Come Find Me(27)

Sutton Tanner is an asshole. “Who goes there?” he calls, like we’re actors in some Shakespearean play, and the play is about him.

I raise my hand. “Hey. Sutton?” I ask, even though of course it’s Sutton. Of course. We don’t go to the same school, but every winter there’s this tri-county baseball clinic, and so I’ve sort of half-known him for years. He has this easy demeanor that everyone loves in the dugout, something to lighten the mood, something to distract from the cold, or the crappy play. But the act never really falls away, and then it’s just grating. Either way, he’s easy to pick out, I’ll give him that.

“Hey, man. Nolan, right?” He smiles, his teeth glaring white in the moonlight.

“Yep.” I don’t know what to say. How to explain what I’m doing here, if he asks. But he doesn’t.

“Welcome,” he says, stretching out his arms, like he owns the place.

    God, they don’t even know. Where they’re standing. What they’re doing.

They’re drinking beer in the middle of a state park, and I don’t get it. What the allure is of meeting up to drink beer outside on a hot night in the dark, when the mosquitoes are eating you alive.

Get a little more creative, I think. Sneak inside someone’s room. A basement. Something with air conditioning. Maybe use a cooler. A refrigerator. This cannot be the peak of adolescence.

He hops down from the tire swing and steps closer, the two other people with him drawing nearer. There’s a guy, tan and skinny, kind of sullen-looking. Though maybe it’s on purpose; from what I can gather from the girls at my school, the moody look is in. And there’s a girl with brown skin and long, dark hair, who stops to look at something over her shoulder every few steps.

“Marco, Lydi,” Sutton says by way of introduction, rapid-fire.

“—ah,” the girl adds. “Lydi-ah.” She looks me straight in the eye, and even in the dark, I can tell: she’s beautiful.

Sutton smiles wide. “You can only call her Lydi if you’ve—”

She swings her arm in the direction of his head, but he catches her wrist, laughing.

“You’re such a jerk,” she says, but she’s smiling.

I don’t get it. I really don’t. Sutton Tanner is an asshole, and she can’t get enough.

God, I have to get out of here.

“Want a beer?” he asks, fishing through a backpack. From the way he can’t keep still, there’s like an eighty percent chance that can of beer explodes if he’s the one who carried it in here.

    “No thanks, I’m…” I’m what? Trying to find out what pi has to do with my brother’s disappearance, in the middle of the night, believing he’s sent me some sort of clue? Searching for the paranormal, and this is the prime spot? They stare at me, waiting.

A twig snaps in the distance, and Lydia jumps again, her head twisting.

“Did you guys hear that?” she asks, her voice shaky.

“Calm down, babe,” Sutton says.

Marco peers over his shoulder into the dark. “She’s still jumpy from this afternoon.”

“What happened this afternoon?” Sutton asks, looking between Marco and Lydia. You can tell, even now, he doesn’t like to be the last to know something.

Lydia shrugs. “Kennedy happened. Wanted me to take a look at something for her, and then she left me there.”

“She left you at the house?” he asks, shuddering.

“No, the shed.”

“Just as bad,” he mumbles.

“Right, and then I…heard something. I could’ve sworn she never left. Only she says she was at the police station, meeting with the prosecutors or something. She had the paperwork and everything.”

Sutton frowns. “Why were you even at Kennedy’s house?”

“She asked me to, Sutton. God. But really, you didn’t hear anything just now?”

“I heard something,” I say.

    They both look at me, surprised. Like they’d already forgotten I existed. Forgotten that they had just thirty seconds ago called me nearer, introduced me to their group, offered me a beer.

“Sutton, come on, I want to go,” Lydia says, tugging his arm.

He presses his lips together. Shrugs. “All right,” he says. Okay, not a complete asshole, I think.

Then he turns the whole thing around with a wicked grin. “Always give a girl what she asks for, my friend.” Nope, definitely an asshole.

Lydia nudges him as he walks past, then quickly falls into step. Even Marco trails after them. Back down the path, out of the park. No one really cares what I was doing here. No one wonders. It should probably feel more like relief.

Their voices carry, and I wait for silence. Sitting still, in the dark, with my eyes closed, I can feel the memory of the signal in the palm of my hand, the way it buzzed, in a rhythm. I picture a circle, myself at the center.

And then I try to listen for my brother. For whatever he’s trying to tell me. I focus on the way he looked during the fever dream, his mouth moving, trying to decipher the words he was saying: Help us. Please.

It takes a minute for everything to still around me, for every sound to have a place, until I feel it. Something else. Someone else.