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Walking around for hours, and somehow, we’d landed right back where we started. I kicked the gravel, scattering it, obscuring the shape—pissed off at the river, the ground, the situation, but most of all, my own stupidity.
I should have known better.The phrase gnawed at me. Wouldn’t leave me alone. I should have known better than to trust Carmine Rossi. I should have known better than to throw in my lot with him to begin with. I should have known better than to deck Robbie Milard for calling me a faggot in third grade, back before any of us even knew what it meant. And I should have known better than to relish the feel of that gap-toothed punk sprawled at my feet, blubbering how sorry he was. I should have known better. And look where it got me.
“Maybe there is no road,” Shane murmured.
“We both landed here somehow, didn’t we?” Sure, Carmine wanted to teach me a lesson, toss me somewhere out of the way. But he wouldn’t be willing to offroad for more than a couple minutes. Think of the wear and tear on the Caddy. “We’ll walk at an angle next time. And if we don’t find anything in a few minutes, we’ll double back. Start again. There’s gotta be a road.”
“Or maybe we should start building a hut,” Shane suggested dryly. “That’s what they do on reality shows, isn’t it? Build a hut. Hunt for food. Scope out a source of fresh—” He gasped, backpedaled into the cover of the trees, pointed at the river, and whispered, “Did you hear that?”
Normally I’m hard to rattle, but at the sound of those words—same as the last question out of Carmine’s mouth—my hackles went up and goosebumps rose on my goosebumps. Once I tuned out the thudding of my own heart in my ears, though, I knew exactly what sound had caught Shane’s attention: the distant whine of an outboard motor.
The trees behind him would make for the best camouflage. A few long, loud strides, and I took cover there beside him. As we crouched behind a thick screen of weedy growth, I wondered what the hell we were hiding from, and why the impulse had died in me to flag down a passing boat.
Gray against gray, the prow of a small boat emerged from the haze, angling toward shore. I’m no expert, and it’s not as if I could recognize any distinguishing marks through the fog, but my gut told me it was the same damn boat as before. Maybe it was the general size and shape of it, the position of the guy at the rudder. Maybe it was the pitch of the engine. Maybe it was because, other than Shane and me, this boater was the only other living soul I’d seen.
Whatever the reason, I would’ve bet my last dollar (even though it was technically Shane’s) that even coming from the same direction as before, it was the same boat, the same guy.
And whoever he was, I didn’t trust him.
The two of us were so busy keeping our eyes on the boat, we didn’t even notice the woman ’till she was practically in the river.
She crept up to the rotted pilings a couple dozen yards away, watching as the boat approached. She was older, Carmine’s age, dressed like she was heading for her granddaughter’s wedding in a glitzy purple dress and a fat string of pearls. Shane and me, we were watching so hard we didn’t so much as breathe. So how’d this old broad manage to sneak up on us—in her sensible two-inch heels, over a quarter mile of gravel? I would figure the whole thing for some screwy hallucination and chalk it up to the knock on the head, except that the way Shane’s fingers were now digging into my forearm, I was pretty damn sure he saw it all, too.
By the time the fog released the boat enough for it to look like anything more than a hazy silhouette, the prow was kissing the jagged pilings. They spoke, the boater and the lady in purple, and though they had to be close enough for me to hear what they said, I couldn’t. The woman rummaged around the front of her dress and came up with a folded bill she’d stashed in her bra. The guy stood—not rocking the boat in the slightest—took the money, then gave her a hand up. The boat had gone so still that it didn’t so much as rock when she stepped aboard. She settled herself in the prow, chatting with the boatman, while he opened up the throttle and steered the small craft into the lazy current.
The outboard motor’s whine receded quickly, eaten by the fog. I expected some kind of smartass comment from Shane to break the tension. Not only was I expecting it, I was hoping for it. Desperately. But when I turned to look at him, he was just staring into the fog, wide-eyed and pale.
I only realized he was still clinging to my arm when he released it, mumbling, “Sorry.”
I half-shrugged.
“I hate water,” he added. “Freaks me out.”
“This stretch of the river wouldn’t hold much appeal for anyone.”
“True. It’s the scariest dead zombie clown in the clown car. But I really,reallyhate water.”
“Then we put it behind us and find the road.”
I motioned for him to go ahead, then followed him out of the trees. He paused and squinted at the rotten pilings, and said, “But what if crossing the river is the only way out of here?”
“Then we walk till we find a bridge. Now, get going.”
3
Straight away from the river, and uphill. In the distance, more fog. Trees. I set my sights on them and trudged. The pale, pebbly gravel crunched beneath the soles of my boots. Shane crunched along beside me. He was scanning the ground, trying to figure out where the old lady in purple had come from. I kept my eyes on the prize. Neither one of us had much luck. He spotted nothing but rocks. I misjudged the distance of the trees something awful. Either that, or my sense of time was all screwed up, because it felt like we were walking for ages, and the trees were still way the hell off in the distance.
“You know what’s funny?” Shane said. The sound of his voice over the repetitive rasp of our feet against the gravel was a huge relief. “I used to think I was just born that way.” I cut my eyes to him, wondering how we’d managed to land onthatparticular topic, and he laughed nervously and said, “Nervous around water, I mean. When I was fourteen, my new high school, St. Adjutor’s, had this huge swimming pool. The gym teacher threatened to fail me if I didn’t get my scrawny ass in the pool—Mr. Meyers, he was a big guy, all shoulders and arms, like you—and I flipped so bad that I totally cussed him out. I was so far gone I don’t even know what I was saying. And kids, they embellish after the fact. I heard I called him everything from a drill sergeant that got off on torturing children to a limp-dicked Nazi on a power trip….”
We trudged. The gravel crunched. And after a good few minutes of that, Shane said, “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Babbling. I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
We crunched along for a while, until finally I had to ask. “So why’d you stop talking?”
Shane paused. “You were listening?”
