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?”
“The key,” Kennedy says, “in the backyard.” She holds it out, fingers trembling. The girl stares at her hand, frowning. She doesn’t come any closer.
“Nothing to see here, kids. The police have been through here already. There’s no mystery. So how about you get the hell out of my house, before I call the cops?”
“You found him?” I ask. I don’t get why his photo is up on our wall, if so.
She laughs. “Hardly. Hunter doesn’t want to be found, so he won’t be. But I don’t need to see him when the money from the downstairs jar goes missing. When my mom’s diamond bracelet goes missing, and also his favorite food from the fridge. I thought you were him, when I heard you up here.” She rolls her eyes. “He is officially the worst, if he thinks we don’t notice.” She shakes her head. “My mom refuses to accept it, though.”
“You think he ran away?”
“Think?” She starts to laugh, then stops. “He’s done it before, but he always comes back. So yeah, I’m sure. Who else would be stealing our things without breaking in?”
“I don’t believe it,” Kennedy whispers, though I don’t think she’s talking to this girl. I think she’s talking about the search, how it’s just led us here for nothing. A whole empty universe that makes no sense.
But this girl isn’t having it, Kennedy’s denial. “Yeah?” she says, leaning into her hip. “That building behind the old Rollins factory?” she asks, like we should know what that is. I nod, an instinct. “Swing by at night. You’ll see what I mean. He’s been here recently, and he never stays far from where he can get money. And right now, that place is us.”
I walk slowly toward the hall, pulling Kennedy along, because I’m starting to think we’re actually going to get out of here without her calling the police, when she grabs my arm—no longer afraid, but pissed. “Hey, what’d you say your names were?”
I scramble, panicked. “Liam,” I say, the first thing that comes to my mind. This is who I’m doing this for, after all. Kennedy tips her head, like she understands, and says, “Elliot.”
The girl’s face scrunches up in confusion. “Oh. Huh. Okay. Yeah, I’ve heard of you.” I can see Kennedy tense beside me, her eyes widen. “I just thought you were…”
“You thought what?” I say. Kennedy appears stunned, and unexpectedly short on words.
“His boyfriend. I thought Elliot was a guy. Sorry, I heard him on the phone with you when he was back once this fall. I just assumed…”
Kennedy looks to me, her eyes impossibly wide, almost tearing up. Her mouth drops open, and I can see her processing, fitting the pieces back together. The connection, it’s here. I can see her believing again.
The signal sent her to my house so we would find this boy. This boy who, we now have proof, knew Elliot Jones. Not only that, who might have been Elliot’s boyfriend.
We are supposed to find him.
The girl steps closer before speaking. “I hope you’re not mixed up with whatever’s sent him running, Elliot. Really. If he won’t show his face, there’s probably a reason, knowing him. I’d hate to see you disappear, too.”
Then she takes the key from Kennedy, eyeing us slowly. “I will call the police if I see you here again.”
Kennedy nods, and we head down the stairs. But before we’re out the door, we hear her call after us. “If you find him, tell him it’s time to come home already.”
* * *
—
As soon as we’re back at my car, out of breath, Kennedy grabs my arm. “Holy crap. Did you get the address?”
“The old Rollins factory? Yeah, look it up on your phone, see if you can find it.”
She turns her phone on and cringes when she sees the display. She must have a bunch of calls or texts from Joe. But she clears her throat and opens a map program.
Her hands are shaking, and she has to enter the information twice before she gets it right. “Okay,” she says. “It’s a factory. Says it’s closed, though. Come on, I’ll put the address in.”
We follow her phone’s directions, and as we drive the streets in the daylight, everything comes into focus: this is an old mill town, full of b
rick factories, some boarded up. Like the town itself is disappearing.
We drive by the address of the old factory, but we don’t stop. It’s a large rectangular building with small windows, all covered up, and there’s too much movement across the street. It appears to be some construction site, with a crane, men in hard hats, several bulldozers. At first I think maybe they’re renovating the factory into some new space. But then I see I was mistaken: the wrecking ball, the dumpsters, the garbage trucks. They’re taking it down, piece by piece.
