Sweetly Read online

  by Jackson Pearce

  LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

  New York Boston

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  Character Interview: Gretchen and Rosie

  Copyright Page

  TO SAUNDRA

  (FOR ALL THE CANDY)

  PROLOGUE

  (Twelve Years Ago)

  The book said there was a witch in the woods.

  That’s why they were among the thick trees to begin with—to find her. The three of them trudged along, weaving through the hemlocks and maples, long out of sight of their house, their father’s happy smiles, their mother’s soft hands.

  A sharp ripping sound bounced through the trees. The boy whirled around.

  “Sorry,” one of the girls said, though she clearly didn’t mean it. Her cheeks were still lined with baby fat and her hair was like broken sunlight, identical to the girl’s standing beside her. She held up the bag of chocolate candies that she’d just torn open. “You can have all the yellows, Ansel, if you want.”

  “No one likes the yellows,” Ansel said, rolling his eyes.

  “Mom does,” one of the twins argued, but he’d turned his back and couldn’t tell which one. That was how it normally was with them—they blended, so much so that you sometimes couldn’t tell if they were two people or the same person twice. The sister with the candy emptied a handful of them into her palm, picking out the yellows and dropping them as they continued to trudge forward.

  “When we find the witch,” Ansel told his sisters, “if she chases us, we should split up. That way she can only eat one of us.”

  “What if she catches me, though?” one of the girls asked, alarmed.

  “Well, what if she catches me, Gretchen?” Ansel replied.

  “You’re bigger. She should chase you,” the other sister told him, pouting. “That’s the way they work.” She was the only one who claimed to know the ways of witches—she was the one with the stories, the made-up maps, the pages and pages of books stored away in her head. She reached into her twin’s bag of candy and pegged Ansel in the back of the head with a yellow candy. He didn’t react, so she prepared to throw another one—

  “Wait… do you know where we are?” he asked.

  One of the twins raised her eyes to the forest canopy and scanned the closest tree trunks, while her sister turned slowly in the leaves. They knew these woods by heart but had never ventured quite so far before. The shadows from branches felt like strangers, the cracks and pops of nature turned eerie.

  The twins simultaneously shook their heads and their brother nodded curtly, trying to hide the fact that being out so far made him uneasy. He hurried forward, eager to keep moving.

  “Ansel? Wait!” one asked, and ran a little to close the space between them. “Are we lost?”

  “Only a little,” he answered, jumping at the sound of a particularly loud falling branch. “Don’t be scared.”

  “I’m not,” she lied. She began to wish she’d packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their adventure, instead of two Barbies and a bag of candy, which Gretchen had almost finished off anyway. What if they were stuck out here past dinnertime?

  “Besides,” Ansel said over his shoulder, “maybe she’ll be a good witch, like Glinda, and help us get unlost.”

  “I thought you said she might want to eat us.”

  “Well, maybe, but we won’t know until we find her. Unless you want to go back,” Ansel said. He didn’t entirely believe the stories about the witch, but his sisters did and he didn’t want to ruin it for them. Another pop in the woods made him jump; he shook off the nerves and sang their favorite song, one from a plastic record player that had been their father’s.

  “In the Big Rock Candy Mountain, you never change your socks.” The twins began to hum along, adding words here or there, until they got to the line all three of them loved and they sang in unison.

  “There’s a lake of stew and soda, too, in the Big Rock Candy Mountain!” The familiar words calmed them, made things fun again, as though their combined voices swept the fear away.

  Ansel was about to begin another verse when a new noise came from farther in the forest—not a pop, not a crack, but a footstep. A slow, rolling foot on dried leaves, then another, then another. He grabbed his sisters’ hands, one of their sticky palms in each of his. The bag of candies fell to the ground and scattered, rainbow colors in the dead leaves.

  They waited. There was nothing.

  And yet there was something—there was something, something breathing, something dripping, something still and hard in the trees. Ansel’s eyes raced across the trunks, looking for whatever it was that he was certain, beyond all doubt, had its eyes locked on them.

