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Sara doesn’t answer. Her hand splays out on the table. After a few seconds, her finger starts tapping again. 1-5-1, 1-4-3, 2-5-2.
ASHFORD: Miss Donoghue? Did you break the rules?
SARA: We alldid.
PART II
THE ROAD
EXHIBIT E
Children’s skipping rhyme, local to Briar Glen, Massachusetts
Little Lucy, dressed in white
Gave her mother such a fright.
Walked into the woods one day.
Where she went no one can say.
Down a road that no one found.
Or are her bones sunk in the ground?
How many steps did Lucy take?
One, two, three, four...
6
“ALL RIGHT. WHO’Scoming?” I ask. I sound calm, despite my heart pounding so hard I can hear it. No one else says anything. They all stare at the road—or at me. Like I have answers.
You expect in a moment like this to have trouble believing or a need to search for a rational explanation. Maybe it’s like that for the others—denial, trying to find evidence that they’re dreaming or hallucinating or that it’s some kind of trick. But for me, at least, it’s like a puzzle piece clicking into place. A feeling that everything has finally aligned the way it should be.
The road is here, and Becca is waiting.
“No way,” Jeremy says, shifting his weight back from the road. “Have you guys ever watched, like, a single movie? We get on that road and about thirty seconds from now some hook-handed motherfucker is wearing our guts like a scarf.”
Trina’s eyes are fixed on the road, her lips moving—praying. Finally she nods. Smiles. It’s an unsettling smile, off balance, and her eyes are bright and watery. “Okay,” she says.
Mel makes a disbelieving sound, half laugh and half cough. “What about this is okay?” She sounds more offended than afraid, like she’s pissed the world would dare throw something so bizarreat her. I know in that moment she’s with me—she won’t let the roadwinby scaring her off—and the first tremor of relief goes through me. If I have Mel, at least, I’ll be okay.
“It’s real,” Trina says. “It’s real, and that means that Becca—doesn’t it?” She looks at me. She’s crying now, her tear tracks silvery in the light. I step toward her, not quite off the road, not wanting to leave it in case I’m all that’s anchoring it here. She scrubs her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “I’m fine,” she says, in the same voice I’ve used a hundred times.
The five of us are standing together now, in a loose ring; Vanessa and Kyle and Jeremy and Miranda are farther back, and it’s just us, just the Wildcats.
“This is real,” Anthony says. “I’m just—we all agree, right? This is really happening?”
“It’s happening,” Mel says, rough-voiced. “Becca was right. The road is real.”
I don’t know who’s the first to do it—to reach out. One hand to the next, stepping closer, drawing tighter, but then there we are, linked. On one side I hold Mel’s hand, warm and dry, on the other side Anthony’s, skin cool.
“No one has to come who doesn’t want to,” I say.
“I’m not going back,” Trina says forcefully.
“We’re coming,” Anthony says. “All of us.” His hand squeezes mine. And then drops. We all shift back, our attention drifting to the others, a question in the air.
