Page 27 of Within These County Lines

And I did. I brought Murray around for dinner not just sometimes but most times. For three more years.

I let out a slow exhale once I finish my story. Xander places a hand on my knee as he watches me with a soft smile.

“That’s amazing, Stetson,” he says. “You’re so lucky.”

“You think?” I ask. I don’t look back on high school and see luck.

“Yeah. You have supportive parents and an amazing best friend. Why do you want to leave again?”

“I’ve never done anything outside of Penango on my own.” I poke the back of his hand resting on my leg. “I want to prove I can make it myself.”

He shrugs. “What’s there to prove on your own when the people who matter want to make life together?”

His words settle between us.

The truck cabin glows gold, bathed in the fading sunlight as if a campfire burns between us. The warmth and comfort from Xander’s touch is quiet reassurance that everything I’ve been through has been worth it.

In a town where hearts are meant to break, it feels like a rare kind of privilege to sit beside a boy who is willing to help stitch mine back together.

14

Back home, I click between internet searches about Xander Pomers and the Penango County Police Department’s public records.

But the results for Xander keep me locked in place. A few articles from the same southwestern Pennsylvania news source rehash the details of the day he went missing like a script.

He was seventeen years old.

A rising senior at Stillwell Trail High School.

The son of Margaret and Richard Pomers.

An animal lover and volunteer at the Four Paws Animal Hospital.

The veterinarian spoke with him as he left his volunteer shift at seven p.m.

He called his mom around seven thirty p.m. and said he was skipping dinner to go for a drive.

That was the last time anyone heard from him.

His black Honda Civic was found at Pinehurst Swim Club the following morning.

His car keys were found on a lounge chair.

The articles were updated every month until July 2016. Then the case went cold. Their last piece was titled: What We Know on the One-Year Anniversary of Xander Pomers’s Disappearance.

I skim it quickly, already knowing the answer.

They knew nothing.

But something about this article feels different. The wording of its final sentence isn’t open-ended like the others. No more calls for tips, no new searches, no false hope. Just a flat statement:

Xander Pomers has never been found.

Every article uses the same yearbook photo. Xander wears an unbuttoned blue-checkered shirt over a white undershirt with a frayed neckline. Black stud earrings gleam from his ears. Three chains hang around his neck—one with a cross, another with a shark tooth, and the third with a pendant too worn to make out.

But it’s his face that keeps pulling me closer to the screen.

Every feature is exactly as it is now. His sharp jawline, his fuzzy sideburns. It’s all so defined it makes me self-conscious about my own baby-faced senior portraits.