One Was Lost(60)

Lucas rattles the shiny padlock on the front door with a sad laugh. And then his shoulders sag, and he drops his forehead softly to the door. Something in me aches at that gesture. It’s the first time he’s looked weak.

It’s the first time I’ve wondered if he was going to cry.

I reach for him, fingertips grazing his sweat-damp shirt. It feels like slow motion when he turns, tears glittering in his eyes even as he forces that cocky grin back into place.

“Yeah, I’m real dangerous. I can’t even get into this rickety-ass trailer.”

I rest my palm against his chest until he takes a breath that shakes as badly as my fingers. I press harder, hoping to steady him. He leans back into the trailer like I pushed him, watching me with heavily lidded eyes.

“You could have left us two days ago,” I say, only just realizing it. On his own, he would have made it. Lucas is built for this sort of adventure. He’s made to survive.

He snorts. “Sure, I could have just—”

“Yes, you could have. You could have walked north on that first day like you wanted to. Like we all probably should have. You could have left us, left me. And you didn’t.”

His heart thumps at my fingers like a bass line, and I step in close.

“But you’re still out here,” he says. “We’re all still out here, so what does it matter?”

I feel everything I felt on the back deck and more, but I don’t hate it right now. This feeling I mocked and ran from and despised is the thing that’s keeping me going.

“It matters,” I say, and I kiss him softly, stretching up so high on my toes that the arches of my feet ache. I taste the salt on his lips and maybe a little dirt, but then his hand is so soft on my neck that everything goes feather-light at the edges. The darkness and fear melt away. Even my stupid hand dulls to a throb.

Lucas pulls back. I can feel his eyes on me, but his expression is hidden by the camper’s shadow. He brushes a thumb over my lips and then takes me back down the concrete block stairs that wobble under every step.

“Stay down here for a minute.”

I’m opening my mouth to ask when he launches back up the stairs, grabbing the file off the ground. He wedges it in the seam beside the door. After grunting and shifting, he slips it farther into the frame and pushes against the end for leverage. Metal and wood creak. I hold my breath—the file slips with a pop.

Lucas cries out, yanking his hand back and shaking it. Blood is dripping from his middle finger.

“Lucas—”

He waves me off, and then he’s pushing until he’s groaning and the door is groaning and I’m biting my lip. A snap rocks through the air, and something clatters on the concrete steps.

The file. Half of it. It broke off in the door.

Lucas explodes, fists and feet and words flying at the door like bullets. I step farther back as he rages, kicking one of the concrete blocks in the steps three feet away as he brutalizes the door. I don’t even think he notices it’s gone. He’s too busy cursing a blue streak and rocking the camper on its deflated wheels.

My heart climbs into my mouth, trapped there by my gritted teeth. I have to do something. Stop him before Mr. Walker hears and comes back. We’re in a valley, but it could echo, couldn’t it?

“Lucas,” I say.

He doesn’t stop, shoving and punching at the door like it’s all he sees. The frame splinters a little, but he’s still slamming over and over, muttering to himself.

“Outofhere. Outofhere. I’mgettingheroutofhere!”

“Lucas!”

He doesn’t stop, throwing his shoulder, his whole body, against the door. Once, it rocks. Twice, something snaps underneath the trailer. A third time, and the door gives with a symphony of snaps and rips.

Then there is quiet. The door dangles off one half-busted hinge. Lucas lands on his side, shoulders and head inside the darkness of the camper.





Chapter 26


I make my way up the stairs on Play-Doh legs, crouching at his side and helping him sit up inside the busted door frame.

He looks up at me, cuts on his face and a dazed look in his eyes. “Shit, I actually got in.”

“You did,” I say, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “You really did.”

It’s so dark inside that the trailer is mostly things I feel and smell. A sticky floor under our boots and sleeping benches I bump into with every step. It smells like spilled beer and cigarettes, but it does not smell like blood or death or trees. And I am grateful.

There’s a plastic-wrapped carton of bottles on the counter, mostly empty. I find a couple of bottles of Gatorade in the back and crack one open. I offer the first to Lucas before opening my own. For a while, we stand there in the dark and quiet, staring at the door he destroyed while we drink our fill.

Lucas finds a flashlight strapped by a window, and the sudden brightness is disarming, illuminating duct-tape-repaired cushions and cracks on the tiny metal table hinged to the wall. Someone moves across from me, and I flinch. Nope, not a person. A mirror.

I stare, Lucas’s left shoulder shielding the worst of my stained clothes. My view of my face is clear as day though, and it’s the face of a stranger. My dark eyes are sunken, my hair clumped around my neck in dull hanks. I have a scrape under one eye I don’t remember getting and sweat and dirt ground into my forehead and chin. I sure don’t look like my mother now.