Some Quiet Place (Some Quiet Place #1)(37)

“You have a purpose,” I venture after a brief silence. “But I don’t know it. Have we ever met before?”

She sighs, an irritated sound. Then she starts to run, and I quicken my own pace to keep up. Our surroundings speed by in blurs of green and black. She swerves around a tree trunk. She’s careful to keep her back to me, keep her face concealed in that hood.

We’re slowing down. I move quickly to avoid a fallen tree hanging over our path; it’s caught in a V between two others. At first I continue, following my mysterious visitor, but then I process the trees, stop, jerk around, and study the V formation again. It’s getting dark out, and the trees’ outline stands out in the orange twilight.

“So you do recognize it.” Her voice sounds somewhere behind me. “I wondered if you would.”

I barely hear her; my attention is fastened on the V … the trees … the shadows …

Something inside of me clicks, and my nothingness cinches painfully tight when I realize the truth. This is the place. This is the clearing. Those are the same trees that surrounded them; those are the same dark shadows, the same grass, the same leaves. This is the place that haunts my dreams.

This is where he died.

I don’t have to close my eyes to see the image. I’ve painted it dozens of times, drawn it, seen it in my sleep, in my daydreams. It’s permanently embedded into my brain, an enigmatic tattoo. There is the beautiful girl, her face twisted in anguish, the blood spilling out onto the grass I see now, and the boy she holds in her arms …

The stranger steps into my peripheral vision, staring at

the scene with me. The air around her shimmers with power. “Understand that this is not the actual place where it happened,” she tells me. “I recreated it to test the p-power on you.” As she says this—her voice still holding that odd, tight note of discomfort—the V formation melts away and becomes nothing but erect, unfamiliar trees. I hardly notice this, though, because the stranger is doubled over. I take a step toward her, but her hand flies out to keep me away and her face is turned in the opposite direction. It’s obviously important I never see her or learn who she is.

This is the first time one of my theories has been confirmed as fact; this was done to me. It was not something of my doing. Is this being admitting that she’s the one who placed it? And not only that, but she seems to know the story that appears in my dreams and memories. Remember for both our sakes. My awareness and instincts sharpen, but all I say is, “Why did you bring me here?”

It’s darker now. She’s unable to reply for a moment, but then she chokes, “I told you. You need to break it, you need to face … ” It’s like there’s a lump in her throat that prevents her from saying anything more—she swallows and halts mid-sentence. But she goes against my expectations by managing to spit, “I came back because it’s not safe.”

It’s random. There’s nothing to bring on the sudden realization. But I stare at this powerful being and wonder how I didn’t see it before. “You’re the girl, aren’t you?” I ask softly. The girl in all my dreams. Who smiles and weeps and loves.

Yet again she doesn’t answer. Is it because she can’t … or she won’t?

It’s so obvious. They’re the same size. The voices may be a little different, but that’s easy to alter. The question comes from all sides, a relentless drum. Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Here, I tell the boy silently. Not dead after all. But secrecy surrounds her like a shroud, this girl who haunts me in both dreams and sleep now.

“What are you hiding from?” I press, thinking of the shadow in the dreams. “How do I fit into all this?” She only shakes her head and backs away, head bent toward the ground.

In the distance, I hear a stick snap. Yet another unknown presence teases my senses—are there two beings stalking me? This bizarre girl and … someone else? Something else? I whip around quickly, narrowing my eyes to better see into the brush. The girl is right about one thing; it isn’t safe out here. My instincts are singing. “We’ll continue this later,” I tell her, abandoning the clearing. My fingers brush the ribs of a tree trunk as I pass it, and I start to sprint.

Somehow the girl gets ahead of me. “One more thing before you go,” she rasps, her baggy pants billowing in the breeze. With all her shadows and facelessness, she almost looks like a ghost.

I dart around her. “Yes?” The wind rushes past, a roar in my ears.

She deliberately falls behind, but I don’t stop. Her tone is a mixture of determination and worry and real warning as it floats to my ears: “Do not, under any circumstances, go to Sophia Richardson’s birthday party.”

I don’t bother asking any questions.





Fifteen

The blank page stares up at me, mocking, beckoning. I stare back down at it. Thinking. My pencil taps against the kitchen table. Tap. Tap. Tap. A poem about hiding. I’m not a writer—if it weren’t for the dreams, I wouldn’t be a painter, either. Joshua thinks I’m creative; I should’ve corrected him. Maybe then I wouldn’t be distracted by this.

Not only do the words not come, but my mind buzzes with more theories. The woman said it’s almost time. That someone—he—has found me. And I need to remember. What does all this have to do with the car accident? How do the dreams fit in?