  “Who’s there?” Ansel shouted. His voice shook, and it made the twins quiver. Ansel was never scared. He was their big brother. He protected them from boys with sticks and thunderstorms.

  But he was scared now, and they were torn between wonder and horror at the sight.

  Nothing answered Ansel’s question. It got quieter. Birds stilled, trees silenced, breath stopped, his grip on his sisters’ hands tightened. It was still there, whatever it was, but it was motionless, waiting, waiting, waiting…

  It finally spoke, a low, whispery voice, something that could be mistaken for wind in the trees, something that made Ansel’s throat dry. He couldn’t pick out the words—they were torn apart, and they were dark. Low, guttural, threatening.

  The words stopped.

  And it laughed.

  Ansel squeezed his sisters’ hands and took off the way they had come. He yanked them along and ran fast as he could, over brush and under limbs. The twins screamed, a single high-pitched note that ripped through the trees and swam around Ansel’s head. He couldn’t look back, not without slowing.

  It was behind them. Right behind them, chasing them.

  Gretchen stumbled but held tightly to Ansel, let herself be dragged to her feet just as something grasped at her ankles, missed. They had to move faster; it was coming, crunching leaves, grabbing at the hems of their clothes.

  It’s going to catch us.

  The twins slowed Ansel down—their joined hands slowed everyone down. They’d promised to split up so the witch could eat only one of them, but now…

  It’s going to catch us.

  Ansel lightened his grip, just the smallest bit, and suddenly his hands were free and the three of them were sprinting through the trees. The thing behind them roared, an even darker version of the words they’d heard earlier.

  Both twins knew the other couldn’t run much longer. Did Ansel know the way out?

  Candy.

  On the ground, yellow candies. Ansel was following them, slicing around trees while the twins followed along desperately, eyes focused on finding the next piece, the trail back to the part of the forest they knew. The monster leapt for one of the twins, missed her, made a breathy, hissing sound of frustration. She dared to glance back.

  Yellow, sick-looking eyes found hers.

  She turned forward and sped up, faster than the others, driven by the yellow eyes that overpowered the sharp aches in her chest, her legs begging for rest. There was light ahead, shapes that weren’t trees. Their house, their house was close—the candy trail had worked. She couldn’t feel her feet anymore, her lungs were bursting, eyes watering, cheeks scratched, but there was the house.

  They burst from the woods onto their cool lawn. Get inside, get inside. Ansel flung the back door open and they stumbled in, slamming the door shut. Their father and mother ran down the stairs, saw their children sweaty and panting and quivering, and asked in panicky, perfect unison:

  “Where’s your sister?”

  CHAPTER ONE

  The truth is, I can’t believe it
took our stepmother this long to throw us out.

  She’s never liked us, after all, especially me—she didn’t like the way my father loved me, didn’t like the fact that I perfectly matched the daughter she’d never met but my father ached for, the way I looked like his dead wife when she’d been a teenager. She said she just couldn’t afford to keep us on anymore and, with me having just turned eighteen and Ansel nineteen, was no longer obligated to.

  Obligated. We were obligations left behind by a father eaten alive by mourning, remnants of a shattered family.

  “Are we in South Carolina yet? I zoned out,” Ansel says, his voice a forced calm as he peers over the steering wheel. Ansel likes to have a plan of attack, like he did back on the football field in high school, but right now, we’ve got nothing more than the clothes in the car and the gasoline in the tank. He doesn’t want me to see him worrying, but the truth is, I’m happy to be gone. I feel freer without a plan in the middle of nowhere than I did back in Washington.

  “Yeah, we crossed the border a few hours ago,” I answer, kicking my feet up onto the dash. The backs of my knees are sticky and sweat trickles down my chest—it uses too much gas to run the AC and the heat here is heavy. It’s a little easier to bear if I imagine we’re on an epic road trip, the kind that’s a fun adventure, like you see in movies. “We should be there in another three or four hours, I think,” I add.

