Chapter 15 - The Girl in Green

On Saturday morning, the boys’ soccer team had a home game against the local high school, the one Barlow would have attended if he hadn’t gone to Danvers-Cutteridge. The small bleachers filled up quickly, with the rest of us camped out on the rise of ground beside the field. Kenzie had a large plaid wool stadium blanket, big enough for all three of us to sit on, with room to spare. I sat next to Ava, with Kenzie on her other side, and watched the game.

Everyone was there. It was an uncharacteristically sunny day, crisp but not cold. It’s shocking how entertaining a soccer game can be if you don’t have a phone or any connection to the outside world. I spent most of the time watching Barlow dart back and forth with dancer-like agility, dark curls whipping around his face. Soren was the real star of the team, scoring three goals before the end of the first half. Madison stood on the other side of the field next to Coach Mullins, cheering Soren on, running alongside the field as the ball made it from one end to the other. She really looked ready to jump into the game.

Barlow had said that the local school wasn’t great. I imagined the school was really small, among other things. The opposing team only had a couple of extra players, and I began to feel sorry for how much time everyone had to spend on the field, and how badly they were getting beaten by our team.

At halftime, I took advantage of the crowd dispersing in all directions to sneak off to the hiking trail behind the school. We weren’t supposed to use the hiking trail on our own, but no one had told the spectators from town that. I followed two women down the trail who had stepped away from the school to grab a cigarette.

They stopped in a clearing, but I continued along the path until I reached the clearing overlooking the graveyard and the avenging angel statue.

I wanted to say goodbye to the angel. If Ava and I found the supply tunnel underneath the school, I would be gone before church ended and the headmaster and all the teachers returned. I would miss this view once I made it back home.

As I looked out over the valley, I was aware that someone was standing next to me. I didn’t have to turn my head to know that it was Barlow. A strange thrill of annoyance traveled along my spine every time he got close.

He was following me—again.

“Don’t you have to be back on the field soon?” I asked.

“Nah,” Barlow replied. “Coach is putting the second string in for the next half to give the other side a chance at a goal.”

“If Coach Mullins really wanted to be kind, he’d pull Soren from the field.”

Barlow laughed.

“Try telling Soren that,” he said. “He doesn’t want to leave the field. Ever.”

“Sounds like Madison,” I said. “So, what are you doing out here?”

“Just taking a break,” he replied.

I shot Barlow a sidelong glance. Sweat had plastered a curl to his cheek—very Betty Boop. My fingers itched to push it away from his face.

“Did you really think I’d try to make a run for it during halftime?” I said. “With all these people around?”

Barlow smiled.

“You’re not that stupid,” he said. “Maybe I just wanted a moment alone with you.”

I looked away, feeling my cheeks flame. “Or maybe you’re just keeping tabs on me,” I shot back.

Barlow shrugged.

We stood, staring at the statue in the distance as a reverent silence fell. The statue meant something to me. For Barlow it was tied up with his family and his history.

“Why is it so . . . big?” I asked. “Sure, you want to honor the dead, but that’s practically the Statue of Liberty down there.”

Barlow turned. “The graveyard lies between the mountain and the town below. Legend has it that Calvin Burton built the statue to protect the town. The outside of the statue is bronze, but inside it has an iron core. To ward off evil.”

I remembered hearing something similar about iron protection from one of mom’s witch friends. Iron to ward off evil, if burning the right color candle and smudging didn’t help.

“So old Calvin wanted to keep the girl in green on the mountain?” I said with all the snark. I couldn’t help it. If he was going to follow me around to keep me in check, I had a right to poke him about his superstitions.

“Pretty much,” Barlow said.

I looked back at the statue. I wondered who the artist was, and what they thought about the request for an iron core. Did people show up at the studio to do protection spells?

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured. “But that’s an awful lot of iron just to keep one spooky girl from wandering the streets of town at night.”

“People used to disappear here all the time before the town was revitalized. I can understand wanting protection.”

“Yeah, but not because of some girl in green,” I said.

“The girl in green is real.”

I turned and stared at him. His face was serious, his eyes far away, in the grip of some memory.

“How do you know?” I demanded.

“Because I’ve seen her,” Barlow said.

“You’ve seen her?” I asked, incredulous. “The actual girl in green?”

He nodded.

“When?”

“When I was eleven. I was hunting with my uncle and his friend on the mountain. I guess I was being a little squirrelly and making too much noise, because he got mad at me and I wandered off and . . .”

“You wandered off?” I interrupted. “Just you and your gun, with everyone around you shooting?”

I tried to piece this scene together in my mind. Eleven-year-old Barlow with a gun and an uncle hunting . . . deer? In Texas it would be deer or quail.

“I had an orange vest,” he said. “We’re not idiots.”

“Sorry,” I said. “So, what happened?”

“I found a deer trail through the woods and followed it,” he said. “The trail took a sharp upturn, and as I cleared the top of a small hill, I heard the sound of running water before I saw anything. There was a creek that ran in a depression between two hills, falling down over a series of rocks. The creek was surrounded by green moss on both sides.”

“Sounds beautiful,” I said.

“It was,” he replied. “There was such a riot of green that I didn’t see her at first. I would say I heard her, but her voice was so soft, I couldn’t hear her over the sound of the water. It was almost like I heard her voice inside my head, if that makes sense.”

“Where was she?” I asked.

“Sitting on a rock by the side of the creek.”

“Was she wearing green?”

Barlow nodded. He got a far-away look.

“She was wearing a green sundress,” he said. “But she looked . . . disheveled? That’s not quite the right word. One strap had fallen down her shoulder. She was barefoot but her feet and legs were covered with mud as though she’d tried to wade across the stream.”

“Weird,” I said.

“She seemed . . . I don’t know the right word for it. Forlorn, maybe? I want to say she looked lost, but it was beyond that. She seemed so hopeless, I felt overcome by sadness. I knew that I needed to help her.”

“So, what happened?”

Barlow bit his lip and shook his head slowly.

“I don’t know. I’ve tried to remember and I can’t. One moment I was walking toward her, and the next, Uncle Jim and Troy were carrying me down the mountain. They took me to the emergency room. Here.”

Barlow reached for my hand. His touch surprised me and I jerked my hand away. His eyes clouded momentarily, and he held both hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to startle . . .”

“It’s fine,” I said quickly. “What did you want to show me?”

“Just a bump on the back of my head,” he said.

I leaned over and laced my hand through his soft curls to find a hard line on the back of his skull.

“Do you feel that?” he said. “Fifteen stitches. And my nose was broken in two places.”

“So that’s how you got that epic nose bump,” I said.

“Epic nose bump?” he said. “I’ve never thought of it as anything other than a big mistake in the middle of my face.”

“No, I think it’s kind of amazing,” I said without thinking.

Barlow smiled and lowered his eyes. I was keenly aware at that moment that I still had my hand laced through his curls and I’d leaned close enough to smell his warm sweat mingling with the pine and earth and mountain air.

I dropped my hand and took a step away.

I didn’t belong here, with Barlow.

Whatever had happened to him, it had nothing to do with me.

Tomorrow, I would be gone and Barlow would still be here, in a place of ghosts and memory. Here, with a family history he could trace back generations through art and atrocity.

Barlow was a distraction.

“I think the game has started back up,” I said. “We should go.”

I turned and walked away without looking back.