The Lost Village(66)

“Chalk,” she says quietly.

“What?”

I’m barely listening to her, so preoccupied I am with our surroundings. My paranoia is making everything both slow down and speed up at the same time.

“It’s a piece of chalk,” she says. She lifts it up at me.

“It must have gotten caught in the sole of her shoe,” I say.

My lips start to tingle.

“It’s from the school,” I continue. “There was crushed chalk on the floor in the classrooms.”

“Do you think it was…?” Emmy asks.

“If it was Tone we heard last night over the walkie-talkie,” I say, interrupting her, “then she must have gone back to the school. It’s where she lost it, when she went through the step.”

I look out over Silvertj?rn. From up here it looks almost like a normal village in bloom. If you squint, that is.

“It’s where she hurt herself,” I go on. “And where her mom was found. It wouldn’t be so strange for her to feel a pull back there.”

“Back where?”

Max hasn’t come out onto the steps, but stands half in shadow.

“Tone was here,” I say. “Last night. I think she’s in the school.”

“We don’t know it was Tone,” says Emmy. “It could have been one of us. It could just as easily have come from your shoe, Alice.”

“But that wouldn’t explain why there are crumbs of chalk in the prints,” I say, hearing the impatience shining through my own voice.

“And even if she was in the school, we can’t be sure she’s still there,” Emmy says.

“But it’s the best lead we have,” I say, looking at the others. “We have to at least try.”

“This changes nothing,” says Emmy. “I know it might feel like it, but it doesn’t. Not really. We voted that it’s safest to stay here.”

I look at the others. Robert’s lips are pinched. Max’s eyes don’t meet mine.

She’s right. They all are. I can feel it in my bones, that fear, like a sour taste on my tongue. I want nothing more than to stay there, to give in to their reason. I’ve seen the movies, too—I know what happens to the person who leaves safety to head out into the dark forest, the haunted psychiatric ward, the abandoned school.

But what those movies don’t show is the guilt surging like a current through my skin; how it feels to know someone you care about is already there, alone and vulnerable and terrified.

What the moviegoers don’t see is that the shame of staying can weigh heavier than the fear of going.

“Then I’ll go alone,” I say.

The sun stings my eyes. I turn around and walk past Max, back into the church.





NOW



It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the church, and I hit my thigh on one of the pews we’ve shoved to one side. I curse under my breath—ugly, explosive words I wouldn’t normally use—but hobble on into the chapel.

It’s warm in there. I close the door behind me, sit down on one of the chairs, and bury my face in my hands. Try to take slow, deep breaths. In and out.

Can I do this?

I have to. Even though the stress is making me sick. Even though the sound of that walkie-talkie is echoing through my head, off the inside of my skull. That inhuman, many-edged roar.

It must have been Tone. Just like it must have been Tone in the van—if there really was anyone there. Just because it didn’t sound like the Tone I know, doesn’t mean it isn’t her. The Tone I know probably isn’t the same person who’s hiding out there now.

But at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. I have to go. If there’s a chance she’ll be there I have to look.

When the door opens, I say quietly:

“Do you want to come with me?”

I’m expecting Max’s voice. I’m expecting a no. It’s only when I hear nothing that I look up.

Emmy has already closed the door behind her. Her eyes are looking at the window, out onto the graveyard. The sunlight plays over her face, washing away the tiredness and dirt.

“You can’t stop me,” I say, even though some small part of me really hopes she can.

“Oh no,” she says. “I probably could. If I tried.”

She sounds so naturally confident that it grates on me like flint on steel, lights a spark that turns fear to anger.

“I don’t get how you can just sit here,” I say to her. “If you hadn’t taken off this would never have happened—you do see that, right? If you’d been there, like you said you would, she would never—never—”

“I know,” Emmy cuts me off. “OK? I know. I know.”

This stuns me into silence.

“You’re acting like you’re the only one here who cares about Tone,” she says, looking straight at me for the first time, her eyes devastatingly green. “Like you’re the only one here with any sense of responsibility, the only one who’s worried. Don’t you get how fucking frustrating that is?”

She throws her arms out.

“Everyone wants to be heroes, Alice! Everyone wants to run around fixing everything, but this isn’t a movie! It isn’t one of your grandma’s stories! Just because we’re in Silvertj?rn doesn’t mean we know how the story ends. Tone blew up our vans. You say she isn’t violent, that she’s sick, and I buy that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but you have no idea what she’s capable of right now! What do you think is going to happen? That if you whisper softly and sweetly to her, appeal to her inner goodness, that she’ll just snap out of it? That isn’t how it works!”