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“And one night, he caught me, asked what I was doing.” In my periphery, he’s slowly shaking his head side to side. “And he told me… he told me they were just echoes. Light reaching us billions of years after they’d already burned out.”
Above us, the stars blur into white streaks, as what he’s telling me registers.
He huffs a short, humorless laugh. “So stupid,” he mutters, his voice cracking the ever slightest bit.
“How old were you?”
“Uh, five, maybe four.”
Jesus.
I turn my head, angling it just enough to make out his profile. His eyes turned up toward the sky gleam, and his throat visibly dips with a hard swallow.
“You haven’t talked about him in years,” I murmur.
“Haven’t really thought about him in years.” He sniffs, and hangs his head, pinches the corners of his eyes with his fingers.
I inhale sharply. Then, “Mase?—”
“Come on. I don’t wanna be here anymore.”
Quickly turning away, he strides with quick, determined steps toward the first exiting pathway he sees, seemingly uncaring which direction he goes.
Biting back a curse, I quickly jog after him.
“This way,” I say, pointing toward the path branching off to the left. “Left hand rule, remember?”
His jaw tightens, and he nods, brushing past me without a word, or a single glance. But at least he’s not just mindlessly wandering off.
With a long-winded exhale, I follow after him, leaving the stars and the secrets they carry behind us.
Five days after Morris drops the news on us, we bury Isobel Montgomery in an empty coffin.
Well, empty except for her favorite stuffed monkey from when she was a kid, a handful of Polaroids—of us growing up, of our family, of her and Mason, of her and her friends…
And a yearbook that her favorite teacher, Mrs. Kennedy, her music teacher, got signed by nearly the entire school, and gave to us at graduation.
The funeral is huge.
Bigger than it should be for an empty casket.
Bigger than it should be for a seventeen-year-old girl who didn’t have nearly this many friends.
There’s even a news van here, parked just outside the cemetery gates where local police are on standby to ensure they don’t get through.
She’s forever seventeen.
The reminder that I’m not just minutes older now, but years older, never fails to gut me.
Mason doesn’t come to the funeral.
His mom tried to convince him. Gavin tried. Waylon tried. Even my dad tried.
I didn’t. I haven’t seen him or talked to him since the night Detective Morris stopped by, dropped the bomb on us, and I lost my shit in the driveway.
Not that I’ve tried to talk to him…
Not that he’s reached out either.
