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A SEMI-DEFINITIVE LIST OF WORST NIGHTMARES

TWENTY WEEKS later.

Late summer again. Almost one year on now. Orchids grew wild around the town, blooming where they landed on the night Reginald Solar died. They shot up from people’s front lawns, the cracks in footpaths, the roots of trees, hundreds and hundreds of them, all standing in defiance of death.

Little Creek, the penultimate resting place of the Bowen sisters, was still dry after Reginald’s passing. A patch of purple orchids sprouted from the sand where his ashes were scattered after his funeral.

The blooms that were stolen from Reg’s house had been brought back from the hospital to Esther’s and now lined the front porch. The Man Who Might Be Death had never reported the robbery to the police. The Solar house looked very different—all but two of the eight oaks had been removed, and although a horseshoe was still nailed to the lintel, almost all of the nazars were gone.

There was movement in each room. Fleayoncé was cleaning her nether regions on Esther’s bed. The Solar parents were in the bathroom where their son tried to take his life, Peter still in his wheelchair but looking healthier, Rosemary arching over him this way and that to trim the beard he no longer had the dexterity to manage, her engagement ring again on her finger. There were no candles in the hall. No lamps surrounding Eugene’s bed.

The second floor, once blocked off with junk, was now clear after a cleanup orchestrated by Rosemary. Upstairs, Esther looked out the window, her hair cropped into a pixie cut. Her outfit was eclectic—white stockings with red sparkly Dorothy shoes, a green and white striped skirt that fell to her knees, a string of pearls around her neck, and a black shirt with a white collar, salvaged from her Wednesday Addams costume.

Hephzibah came up beside her and squeezed her arm.

“You ready for this?” signed Heph as she stared down at the front yard from an upstairs window. And then she spoke: “There are a lot of people.”

Esther nodded. “I can’t believe it’s almost over.”

Outside, a projector had been set up on a screen that’d been attached to the front of the house. The lawn was scattered with blankets and pillows. The two remaining trees were lit with string lights and paper lanterns. A sign on the footpath read: A SEMI-DEFINITIVE LIST OF WORST NIGHTMARES. And everywhere, there were people. People on the lawn. People on picnic blankets set up on the street. People in lawn chairs watching from neighboring yards.

It was supposed to be a small viewing party to watch “50/50,” but the location had been leaked online, and people had traveled from all over the state—and some even from other states—to watch the final video live and meet its stars.

The patron saints of the anxious, depressed, and fearful.

Anxiety swelled inside Esther at the thought of several hundred sets of eyes on her, crawling all over her skin. Fifty weeks later, and the grapnel anchor still lodged in her lungs from time to time, but she’d gotten better at controlling it. She did some of the breathing exercises Dr. Butcher had taught her, then she went downstairs and opened the front door and stepped outside and was swallowed by shouts and applause and camera flashes.

“My name is Esther Solar,” she said into the microphone that had been set up on the porch, “and I’m a fear eater.” A cheer went up in the crowd. Esther smiled shakily. Each set of eyes made her skin wriggle and itch, but the experience wasn’t as painful as it had once been. “Fifty weeks ago I would’ve had a panic attack at the thought of standing up here and talking to all of you. I would’ve had a panic attack at a lot of things actually, as you know. As you’ve seen. But here we are, at the end. I made it. We all made it.

“Thanks to Jonah, most of you know the story now about how my family was supposedly cursed to each suffer one great fear, and I know you’ve all been waiting for a long time to find out what mine is. So . . . here goes nothing. I’m going to turn the projector on.”

The projector was set up on one of her grandparents’ coffee tables, reclaimed from a pawn shop in the last couple of months now that a large chunk of Rosemary’s salary wasn’t going to the slots. As Esther turned on the projector and the image of her rowing a pale blue boat out into a glass-clear lake burned into the front of the house, she looked up. At the end of the street, on the corner, the Man Who Might Be Death leaned against a streetlight and watched her. Esther stopped and stared for a moment, worried that he was there for one of them, or even all of them. Maybe one of the eggs she’d used in her cupcakes was contaminated with salmonella. Maybe the projector was about to explode in an insane fireball that would swallow them skin and bone and teeth and all.

