Page 36 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

“Put this back on,” he instructs, grabbing my dagger and sheath from where I dropped them. I do, then follow it with my boots, which I prop on the wooden rail to tie.

“We should get going,” he says gruffly, shouldering my duffel. I go to take it from him, but he sidesteps me. “I’ve got it. The nearest town is probably a few miles, maybe more. Let’s hope we find something drivable there. It’s a long way to Beliar, otherwise.”

He starts walking in the direction the train zoomed off in. Though the burn to thank him for patching me up rises in my throat, I can’t force the words out. But the silence is too pressing and loaded with a question I can’t choke back.

“Melinda said you’re grieving someone, too. Who?”

Luke’s body goes so still I’d assume rigor mortis was setting in if he wasn’t standing. The quiet makes it feel like we’re the only two people left in the world.

“My brother.” He breathes deeply, like admitting it out loud is difficult. With his back to me, I can’t see his face, but I can hear the pain behind his words. “He’s not dead. But he might as well be. What about you?”

With the adrenaline leaking out of me and my knee throbbing, I’m powerless to stop myself from obliging. “I’m grieving the old me. The one who used to be in med school. Who had friends, and a fiancé, and a life, and parents.”

He looks at me. The tenderness in his gaze, like he’s sorry for who I was and who I am now, makes tears clog my throat. Understanding passes between us, giving me the courage to continue.

“And then she lost her parents, and realized the life she thought she wanted as a doctor didn’t appeal without them being alive to see it happen, and her fiancé thought she was throwing her future out, so she threw him out, and then all her friends sided with him, so they left her, too.”

It’s not the full truth, especially using a word as cavalier as lost, but it’s easier like this. To talk about me like she, some poor unfortunate girl I don’t know.

“I’m sorry,” he says, low and even and so sincere I want to break eye contact, but some greater force won’t let me. “You didn’t deserve that.”

My humorless laugh cracks the quiet like an egg smashed against the pan before its guts spill onto sizzling heat. I start walking, brushing past him. “Maybe I did. Maybe that’s what you get when every choice you make is for someone else. To keep them happy, or proud, or calm, or—”

“Safe?” he offers.

I turn, taking in the way his jaw clenches and his chest rises and falls with his breath. He gets it. I don’t know how, but he does. I nod. “But the second I couldn’t keep up the show, it all fell apart. And when I got off the stage, I realized I have no idea who Brie Benson actually is.”

Luke’s shoulder brushes mine as he matches me step for step. There’s a comfort in the gesture that I don’t want to dissect, even as he glances at me as if he’s really seeing me and says, “I’m starting to realize neither do I.”

Twelve

The sun rises steadily during our walk, but its position is impossible to pin, thanks to the plum clouds that rolled in shortly after dawn. They collect overhead, a foreboding presence that casts everything in shadows. We’re following the tracks, keeping them to our left and the unending forest to our right. Luke deduced we made it far enough by train to nearly get out of Pennsylvania—aka the Department of Mining—which might have felt like a success if we hadn’t started there, albeit in a different world.

“You keep looking up at the sky,” I observe.

“A storm’s coming,” Luke replies. He still carries his backpack and my duffel, neither of which seem to be slowing him down. I, on the other hand, am on the brink of exhaustion. My knee throbs, my ribs ache, and the cavernous pit that is my stomach has been growling for the past two hours.

“Very cryptic,” I comment. “Do we need to find shelter?”

He shakes his head. “It wouldn’t help. Those clouds aren’t a normal storm. They signify…”

He trails off ominously. “What?” I ask, trotting a few steps behind him. His gaze is locked on something in the distance.

“Oh, thank God.” I sigh in relief. “A diner!”

I pick up my pace, heading toward the quaint establishment. There’s a little sign next to it telling us we’re at the next train stop. The diner itself is planted on the side of the tracks in a silver boxcar that gleams despite the blocked sun. Across the length of the front, in neon-green letters, are the words “Sullivan’s Diner & Delights.”

“Brie, wait.” Luke stops me as I stride up to its propped open door. He glances around, lowering his voice even though it’s just us out here. “We should keep moving. We’re farther from the next town than I thought.”

“Sounds like we need to ask for directions,” I wager, planting a hand on my hip.

“I don’t need directions.” Luke’s jaw clenches in annoyance. “I know where we’re going.”

“So you’ve said super convincingly over the past six hours while I’ve kindly pretended not to notice the way you keep looking around and pulling out the coffee-stained map in your back pocket while your frown gets deeper and deeper. But I’m getting hangry, so the kindness is on its last legs. You can say it: we’re lost.”

“We are not lost,” he argues. “Things just look different than I remember.”

“Another thing,” I muse, continuing toward the diner. “You still haven’t told me how you know your way around so well. Or much about anything, actually.”