“What—”
He’s two steps behind, his arms out and to the side like he doesn’t know what to do with them.
“Seriously, Nolan, at least pretend.” I grab his wrists and hook them around my waist so his hands press to my lower back.
I don’t think, I just lean down and kiss him. His entire body tenses, and then his fingers press deeper into my waist, and his other hand trails up my back, and it occurs to me he knows exactly how to pretend, when the rap of a flashlight against the window jars us apart.
My heart beats quickly, and his hands still grip my waist. I have to squint from the light, and Nolan raises a hand to his eyes. He lets go of me to lower the window more, and the officer leans into the car, the rain dripping from his black hood, the smell of summer rain filling the car, the humidity surrounding us.
He frowns, and his face, so close, smells of rain and aftershave. “This is private property,” he says, though he backs away, seeing the position we’re in. He looks away, like he doesn’t want to look too closely at the disheveled clothing, the fact that we’re young enough to need to be in a car, for privacy.
I duck my head into Nolan’s shoulder, then slide from his lap, back to my side of the car.
“Sorry,” Nolan says. “We didn’t know. It just looked like a”—he winces—“an empty road.”
The officer sighs, panning the light back and forth between us. He shakes his head. “Go home,” he says firmly.
Nolan nods and raises the window as the cop walks back to his car. We sit in silence, both of us breathing heavily, until the red and blue lights turn off. Then Nolan clears his throat and turns the car around, looping us back onto the main road, where we pull into the parking lot of the gas station, which has a twenty-four-hour convenience store attached.
The whole time, it’s painfully silent. He doesn’t look my way or try to make a joke to lighten the mood. Nothing.
Not even a Thanks for the quick thinking, Kennedy.
I finally look over at him, and he looks decidedly uncomfortable. I thought he felt the same as I did—like Joe had noticed, too. But then I think, Maybe he’s just a great pretender. Maybe I always only see what I want to see: in Nolan, in Elliot, in myself.
“I need a soda,” he says, his voice scratchy, as he exits the car.
“I’ll get it,” I say. I slam the door, and he jumps, frowning at me. “It didn’t have to be that hard, Nolan.” I take a step back, toward the store. “But thank you for your sacrifice, either way.”
And then I step out from the overhang of the station, thankful for the rain.
I watch her walk through the rain under the glow of the gas station lights until she disappears into the brightly lit store. I count the cash in my pocket, taken from the emergency envelope in our kitchen drawer. I hope it’s enough to get us all the way back. I hope I don’t have to ask her to pay for this, too.
This…wouldn’t be the best time to ask her for a favor.
She looked so angry, but I don’t know how to tell her these things. I’m not good at saying what I’m thinking. The times when I’ve been fully honest, laying everything out there, have been twisted around on me instead. The police, eyeing me with suspicion. My parents, even, disbelieving.
So I don’t know how to tell her that instead of dreaming of my brother, his image flickering in the corner, I now dream of her hair, the sound of her laugh.
That when she talks I am both listening to the words and watching her mouth, imagining kissing her. The rain comes down heavier now, and it’s like there’s a wall growing between us, the more time that passes.
Shit. I leave the pump and follow her across the lot, and within five seconds, I’m soaking wet. I push open the door to the store, the bell ringing overhead, with the sharp cold of the air conditioning on my skin, and the glare of fluorescent lights. “Kennedy, wait.”
I weave through the aisles to find her. She turns around, the cool air from the soda fridge trailing goose bumps over her wet skin. I don’t know how to say it, so I just do. Fast, before I can second-guess myself. “I think about you all the time, and not just because of all this.” I wave my hands around, and I hope she knows what I mean. “I wanted to, Kennedy. I’ve been wanting to. I didn’t want it to be a joke, the first time I kissed you. Or, like, a way out of jail.”
She regards me slowly, then pulls two sodas from the fridge, letting the door swing closed behind her. I realize then how close we are, and how she’s leaning against the glass, the clothes clinging to our skin, and exactly how little space there is between us.
“I also didn’t want it to be in a car,” I say, thinking of Abby, then try to shake her from my mind. “And I don’t want it to be in a convenience store, while I’m making a list.”
I get the ghost of a smile then. “You’ve given this a lot of thought, I see.”
“It was a long car ride down here.”
She laughs, and it sounds like music. She brushes by me, and I can feel the air move around her, imagining that moment in the car again. Replaying it, and imagining it was real. She pays and exits the store without looking back.
I purchase the gas from the guy behind the counter, and when I leave, she’s standing underneath the overhang, leaning against the car. Like she’s waiting for me.
I keep walking until I’m definitely inside her personal space, one hand on the car behind her so her head tips up, just to look at me. “We’re sort of close to the car, though,” she says. “And a gas pump. And this lighting, I mean, it’s not ideal.”
“Ha ha.”
“And there’s a convenience store within sight. Also, there might be animals out there. Are you sure this is okay?”
