Poison Princess

11

“You’ve had better ideas,” Mel muttered, squinting to see out of her bug-splattered windshield. At dusk the insects swarmed, and their squashed bodies had meshed till they were like tar on the glass.

“Maybe so, but I have to do this.” I’d never been so incensed in all my life, and I’d be damned if I let Jackson get away with this. “Can’t you go any faster?”

The sun would set soon, and we hadn’t even made the parish levee yet. It’d taken us hours to find the Cajun’s address on Mrs. Warren’s computer, and then I’d wasted even more time persuading Mel to drive me into the Basin.

“You’re lucky I’m in for this one at all, Greene. I’m not losing my license because of a fifth ticket this year. . . .”

She still hadn’t stopped grumbling by the time the towering levee loomed. “Let’s just call the cops.”

And then they’d confiscate my journal. “Jackson only did this because he’s a bully and because he can. No one ever calls him out. But it’s time somebody did.”

“How do you know he’ll have the phones? You said he just served as a lookout.”

I hadn’t told Mel exactly how good Jackson had been at his job, only that he’d kept me talking to him while Lionel snatched our things. “I just know, okay?” Which wasn’t precisely true. He might not have the phones, but he’d have that sketchbook, which was my main priority.

Not that the phones weren’t a big deal. Though I code-locked mine—good luck accessing any of my info—Brandon never locked his phone. And he had all our private texts over the last seven months, not to mention a folder filled with countless pics and vids of me.

Were those Cajuns even now ogling images of me in my bathing suit, or snickering over the goofy faces I’d made for Brand’s camera? The corny jokes I’d told.

Had they listened to my voice message from earlier? “Yes, I’ll spend the night with you.” My face burned, my fury ratcheting up to new heights.

When we came upon the new bridge, stretching over acres of swamp, my lips thinned. Without this line of dull gray cement, I’d never even have known Jackson Deveaux.

Once we reached the end of the bridge, we were officially in a new parish. Cajun country. Bayou inlets and smaller drawbridges abounded. A pair of wildlife agents in their black trucks sat chatting on a shoulder.

Mel exhaled. “Why are you forcing me into the voice-of-reason role? You know that never works out for us.”

“I need to do this,” I said simply. When I’d realized Jackson had played me, that the almost-kiss had been a ruse—it’d hurt. Even though I’d never wanted his kiss to begin with.

Why did he have to act as if he’d liked me? It was a mean-spirited, coldhearted prank. How he and Lionel must have laughed at my gullibility!

“It’s getting really dark,” Mel said as we approached the Basin turnoff. She didn’t just mean daylight-wise.

Ominous clouds were back-building over the swamp. “Yeah, but what are the odds that it’ll actually rain?” Those clouds reminded me of the scene I’d painted on my wall, and of the blazing eyes I’d soon see.

Folks didn’t usually drive to lower land when faced with a gale like that. I didn’t know which storm would prove worse—the weather or Jackson’s anger.

Didn’t matter; I was bent on seeing this through tonight. I directed Mel to turn onto the dirt road that led to the Basin.

After a few miles, she said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

We saw shrimp boats, bayou shacks, and shipyards filled with rusted heaps. Statuettes of the Virgin Mary graced every other yard. I’d known how Catholic the Basin folk were, but even I was surprised.

We neared the end of the road, closing in on Jackson’s address. There were fewer structures down here, but more palmettos, banana trees, cypress. Trash had collected all around the ditch lilies.

By the time the marsh was visible, it was dark and the car lights had come on. Red eyes glowed back from the reeds. Gators. They were so thick, some of the smaller ones lay on top of the others.

Pairs of beady red dots, stacked like ladder rungs.

Mel nervously adjusted her hands on the wheel, but she drove onward. The car crept deeper under a canopy of intertwined limbs and vines, like a ride going into a haunted tunnel.

When the road surrendered to a rutted trail, Jackson’s home came into view—a shotgun house, long and narrow, with entrances on both ends. The clapboard framing was a mess of peeling paint. A couple of gator skins had been tacked over the worst spots.

The roof was a rusted patchwork of mismatched tin sheets. In one section, a metal garbage can had been battered flat and hammered down.

This place was as far from proud Haven as possible. I thought I’d seen poor. I was mistaken.

“That’s where he lives?” Mel shuddered. “It’s horrid.”

Suddenly I regretted her seeing this, as if I’d betrayed a secret of Jackson’s, which didn’t make any sense.

“Evie, my car’ll get stuck if I drive any farther. And it’s not like we have our phones on us.”

“Not yet. Just stay here, and I’ll walk it. Be back with our stuff.”

“What if he’s not even here?”

I pointed out his motorcycle, parked under an overhang beside the rickety front porch. “That’s his.”

When I opened the car door, she said, “Think about this.”

I had. This entire situation was so unnecessary. None of this had needed to happen. All because Jackson had stolen from me! He’d violated my privacy, had possibly seen and heard my intimate exchanges with Brandon.

And he’d seen my drawings.

That freedom I’d vowed I would never take for granted? His actions were threatening it!

Remembering what was at stake made me slam the car door and venture forth. Yellow flies swarmed me, but I kept going, wending around tires, busted crab traps, cypress knees.

Closer to his house, there was no cut lawn, there wasn’t even grass. In these parts, some folks who couldn’t afford a lawnmower “swept” their yards, keeping them free of vegetation—and of snakes. His yard was a giant patch of hard-packed earth.

As I neared, I saw tools hanging from the porch roof. A machete and a saw clanked together in the growing breeze.

I crossed a dried-out depression in front of four wobbly-looking steps. The first stair bowed even under my weight. How did a boy as big as Jackson climb them?

There was no knocker on the unpainted plywood door, just a rusted lever to open it. The bottom was shredded in strips.

From when animals had scratched to get in?

With a shiver, I glanced back at the sky, saw the clouds were getting worse. I gazed at Mel in the distance, pensive in her car. Maybe this is . . . stupid.

No. I had to get that journal back. I found my knuckles rapping the wood. “Hello?”

The door groaned open wide.