Page 62 of Cemetery Boys

“Sorry, we didn’t mean to bother you, we just thought he’d be here.” He backed toward the stairs.

Flaca watched him carefully, calculatingly.

“But obviously he isn’t, so we’ll just—”

“Wait!” Luca stepped out from behind Omar. “Have you seen Jules?” His voice was hopeful. Luca spoke with his chin tucked down, glancing up at them through the fringe of his hair. The wide neck of his sweater slid down his collarbone.

“Luca,” Omar warned, catching the smaller boy’s arm.

Yadriel glanced to Julian for some direction.

“No, you haven’t,” he said with a vigorous shake of his head.

“No, we haven’t,” Yadriel echoed.

Luca’s shoulders fell. “Neither have we. Not—not since last night—”

Omar gave him a tug. “We don’t know them—” he hissed, but Luca twisted out of his grasp with such expertise, his sudden absence made Omar stumble.

“We’ve been looking for him.”

Julian stiffened. “Jesus, Luca.” He moved to his friend, reaching as if to grab his chin, but he stopped, probably remembering he couldn’t touch him.

Yadriel gave the boy a closer look, not knowing what Julian saw that was making him so upset. But then he realized.

The smudge across the bridge of his nose wasn’t dirt but a bruise. There was also a red cut in the corner of his mouth. And was his bottom lip swollen?

“He’s missing,” Flaca finally said.

Luca nodded while Rocky shifted her weight between her feet, her gaze dropping to the ground.

“¡Cállate, Flaca!” Omar warned.

Flaca brushed him off with an irritated wave of her hand.

For a moment, the pretense and defenses slipped. They were just four kids worried about their best friend. Yadriel released some of the tension he was holding. There was no drug paraphernalia, no guns or weapons that he could see. He was the one with a dagger tucked into the waist of his jeans.

If they only thought Julian was missing … “What happened?”

Flaca spoke first. “He got jumped by the park.”

“We don’t even know them!” Omar was still trying to keep their secrets, but it was obvious he’d lost control over the situation. Their concerns for Julian outweighed anything else.

“I got jumped,” Luca corrected. His shoulders hunching up to his ears. “Jules tried to stop them. It was dark, he told us to run, so we scattered.” He twisted his sleeves between his fingers. “We can’t find him.”

This wasn’t good. There were no leads for them to go off of. If they thought Julian was missing, that meant they hadn’t found his body. And it also meant—

“They don’t know I’m dead.”

Julian stood there, his arms limp at his sides. He stared down at Luca, and his expression—the upturned brows and painful grimace of his lips—made Yadriel’s heart ache.

“When we regrouped, he wasn’t there, so we went looking for him, but he’d disappeared without a trace,” Luca explained.

Disappeared without a trace.

Yadriel’s mind raced, fitting the pieces together. Julian had died last night. He got jumped in the park, and when his friends tried looking for him, he was gone. There was no sign of his body.

Just like Miguel.