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“Anyone who doesn’t want to come should head back,” I say, realizing as I do that I’m somehow in charge and that no one is objecting to this.
“I’m in,” Kyle says. “I’m already past my curfew. Which means Chris is already going to hit the upper limit of pissed off, so I might as well go for broke, right?” He gives Trina a lopsided grin. Her mouth opens, like she means to say something, but she only shakes her head and makes a sound like a swallowed laugh.
“I’m in, too,” Vanessa agrees, nodding vigorously.
“This is nuts,” Jeremy says. But he doesn’t leave.
No one asks Miranda. This doesn’t seem strange to me, not yet.
“I guess... I guess we go, then,” I say, knowing that no one is going to move until I do. I turn. Grip the strap of my duffel hard. And take the first step.
If I expect anything mystical in that first step, it doesn’t happen. I let out a held breath and take another step, and another. But now that the road has arrived, it seems content to exist in a state of absolute reality. The trees lining it stand upright, its stones meet neatly, its surface is firm. Silence lies steadily against the road, and I am glad I do not walk alone.
“‘Even larks and katydids,’” Anthony mutters, a few steps behind me, and I glance back.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just something from a book,” he says.
“You read a book?” I ask in mock surprise, nerves knocking me into our old, joking pattern. “Look at Anthony, shattering the jock stereotype.”
“Hey, watch it, or I’m going to make you repay me for all those Goosebumps books you ‘borrowed’ and never returned.”
“Your mom told me not to give them back because they gave you nightmares. She called you asensitivechild,” I remind him,and he laughs, wincing at the memory. I guess all it takes is breaking the rules of reality to make things feel normal for a moment.
Behind him, the others trail in a ragged line. Jeremy is last, still on the dirt of the forest floor, not yet on the stone. He looks like he is ready to turn, to head back to the street and the cars they arrived in, to decide that this is a dream or a mistake and return to a life where things make sense and roads don’t stitch themselves together out of moonlight.
I wish more than anything that he had.
But his eyes meet mine, and a look like shame flits across his features, stark and clear despite the shadows. And he steps forward. Onto the road.No turning back, I think, knowing instinctively that it’s true. The only way now is forward.
I don’t know how long we walk. A few minutes or an hour. None of us say a word, not until we reach the first gate. Anthony and I have dropped back a bit, Mel charging out ahead, flashlight swiping furiously back and forth ahead of her, legs pumping like she’s trying to escape something. Or maybe she’s just trying to sober up. She gets far enough ahead of us that she goes around a bend and out of sight, a screen of scraggly-limbed trees blocking her from view.
When we come around the curve, she’s stopped dead. She holds the flashlight up like a pointer, aiming it straight ahead, toward a wrought-iron gate that blocks the way. It’s eight feet tall, spanning the whole road, but there’s nothing but a low, crumbled wall to either side. You could just step around it. None of us ever suggest it. Some rules you don’t need to be told.
“What’s up?” Anthony asks as we reach Mel. “Is it locked?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “But look.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Justlook,” she says again, and hands him the flashlight. He lifts it, squinting. Swears. And then I see it too.
The light from the flashlight hits the iron bars and it should appear beyond them. Turn the night gray, illuminate some stray mote of dust. Instead, it stops, as if it has struck a black wall, but there’s nothing there. Only darkness, the utter absence of light.
“What do we do?” Anthony asks.
When it’s dark, don’t let go, I remember. “I think—” I pause. Everyone has reached us now. I look back at them and find myself taking a head count even though I don’t see how anyone could have gotten lost. “Becca left a notebook. It has—I think they’re rules,” I say.
“What rules?” Trina asks.
“Don’t leave the road,” I say. “When it’s dark, don’t let go. And there are other roads—don’t follow them.”
“Don’t let go?” Trina asks. “Don’t let go of what?”
“L-like the game,” Vanessa says. “That’s why you need a partner, right? H-hold on to each other’s hands.”
“That makes sense,” I say, halfway between a statement and a question.