  “There” is the direct result of the folded and refolded pastel brochure in my hands: Folly Beach, South Carolina: The Edge of America. I picked up the brochure at a Tennessee rest stop, and ever since, we’ve been moving toward it, at my behest and Ansel’s ever-accommodating apathy.

  The photo on the front is of a peaceful, quiet beach with a red and white lighthouse by the water’s edge. The sand goes on for miles, golden and flat, while the water peaks into elegant waves. It’s the place of my dreams—western Washington State, with its dense forests, was full of places for girls to disappear, to vanish into the trees at the hands of a witch.

  A witch. The only term I have for whatever it was that took my sister. I visualize the witch as a twisted villain, an evil woman, a monster, a demon, a near-invisible force, every man in our neighborhood, a trick of the light—something with horribly golden eyes that only I saw and Ansel has long insisted never existed in the first place. Whatever the witch is, she lives among dark trees, deep valleys, craggy ocean cliffs. I’ve spent my whole life longing for soft, endless sand and crashing waves that blur the sounds of the world so I no longer stare at the trees and wonder where the other half of me is among them. I’ve spent my whole life wanting to escape the memory of my sister, wanting to start over, and hating myself for wanting that. How could I want to run away from a lost little girl?

  But still. I open the brochure again and read.

  A picturesque town of painted sunsets, elegant dining, and endless beaches, Folly Beach is truly the Edge of America—where the everyday ends and serenity begins.

  Each second we drive, we get closer to the water, the sand, the flat shore where it’s impossible to vanish, where I have plans: Plans to start over. Plans to be someone new, someone who isn’t haunted by a dead sister. We fly past exits that have nothing at them and finally see hints of the beach only a few hours ahead. Signs advertising resorts and speedboat rentals and little shops boasting floats and giant-size beach towels—it’s early June, prime beach season, and most of the other cars on the road seem packed to the brim with vacationing families. I inhale the hot scent of cut hay and try to imagine that it’s the ocean’s salt.

  The Jeep kicks. There’s a loud crack, a boom, and the smell of smoke suddenly overpowers the air.

  Ansel veers off the nearly empty road just as gray smoke billows from the front of the car. He jumps out, slamming the door as he runs around and opens the hood. I can’t see him anymore, but his coughs and curses make their way to my ears. I lean out my window, trying to see what’s going on, just as Ansel makes his way back around the car.

  “The whole damn thing is burned up,” Ansel snaps, throwing himself back into the driver’s seat. He shakes his head and punches at the steering wheel. “We only have fifty-seven dollars left and the car burns to pieces.”

  Ansel mutters another string of curse words, flipping through his wallet as if he may find an extra twenty-dollar bill hidden between old receipts. When he doesn’t, he shakes his head, grits his teeth, and breathes slowly. He has a fast temper, but he knows it and tries to keep it at bay around me. It was my mother’s suggestion, when Ansel started to heal and I still stared at the forest, waiting for my sister to stumble out.

  “Make sure Gretchen knows you’re there for her. Don’t upset her—be her rock, Ansel. You have to help her move on.”

  It’s a shame my mother couldn’t listen to her own advice. She couldn’t be anyone’s rock, curled up in her bedroom until the grief devoured her. We weren’t even allowed to say our sister’s name in front of her, because it would set her off, either make her sob or yell at us, scream that we had lost her. So we were supposed to act as if nothing was wrong. As if there’d always been only two Kassel children, Ansel constantly trying to find whatever it was that would make up for our sister’s absence, doing everything he could to be my rock, the person I hold on to when I feel as though I might slide off the world and vanish like she did.

  Ansel leans across me and opens the glove compartment, then pulls out a crumbly map, folded in all the wrong ways. He stares at it for a moment. “We’re closer to the town we just passed than we are to the next one. We’ll have to walk.”

  “What if we called a tow truck?”

