Come Find Me(56)

I said them to myself even after I stopped broadcasting. I said them over and over, in case anyone, anywhere, was listening.



* * *



—

Joe has called me four times in the minutes it has taken me to sprint across the campus. I look around me, but it’s only more of the same. The ground curving away, in every direction, at the horizon.

There’s no place to go. The earth is finite, I can’t escape my existence here. Or the things I did, and the things I didn’t do.

Eventually, I stand, brushing the grass from my shorts, and I circle back. There’s nowhere else to go. Run forever, and the earth curves back around.

On and on it goes. The same thing over and over.

I head back to the parking lot and see a shape waiting for me there. When I get closer, I see it’s not Joe, but Nolan. He pushes off his car, standing there, looking at me like he doesn’t recognize me.

    I stop in my tracks, halfway across the lot. “I didn’t know,” I say. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know,” he says.

He opens his mouth to say more, but we’re cut off by a booming voice in the distance.

“Kennedy!” It’s Joe, jogging down the path from the other direction.

I turn back to Nolan. “You should go,” I tell him.

“No, I want—”

“Please, Nolan.” Because I don’t want him to hear this, the things Joe is about to ask me. I don’t want him to know what really happened that night.



* * *



—

At first, Joe doesn’t say anything. He just gestures to his car, and we drive in silence, except we’re not heading toward his house, or mine. We’re just on a highway, signs designating east.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “You know, the first week you were at my house? I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and I’d see you sleeping, and I just…I didn’t know what to do. I would get in the car and just drive. For hours.”

I twist in my seat. “You snuck out?”

He presses his lips together, but it’s almost a smile. “It’s not sneaking out when it’s your own house. I even left you a note on the kitchen table in case you woke up.” He cuts his eyes to me. “A courtesy you might want to take into consideration next time.”

“I’m sorry.”

He lets out a slow breath and merges onto some other road, less traveled, nothing but trees surrounding us. “Me too, Kennedy. Truth is, I didn’t know what to say to you.” He grips the wheel tighter. “I still don’t. Right now, I want to ask you what happened, but I don’t even know where to start.”

    “I tried to get help,” I say to Joe again, and this time, he understands. He pulls the car over onto the shoulder, in what feels at that moment like the middle of nowhere.

He takes a deep breath, then turns to face me. His voice low, and calm. “It’s just us, Kennedy. Just me and you, for real this time. Anything you say to me, it stays right here. And we’re nowhere. Okay?”

He’s right; it feels like nowhere. I didn’t think I’d be able to find this exact spot ever again. There were no mile markers. Just road and trees and a sun dipping lower on the horizon.

I stare out the front windshield, my eyes watering from the glare.

It had been dark and raining that night, and I was waiting for the distance between the lightning and thunder to spread out so it was safe to race across the open field, to my house. And then I ran, sprinting through the storm.

“When I was coming back home,” I tell Joe, “I could see, from a distance, a light was on. In Elliot’s room. I was all the way across the field still, though.”

I heard a loud boom, and then, a little while later, a second one. The first I could explain away, as a trick of thunder, and the distance. But at the second sound, I jumped. The noise felt closer than the storm. Sharper, something that gripped my heart, turning everything still.

It was enough to keep me from going to my room, sliding open the window, and crawling inside. Some deep-buried instinct. It was like, even then, I knew.

    “When I reached the house, I looked into Elliot’s room first—where the light was on. His desk chair was empty, but the light over the desk was on.” The headphones had been sitting beside his laptop, like he’d just been sitting there a moment ago. His bedroom door was open, and I could see the hallway. “Out in the hall, I could see the handprint on the wall. Red, a streak of blood below.” I shiver, and Joe closes his eyes. “And I could see Elliot, crouched down, but I didn’t know what he was doing. I hit the window with my palm.” Fast, an open slap, to get his attention. “When he stood up, he was holding a gun. He was covered in…his hands were…And he was pointing it straight at me.”

Joe doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. I want to come back from the shadow house, but I need to say it all now, or I never will.

Elliot’s eyes were dead. His face was pale. There was so much blood I thought he would’ve passed out.

I didn’t know if he could see me, in the dark. Or if it was just his own reflection in the bedroom window. I like to think he didn’t know it was me, standing on the other side. That it was just a reflex.