The last fingers of fog pulled across the park, leaving behind their wet trails and a clear blue sky. Atop Tristan’s house, the weather vane turned slowly. And turned. And turned. The wind was blowing in from the east, whipping the flags on the flagpoles all along Main Street toward the west, but the weather vane paid it no mind. It took one last turn, and stopped, pointing due north.
“Okay, so that’s good,” Krista said.
“No, it’s not,” Joaquin snapped. “If the problem isn’t the weather vane, if it’s not telling us people are going south when they’re not, then that means Jennifer and Aaron and Grant all ended up in the Shadowlands when they shouldn’t have.”
Krista turned pink around her ears. “Oh.”
“What the hell is going on around here, J.?” Fisher asked, squaring his broad shoulders. He looked like he was ready to beat the crap out of someone and was just waiting for an opponent to show himself.
“That’s it,” Joaquin said. “I’m calling a meeting. Tell everyone we’re getting together at the Swan at midnight. I want to know if this has happened to anyone else and how many times. If we get enough people together, the mayor will have to listen to us. In the meantime, I’m gonna go check on Ursula.”
“Good luck, man,” Fisher said, clasping Joaquin’s hand. “I’ll hit the beach. Pete and them are probably down there.”
“No,” Joaquin said, glancing over at me. “Don’t bother with them.”
“Why not?” Fisher asked, drawing his head back.
“They’re not… They don’t want to hear it,” Joaquin said. “But get Bea, Lauren, and Kevin.”
Fisher screwed up his face in confusion, and he knocked his fists together. “Um…okay,” he said dubiously, as Joaquin jogged away. He looked over at me and Krista, as if waiting for an explanation. I just lifted my shoulders. “All right, then. Kevin’s probably sleeping one off at the cove, so I’ll go there.”