Lust.

Mr. Whiting was only twenty-three years old.

It came up in conversation early Friday morning that week. I was in calculus, which I conveniently had with Hawley because he was a year behind in math. Or rather, he was right on track for the normal senior. He eventually learned near the end of the week that I wasn’t going to bite him and decided that I’d want to inquire about Purshing more than I had.

“Purshing has such a weird history,” Hawley elaborated, moving his hands in front of his face as he spoke. He looked funny when he did that. “I mean, apparently during the sixteenth century this town was full of witches. Y’know, like the Salem witches? But anyways, most of the people here turned out crazy over the generations until some old man decided to move into town and told them they were all nuts. They had some kind of freakish religious revival and then relapsed.”

I furrowed my eyebrows at him. His eyes were a curious deep green and looked like they had golden flecks in them. “Relapsed? So wait, do some people still think they have mystical witch powers or something?”

He rolled his eyes- not at me though- and chuckled. “Yeah. We have this whole area downtown of witch-related stores and whatnot. And a fraction of the local population thinks that they can have conversations with their dead ancestors so there are a few psychic stores down there. But that’s only half the story of this place.”

“There’s this old log cabin out on the edge of the woods that serves as the Purshing Museum of Native American History, and boy, those people are just as crazy as the witches. They think Purshing was some kind of hub for the Natives to come perform religious ceremonies and bury their dead. So basically, they believe that everyone in Purshing serves some kind of purpose to the land. Like, for example, you and I could be the gatekeepers of hell or whatever.”

“That’s strange,” I drawled, scribbling down a formula from the board.

“Yeah it is, but it’s so cool at the same time. Mr. Whiting will take you guys around the edges of town sometime soon probably. He always does that with his advanced art class. And there are all these people down there- mostly Native Americans- that think you’re trespassing on sacred land when you go into the woods. They’ve given him such a hard time about it.”

“I didn’t know you took advanced art,” I smiled. I was genuinely beginning to credit Hawley as my new best friend. Or hopeful best friend. I knew at that instant that I liked him a tad bit more than his twin and Lilah, only because I got along with boys better and Royce wasn’t as interesting.

Hawley opened up to me about Purshing and wasn’t ashamed of it, like Purshing was his life. Honestly, I probably would be interested in this place too if I’d lived here my whole life like him. His features seemed to turn animated when he was telling me about everything, and the golden flecks in his eyes seemed to sparkle.

“Yeah, I took it last year. Mr. Whiting started doing that a year ago mostly because he said he likes getting away from the town, but really he just wants to get away from his wife. I mean, he used to leave his cell phone at school and make us bring ours because he never wanted to talk to her. It’s bad for him, but it’s a great experience for all his advanced art students. There’s so much mystery out there and it’s so peaceful.”

“Isn’t Mr. Whiting a little young to be having wife troubles?” I asked. I was giving him my full on attention now. Not that I wasn’t giving him my full attention in the first place.

“I suppose. He’s twenty-three, but when you’re married I guess you’re never too young to have problems,” He pushed his pencil up against the side of his cheek thoughtfully. I noted that he had less freckles than Royce, and had a stronger jawline.

We dropped the subject. We both knew that it was particularly awkward to talk about your teacher other than in a scholastic manner, let alone talking about your teacher’s marriage. I took a quick mental note of the fact that Mr. Whiting was having marriage troubles and then turned to my calculus homework. I did not want to do my homework at all, now that my interests had been sparked.

“Hawley?”

“Hm?” He questioned, shrugging his jacket off.

“Don’t you ever try to figure out why the people in Purshing think that way? I mean, have you ever been downtown and really talked to any of these people?” I queried.

“Not really. First of all, no one is ever willing to go with me, and second of all, I think I’d get in to deep if I really did. There’s so much history around here like that and it would all engulf me. I’d like to do it a lot though.” He told me, flashing a brilliant smile.

“Well you obviously love it. So why don’t you just go do it? I would go with you.”

“You would?” His eyebrows raised. “Don’t you think that I would bore you or annoy you? What if something bad came out of all of that? What if it wasn’t just some stupid town myth and ended up being real? The chances of that are slim, but come on.”

“Honestly, I’ve got plenty of time on my hands. I’m new here, remember? And maybe I’d like that.” I coaxed him. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do more than just sit around and have those thoughts milling around in the back of my head. Plus, I liked Hawley.

“You sure?” He looked at me incredulously.

“Positive,” I beamed.

“You’re crazy,” he smirked. “But I suppose I could show you a little bit of downtown Saturday.”

“It’s a deal,” I grinned and shook his hand.

He sat there and smiled at me goofily before returning to his calculus homework. He probably didn’t think I would be that serious about the whole deal, but I was going to prove him wrong. Right after I lived through a back to school party Lilah wanted us to attend.