“We’ll come back after work hours,” I say. “She told us to check it out at night anyway.”
I think of all the people here, and what will happen to them. If entire sections of the world go like this. Slipping through some crack in time, swallowed back into the earth.
There’s a long way to go until night, and Kennedy sends a quick text, then powers down her phone again. “I’m worried Joe’s got some tracking app set up, since he grounded me.”
“What did you say to him?” I ask.
“ ‘Trust me,’ ” she says. She’s lucky, I think, having someone checking in on her all the time. The way Joe looked at me when we first met, like I was something he needed to protect Kennedy from. As if he’s making up for everything he wasn’t able to keep her from before.
The sudden interest from my own parents only seems to be because of Liam.
We go to the same fast-food restaurant again, where Kennedy pays for lunch. “You drove,” she says, waving me off. “Again.”
The worker looks between me and Kennedy. “Weren’t y’all just here?”
I nod but then think it’s in our best interest to get out of here. The only place I can think to go is the ballfield, in the distance.
“Come on,” I tell her. We take our food to go, and I drive down the road, which dead-ends at nothing. There’s no reason for this road to exist, really, except for the ballfield, and even that doesn’t seem to be serving a purpose anymore.
The fence around the field is only partially standing, warped and disconnected in sections, and I step through a narrow clearing where the metal posts have come loose from the earth. There are two silver benches beside the baseball diamond, and I straddle one, spreading the contents of the fast-food bag between us. “Quite the picnic spread,” Kennedy says, taking a seat facing me.
But all I can picture is the family picnic, two years ago. The food we ate before Liam took off. Fried chicken, potato salad—all the little details I had forgotten.
“Did you know Hunter was Elliot’s boyfriend?” I ask between bites.
She shakes her head. “I should’ve realized it. But he was only there the one time, and Elliot didn’t even introduce him to me. I didn’t think he was someone important to him. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“He never mentioned him?”
She looks up at me and stops chewing. “I never asked. We were the new kids, and I was trying to, I don’t know, find my own people. I was too preoccupied with myself to notice what was happening in the rest of my house.”
She stares out onto the ballfield, picking at her food.
“What are you thinking about?”
She bites the corner of her lip, doesn’t look at me when she starts talking. “Marco told me there were rumors…about you and…” She moves her hands around, like she’s begging me to fill in the blanks instead.
“Me and what?” I say.
Her eyes cut to the side. “Some girl.” She clears her throat. “Liam’s girlfriend?”
My stomach sinks. “Abby,” I say. “Are you asking me if it’s true?”
I narrow my eyes, trying to understand where she’s coming from. Whether she really doesn’t trust me, or if she’s asking something more. “It was a mistake,” I say. “And it was after. Much after. Do you know what it’s like? When you’re stuck in this world, and you can’t see anything past it?”
She looks my way again.
“It was like that. She was missing him, and I was missing him, and I was there.” I didn’t tell anyone, but apparently Abby did. I’m surprised. Then my stomach twists—if Marco knows, others know, and that means the police probably know. As Abby’s friend, Clara must know, and I wonder how many people in our house have heard it, too. My parents, even? I close my eyes from the guilt, just thinking about it. Is this part of my cloud of suspicion? That I was secretly jealous of him, because of Abby?
“It was one time,” I say. “One time, when I was feeling really bad, and I regretted it right away.”
She doesn’t answer at first, just leans her head back, face tipped up to the gray overcast sky. The food is done. She closes her eyes. “I know what it’s like.” Then she looks straight at me. “I regret so much.”
I force the last bite down my throat, but my stomach rebels.
I don’t want to think about Abby. I don’t want to think about the case the police are building against me. I don’t want to think about Kennedy hiding out in the shed behind her house while life as she knew it fell apart just steps away.
