The Ol' Pickaxe was not a big store. It didn't have long aisles composed of nothing but nails, or big displays informing customers about the new types of hammers they could buy. The Pickaxe didn't need that stuff. The shop was able to hang everything it sold right up on its walls, or on a few shelves and tables along the sides. If there wasn't room for something, it was stored in the back until it was bought or until room was made.

Mae stood in front of the wall opposite the shop's counter, staring carefully at the selection on display. This wall served as the gardening section for the Ol' Pickaxe. Dozens of pieces of hardware hung in front of her, half of them nearly indistinguishable from each other. Mae found herself nearly dumbfounded by the sheer number of shovels in particular. There were farming shovels; round point shovels; square point shovels; trenching shovels; transfer shovels; utility shovels…

And that wasn't even getting into the spades.

Why were there so many types of shovel? Who would need all of these shovels? Didn't they all do basically the same thing?

Mae had been asking herself these questions for about ten minutes. That was how long she'd been staring at the wall for. Mae was beginning to think she had a tendency to fixate on things.

It wasn't like Mae could afford one of these, anyway. She was still broke as heck. No, at the moment, Mae was just browsing; trying to figure out which one of these shovels was the right shovel. When Mae went out looking for Casey's legendary lockbox, only the finest shovel would do. She couldn't dig up the last thing Casey had left behind with some peasant's shovel.

Not that Mae would know a peasant shovel if she saw one. They all looked pretty much the same. She wouldn't be able to pick one out without an expert's opinion.

Mae craned her head a bit and yelled over her shoulder. "Hey, Bea?"

"Yeah?" Bea's voice came from the other end of the store, at the Pickaxe's front counter. Despite how important Mae's shovel business was, Bea sounded kind of disinterested.

"Which one of these shovels is the best for digging up treasure?" Mae asked.

Bea gave no answer. After a few seconds of silence, Mae called out again.

"Bea? You there?"

"Yeah, sorry," Bea said. "I just… needed to take that question in. Have you tried a digging shovel?"

"Aren't all shovels digging shovels?" Mae returned her attention to the shovels hanging on the wall. Sure enough, there was a type of shovel that was for some reason specifically referred to as a 'digging shovel'.

The cheapest one was around fourteen dollars. For someone like Mae, that number might as well have been a thousand. Mae stared at the shovel, desperately longing for what could never be. The holes that would never be dug and the zombies who would never get their heads bashed in.

"Is it possible I could just borrow one of these?" Mae asked. "I'd bring it back. You could just clean it up and hang it back on the wall."

"Mae, I'm with a customer!" Bea snapped. "… And also, no, you absolutely can't just borrow one."

Mae turned around, surprised. She hadn't realized there was another person in the Pickaxe besides Bea and herself. When she turned towards the front counter, she saw there were actually two other people in the shop. One of them was the customer Bea was apparently dealing with. It took Mae a few seconds to recognize that the customer was Erika Larsen, Daryl's cousin.

The other person was in a stroller being pushed around by Erika. It didn't take Mae even half a second to recognize that it was a baby. Only babies hung out in strollers and wore onesies with 'I'M GRAMMA'S GIRL' on them.

Stupid babies and their terrible fashion sense. Mae was proud of the fact that she had better taste than a baby.

Erika, seemingly just noticing Mae was there, smiled and waved. Mae was a little surprised by the lack of hostility from someone she'd gone to high school with. Then again, Mae supposed she hadn't really known Erika well enough to do anything to piss her off. Mae couldn't really say that about most of her old classmates.

"Hey there!" Erika said as Mae approached the front counter. "Mae Borowski, right? The one who nearly burned down the school?"

It was somewhat refreshing to Mae to hear herself referred to as 'the person who nearly burned down the school' instead of 'the person who messed up that one kid's face forever'. For one thing, almost burning down the school was something Mae was proud of. For another, nearly burning down the school hadn't caused several people to hate her forever.

"Yeah," Mae said. "I mean, I wasn't alone. Gregg helped. The sprinklers saved all the teachers' jobs, though."

Erika laughed at that. Mae had a feeling she wouldn't have been laughing if Gregg and Mae actually had burned the school down. It was really kind of interesting how the absence or presence of a huge fire could completely change someone's outlook on something.

"Mae doesn't set nearly as many things on fire these days," Bea said as she leaned on the countertop. "As far as I know, at least."

