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“You knew. Anthony knew.”
“It’s not that I knew it was real,” I say. “It’s that it didn’t matter if it was real. I had to be here either way.”
She screws the cap back on the water bottle. Half of it still sloshes back and forth. I have extra bottles in my bag. I don’t think anyone else brought anything to eat or drink, but I hope we won’t be on the road long enough to need it.
“I’m glad Sophia didn’t come,” Mel says.
“Who?”
“Oh. Yeah, she left before you showed. She was my date,” Melsays with an awkward sort-of laugh. “I told her we’d go make out in the woods.”
“I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.” I try to sound like it’s an intellectual point of curiosity—and I mostly succeed. I got a lot of practice at it, before we stopped talking.
“No reason you would.”
I bite my lip. Once upon a time, I was the first person Mel came out to. We were sitting in my room drinking lemonade that had gone watery, playing a game she’d invented on the spot. Trading a secret for an M&M. Little things. Thirteen-year-old things. The lip gloss I stole from Becca. The time Mel snuck out and then couldn’t think of anything to do and so just sat in front of her house until she got cold. When Becca and I stole Mom’s gin and got silly drunk off a few sips and decided it was a good idea to go belt out Christmas carols in the park at midnight. But the point of all of it was the last secret.
Who do you have a crush on?
I’d shrugged. Couldn’t sayAnthony, because he was our friend and that was weird and embarrassing and I wasn’t sure it was a crush anyway. Mel probably assumed Anthony anyway, the way I always hung around him. I’d picked a name almost at random. I can’t even remember who it was, now. And then she said,Now you ask me.
So I asked, and she answered—Nicole from English class—and she waited, and it was awkward and stilted but I said the right things I guess and we went back to M&M’s and lemonade, and six months later she was stapling a pride flag to the back of hersweatshirt until a horrified Trina confiscated it and stitched it on properly.
My coming out, if you could even call it that, was more incremental. I never kept it a secret, but I never particularly volunteered it. There was no moment when I declared,Oh, by the way, I’m bisexual.Maybe it would have been easier if I had, so there was one clear moment when Mel could make it obvious she wasn’t interested, instead of the months of me vaguely hoping that now that I was a little more open with it, a little more certain of it, she’d finally notice me as more than a friend.
“So, wait. But you came with Miranda,” I say, remembering.
She snorts. “None of tonight can be counted among my finest hours. Sophia and I have been dating, sort of, but I met Miranda a couple days ago and... I sort of asked both of them to come? And forgot about it? I was pretty drunk.” She pauses. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be. You came.” I bump my knuckles against hers, smile. If friendship is what we have, I’m still glad to feel it creeping back in. “I’ve missed you,” I say. I’m surprised how much it’s true.
“Hey,” Kyle calls. He and Trina are in the lead now, but they’ve stopped. “Guys? There’s another gate up ahead. And I think there’s someone there.”
We hurry to catch up with the two of them. The trees have thinned, letting more of the moonlight spill over us. Our flashlight beams probe forward, catching against the tines of the wrought-iron gate ahead like a plastic bag catching on barbed wire; they seem stuck, pierced through. The gate is almost identical to theone we already passed through, except that it’s taller, wider. At the base of the gate, slumped against the bars, is a person.
He wears dark clothes. His head hangs forward. His hands lie limp in his lap. There is a stillness about him that is less an absence of movement and more a sense of having settled, like a stone sinking slowly into the muck of a river until it can press no deeper.
“Is he dead?” Trina asks.
“I can’t tell,” Anthony says.
“What should we—” she begins; I’m already stepping past her. Someone is here, other than us. There are people on this road. It’s the first hint I’ve had that this might not be a wild-goose chase. That we might be able to find someone—find Becca. “Hello?” I call. “Hey. Are you okay?”
He doesn’t move. I’m not even sure it’s a man. The flashlights flatten his face into a pale oval, featureless, leaving no shadows to shape it.
We creep closer, moving as a single organism, amorphous. We find each other’s hands; who links with whom doesn’t seem to matter right now. I might be holding Mel’s hand or Anthony’s or Trina’s; later I won’t remember, and neither will anyone else.
Once we’re within fifteen feet or so, it’s obvious that he’s a man—a boy, really, our age, with blond hair that flops across his forehead and a long face, a soft face of few angles that will probably look young in fifteen years. He stares straight ahead. He’s breathing, short, sharp breaths like an animal in pain. He looks normal. Like us, not like this place.
“Hey,” I say. I drop the hand I’m holding and I crouch. Stillwell away, but down on his level now, tipping my head to try to catch his eye. “Are you hurt?”
He doesn’t answer. I try again. Anthony talks to him. Trina does. I stand. Look at the others, helpless. And then I swallow, and step closer. The group sorts itself swiftly, like we’re being unzipped: those who come forward, and those who stay back. With me: Anthony, Trina, Jeremy. Standing back: Vanessa, Mel, Kyle, Miranda.
I approach until I’m standing right next to him. He keeps up that shallow breathing, that in-out, in-out. It’s a wet sound; I can hear the spit in his mouth. “Hey,” I say. I reach out. “Hey.” My fingertips brush his shoulder, the cloth of his black sweatshirt.
He moves so quickly I can’t track the movement, his hand seizing mine, tightening until my bones scrape together. I yelp and lunge back, but he holds me firm, stock-still again, staring, panting between his teeth. Anthony yells and grabs his wrist, trying to pry his hand off mine, but it’s pointless. Jeremy’s there, too, grabbing the boy by the collar, shaking him, fist raised—and then just as suddenly as he grabbed me, he’s letting go.
I fall back against Anthony, who keeps me upright as I cradle my aching hand. Jeremy backs up fast, arms spread out slightly like he’s making himself a wall between me and Anthony and the boy.
