Trace gives up on them and faces me as we walk, hands in the pockets of his worn-out Carhartts. “Why do you think he looks like that? He’s starving. Hates what he is. Only feeds when he can’t stand it anymore.” A sigh. “Yep. Caught him in our back pasture one night. Like, in flagrante delicto. But I told him, look, man, we all got our stuff. I’m not here to judge.”

At the cool table, we sit across from the two girls I mistook for identical twins the night before. Now I can see that they’re probably not even related. It’s their Tim Burton−esque makeup—white powder, eyeliner, red lips—and their matching outfits: black denim jackets with popped collars, buttons, and patches; band logo tees; boots visible beneath the table.

When Trace asks his question, the twin with her hair twisted into a crown of little buns reaches into their shared sandwich bag of carrot and celery sticks. “Dabney?” She gazes at me as she chews. “Yeah. She’s dead.”

Her twin swirls a celery stick in ranch dressing. Her hair’s trimmed close to her head, a smooth dark cap. “Four years ago, now.”

“I thought it was five,” Bree says.

The first girl, who I see by the dog tags around her neck is Landon, stares coolly back. “I oughta know. She lived next door to my cousin. We played Barbies when we were little.” Bree snorts. “Anyway. It was pretty harsh.”

“Tell Clarabelle about the . . .” Trace draws his finger across his throat.

“How about not.” Sage pushes her tray away, eyes squeezed shut.

“She was walking home from a party,” Landon says. “Late. Autopsy showed her blood alcohol level was insane. More Orloff than plasma, you know?”

Ivy: “Probably never knew what hit her.”

“Only explanation, right? Hit-and-run. She lost it somewhere between Randall Road and Wright Way.” When I look blank, Landon gestures. “Her head.”

That word again: lost. Like Gavin Cotswold. I laugh, but they don’t. “Lost it? Like it just fell off?”

“Like severed. Not clean.”

Ivy crunches through celery. “Ripped.”

I watch their nearly twin faces, giving nothing away as they solemnly chew their roughage. “How?”

“Cops said it was probably one of the logging trucks headed to the mill. They used to come and go twenty-four-seven. A chain or something could’ve whipped out and caught her under the chin without the driver even knowing.” Landon shrugs. “Or.”

“Or.” Trace leans into me. “You know, they never found the head.”

“Don’t say it like that. ‘The head.’ Like it didn’t belong to anyone.” Landon exhales through her nose. “Her parents had to bury her without it.”

Now there’s an image. “So . . . it’s still in the woods somewhere?”

Landon nods. “They brought in cadaver dogs and everything.” She twists her mouth to the side, laying her half-eaten carrot stick on a napkin and folding it carefully over. “Poor Dab.”

Six