We have hours to pass, still. Hours to keep thinking of everything we did wrong in the past, everything we might be doing wrong now. I want to blow off some steam, and we’re suddenly in the perfect place for it. “Hey, I have an idea.”
* * *
—
Inside my trunk, I still have my baseball gear, from spring practices and games. Kennedy shoved it all to the far corner when she loaded my trunk with her brother’s things, transporting everything back to her house earlier this week.
“Can you play?” I ask, sliding on the mitt. It’s worn and broken in, and it feels like a second skin to me by now.
“Soccer was more my thing,” she says. “But I’m a quick learner.”
I hand her the bat. “Let’s see what you got, then.”
She stands in the batter’s box, waiting for my pitch. She hits the first few I throw, one angling off to the side, another popping straight up so I have to run almost all the way back to her just to catch it.
“If you want more power,” I say, “think more about the step than the swing.”
She nods, taking some more practice swings.
After a few more pitches where she lunges for the ball as it heads her way, I jog over to show her what I mean. “You’re swinging on the defensive,” I say. “Here.” I stand behind her, my hands on her hands, gripping the bat. I don’t even think about it at first, how close she is, her hands under my own, until I feel her tense up for a second.
“Sorry,” I say, pulling back.
She shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. Show me.”
So I do, my arms folding around hers, stepping and swinging until her body does the same, in synchrony. I step back, watching her as she takes the swing on her own. “Perfect. You got it.”
Then I jog back to the pitcher’s mound, and on the windup, I tell her one last piece of advice that my coach once gave me. “Don’t swing like you’re afraid, Kennedy.”
She nods and gets into position. Then I toss her a pitch, and the crack of the bat on the ball echoes through the emptiness. It sails over my head, and she raises her hand to her eyes. She laughs then, her face mirroring my own. We’re still smiling at each other when the first drop of rain falls from the sky.
“Probably should end on a high note anyway,” she says, the bat hanging by her side. “I think that was a fluke.”
“No way,” I say. “It’s my teaching, obviously.” She shakes her head as I take off for the outfield to retrieve the ball, and when I turn around to head back, she’s still standing there, waiting for me.
The sky opens up just as I reach her, and we race for the car. I drop the baseball gear into the trunk and she ducks into the passenger side, shaking out her hair. It makes me smile.
“Where to?” I ask after I start the car again.
“I’m thinking a nap would really help right now. You?”
“You know how I feel about naps,” she says.
I drive back up the road until I see an empty parking lot of another empty factory, and I pull the car into the alley behind it.
She reclines her seat first, curling onto her left side, her hands folded into a pillow. The sound of rain on metal picks up, and I curl up on my right side, facing her. I’m not sure which of us drifts off first, but sleep comes fast, dark and deep.
When I wake, it’s dark. The first thing I hear is the tap of rain against the metal roof of the car. The first thing I see, coming into focus, is Nolan’s face, asleep, his lips slightly parted, so at peace. It’s like seeing the Nolan that lives underneath, one that might be possible if his life had followed a different path, a different set of circumstances.
The second thing I notice is the colors, faintly flashing against the window beyond his head. Blue, red, alternating in the streaks of rain against the glass. I push myself to sitting. “Nolan,” I say, shaking him awake.
He stirs, rubbing his eyes. “What?”
“The police,” I say.
Nolan sits upright almost as fast as I did. “What are we doing,” he says, but it comes out slow, like his brain hasn’t fully caught up to the sequence of events.
What’s our story. Why are we here. We’re parked in an alley behind an abandoned factory, in the middle of the night, in some town where we don’t belong. What are we doing? We’re two teenagers, trespassing. Sleeping. We look like runaways. There’s no way the police won’t take Nolan’s ID, run his name, contact his parents.
“Trust me?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says immediately, but he’s staring out the window, immobile as the bright light gets closer.
I slide over the console to his seat so I’m facing him, a knee on either side of his legs.
Come Find Me Page 19