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“You snuck up on me! What did you expect?”
“Obviously not your teeth in my skin.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad. You’re lucky. The last guy who snuck up on me got kneed in the crotch.”
A ghost of a smile graces Thane’s lips. “Too bad. He would have probably preferred your teeth.”
“Shut up. What are you doing out here anyway?”
“Following you,” he says, taking a quick look around. “I figured you’d need help.”
“I’m pretty good at playing dodge the dead, thank you very much,” I say.
We stare at each other for a long moment. I know he didn’t follow me to help, he followed to spy.
Then we hear the voices.
“Sean, stop!” The voice belongs to a girl. “It’s not what it looks like!”
In my experience, it’s often what it looks like.
“I can’t believe you, man!”
Thane surprises me by taking the lead, wandering deeper into the woods. I follow, led by the voices and that horrible, energetic pull. It makes my insides shake.
“Put that down, Sean!” The other voice is male and alarmed.
Uh oh.
I try to move faster but drag my feet. Maybe I’ll scare off whoever’s fighting in the woods.
We find them in a clearing—two boys and one girl. The one called Sean is holding a large branch like a baseball bat and I’m fairly certain he’s about to use it like one. His skin glistens with sweat and he is breathing hard, his eyes move from the boy to the girl and then go dim, like he’s not actually present in his body. I’ve seen the look before—in people who are dying or grieving.
“Sean! No!” The girl screams.
Sean lifts the branch and swings, hitting the other boy square in the face. He fal
ls like a rock. I burst through the trees.
“Stop!”
Sean’s back goes ramrod straight, his head snaps back, a plume of gray erupts from his mouth and gathers in a cloud above his head. I freeze. I’ve seen this thing before, tangled with my poppa’s soul after his death. The thing hisses at me, and then ripples through the air like the aftershock of an Earthquake. It’s energy, dark and disturbing. It cuts through the trees, making their branches shake. I run after it, dodging limbs and dead things, but it is dark and my clothes snag on branches and thorns, and I trip over rocks and raised earth, finally stumbling right through a dead guy.
And it’s like I’ve landed in an inferno—flames scalding, wilting my skin like a flower in winter. I wail, writhing on the ground, my fingers curl into the dirt, and bile rises in the back of my steaming throat.
When the worst of it’s over, pain still vibrates through my body. I lay, gasping for breath, unable to move.
Then something lands beside me and I roll over to find a creature. It’s nothing like the thing of shadow that burst from Sean. This has the body of a human and large wings. I roll away, moving onto my hands and knees, blinking rapidly, my head swimming...and find that the person in front of me is just a boy, and the halo of wings I imagined, trees.
“Shy?”
“Are you okay? I thought I heard screaming.”
“Y-yeah. I’m fine.” I take Shy’s hand, head spinning as he helps me to my feet. We’re inches apart and he still has a hold of my fingers.
“How did you…” I start, but I can’t think clearly when I’m touching him. I withdraw my hand. I had clearly heard the thump of feet landing beside me, not footfalls. “W...what are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be at the game.”
“I was just arriving when I heard screams.” He’s staring down at me, studying me. I feel like he can see the last ten minutes of my life written on my face. “Sean ran out of here like he’d seen a ghost.”