“Kennedy…”
She opens her mouth to speak, but I’ve closed the distance already.
* * *
—
I’m not sure how to balance this moment with the bigger ones. This connection between us, with a message from somewhere beyond our world. This need right here, with the need for answers. This tiny truth, with the ones that might be waiting farther out, in the universe, on the other side of what we can understand.
I pull back first, because it’s night, because I convinced her to come here with me, under the guise of answers, and this is all I’ve given her. “Are you ready?” I say.
She shakes her head, kisses me one last time, lingering there. Then she opens the car door and slips inside. And I know she understands, too.
* * *
—
The construction site across from the old Rollins factory is empty. We park the car in the lot, and I take the flashlight from the glove compartment.
“Maps and a flashlight,” she says. “Nolan, I think I like you.” She nudges my shoulder.
“If I knew this was all it would take,” I say, and she smiles. We’re procrastinating. We’re frayed nerves. Misplaced energy. Getting ready to leave a car in the rain in the middle of the night at an empty factory, walking around back to some alleged building, a location given to us by a girl neither of us knows, other than the fact that she caught us trespassing.
This is stupid.
At least it’s not raining as hard, but let’s be honest, rain is rain, once you’re out in it for more than a few minutes. I feel it in my socks, between my toes. My sneakers are a lost cause.
Kennedy walks forward, and I follow her, shining the light in her path. The rain hits the puddles in the dirt on a poorly marked path, overgrown with weeds, as we circle the main building.
Behind it, the trees stretch out in the distance. Until the dark building comes into focus. It seems like just another abandoned building out here, with the windows boarded up, the wooden steps half broken off. It looks like it was once part of the factory but has since been left to disrepair, same as the others. We duck under one of the large oak trees, which shelters us fro
m most of the falling rain.
“Do you see that?” Kennedy says, and it takes me a second to notice what she’s pointing out.
The soft glow of a light, from the corner of one of the plywood boards covering the window. A corner forgotten. A sign that not everything is dark and abandoned out here. At least, as Hunter Long’s sister implied, not at night.
We sneak around toward the back, where there’s a door, boarded up. I’m not sure how they get inside, but there’s something happening here. Kennedy stands on a rotted bench under a window, where there’s another sliver of light peeking through.
She peers inside, then quickly backs away. She points at the gap and whispers, “There are people inside.”
I step up beside her, but it’s hard to share the tiny gap in the window boards. We have to take turns, and even then, we can only see random streaks of fabric moving in the distance.
I pry my fingers into the gap—one of the boards is just barely hanging on; one nail in the corner, balanced on the piece of wood below. I pull it out and let it swing quietly down, and then we’re staring into the open expanse of what looks like an abandoned shipment center.
There are crates in the corners, broken down and emptied. And in the center of the space, three guys sit in a circle of metal chairs around a lantern. Other than those crates and the wrappers and trash littering the floor, the room is barren. There are sleeping bags behind the guys, making it seem like they’re planning to stay here for the night.
Kennedy presses her face up against mine at the window. The kid facing us has white-blond hair, and he laughs at something another one says. Her hand comes down on my wrist. “That’s him.”
She pulls back from the window, looking at me. “We should talk to him,” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say. I get this feeling, this premonition, standing in the rain, peering into the abandoned factory. He’s here because he doesn’t want to be found. What happens, then, if we find him?
Kennedy takes a step to the side and stumbles off the bench. She reaches a hand out and grabs a piece of the wood from the window as she falls. The sound echoes through the night.
The guys inside go silent. I crouch down lower, still peering through the window. The three guys all stare back, but I don’t think they can see me. And then on instinct, Hunter dives for his bag. I brace myself, thinking he’s going to grab a weapon, but he doesn’t. He grabs his bag, and he runs in the other direction, for the door.
Before I can reach for Kennedy’s arm, she takes off around the building.
Everything clarifies: the night, the rain, this moment. I take off after her, on instinct. She’s a blur in the night that I’m following through the trees. My God, she’s fast. “Kennedy, wait!” I shout, but she doesn’t listen.
I hear her shout in the distance. “Please. I’m Elliot’s sister!”
And then I almost collide with her back. She’s standing still between the trees, and across from her, Hunter stares back.
He looks her over closely. “I remember you,” he says.
She nods. “Kennedy. I saw you once, at the house.”
He frowns at me. “Who the hell are you?”
“My friend,” she answers for me. “We’ve been looking for you.”
His hair drips with rainwater, and he shakes it out. His T-shirt clings to his skinny frame, and his worn jeans and tan boots are also rain- and mud-covered. “I don’t know what happened,” he says.
She steps closer. “But you do know. You know something happened. You know Elliot’s in trouble.”
He looks over our heads, as if he’s expecting someone else to appear from the trees. “I couldn’t stay,” he says. “Not for that. Not for the police.”
