Come Find Me(60)

But, as I could’ve told him, it’s only the emptiness. You can feel it, that the room has been abandoned. Someone has been through here, cleaning, organizing, so all that remains is a bed, neatly made, with a pillow on top; a dresser, all drawers firmly shut; and a closet door, also shut. You can see the vacuum marks on the rug, and I know we’re leaving a trail of evidence just by setting foot in here.

I’m thinking about how to cover it up—find the vacuum, maybe?—when Nolan walks straight for the closet, his footprints marring the pristine lines on the floor.

When he opens the closet door, an assortment of shirts faintly sways on the bar, disturbed by Nolan’s presence. He lets out a long sigh. It’s just an empty room, and I think he must be facing the truth, too: that there was nothing leading us here. This room belongs to a missing kid, but, like I learned when I was standing in the downstairs of Nolan’s house, there are hundreds, thousands, of missing people, all over the world.

There’s nothing on the walls. Nothing for us to find. Elliot and my mom were probably talking about someone else that morning, anyone else. We’ve driven through the night to look at the room of a random kid, who will end up meaning nothing to us. We’ve been trying to force the connection, seeing it everywhere, even in things that don’t exist.

This room feels like it’s hovering in the in-between, just like Liam’s room felt to me when I hid upstairs at Nolan’s house. Like it’s the ghost of a room, waiting for someone, with all the life sucked out of it.

    Nolan frowns, looking around. “When you don’t have answers, you don’t know what to do….”

“Answers don’t always make things easier,” I say.

Nolan’s face changes, and he reaches for me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…That was a terrible thing to say.” But he sets his jaw, looking out the window. He means it, I realize. He thinks it’s better to know, even if the knowing is horrific. What must it be like, living in that house, for him to think my life is the better option? What must it be like here?

“It’s all terrible, Nolan,” I say.

He nods once, and then his eyes widen. Downstairs, a door creaks open. We stare at each other, frozen. Nolan grabs my arm and pulls me into the closet, shutting us both inside. We’re pressed together, chest to chest, the clothes and hangers swaying around us, and I can feel his heartbeat against his ribs, as fast as my own must be beating. His breath against my forehead comes quickly, and I try to slow my breathing, to calm myself. It isn’t working. Someone’s here.

Nolan grabs the clothes, to keep them still. I hold my breath.

The house is older, and I can track the person just from the creaks in the wood, doors opening, cabinets closing, water in the pipes.

I start to relax, thinking we just need to wait this thing out. Maybe someone forgot their wallet, or something else they needed, and they’ll be on their way again. But seconds later, we hear footsteps coming up the stairs. I start to panic.

And then, as the steps get closer, they start moving faster. Oh God, we left the door to this room open. My entire body tenses, and I can feel Nolan’s doing the same.

    The steps stop at the door of the room. And then a voice. “Hunter?” She sounds younger, our age—I imagine the teenager in the family picture downstairs.

My hand tightens on Nolan’s arm, and he pulls me closer.

The footsteps approach, and it sounds like she’s mumbling, “You’re such a jerk—”

I hold my breath, counting the seconds, hoping she turns away. Nolan’s fingers are trembling against my skin. Then, in three quick steps, she storms across the room and yanks open the closet door.

I close my eyes, as if that can stop the inevitable. And I throw my hands in the air, as if that’s ever stopped anyone.





“What the—”

The girl in front of us is probably around our age, and she’s quickly backing away. Her blue eyes have gone wide, and her mouth, colored with bright pink lipstick, has dropped open.

“Wait!” I yell after her, thinking she’s going to call the police, or worse.

But she has her phone in her hand, held out to us like a weapon. And she’s still backing away, into the hallway. We should run, too. We should run before we’re found by someone else.

“We’re friends of Hunter’s!” Kennedy shouts, and everyone freezes.

Oh God, I hope she has a plan.

The girl turns around, her grip still on the doorway, like she’s about to take off at any moment. “Did Hunter send you here?” And then she no longer seems afraid. She narrows her eyes, holds out her hand again. “Whatever you took, leave it. Or I will call the police, and you can tell him that.”

    Huh?

Kennedy shoots me a look, as if she, too, is unsure where to go from here. “No, sorry. We went to school with him. And no one”—she clears her throat—“no one seems to be looking anymore. We just thought…”

“You thought what?” the girl asks, her knuckles still white from the tension in her fist.

I hold my breath, waiting. Her face is hard, unreadable. “We thought…we thought…” But even Kennedy is coming up empty.

The girl continues. “You want me to believe that Hunter didn’t send you here? That instead, you decided to just break into his house, looking for clues?” She looks between the two of us skeptically. “How the hell did you get in here, then?”