Page 9 of The Snake in the Grass: The Prequel

By then it was too late for the both of us.

Chapter 7

The 4th of July

No one has ever been as happy as my mother is making dozens of people fat and full at the same time.

As the Fourth of July picnic wore on in Freedom Park, she tossed her head back and laughed, a wine margarita in one hand, the tongs to the barbecue in the other. All around her neighbors from both sides of the river joined her with their own potluck additions, from the casserole no one would touch to the oven-baked macaroni and cheese that would disappear without a trace. My mother was the middle of it all, the fourth woman in her family to hold the Wayborne tradition, and the first to really revel in it.

She’s a slip of a woman, my mother; turn her sideways and she’s barely there. But with her thin golden blonde hair catching the sunlight and a smile as wide as the horizon, she looked alive that afternoon, and she rubbed her happiness off on other. Even my grump of a father dared to have a conversation or two with the neighbors that didn’t end in a blowup—though he soon retreated to a fold-out chair in the shade, a beer in one hand and a plate heavy with ribs in the other, his body language making it clear that he wasn’t to be disturbed.

“So.” Jade joined me in the picnic line as we went through a second time, her flag-printed tank top and shorts making her stand out as absurdly as she wanted. “He still brooding?”

I followed the crude flick of her fingers towards my brother Silas, who somehow managed to make the sun’s rays shrink from him. “I don’t get it,” I told her. “He won’t talk to me. He barely leaves his room.”

“Heisa teenage boy,” she pointed out. “Maybe he’s done with the whole glued-at-the-hip with his sister thing.”

“Maybe.” The thought hurt, so I didn’t entertain it for long. “I know something happened while he was at that orientation thing, but he won’t talk about it. He just pretends like everything is normal.”

“Did it ever occur to you to let it go?” I cut my eyes at her, and she snorted. “Guess not. Here—take another serving of cornbread. Mom will force feed it to me for weeks if it doesn’t get polished off.”

She piled a huge slice of the stuff on my plate, weighing it down even further. I eyed the tray of cornbread in front of us and shook my head. “No way is all of that going to be gone by the end of the day. You’ll be eating it for breakfast, lunch,anddinner all month.”

Jade groaned. “Maybe I can convince Mom I’m going keto.”

“Good luck.” Grace Smith served enough carbs with her meals to make a long distance runner cry. “You’d be better off feeding it to the dogs in front of her.”

We moved down the long table towards the dessert end, and got a slice of no bake cookie crunch cake each, balancing the little desserts on smaller, second plates that sat on the edge of our big plates. Then we wove our way through the crowd towards the long table where our seats still were, and settled in to make room in our stomachs for seconds.

At some point in the middle of eating, I looked up to see where Silas was and couldn’t find him. Heart thundering absurdly—that was those instincts kicking up again—I looked around for him in a wide-eyed panic until I spotted him standing in the shade of an old pecan tree, talking to Wally.

“What’s wrong?” Jade followed my gaze. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Oh—it’s just Silas. You’ve got to stop worrying about him. He’s going to Connecticut, not Mordor.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me.”

I opened my mouth to try, but nothing came out except a frustrated breath of air. Ididn’tknow what was wrong, not really. As far as I could tell, my brother’s life since returning from Coleridge’s orientation week had been non-eventful. Dad had mostly kept to himself, entering that passive aggressive, silent treatment period of his moods, and Mom was the bright and cheery self she always got to be when she was entertaining like this. There was nothing for Silas to really be mad about—at least, not that I could see.

He was getting what he wanted: to leave Wayborne forever. So why was it, as he watched Wally walk away from him, something frightened flicked across his face? Why did Wally look like he had something in his stomach that wasn’t settling right, as if he’d eating all of Ms. Rathbone’s casserole and was suffering the consequences?

I got my answer soon enough, and it came from the opposite end of the table, where the First Baptist girls were sitting. Silas walked up towards the empty seat at the end near them. Church girls through and through, they were eating the lowest calorie menu items—and not sneaking the wine margaritas at all.

They looked at Silas like he was diseased. “Be careful.” One of them shot a look towards my brother, flipping straight blonde hair over her shoulder. “You never know what that Wilder boy will do. You should cover your cup with your hand, Abigail. He might put something in your drink.”

Her words were loud enough to carry, and she meant for them to be. A hush came over our end of the table; Silas, stiffening, picked up his plate and looked down the row of chairs for another place to sit. Our eyes briefly met, and his jaw clenched.

He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there.

Something in me rose up, something wild and angry that could not be contained or controlled. I stared the girl who’d spoken down. “Shut up Bridget. You’re one to talk. We all know what you do behind the bleachers during gym class. No one needs to drug you.”

Jade’s hand clenched on my upper arm. “Brenna... people are watching.”

“I don’t care,” I muttered back at her. “She doesn’t get to talk to my brother that way.”

But the gaggle of church girls wasn’t done. “We all know what he did to that girl up in Connecticut.” Abigail looked at me with wide, doe eyes. “Or don’t you know, Brenna? Didn’t anyone tell you?”

I didn’t understand what they were talking about. I wish I never learned.

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