  “I don’t think we can afford it, but either way my phone is dead. Wait—yours hasn’t been used much. Does it have any bars out here?”

  Of course it hasn’t been used—no one would think to call me. I wanted friends, really, but at the same time, how could I go to the mall and laugh at movies when my sister was out there in the darkness? Ansel, somehow, forced himself over that hurdle—every time he hangs up the phone, he touches the thick class ring on his finger, as if it’s his last connection to normal, to his friends, to their world. I feel bad that he’s back in mine, despite how much I need him.

  I shake my head at Ansel. “My phone died this morning. I forgot to bring a car charger.”

  “Then we walk,” Ansel says with a sigh. I grab my purse and climb out of the car.

  And we start to walk.

  Everything seemed hot before, when we were sitting in the car. But now things are truly hot, stifling in a way I’ve never known. The air doesn’t move—it sits on us like a weight, crushing us into the long grasses we trudge through. The sky is cloudless, imposing, and for what feels like a million years the scenery doesn’t change. The pine-saturated forest feels as though it’s growing oppressively closer, and I can sense the familiar fear bubbling up in my chest. There could be something in the leaves; there could be something that makes me disappear. Ansel sees it and quietly moves so that he’s in between me and the tree line. He thinks that makes it better, but really, who would I rather the witch take this time around—Ansel or me?

  Finally, the exit ramp appears ahead, just as the feeling of insects nipping at my ankles is becoming too much to handle. Rivers of sweat carve down my back and Ansel’s shirt is drenched, but we huff and jog up the ramp to a crossroad. There are two signs at the top of the ramp surrounded by black-eyed Susans. One is hand-painted with red and blue lettering and reads SEE ROBERT E. LEE’S RIDING BOOTS. The other is wooden with a white background and red lettering that isn’t entirely even, as if it was hand-carved. LIVE OAK, SOUTH CAROLINA. HOME OF THE ACORNS— 1969 COUNTY CHAMPIONS.

  “1969?” Ansel says, surprised. “And they still have the sign up?”

  “Maybe it’s the only time they’ve won,” I suggest. Ansel frowns—in Washington, his school’s football team won the state championship so regularly that they had to shift the oldest “state champs” plaque off the sign every year to make
way for the newest one. Ansel was a defensive lineman—I think I see him smirk a little at the sign as we pass it. He loved all sports, but football was his obsession—he memorized plays, other players’ stats, training regimens. He told me once that it was because he liked getting hit. That being knocked to the ground reminded him he was here.

  “It looks like our options are limited,” he says. There’s nothing but farmland to our right. To our left is a large store—floats in the shapes of orcas and alligators rest in bins outside, and beach towels are hanging in the window. Beside that is a gas station attached to a long diner with giant glass windows. Even from here, I can see people watching us as they eat lunch. They look as if they’re glaring at us, but I can’t really tell for sure.

  Ansel walks quickly to get in front of me, and within a few moments we’re close enough that people have stopped staring for fear of being caught. There’s a faded red cursive sign over the diner: JUDY’S. Painted letters on the windows advertise famous blackberry pie and muscadine grape preserves. All the people inside are hunched over whatever they’re eating, as though they worry someone might snatch it away from them.

  When Ansel pushes the door open, a wind chime hung on the interior knocks against it. The diner is mostly occupied by sun-spotted old men wearing baseball caps and jeans, though there are a few soft-looking women as well, all completely silent, eyes on us. I was right—they are glaring, but I’m not sure why.

  “All right, all right, give them some space,” a weary-looking waitress calls from the other end of the diner, waving a rag at the patrons. They give her dark looks but abandon the suspicious glares at Ansel and me. The waitress drops off a stack of napkins by an old man, then walks our way. Her yellow dress stands out against the faded aquamarine and black that decks out the diner. “Forgive them. They don’t like outsiders. I see enough that I’m over it, I guess. What’ll you have? Coca-Cola? Sweet tea? You look roasted.”