Midnight Wonders

7.2.2. The End of Summer

"What do you do with your car when you're in Under-The-Green-Hill?" said Luc as he stood on the porch with Emma, watching Annabel and Mr. Jacobs converse down on the sidewalk.

"Well, we just park it where there's space," Emma said, gesturing to the other cars parked along the curb in the neighborhood. "Sometimes we sleep in it if we want to stay outside."

Catherine was back on her bike, trying to follow a crack in the driveway. Luc watched her turn the handlebars this way and that. She looked dangerously close to tipping over. But Mr. Jacobs didn't even seem to mind, so she was probably okay.

"How long have you been out here?" he asked.

"Me?" Emma said. "I haven't regularly been here for very long. Only a few months before we met. When I knew Midsummer was nearing. I wanted to check on you two. But Annabel's been outside for longer. I know it's because she has to come out here to collect the lost children anyway. I don't remember when she got a car."

"She might have been out here for a long time," Luc said, looking back at Annabel and Mr. Jacobs.

"Probably."

But Mr. Jacobs had still thought of her as long-lost. She'd been there the whole time. Luc had been there the whole time, too.

"Did he think I would want to come back?" Luc said.

"What?" said Emma. He hadn't spoken clearly.

"Never mind."

"You're not going to go back, right?" she said gently.

"I don't think so," he said.

Catherine reached the end of the crack and rang her bell. Then she rode over to Annabel and Mr. Jacobs to draw circles around them.

—

What had Luc done all the other summers, when there had been no one but him and Cora? He wasn't entirely sure he could remember anything now, knowing that all the things he'd thought he'd remembered were not in fact memories but merely dreams.

He wasn't sure who had decided the house had to be occupied by at least four people constantly, but it was. Of course, there was him and Cora and Tristan, mostly because none of them had anywhere else to go, and then there was Emma or Annabel, sometimes both, sometimes one at a time, and then there was Mr. Jacobs and Catherine. But Luc wasn't complaining. He just couldn't stand to be alone. He'd been alone before, and he thought he'd been quite content with himself. But after the constant company in Under-The-Green-Hill, the constant attention, he realized he'd been severely deprived of something for the past seven years, and it was too late to go back to how it was before.

He didn't have to think about summer for long, though. Instead of the trip they had been planning, Emma and Annabel took them out to the coast and for a week there was sand everywhere in Luc's shoes and clothes and Annabel's car. Tristan didn't know to fear the ocean and got endlessly battered by the waves and came back laughing every time, and upon discovering some children building a sand kingdom he was readily adopted into their group because he figured out the optimal wetness of sand almost immediately. Then after he had helped him build their palaces they led a rebellion and kicked him out of their kingdom and sadly he went back to the ocean. But it was all right because Cora joined him and they splashed about and drew happy faces in the wet sand with big sticks (which Cora happily called wands and which Emma said were more accurately wizards' staffs) even though the waves would inevitably come and wash them away. Emma and Annabel sunbathed and then went into the water and got covered in sand coming back and then went back to the ocean to rinse and then got covered in sand again and again and again.