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“Six?” Anthony asks.
“Six,” I say. Then, whispering, clutching each other so tight our bones creak, “Seven.”
I don’t know who lets go. Maybe me. By then the urge to do it is so strong it’s a physical ache, pain through my wrist and shooting up to my elbow. It makes my teeth hurt, and I clamp them hard over the urge, but it isn’t enough. Or maybe it’s Anthony whose fingers slip away from mine. Maybe it’s both of us. It doesn’t matter. We start to take the step and by the time my foot comes down, my hand grasps nothing but air.
It lasts a second. Half a second. An instant of sweet relief, overpowering, and then panic sweeps over me, and I flail for his hand again. He catches mine, a moment of awkward grappling for each other before our fingers fit together again, and I let out a shuddering breath. I grip his hand with both of mine, getting my bearings.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “Okay. Seven—no, this is eight.”
We step forward. Faint vertigo makes me unsteady; I stumble.Anthony’s grip keeps me on my feet. I never want to let go.
“Nine,” I say. I take another step, Anthony slightly out ahead, guiding me. My foot lands strangely, on the edge of a stone, tilting toward bare dirt that compresses under the edge of my sneaker. “Hold on,” I say. “I think we’re—the road curves or something.”
Anthony doesn’t answer. And then I hear my name.
“Sara!”
Anthony’s voice. Behind me. Far behind me.
“Sara, where are you? Where did you go?”
I can’t breathe. There’s something in my throat as solid as a stone.
Whose hand am I holding?
“Anthony?” I say. Barely a whisper. Louder, “Anthony?”
“Sara? I can hear you, barely. Where are you?”
I make a sound like a sob. The hand in mine doesn’t let go. Doesn’t tighten. Doesn’t do anything. I tug. It holds fast. “Let me go,” I whisper. “Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.” I pull. I twist my hand.
It holds fast. And slowly, slowly, starts to pull toward the edge of the road.
“Let me go!” I yell and strike out at where Anthony should be. Whereitshould be. My hand hits something. It tears under my fingers, sinewy but thin, warm and wet and shredding, filling the gaps between my fingers, like putting your hand through rotten fruit.
I scream. I rake at the hand in mine, my fingernails scraping over my own skin, digging painful furrows across my wrist and palm. The hand shreds, pulps beneath mine, still tugging metoward the edge of the road—and then there’s not enough of it left to hold me, and I fling myself away. Back toward Anthony’s voice.
“Sara! I’m coming!”
“No! Stay there! Just—just keep calling,” I say, struggling to form words around the sob still lodged in my throat.
“I’m here.” Closer now. But still farther, so much farther, than two steps. He talks to me as I creep closer and closer, my breath coming back to some kind of regular order, my feet shuffling, feeling for the edge of the road that doesn’t come, doesn’t come, doesn’t come—and then his voice is right in front of me, and my hands creep up, cautious, finding him. His arm. His chest. His face, my fingertips testing the shape of him. “Sara?” he says.
I find his hand.
“What happened?” he asks.
It tried to—I want to say, but I don’t know how it ends. Trick me. Steal me. Kill me. It wanted me to leave the road, to break the rules, but I don’t know what it was.
I don’t know if it’s enough, that I escaped. Or if letting go means I’ve already lost.
“I’ll tell you when we’re out of here,” I say. “Nine?”
“Eight,” he reminds me.
“Eight,” I echo, and we take another step. I want to let go. I want to let go more than anything in the world and that is the most comforting thing I have ever felt, and the more I want to let go, the tighter I hold, through nine and ten and eleven and twelve, and then, our fingers digging into each other so hard I’m sure I’ll feel the trickle of blood down my hand any second, thirteen.
And we’re out of the dark. Out ofthatdark, at least, theimpossible dark. Back in the night, moonlight gleaming over us. I stagger. Lose Anthony’s hand, fall to one knee, retching. I hold my hands in front of me in the silvery light. Clean. They’re clean, no sign of what I felt beneath them, giving way.
