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After an eternity, lights flare into the darkness from behind me, casting twin pillars of yellow-white onto the ground, illuminating the blacktop and making a shadow out of me. I stop dead, exhaustion sinking into my bones, and bend over, resting my hands on my sodden jeans, coughing and choking the wickedly cold air down, trying to catch my breath.
A car door slams behind me.
Wait.
A car door?
It hits me all of a sudden: I’m on a road. A fuckingroad. Not the destroyed road that Gaynor and I gawped at a couple of months ago. This road is whole, in one piece, perfectly fine to drive on.
“Sorrell, you’re gonna break your neck, hurtling down here like that. Please, can you get into the car and talk to me?”
Theo’s deadly calm does something to me that I can’t explain. The fear and the panic blink out, abandoning me to my exhaustion, and suddenly it’s all I can do to remain standing on my own two feet. When I feel his hand on my shoulder, I turn and collapse into him, letting out a strangled sob as I bury my face into his chest. He’s put his t-shirt back on now, concealing the names on his ribcage, but it’s as if I can feel them burning there beneath my hands, and I feel so lost and turned around that I can do nothing but cry.
He picks me up, sweeping me into his arms. He carries me back to the car—a sleek black Mustang—and gently places me into the passenger seat, clipping me into my seat. I’m in a daze as he gets in and starts to drive. Not back up the mountain, I realize. But down.
“Where are we going?” I ask stiffly.
“Somewhere special,” he answers.
And I’m too tired to ask any more questions.
I’moutragedwhen Theo drives past a bus stop.
A fucking bus stop.
My anger is a living, breathing thing.
There weren’t supposed to be any other roads leading to the Academy, just the one solitary, destroyed road that I saw when I arrived at Toussaint. It was unnavigable, the sign had said. Impossible to pass through, Principal Ford had said. But here we are, speeding down a perfectly good road,streetlightswhipping past the car windows as Theo burns into the night.
I chew the inside of my cheek until I taste blood, refusing to open my mouth, because I know what will happen if I do. I’ll start screaming, cursing, throwing fists, and I can’t see how that will help anything right now.
I’m livid by the time Theo makes a left hand turn and we enter a small town—a fuckingtown!—driving past a painted sign that reads, ‘You are now entering Sumner, WA. Population 1287. Please drive carefully.’
A pharmacy. A general store. A post office. A real estate agent. A liquor store. We pass each of these businesses, the only car out on the potholed road in the rain, and I seethe in astonished silence. Another half a mile up the road, Theo pulls into a parking lot. A diner—Patty’s—sits on the other side of the lot, still open, it’s lights blazing out into the darkness.
Theo kills the engine. He looks down at his hands, picking at his fingernails for a second, then says, “Come on. They have great coffee here. You really like it.”
I stare down at Theo’s phone, blinking at the image on the screen.
It’s not fucking possible.
I’m there in the photograph, locked in the circle of Theo’s arms. He’s kissing my cheek, and I’m wincing, pretending to hate it. But I’m not. I can tell that I’m not. I’mlovingit.
“Here we go. One black coffee. One coffee with creamer. One sugar.” The tall waitress with the matching dimples sets down two cups, one for me and one for Theo, beaming nervously at us. She didn’t take an order from us when we came in. Her whole face lit up when she saw us enter, but Theo shook his head at her in warning and she nodded, turning back to the cash register. He guided me over to a booth by the window and sat me down on the bench, operating my limbs for me like I was an inert robot, and then sat down on the bench opposite me, clearing his throat. He’d given me his phone then. Told me to look through the camera roll.
I still haven’t managed to process the pictures I’ve flicked through.
Me in a yellow summer dress, standing in front of the Space Needle, arms held aloft in the air. Me asleep in Theo’s arms, nestled in a welter of sheets. Me on a couch, hair tied up in a messy bun, a cupcake in my hand, cheeks full, frosting on the tip of my nose, grinning like a little kid. Me in Central Park, hair wet from the rain, clutching hold of the snow globe that’s currently sitting on the chest of drawers back in my bedroom at the academy. Theo and I kissing. Theo and I kissing in a million different images, in different poses, in different places, surrounded by snow, and in the rain, and washed in sunlight.
Theo, and me, and Lani, and Ashley, and Sebastian, the girls wearing bikinis, the boys wearing boardshorts. In this image, there’s only one name inked into Theo’s ribs, and its mine.
“Let me know if I can get you kids anything else,” the waitress says quietly. Theo thanks her, and she retreats back behind the counter, giving us some space.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“That’s us,” Theo answers simply.
“You’re lying.”
