One Was Lost(61)

Do I still look like Hannah?

Lucas isn’t much better. He’s like an extra from a zombie movie, his features beyond hollow and patches of stubble showing through on his chin. He’s rooting around in cabinets, hunched over because he’s too tall to stand up in here. He takes up every inch of available space, like a cartoon character in a too-small bed.

“Let me see that hand,” he says, reaching for me. I can see a red metal box in his other hand. First aid kit.

I turn over my hand and let out a low breath. It isn’t pretty. Like the worst case of road rash I’ve ever seen. It’s puffy and pink, and I see places where it’s weeping yellow pus.

Lucas opens a bottle of peroxide and looks at me. I can tell his jaw is tight, but he just tells me to grit my teeth and hold on to the table. Nothing has ever hurt like the peroxide he pours over my hand. It hits my tender flesh like lava, flashfire painful and leaving a loud throb in its place.

“Breathe, Sera,” he says.

I do, and I cry a little too but try to hide it because Lucas knows me as the girl with her crap together. I had clipboards, flouncy dresses, and a plan. Even when our rotating Les Misérables set broke mid-show last year, I held my shit together and got us all to curtain call.

Now I cry over every damn thing and swoon when Lucas glances at me sideways, and I’m going with my gut so much, I should hate myself. I really should.

I feel cool pressure and look up to see him pressing a white gauze pad over the palm of my hand. He frowns at it.

“I squirted a bunch of antibiotic ointment on it. It’s not perfect.”

“It’s better than nothing.”

“It’s not good enough.” He rummages in the kit again, finding a ratty-looking ACE bandage, and starting at the webbing between my thumb and forefinger, he wraps my entire hand and wrist. “It’ll keep it padded and clean. Cleaner anyway.”

I pick at the table. Stare at my lap. Think about the last time I cut my hand. It wasn’t as bad, of course—just a paper cut—but it was in that tender webbing between my thumb and index finger, and God, it hurt for a week.

I got it on the one and only thing my mother has sent me since she left. I’d ripped open the envelope so fast, desperate for some sort of explanation. A letter. Maybe a late birthday card. Or at least a check.

It was a holiday card, one of those preprinted photo things you can order from the drugstore. This one featured Mom and Charlie by a palm tree strewn with Christmas lights. On the back, she wrote four words—Always thinking of you—and a little ink heart.

I look up at the mirror, and now I can see her. Just a spark in my eyes, but it hurts. What did I expect though? There aren’t enough scrapes and bruises in the world to take her out. She’s in the marrow of my bones. Some part of that person who believes a greeting card somehow makes up for four years of not being there—it’s inside me.

“Are you OK?” Lucas asks.

I stand up abruptly. “Sorry, got distracted. We should find a key for the quad, right?” Then I turn to the four doorless cabinets and hinged counter over the cooler. I guess it’s supposed to be the kitchen, pathetic as it is. There’s a camping set and something made of grass and sticks that’s too shadowy to investigate in the corner of the counter. It’s probably a nest.

“There’s got to be one somewhere,” I say.

“Got it.” I hear him stand up, feel him move behind me, all strength and heat and absolute patience. Lucas is always patient. Always waiting.

He reaches past me, hand grazing my hip. My whole body goes tight, heat surging behind my rib cage. Something jingles, and then I see the keys in his hands.

“How did you see that?” I ask, looking behind me. There’s a small hook screwed into the edge of the counter I’m leaning on. They must have been hanging there.

“Lucky spot,” he says.

“Thank God! So, we’re going north?” I turn for the door, eyes on my feet as I try to edge past him in the narrow space.

He steps in front of me, a simple move that stops me in my tracks.

“We can’t leave until dawn.”

“Are you kidding? Mr. Walker could be out there right now!”

“You know what’s definitely out there? Cliffs. A shit-ton of them.” He shakes his head. “Dawn is four hours away, tops. Mr. Walker was headed north, so he’s probably to the road already, unless by some miracle the Cherokee ghosts led his ass off a cliff.”

I bite my lip. “I’m afraid to wait.”

“Me too,” he admits. “But I’m more afraid to go when we can’t see. We’ll keep watch. We’ll hear him coming long before he gets here, if it comes to that.”

“And then what? What if he does come?”

“Then we fire up the quad and take our chances with driving off a cliff,” he says. “We have to be smart, Sera. Driving in the dark around cliffs is how people die.”

“It feels crazy to just sit here.”

He nods, and I can tell he’s still watching me. I try not to fidget, but it’s hard.

“Sera, what were you thinking back there? When you were sitting at the table, you were a million miles away.”

I stop, arms crossed around my middle and hair covering my face. I can see his shirt move as he breathes. In and out. In and out. I feel like a diva with a broken voice. This isn’t me marching across a stage, laying out battle plans and leading the charge. I have no control here.