The Dead and the Dark(17)

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Ashley exhaled. She wrung out her ponytail. “I’m fine.”

She wasn’t, but it wasn’t worth explaining anymore. The world since Tristan’s disappearance was like a fist pressed into wet clay. She felt the impression of him in her chest. Her new version of okay would just be this. It was a hard thing to swallow.

She hadn’t really wanted to come out tonight, but she’d spent weeks trying to get the search party to this side of the lake. A piece of her thought, once she got here, she would feel Tristan’s presence. She would know where to look. The answer would fall into her lap. But she’d been here for hours and she felt nothing.

On the lakeshore, John Paris hunched over a pile of juniper brambles. His bright red swim trunks glared in the cool dark, massive shoulders bobbing as he attempted to start a fire. They’d packed kindling and a lighter in the back of the truck, but as usual, John was determined to do it like the movies. Just a stick and furious motion. Fran and Paul sat behind him on the picnic table only halfway paying attention.

“I thought we were supposed to be swimming,” Ashley said.

Bug shrugged. “Guess they changed their mind.”

“You can go hang out with them if you want.” Ashley popped her neck. “Maybe you and Paul can talk about his dad some more.”

“Oh my god, no thanks,” Bug said. “If he—”

Before she could finish, John’s fire roared to life. He sprung backward, tumbling to his back. Fran and Paul jumped up behind him with a cheer. Ashley and Bug made their way toward shore.

While the others settled, John sat on the log next to Ashley. For a moment, he stared into the dirt between his feet in silence. “How’re you holding up?”

Ashley blinked. “Oh. You know.”

“Yeah.” John wiped his nose. “I know.”

Ashley nodded. Compared to her friendships with Fran and Bug, she and John had only ever been as close as two people raised in the same pocket-sized town. But on nights like this, when Ashley looked into John Paris’s face, it was like he was the only one who got it. He was the only other person with a Tristan-shaped impression in his chest. The only one who looked out at the black horizon and wondered if Tristan was looking back. The emptiness was suffocating him. It was suffocating Ashley, too.

In a way, it was nice to know she wasn’t alone.

Usually, there were six of them. There was a gap in their circle, just between Ashley and John. She hadn’t expected the empty air to feel so cold.

Eventually, the night softened into a blurry semblance of the way things used to be. Fran playfully fed s’mores to John, wiping stringy bits of marshmallow on his swim trunks. Bug slipped on her favorite green hoodie and buried her fists in the front pouch. Paul grasped at the dark, trying to catch flecks of ash between his fingers. It was almost right.

“I wish I could see their faces when they find it.” Paul laughed, part of a conversation Ashley had long since tuned out. He nudged John.

“I don’t care about their faces. I just want them to admit it,” John said.

“That, too,” Paul relented.

Over the last year, all of them had changed. But John Paris had changed the most. Instead of the scrawny pale boy he’d been junior year, he was now six feet tall with shoulders as wide as a horse’s and a square jaw that made him look just like his father. He was colder now, too. He wasn’t the boy who rode ATVs around the hills all summer with Paul and Tristan. He was more serious, like over the course of a single school year he’d turned into an adult. In a few years, he’d either be at Barton Lumber or training to join the police like his dad.

“Needs more wood,” John said, ignoring Paul completely. He slapped his knee and stood to face Fran. “Wanna help?”

Fran’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah. Cool.”

John smiled at her and they made their way toward the trees, leaving Ashley sitting opposite Bug and Paul. The fire popped and crackled, licks of orange flashing against the velvety night. A pile of firewood was stacked next to it—more than enough to last for hours.

So they’d been ditched.

“I’m gonna get a truck,” Paul said, angled toward Bug. Puberty may have blessed John, but it’d done the opposite for Paul. He’d grown at least six inches in the last year, but his limbs were still gangly, eyes sunken so deep they looked bruised. He flashed a toothy smile at Bug and the firelight sank into the deep crevices of his face. “Well, I’m probably getting one.”

Bug’s eyes remained on the fire. “Awesome.”

“Yeah. My dad says if I can fix up this old Tacoma he got from the tow lot, I can have it. He’s teaching me how to fix the radiator.”

“Nice.”

Paul kept talking, oblivious to the way Bug avoided eye contact. This was usually when Ashley and Tristan would meet eyes and Tristan would shake his head. Ashley would have to bite her lip to stop from laughing. Later, when everyone else had gone home and it was just her and Tristan in the back of her truck under the stars, she would put on her best Paul voice and say, My dad taught me how to change oil the other day. A truck with a fresh oil change? That’s art. And Tristan would laugh until he wheezed. He would pull Ashley against his chest and they would be a tangle of laughs and kisses until her mom called and they had to race back to town before sunrise.