The Leaving(2)
“I think this is a map to my house,” Lucas said. “Thirty-three Locust Place.”
“Mine’s not ringing any bells.” Kristen flipped to the other side of her map, and back. “Maybe I got the wrong one?”
She wasn’t chewing gum, but Scarlett pictured her that way. Always chewing.
Scarlett turned. A slide. Some swings. A gate.
A thought about a cracked tooth, a boy.
Had it been Lucas?
No, but . . .
Her feet had orders.
Marched toward the playground.
Stood at the center on the springy blacktop.
A warm wind woke an old swing. It squeaked and swung a ghost child.
“I’ve been here,” Scarlett said to no one.
The others came in, too.
She stopped at a red horse on a springy coil, the kind you sit on . . .
. . . and rock.
Sarah was all panic. “Why don’t we remember where we live?”
Good. Question.
Better question: Why don’t we remember . . . everything?
The horse’s eyes spied. Crickets pulsed. The wind whipped palm trees into whispers.
The world folded in.
This was the Cliff of Scarl e t t.
No idea how she’d gotten here.
The path behind her was wiped clean.
She knew the others . . .
. . . and she could not think of a thing they’d done before . . .
. . . this.
Her mind clicked its blankness at her . . .
/
/
/
. . . three times.
“We must have been drugged,” Adam said. He was taller and more muscular than Lucas but somehow not as confident.
“Does anyone remember who was driving?” Lucas asked. “Or where we were when we got into the van? Were we all at a party or something?”
Heads shook.
The wind died and the swings froze, a still photograph.
Adam said, “I don’t remember . . . anything.”
“It has to be a drug. It’ll wear off,” Lucas said.
Another car drove by: extra lights under the body and bass-heavy music blasting. Scarlett’s heart rattled and settled.
Probably drugs.
If not that . . .
/
/
. . . what?
/
/
Sarah was shaking her head. “I don’t understand what’s happening.” She walked in small circles, rubbing her hands together.
“We should go home.” Lucas held up his map. “Someone will know what’s going on.”
“What if it’s a trap?” Sarah’s eyes were drowning.
“Why would there be a trap?” Kristen looked like she was about to hail a cab or hitch a ride. Anything to get away from them.
Adam said, “Why should we trust whoever dropped us off here and gave us these?” He wagged his map around.
“There’s no point standing here talking about it, is there?” Kristen bent, retied her shoelace, and then stood. “I guess I’ll see you guys around.”
She started to walk off, but Lucas grabbed her. “Wait. Just wait.”
“Why?”
“We should have a plan,” he said. “We should, I don’t know, get our story straight.”
“There is no story,” Kristen said. “The story is we have no idea what’s going on. So let’s go home. What else is there to do?”
“We’ll go, yes.” He released her arm; she rubbed it. “But let’s meet back here tomorrow night, like eight o’clock. Just to make sure we’re okay, just to make sure we’ve gotten some answers and snapped out of it, whatever it is.”
Scarlett was running into dead ends, circling back on herself.
She was n o n l i n e a r.
L o o p e d.
Cycling back, again and again, to a memory of riding in a hot air balloon—happy, unafraid.
So, yes. Definitely drugs. Had to be.
“Somebody will be able to explain,” Lucas said. “Somebody will know what happened.”
“What if we can’t get away tomorrow?” Sarah’s circling was surely making her dizzy. “Maybe we should go to a hospital and get checked out.”
“No hospitals.” Lucas shook his head. “Meet back here. Tomorrow night at eight. Okay? And if that doesn’t work out for whatever reason, we try the next night, same time.”
Sarah stopped circling.
Everyone nodded except Scarlett, who looked at her map again.
That red star.
Was the address familiar or just . . . generic? “Scar?” Lucas said.
There was something between them.
Something . . . extra.
Something . . . else.
“Tomorrow night.” Him, again. “Okay?”
Lucas
He couldn’t walk fast enough, pushed his calf muscles to the limit, stretched the very definition of walking.
Not good enough.