Come Find Me(73)

I stumble back, squeezing my eyes, trying to undo it.

“Kennedy?” he asks as I backpedal farther from the edge.

I breathe heavily, trying to quell the twisting in my stomach, spreading everywhere. But Nolan’s across the clearing, asking.

    Here’s the thing about the shadow house: In my mind, everything is blurred, and so when I think of my mother, I still see her laughing, sliding a plate of pancakes in front of me. Or holding my chin in her hands years earlier and telling me to keep very still as she dabs the ointment on a cut under my eye. I can still feel the press of her lips on my forehead after, her breath as she says, Be careful, my wild one. When I see her now, her eyes crinkle in joy.

And at this moment, Nolan still sees a boy holding his hand, counting down and jumping. And that will be gone, I know it will be gone, five seconds from now, as soon as he walks my way.

I walk toward him instead and put a hand on his chest. Firmly. Until he looks me in the eye, asking. He’s been asking all along. But this is not the answer he was searching for.

“Nolan,” I say, trying to hold my voice stable, not to cry, not right now, because it’s not about me right now. My other arm wraps around his side, to hold him this way. “Don’t look.”

I feel his muscles give, everything just exhale, like some great hope has left him. And I hold on tighter, though he doesn’t fall. He lists slowly to one side, and I guide him to a tree stump, farther from the edge. He sits with his head in his hands, and I think: He’s in shock; he’s only part here; he’s going to fall apart, but not yet.

Not yet.

I don’t know what to do. Everything feels urgent, and yet it’s also not. What am I racing for? It’s already happened. Like the shadow house.

It exists, and so do we, and now so does this, and nothing will change that.

    It isn’t fair.

That’s all I can think: It isn’t fair. This isn’t how his story ends. It can’t be.

I take out my cell phone and place the call. Someone picks up, but it seems like dead air. No, it’s static. It sort of connects, but I can’t hear the voice on the other side. “It’s only static,” I tell him. Static, cutting in and out. Like the voice is too far away, unreachable.

Out here in the quarry, there must be no signal. Not this deep in the woods. But I know we had a signal out on the road. My GPS on the phone got us here, after all.

“We have to go,” I say, but he doesn’t budge, and I have no idea if he’s heard me. I crouch down in front of him. “Nolan, all I get is static. We have to—”

“No,” he says, and he looks up then, this haunted, hollow look that I don’t think I will ever forget. “I can’t. I can’t leave—” He shakes his head, and I nod, understanding.

“Okay. Okay, stay here,” I say, standing up. “I’ll be right back.”

I look behind me once, to see him still sitting in the exact same position, before the trees close in around him as I move farther away. And then I start running. I’m only half-paying attention as I race back down the trail, looking at my phone to see when the signal comes back, so I almost trip on a root before steadying myself on a trunk nearby. I shake out my leg and try again, but all I get is static once more. I keep going, veering at the cutoff, back past the shed. I’m almost all the way to the parking lot, and I try again, begging the phone to connect.

I pace beside the shed as the phone in my hands rings. And then the phone connects, and I grip the phone tighter. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”—a memory of a call I made months ago. The same greeting. The same response.

    “I hear you,” she responds. “Miss? Are you okay?”

Something’s happening. Something terrible.

“Help us. Please,” I say. Because Nolan needs something that no one can give him anymore. I don’t know how to help him. I think this must be how Joe felt, standing in the doorway of my hospital room, watching me sit there, staring off at the white curtains.

I give the woman our location and tell her it’s an emergency.

I tell her what we’ve found.

I’ve just hung up and am about to turn around and run back to Nolan when I catch another glimpse of color through the trees, in the parking lot. This time, a flash of blue.

I step closer, until I can make it out: the light reflecting off the blue of a car.

Someone else is here.

I turn in a circle, confused. I’m not sure whether this car belongs to the developer—someone who can help us. Or whether it belongs to someone who knew Liam was here and sent that picture. “Hello?” I call. I didn’t see anyone on the path on the way back, but they could’ve veered to the right at the cutoff, heading to the base of the quarry.

The car looks familiar, in a vague sort of way. It’s parked beside Nolan’s, and it reminds me of earlier today.

I walk closer until I’m out in the dirt lot and quietly step around it—until I see, on the back, the decal for the foundation Nolan’s family runs, and I know this belongs to that guy who works at his house, though I’ve never seen him before. Mike, I think he said.

    I wonder if he knew what we were doing and followed us here. Nolan trusts him, and it’s possible he’s here to help. Though I don’t recall seeing another car behind us on the back roads, or when we arrived.