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The gas catches almost at once. Easy. The flame elongates elegantly, filling the glass cylinder built to contain it. In front of the large glass case, Mel yelps. “Damn, that’s bright!” she says, staggering around the side with her hand over her eyes.
“But look,” Becca breathes, pointing.
The glass focuses the light. Not to a beam, shining out to warn ships, but to a narrow slice that cuts down to the water and across it as far as I can see. It’s angled so that the light touches down precisely where the shore meets the water and continues in a strip along its surface. The light is golden, but it turns the water gray—the same gray as the road, as the shore, as the floorboards in the house.
“That’s it,” Becca says. “That’s the road.”
“That’s our way forward,” I say.
“And that’s where something’s going to go wrong,” Kyle says. He looks grim. “It’s too easy. It’s apuzzle. And none of the gates have been easy. Whatever’s waiting on that water, it’s going to be bad.”
“We’ll deal with it,” I say. “But we need to go now.”
“Why?” Anthony asks.
“Because it’s night. The light is strong enough now, but what about when the sun rises?”
“Good point,” he concedes.
We head back down. At the bottom of the stairs, we collect our things, Becca hanging awkwardly back. She never let go of her bag. Probably smarter than the rest of us.
When I pick up my bag, it’s ridiculously heavy. I start sorting through it, pulling out all the food and the extra clothing and the water bottles that now seem foolish. Becca’s survived a year without food, and here I am lugging around enough protein bars to last a week. I take Becca’s camera out and cradle it a moment before looking up at her. “I brought this,” I say. “Do you want it?”
Her eyes light up. She reaches for it, and when I hold it out, she takes it gingerly, her fingers running over it like she’s rediscovering its contours. “I didn’t want to bring it out to the woods, so I just brought my point-and-shoot,” she says. “And then I lost that in the house somewhere.” She turns the camera on, fiddles with a few settings, and lifts it, snapping a photo of Anthony. He looks up, surprised, and she laughs. She turns it on me. I look away. I’ve never liked having my photo taken.
I’ve never liked having my photo taken,exceptby Becca. I hate how my cheeks bulge out when I smile, how I always look hunched, how every angle seems to capture the awkward bump at the top of my nose. Becca’s photos are the only ones that I look at and see myself the way I look in the mirror. But still I turn away. In the moment I’m not sure why, but now I think I know.
I don’t turn away because I am worried about the way I will look in the photo, about seeingmyself. I turn away because the reason Becca has always been able to take my picture so well, thereason all her pictures are so good, is that they’re howshesees. And for some reason, I don’t want her to see me right now. As if there’s something that only she might be able to discern—something I don’t want revealed. But that thought skitters away into the dark like so many others I can’t seem to keep hold of.
I get to my feet, throw the bag over my shoulder. It’s lighter now, especially without the camera. The movement puts my shoulder to her, blocking her view of me.
“Let’s go,” I say.
We traipse down to the shore. The boat bobs in the water, bathed in the light. A thick, water-swollen rope lashes the boat to a metal ring bolted to the rocks. Anthony leans out to grab it, then hauls the boat in close enough that we can step onto it from the dry shore to the boat.
It’s a rowboat. Not huge, but big enough for five people who don’t mind bumping shoulders. Mel and Kyle crouch at the front together, Becca and I take the bench at the back, and Anthony, unsurprisingly, mans the oars at the center bench. It takes us a while to get the rope loose and cast off, and another few lurching tries for Anthony to figure out the rhythm of the oars. But then we’re moving, and the boat, for all its apparent age, is surprisingly smooth and swift. The shore falls away; the path of light spills ahead.
“Let me know if I’m going off course,” Anthony says, focused on the unfamiliar movement. I watch his shoulders as he rows, the coiling and uncoiling of his muscles. I feel oddly detached.
I want what I told Mel to be true. I want there to be a someday we’re reaching for, waiting for, when all of this is far enoughbehind us that I can care about crushes again. Think about being kissed and feel that thrill like fingers running up my spine.
I almost, almost let myself believe it for a moment. And then I see Anthony’s eyes widen in horror, and twist around, half standing.
The road is vanishing. At first I think something is wrong with the lighthouse—and then I realize the lighthouse is gone, too. It isn’t that the road is gone. It’s that the darkness is coming.
“Dark,” Anthony manages, a frantic warning. Kyle and Mel whirl, the boat rocking at the movement, their hands already clutching together.
Becca turns in the seat. Breath hisses between her teeth.
Five of us. One too many.
She looks at Anthony. She looks at me. Her hand hovers, indecisive, and I don’t know which way I want her to reach. Who I want her to choose.
I never get the chance to find out. The darkness crashes over us, and the boat suddenly rocks, struck from beneath by some unseen force. I’m thrown from my awkward position. I scrabble blindly at the wood of the boat, but it slews, and my shoulder strikes the side hard the instant before I hit the water.
EXHIBIT L
Police interview of Rebecca Donoghue