Erika and Bea both shared a chuckle. Mae, who felt like it had indeed been a criminally long time since she'd started a fire, was too distracted to join in. She felt on edge, as if she were being watched. Mae could practically feel someone's eyes on her. And since there were only three other people in the Pickaxe at the moment, it didn't take Mae long to deduce that the baby in Erika's stroller was staring at her.

Mae looked down at the little baby in the pink onesie. The baby was staring up at her with big, dumb, uncomprehending eyes. It made Mae feel a little uncomfortable. Of course, babies made Mae uncomfortable in general. They were basically just tiny, person-shaped poop factories that slowly turned into actual people.

"Hey, Erika?" Mae said, not looking up from the baby. "Is this… yours?"

"Yeah, this is Georgie," Erika said, laughing as she looked down at the baby. "She's only six months old, but my parents have already spoiled her rotten."

The baby, who looked to Mae like it wouldn't even be able to recognize its grandparents if they weren't right in front of it, gurgled incomprehensively. Bubbles of drool rose to the baby's mouth. Erika cooed at her baby's noises, apparently proud of the six-month-old's attempt at nonverbal communication. Mae wasn't anywhere near as impressed.

Mae watched as Erika knelt down and began wiping the drool off of Georgie's face with a tissue. Mae couldn't help but be weirded out by the sight of someone her own age happily wiping up their baby's drool. Oh, sure, Mae had known a few people in high school who'd gotten pregnant—but that was teenage pregnancy. Erika was, as far as Mae knew, an adult.

Mae didn't always have good words for how stuff made her feel. All Mae knew was that seeing an old classmate acting like a parent made Mae feel like a little kid in comparison.

"Why've you got a baby in a tool store?" Mae asked, finally managing to tear her eyes away from Georgie's terrible stare.

Erika tucked the tissue she'd used on Georgie's face away into a side-pocket on the stroller. She stood back up beside her stroller, and for a moment Mae saw something in Erika's face that she couldn't quite describe. It was an expression that had a sadness that Mae didn't understand. It was an expression that looked far too old for the person who was making it.

The expression was gone in an instant, though, and soon Erika had the same tired smile that she'd had before. Mae almost believed she'd just imagined the sad, old look on Erika's face.

"We're meeting my folks at the Clik Clak," Erika explained. "Just dropped by to say hi to Bea."

"You're bringing your baby to a restaurant?" Mae asked in disbelief. "Why? They don't even have baby food there, and she's just gonna make a lotta noise."

"Mae!" Bea whispered, trying to chastise Mae quietly.

Erika attempted to politely laugh Mae's comment off. "I mean, she's usually good when she's out of the house. She ain't too fussy so long as she's had a nap."

That, finally, was something Mae could understand. She was pretty fussy if she didn't get enough sleep, either. Mae felt as if the generation gap had finally been bridged, and that she could understand babies a little better now.

She still didn't like babies, of course, but who did? They were awful little gremlins you had to be super delicate with.

Erika, who would probably never refer to her daughter as a gremlin out loud, spoke up. "So what're you doing in here, Mae? You planning on doing some gardening?"

Mae frowned, puzzled. It took her a moment to remember that she'd just been staring at the Pickaxe's gardening selection like a weirdo. It wasn't a surprise someone would see Mae and think she had an interest in flowers and gnomes, or whatever people did with gardens.

"Oh, no," Mae said. "I'm just looking for a shovel so I can dig up an old lockbox my friend Casey buried."

Out of the corner of her eye, Mae could see Bea quietly placing her hands on her face. Although Bea made no noise, Mae had a feeling that she was groaning internally.

Mae returned her focus to Erika, who was staring at Mae in silence. Mae, who'd only now realized that what she'd said was kind of weird, couldn't blame her. Sometimes Mae wished she could carry a little mirror around so she could stare at herself whenever she said something weird—then she'd know what it was like.

After a moment, Erika smiled and nodded politely. She looked like she was trying to figure out if Mae was joking or not, and was quickly discovering, much to her horror, that she wasn't.

Erika stepped back behind her baby stroller, putting her hands on the handlebar. Mae almost thought that she'd actually scared Erika off, and the former cheerleader was going to fun away, fearing for her baby's life. While that would've been funny to watch, it also would've been a little rude.

"Well, have fun digging up whatever Casey buried! I bet there's a whole bunch of stuff that guy left behind."

