Sign Here(81)

“This is it,” she said. “The entrance must be up there.”

Her knuckles were white around the tablet, and she held it in the air in front of her as if to line up a picture. I thought about reaching out to her mind, but I couldn’t give myself away. Not yet.

Trey stumbled out of the woods after her, tripping as he pulled burrs from his shoes.

“Did you have to wear neon sneakers?” Cal asked, glaring back at him. “I told you this was an incognito kind of thing.”

“That’s all I have,” Trey answered, trademark pout in his voice.

Her shoulders tightened as soon as he spoke, and I knew it: she hated him. I could feel it boiling off her skin from here. Which was further proof that I was right—she was up to something. Something she didn’t want me to be a part of.

Too damn bad, I thought. Here I am.

“His room is on the first floor,” Cal whispered as she approached the squat brick building.

“Are you sure he’ll be in there? Don’t nursing homes have, like, activities?”

Cal shushed him and held up one finger as she sent her mind out, listening.

“You’re lucky you’re hot, you know? If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be so cool with all the shushing.”

“Just be quiet,” she hissed, and Trey complied. We were all silent for a moment until she nodded. “Yeah, he’s in there. His room is all the way at the end of the hall. Are you ready?”

But when she turned back to Trey, it was too late.

I’d gotten my hand around his wrist just the second before, so all she caught was his faint outline as I triggered my tablet and shot him straight back down to Hell.

“Hey there, partner,” I said, dog tag necklace outstretched. “Lose something?”





SILAS





SILAS RIPPED THE PLASTIC casing from the cap with his teeth, the engine roaring loud enough in the darkness to make him feel like it was the only sound in a soundless world. He put the whiskey pint in the cupholder Phil had jerry-rigged to the front of the bike and spat out the plastic along with the cap itself. He hadn’t meant to, but he didn’t need it.

It was only there on the road, the bike so loud and the dark so dark, knowing the kids were fed and safe at the Watersons’—Lily gone for the night, who knows where, but he didn’t care—and he was truly alone, that he could talk to his brother. And it was only with whiskey that his brother ever seemed to talk back.

“I bet you think this is pretty fucking funny,” he said. He knew he said it out loud because he felt the wind rush his throat and the roof of his mouth, making him take a burning sip. But he couldn’t hear himself say it.

“Even you couldn’t have seen that coming—huh? Lily and Gavin Kelly?” Silas laughed. “I know, I know. Karma is a bitch.”

After Phil died, Silas tried everything he could to lure him back. First, he tried bribes, filling the cabinets of his newlywed apartment with Phil’s favorite cereal and shape of mac and cheese. When that didn’t work, he tried challenges: Bet you can’t hold your breath this long, Phil. Bet you can’t drive this long with your eyes closed.

When that did nothing, he turned to bargaining.

One year after Phil died, Silas took Sean to the park. He was an infant, his head still soft to the touch. Lily went out to do errands, and Silas took his son to the pond outside of town, to look at the ducks. He was bargaining a lot back then, positive the only thing missing wasn’t his brother, but just the right deal. It was a cool day for that time of year, “crisp” as the tourist pamphlets called it. Sean was a quiet baby (which you just know means he’ll give you hell as a teenager, said every woman over forty to his teen parents, terrified but good at smiling), and especially so near water. When they arrived, Silas slid Sean’s bassinet onto a picnic table bench.

“What if I take off all my clothes and jump in the water?” he asked, squinting unpleasantly at the pond, fingers of frost still holding tight to its edges.

Nothing.

The sky was white. Not blue, not red or purple. Not black. It was white; blank space. Like someone forgot to color it in. Silas looked at his son, so pink compared to all that nothing around him. It made him look like he was screaming, he was so pink. But he was quiet.

Silas put one hand under his head and one under his body—Sean was so small back then, he could fit entirely in Silas’s forearm, like a football—and he walked down to the water.

He didn’t bother to roll up his pants. When the water got to his waist, he lowered the arm that held Sean, stopping just as the sagging heels of his onesie dipped into the water. Sean was awake; he had been all afternoon. He looked at Silas, not scared, not even curious. Just present.

“I’ll do it, Phil,” he said. His eyes were burning, tears hot and so close to the edge, but he refused to blink. “I swear to God. If you don’t come back, I’ll do it.”

The pond was murky, and his sneakers suctioned to the bottom. The pond, like the sky, had been forgotten. Not black, not blue. Just nothing.

Then Silas slipped and lurched forward, and Sean hit the water. At first, nothing happened. And then, as if he remembered that his body was a part of him, Sean’s face cracked into a sob.

Silas had his fair share of demons. The thirty seconds he waited before pulling his son out of that water was one of his fiercest.