But no. Horowitz—for that is who she was convinced he was—saw her staring at him and smiled and dipped his hat, then lifted his hand in greeting. Esther waved back and watched him laughing softly as he turned to leave, though she knew he would return for her very shortly.

“Who’s that?” said Jonah from behind her, looking down the street, where he saw—of course—no one of significance. Only a man. Jonah looped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck. He was wearing a ridiculous terracotta-colored suit with a patterned button up shirt (with little tacos all over it), a stripy tie, and a beret. Fleayoncé was slung around his neck like a drooling stole, and they stood on the lawn in the exact spot where he’d crashed his moped into tree roots after hitting the cat.

“No one,” Esther said and then she smiled, and turned in his arms, and stood on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his lips. It was a bittersweet caress—as all of their caresses had been for some time. Jonah had gotten a full ride scholarship to his number one film school, and would be leaving town at the end of summer to start studying. Each day made Esther both happier and sadder: Jonah was leaving, but that also meant he was escaping. The black hole could not keep him.

It couldn’t keep her either.

What she hadn’t told him—what she had told no one at all—was this: For three weeks now, a single purple orchid had appeared on her pillow every morning when she woke. Esther didn’t know why, or when exactly he would come for her, but the Reaper had chosen his next apprentice. Esther Solar was now the Girl Who Would Be Death. Already she knew what her first act as a trainee Reaper would be: to stand at the end of Holland Smallwood’s bed, scythe in hand, cloak drawn over her freckled face, and warn him that if he ever laid another hand on Jonah, or Remy, or anyone, that she would ensure his death was slow and painful.

“Are you ready to watch this?”

“Still can’t believe you wouldn’t let me help you film the very last video,” he said as she pressed play.

Before the showing of “50/50,” there were fifteen minutes of highlights from the past year. It hadn’t been easy. Every week, Esther had wanted to stop, to walk away, to sink into her panic and let it consume her. It was easier to be afraid. Yet every week, she worked through the three steps Dr. Butcher gave her. Externalize your anxiety. Correct thinking mistakes. Expose yourself to fear.

Jonah had always brought her to the edge but he’d never pushed her over; Esther was the one who had to jump.

And jump she had. In the last six months, they had gone out and faced spiders, snakes, cockroaches, and clowns. They’d given blood, gone to the dentist, and stepped off the edge of a bridge with elastic bands strapped around their ankles. They’d swum with sharks at the aquarium and leapt from planes and spent long, cold nights alone in the wilderness. People had watched them. People had loved them. People had joined the crusade against fear with challenges of their own: spend a night in a haunted house; be interviewed live on the radio; go to the beach in a bikini.

And then the very last video. “50/50.” The one people had been waiting for. At first, a blank white screen, and then Esther came and sat down in frame.

“I know a lot of people have been taking bets about what my great fear might be: frogs, rollercoasters, serial killers. They’re all scary things and I’m not going to go out of my way to bump into any of them, but the truth is, they don’t scare me as much as this does,” she said, motioning toward the camera.

“My greatest fear has already happened to me. It’s been happening to me for fifty weeks. My fear is being seen, truly seen, for who I am. For a long time, I believed that I was a square peg in a world full of round holes, and that something inside me was fundamentally damaged somehow. I believed that I was not built to love or be loved, and I was afraid that if anyone saw me—like, really saw me—they would realize I was broken.

“Then my worst nightmare came along in the form of a boy. You know him. He started this channel and edited all but this video, which is why the others are a lot better than this one.

“Before I met him, I used to keep myself compartmentalized, like the Titanic—I was the unsinkable girl. I truly believed that compartmentalizing myself and making myself watertight would ensure I never sank. Obviously, it’s a pretty crappy metaphor considering what happened with the actual Titanic. Because I was a ship and Jonah Smallwood was an iceberg and let the world pour into my lungs, I thought, after he hurt me, that I would sink to the bottom of the abyss and remain in darkness forever.