Mae blinked in surprise. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, I gotta get going!" Erika said hurriedly. "It was nice seeing both of you!"

Erika walked backwards, wheeling her stroller along with her as she pushed the Pickaxe's door open with her butt. By the time the bell over the door rang with its closing, Mae realized that Erika had completely ignored her question.

"Huh," Mae said contemplatively. She turned towards Bea, who was now sitting up straight behind the cash register. "So Erika's a mom now, huh?"

"Yup," Bea said, clearly too tired to be sarcastic. "Her and a couple of other people from school, actually. Not like there's anything to do around here except work and get pregnant."

Mae laughed at that. "Yeah," she said. "Ever since the town's thriving cult community died out, the gamut of stuff to do's really run out."

Bea blinked, surprised. "Did you just say 'gamut'?"

"What?" Mae asked. "I've been reading more."

Bea looked up at the clock above the Pickaxe's door. Mae followed her gaze and saw that it was starting to get close to closing time. Mae turned back towards Bea, who was already getting her pack of cigarettes out from beneath the counter.

"You wanna do anything tonight?" Mae asked.

"Can't," Bea said as she placed a cigarette between her lips. From the looks of things, it was another one of the dummies that she just chewed on. "I gotta do business stuff with the Chamber of Commerce. Assuming they don't bail out again…"

Mae groaned inwardly. She passed those Chamber of Commerce people in the streets every so often, and they were always so boring. They were always arguing with each other, or… well, mostly, they just argued with each other. And, yeah, it was funny hearing old people insult each other, but you could only take so much of it in one sitting.

"I guess I'll see what Gregg's up to," Mae mused. "Try and get some hang-time in before spring."

Bea sat up, a thought occurring to her. "Hey, speaking of Gregg moving, how are you dealing with that whole… situation?"

"Good!" Mae said. "Surprisingly good!" And she meant it. Mae was honestly a little astounded by how well she was handling her best friend's upcoming move to Bright Harbor. Mae didn't know if that was because she was becoming more mature, or if the reality of the situation just hadn't settled in yet. In all likelihood, Mae felt like she'd start feeling progressively worse once the date of the move came closer.

"That's good, I guess," Bea said. "Hey, you know, if you ever wanna talk about the Bright Harbor thing, I—"

"I know," Mae said quickly. She appreciated the offer, but she didn't want to talk about the Bright Harbor thing yet. The longer she could go without thinking about it, the better she'd feel.

Bea frowned, clearly not satisfied with Mae's dismissive answer. "Okay, well… Take care, then."

Mae nodded, but didn't say anything as she hurried out of the Pickaxe. There would be time later to talk with Bea about their friends moving away. There wasn't any reason to talk about it now, when Mae wasn't even feeling bad about it. It wouldn't do Mae any good to start missing Gregg before he even moved away.

Standing outside of the Pickaxe's front door, Mae looked down the street towards Towne Centre. The sky was cloudy, only thin beams of sunlight managing to break through. Mae breathed in the cool February air, savoring it while she could. It wouldn't be long until things started getting a lot warmer. The days would be longer, too—no more early evening walks through town.

The warm seasons always seemed to drag on forever, but they also seemed to take their time showing up.

Mae began walking in the direction of the Snack Falcon. The early evening pedestrian traffic in Possum Springs was, as always, very light; mostly people going to jobs, going home, or going to eat. There were a dozen or so people in all, going about their business and never paying very much mind to each other.

That was why it was such a surprise to Mae when someone called out to her.

"Hey, kid!"

Mae stopped turned back towards the Pickaxe, where the voice had come from. An older man in a flannel jacket was approaching her very quickly. For a moment, Mae thought she was going to be attacked—the guy had a very intense, angry expression on his face. As he got closer, though, Mae realized that he wasn't angry at her. Rather, he was just sort of angry in general.

"I'm an adult," Mae corrected as the man came within speaking range. "I'm a legal adult."

"Yeah, sure," the man said gruffly, stopping just in front of her. He looked down at Mae, an eyebrow raised. "What the hell are you staring at?"

Mae, who hadn't even realized she'd been staring, quickly drew her gaze away from the stranger's face. "You've got a tattoo," Mae pointed out dumbly, gesturing to the left side of his face. A black, intricate tribal tattoo went over his eye and temple and traveled down to his cheek.

The man's eyes glanced down and to the left, as if for a moment he was trying to see the tattoo for himself. His gaze flickered back towards Mae in an instant as he regarded her with a scowl.

"… Do I know you?" Mae asked, confused. The man looked vaguely familiar, but Mae couldn't assign a name to his tattooed face.

"No," the man said, folding his arms over his chest. "I know you, though."

"Okay. That's not creepy at all." Mae was suddenly very glad that she was talking to this man out in the open, with plenty of people around.

"You're May Barkovski," the man said.

"I mean, that's, like… partially right."

The man nodded as he looked Mae over, seemingly studying her. He looked like he was trying to determine if he could beat her in a fight. Mae knew this because she also frequently tried to guess how easily she could beat random strangers up. Unlike Mae, though, this guy looked as if he'd actually follow through on that chain of thought.

"Now, see, I saw you at that party in the woods," the man said, whispering conspiratorially. "And I heard that Scriggins kid ask yous about Hartley. And just now, I heard you mention Hartley in there with your gal-pals."

Mae was almost so distracted by her hatred for the word 'gal-pal' that she almost missed out on what this man had said. But the mention of Casey, as well as the fact that this guy had just admitted to eavesdropping on her, was enough to warrant Mae's attention. Even Mae, who didn't understand why people might yank valuable metal out of the walls of a building, understood that this guy was getting more and more shady.

"Have you…" Mae paused. Her voice was shaking a little. She cleared her throat and spoke again, trying to sound less creeped out. "Have you been following me?"

The man's scowl, seemingly always present on his tattooed face, grew even angrier. "I been following lots of people—you ain't special, kid. Hell, you ain't even on my shit list yet. I just got a question for you."

Mae could guess what the tattoo man was going to ask about. Over the last few days, Mae had been asked about one subject in particular at least twice. The rule of three, a common literary device in some of Mae's favorite stories, was about to come into effect.

"Do you know where Hartley is?" The tattoo man asked. His gravelly tone sounded almost accusatory, as if Mae were being interrogated. "See, I dunno if I buy that he left town. I dunno if Hartley was that smart. So if you know where he is, you'd better tell me before you tell Scriggins or Levy, got it?"

Mae wasn't quite sure what to say. She'd been intimated by the tattoo man before—now, though, she was just annoyed. For one thing, Mae was getting pretty sick of people asking her if she knew what had happened to Casey. She did know what had happened to him. She was one of the only few people who knew. But if Mae couldn't tell Casey's own stepdad the truth, she definitely couldn't tell the truth to some random asshole in flannel.

To top it all off, the tattoo man seemed to be under the impression that Mae would willingly tell Steve Scriggins or Levy anything remotely useful. That was just insulting.

"Why the hell do you want to know where Casey is?!" Mae snapped. "Why the hell do assholes keep asking me about Casey?! I got news for ya, citizen: It's none of your business! Just forget about it! He's got nothing to do with you!"

Tattoo man regarded Mae with surprise, clearly taken aback by her outburst. Most people had enough common sense not to shout at a guy who looked like the tattoo man did. Mae's stupidity had caught him entirely off-guard.

The tattoo man mulled things over for a moment. He looked like he was deciding whether or not he could get away with cold-clocking Mae right then and there. After a moment of silence, the tattoo man spoke, his tongue in his cheek as he did so.

"Huh."

Mae blinked in surprise. "'Huh?'"

The tattoo man nodded, once again sizing Mae up. This time, though, it looked as if he was trying to get a second impression of her.

"You really don't know anything about Hartley, huh?" The tattoo man asked.

Mae felt her irritation leave her suddenly and swiftly. The sincerity in the tattoo man's voice—as if he was apologizing for making a false assumption—only increased his question's impact. Mae didn't know what to say to that. What could she say? What did the tattoo man even mean?

Before Mae could ask for clarification, though, a voice cut into the conversation.

"What's going on here?"

The tattoo man once again had an angry expression on his face. Mae could hazard a guess why—the person who'd just spoken tended to make Mae angry, too. Mae turned around to face her least-favorite relative, who was standing beside her patrol car.

"Hi, Aunt Molly," Mae groaned.

Molly didn't respond. She wasn't even looking at Mae—Molly's eyes were locked on the tattoo man, who had started walking in the opposite direction. Molly didn't pursue him, but she looked like she was making damn sure that he was gone. When he was finally a good distance away, Molly's eyes flickered down to look at Mae.

"Get in the car, Mae," Molly ordered.