“Humans aren’t ships. They have more compartments. The Titanic had sixteen. I have millions. The truth is, it wasn’t when he betrayed me that tore open all my compartments. He’d already been doing it for a lot longer.

“For the concerned adults in the audience, I’m aware this sounds a lot like a sex metaphor, but it isn’t.” A chuckle from the audience. Screen Esther took a deep breath to readjust the grapnel anchor—smaller now, but still there—and continued. “I might never be the type of person who can say ‘I love you’ freely but, Jonah, I will say this: You opened my compartments one by one and let the world flood in. It took until fifty of fifty for me to realize that I wouldn’t sink, because you’d slowly been teaching me how to swim.

“You didn’t tear me apart. You found the only way to set me free.”

Esther had been worried, when she’d filmed the video, that people wouldn’t like it. It contained none of the adventure or humor or cinematography the channel had become known for. But when the credits rolled, the crowd stood and applauded, maybe not because the ending had been a great one, but because the journey had been worth it regardless. Jonah squeezed her shoulder and then walked up the porch stairs with her and Heph and Eugene, and the four of them looked out at the empire that their bravery had created. Hundreds of people, each with fear buried in their hearts like splinters, each one a little bolder for having watched them for the past fifty weeks. The four of them held hands and took a bow, a solid minute passing before the crowd stopped clapping and cheering.

“So, uh, what you dressed as exactly?” Jonah asked Esther as the crowd began to disperse. “Normally I’m not so bad at guessing, but this one must be some obscure anime or something, ’cause I’ve got no idea.”

“Oh, um. Everything was salvaged from some costume at some point, but this is all me.” Esther twirled. “This—apparently—is my sense of fashion.”

“Good Lord.”

“I know, it’s even worse than the costumes. I’ve gotten more stares today than I ever have before,” Esther said with a laugh. “I have something for you. To celebrate the end of an era.”

“Oh?”

“The best gift one can get: a solved mystery.” Esther slipped her hand in her pocket and opened her fingers to reveal a small white condolences card on her palm. The one that Horowitz had given to her grandfather the day before Florence Solar died. Inside were two words written in running ink.

“I don’t get it,” Jonah said.

“Because that’s only half the puzzle,” Esther said. “Remember the scrapbook we found in the storage unit? Remember the last page, with the article that said some man had died under strange circumstances?” She handed the article to him, and Jonah looked from the card to the newspaper clipping they’d found in the locked box so many months ago. Written in small writing on the mailbox in the black-and-white photo was a single word: Whittle. “No way,” said Jonah as it all started to come together. “It has to be a coincidence.”

Esther shook her head. “It’s not. You know it’s not. Jack Horowitz couldn’t save my grandmother, but he could give my grandfather something to console him. Something he’d wanted for a long time.”

“The name of the Bowen Sisters’ murderer.” Esther nodded and smoothed out the newspaper clipping about a burglary gone wrong that left an elderly man drowned in his own bathtub. It was dated the day after her grandmother’s death. Arthur Whittle, then 74. The end of a Cadillac Calais was just visible in the open garage. “You know if you believe this version of events, it means your grandfather killed someone.”

Esther shook her head. “Maybe. If he did it, then he killed a man who murdered at least three children for certain, probably more. A man who was too old to stand trial or serve a prison sentence. But . . . I think he was there, but I don’t think he did it . . .”

Esther told Jonah how she imagined the day went down.

It was raining, and a darkly cloaked figure—Reginald—stood in front of a run-down suburban house. In his hands he held a sympathy card, upon which was written a name. The ink had bled in the rain, little rivulets of blue snaking down the white paper, but the name was still visible: Arthur Whittle. Reginald looked from the card to the letters on the mailbox. Whittle, it read.

There was a flutter of movement in his peripheral vision, and then Jack Horowitz was at his side, also dressed in a black coat, also staring up at the house.

“I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to kill him or turn him in,” her grandfather said quietly.

“Then why am I here?”