There was something in Aunt Molly's tone that Mae didn't like. She was talking to Mae like she'd done something wrong. Sure, Mae had just finished shouting at a man in the middle of the street, but that didn't really warrant Molly's accusatory tone. Then again, Aunt Molly kind of always sounded like that to some degree.

"Am I under arrest or something?" Mae asked indignantly.

Aunt Molly folded her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at Mae. "That depends on what you were talking to Dudley Hughes about."

Mae groaned. There was no point arguing with Aunt Molly when she was like this. And unlike other cops, Mae couldn't just run from Molly. Molly could just pull up to Mae's house for dinner and tell her parents all about how Mae was hanging with tattoo people.

Well, Mae guessed that cops other than Molly could do that if they wanted. It'd be weird, though.


Mae, despite never having been arrested, was very familiar with the inside of her aunt's patrol car. Over the years, Aunt Molly had given Mae plenty of rides through Possum Springs. Most of the time, these were rides home after Mae had gone somewhere she shouldn't have, like falling off of a telephone pole after sneaking through an abandoned playground.

Mae didn't say anything after she got into the car. She definitely had questions, but she was too irritated to ask any of them. If Molly had been a little less abrasive when she told Mae to get into the car, Mae might have been more willing to talk.

Since that hadn't happened, however, it was up to Aunt Molly to begin the conversation.

"Do you know who that man was?" Aunt Molly asked as she drove away from the Ol' Pickaxe.

Mae had a few theories. The sketchiest man in town? The world's biggest random asshole? A creep who was following her? Really, the possibilities were endless.

"No. I don't." Mae stared out the window as her aunt pulled the u-turn that would lead them to Mae's house.

"Good," Molly said. "Keep it that way. That's not the sort of person you should be hanging around with."

As much as Mae would have liked to get into an argument with her aunt, she couldn't really disagree. Tattoo man had set off so many red flags that it wasn't even funny. But he was also somehow tied in with Scriggins and Casey, so Mae was too busy being confused to really think about how dangerous he might have been. She'd have plenty of time to be afraid later.

"Why were you talking to him?" Molly asked. Some of the suspicion had dropped out of her voice. Not all of it, of course—Molly seemed like she was always suspicious of Mae for one reason or another.

"He's the one who started talking to me," Mae muttered irritably. "He said he'd been following me. Then he started asking questions about Casey."

Molly's patrol car pulled a U-turn at the end of Towne Centre, and soon began driving in the direction of Mae's house. The only sound was the rumbling of the car's engine and the wheels on the road. After a second of surprised silence, Molly finally spoke.

"He said he'd been following you?" Any suspicion in Molly's voice had disappeared, giving way to genuine concern. When Mae looked away from the window and looked at her aunt, she saw that Molly looked both surprised and worried.

Mae felt some of the anger in her chest fade away. As much as Mae disliked Aunt Mall Cop, she couldn't stay upset when Molly was clearly worried about her.

"Yeah," Mae said. "He thought I knew where Casey Hartley was."

Molly looked as if she wasn't sure what to say. It occurred to Mae that she had never really talked to her family about Casey's disappearance. As much as she was trying to open up to her parents, Mae didn't think she could be honest on this particular subject. Not just because the truth was hard to believe, but…

Well, it hurt to think about it. It hurt to think that Casey had died alone and for nothing.

The people who had bene close to Casey didn't need to know about that. As long as they thought Casey had just run away, they had hope. They could still picture a day when Casey might come home.

Mae didn't want to take that away from anyone.

Molly drummed her fingers on the car's steering wheel. She looked like she wanted to say something but couldn't quite find the right words. As the patrol car slowly pulled up alongside Mae's house, Molly finally seemed to figure out what she wanted to say. Molly parked the car and turned off the engine before turning to face Mae.

"Listen, Mae… I know this probably goes without saying, but be careful. Things have been strange in town lately. We're still getting swamped with phone calls about those people that went missing last year."

Ah, yes—the dead cultists. That was something else Mae would probably have to keep to herself forever. Mae tried her best to look disinterested, and not at all like someone who'd inadvertently killed a bunch of dudes.

"My point is, you need to start taking things more seriously," Molly continued. "I mean, I get it—you're young, you're confident, you think you're invincible. But you're not. And one of these days, all that trouble you get into is going to catch up to you. Understand me?"

Mae had left the car before Molly even finished answering her question.