Reginald slipped the card into his pocket and they walked up the drive together, where Death tried the side entrance to the garage; the door was unlocked. Reg looked back at the darkened street, where black trees whipped and seized in the wind, pelted by the rain. The windows of the houses across the street were dim, their curtains drawn. When he was satisfied that no one had seen him, he slipped inside. Horowitz was already looking around the garage, picking up and putting down junk with gloved hands, as enraptured by the mystery of this man as her grandfather himself. A car, concealed under a waterproof cover, sat in the shadows. Horowitz helped her grandfather peel back the fabric from the bumper. Underneath was a mint Cadillac Calais. The killer’s car.

The men shared a look.

Death tried the door that leads into the house and found that it, too, was unlocked. Reginald wondered if locks simply fell open at his touch; no earthly lock could keep the Reaper at bay.

Inside the house, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” by Edith Piaf played on repeat, loud enough that it masked her grandfather’s footsteps. Horowitz’s footsteps made no sound. Death nodded up the staircase. Reginald drew his service weapon, kept it at his side as he silently ascended the steps, Death a dark, protective presence at his back. There were photographs on the walls: Arthur Whittle on his wedding day, Arthur Whittle with his children, Arthur Whittle with his grandchildren. The upstairs room was smoky and dimly lit. Whittle sat in a black leather armchair, milky eyes fixed on the muted TV as he sucked on a cigarette. Reg breathed out, lowered his weapon. He couldn’t do it. Killing a murderer left the same number of murderers on the planet, and brought no peace to the families of the missing children who would never find out what happened to them, would never have any closure.

It was Horowitz who, upon seeing Reginald falter, grabbed Whittle by a tuft of his remaining white hair and dragged him kicking and screaming to the bathroom. It was Horowitz, in the end, who turned on the faucet and held the old man under water until he stopped moving.

Reginald sat on the closed toilet lid and ran his hands through his hair as Death, breathing heavily, sat back against the tiled walls, his gloves and sleeves soaking.

“You said we’d only meet twice more,” said Reginald as the Reaper reached over to turn off the faucet.

“There are some things not even Death can predict.” Horo-witz stood. Peeled off his gloves. “I’m so sorry about Florence, Reg. There was truly nothing I could do.”

“The wake is on Friday, if you’re so inclined.”

Death nodded. Put his wet hand on her grandfather’s shoulder. “I’ll bring some milk.”

•   •   •

“WELL I’LL BE DAMNED,” said Jonah as he handed back the card. “The Harvestman has been dead for years?”

“No children have disappeared since Arthur Whittle drowned in his bathtub. It’s good enough for me. It has to be.”

As she looked at him, Esther thought about how this might be framed as a happy ending if their lives were like the movies. Maybe Jonah would say something smooth, and the music would swell, and they’d run to each other and make out under one of the oak trees while some indie song played in the background and the screen cut to credits.

But life was rarely full of clean and tidy resolutions. Good moments would inevitably, again, lead to bad moments, which would lead to more good moments, until there was nothing left but dust and stories. But that moment, right there, with him, that night—that was a damn good moment, and the good moments had to be remembered. And if all she could be, in the end, was dust and stories, she could think of far worse fates than to become dust and stories with a pickpocket, a skilled petty criminal, an underage drinker, a public nuisance, and the very best person she had ever met.

With Jonah there in front of her, she wondered if people really fell in love with others or if they fell in love with the best parts of themselves. Love was a mirror that made our bright bits shine like stars and dulled even the harshest ugliness. We loved to love because it made us beautiful. And maybe there was nothing wrong with that.

Maybe we deserved to be beautiful.

“Okay. Ready to find out the most interesting thing about you?” said Jonah as he tapped the covered canvas leaning against the side of the house. It sounded like he was rapping his knuckles against something solid, like glass. “Fifty weeks later, are you ready to see what I see?”

Esther exhaled and cracked her neck from side to side, like a boxer about to enter a ring. “Bring it on, Smallwood.”

Jonah pulled back the sheet, a mischievous smirk on his face. For a moment, Esther was confused. There was no canvas, no paint. But then she got it, like he said she would, and she collapsed to the ground laughing, like he always did.

Because the portrait was her. Exactly her.

It had been all along.