Then he brushes by both of us, and I guess that’s a sign that it’s okay to follow him back to the old building. He leans his hip into a side door where the lock has worn through the rotted wood.
It’s cold and impersonal inside, but at least it’s dry, and there’s still that lantern set up in the middle of the room. The other two kids who were here are gone—apparently spooked by our presence. Why would anyone want to stay here, I think, unless they don’t want to be found?
Hunter kicks an empty can out of the way and settles into one of the metal chairs.
“I saw, on the news,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s it? You’re sorry? You think Elliot did…that?” Kennedy asks, standing over him. She looks like she’s conducting an interrogation.
He runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t. I don’t. Not really. Except I saw on the news, the evidence was pretty clear. And I know how he felt about Will.”
She frowns. “What do you mean? How did he feel about Will?”
He laughs. “He hated him. Obviously. Which was something I could definitely relate to. Me and my stepdad don’t exactly see eye to eye, either,” he says, looking around the room. Which I assume is why he’s here. He focuses back on Kennedy. “Elliot said he was controlling, manipulative. He kept fighting with his mom about it. Your mom, sorry.” I can see his throat move as he swallows. “Said Will wasn’t good for her, but she thought his attitude was just because he was failing Will’s class.” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t that. He said there was something off with him. Something no one else seemed to notice…I guess Elliot confronted him. I guess he…well. I have a hard time believing it, but what do I know? I’d only met him a couple months before.”
“So…what? You hear what happened, and you take off, and now you’re hiding out here?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not hiding. I don’t want to go home. I’d been staying near the college up there—no one looks too close, and it’s easy to use the dorms, and student services. It’s how we met.” He bites his lower lip, looking at the dirty concrete beneath our feet. “I had to leave. I don’t want to be dragged into the case up there. I’m sorry, Kennedy. I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see. Last time I got involved with something that wasn’t my business, it ended badly. So, yeah, I got as far away as I could.”
Kennedy leans over him so his back is pressed into the seat—but there’s nowhere else for him to go. “You just left him there.” She shudders, like there’s a ghost in the room. And I can feel them, all of them—Liam, her mother—watching us now, thinking about all the things we didn’t do, and couldn’t stop. She steps back. “Your sister is looking for you,” she says. “Go home.”
Hunter looks at me instead, like I’m about to absolve him of something. But I am not that person.
* * *
—
Kennedy stays silent on the drive home, twisting around in the seat, staring back into the darkness. “What are you looking for?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. I’m not sure if she knows, either. I drive for ten minutes before she faces forward again, but she’s shaking.
I can’t tell if it’s the nerves, or the fact that we’re soaking wet, in day-old clothes, but I just keep driving. I want to go home. I want to get her back.
“I didn’t know Elliot hated Will,” she says. “He didn’t seem warm to him when he was around, but I thought that was just because, you know, he was our mom’s boyfriend. We didn’t spend a lot of time together other than at my mom’s work conference over the summer and the occasional weekend dinner. Most of the time, they would go out, or spend time at Will’s, just the two of them.” She sits upright in her seat. “I heard them arguing once, Elliot and my mom. About how she didn’t see what he was really like—I didn’t realize he was talking about Will.” She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “I didn’t see. But Elliot did. He saw something that no one else did,” she says. “I need to talk to Joe. You know, Will’s prints were on the gun, too, right? The police said…they said Will tried to wrestle the gun away from him. But what if that’s not what happened at all?”
/> I try to see both possibilities—Elliot with the gun; Will with the gun. The images switch. Her brother, holding the weapon. An older man, graying beard, holding it instead.
Eventually, the rain lets up, but I keep driving until we’re at a rest area on the highway, heading back to Virginia, where we wordlessly take turns standing guard outside the restrooms while the other changes.
It’s 2 a.m. and the adrenaline is wearing off. There’s a truck stop behind the rest area, lights on in the parking lot, full of people, despite the hour. In contrast to sneaking around an abandoned factory in the middle of the night, this feels decidedly safe.
I try to sleep, but I can’t. There are too many thoughts swirling in my head. An hour later, I look over, and she’s staring straight up at the ceiling. Wordlessly, I reach a hand out for hers. She laces her fingers around mine, then shifts to the side.
“I need to tell Joe,” she says. “If Elliot doesn’t remember what happened, then maybe it wasn’t him. He can’t stand the sight of blood. It makes him sick, always has. And there was so much blood…” She drifts off, then continues. “It’s possible Elliot took my mom’s gun out to protect himself. Or my mom took it out to protect herself. Maybe it was Will who did it.”
I try to see it, to believe, to make it so. I shake my head. “But then who shot Will?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. And then, quietly, “Elliot,” she says. And it’s like everything finally clicks together: why he hasn’t denied it, why he isn’t sure. If the night is a blur, and he pulled the trigger…He did do something. It’s terrible.
But then I think of what I would do if I saw someone hurting someone I loved.
“Are you ready to go back?” I ask.
“Not really. But I have to. Are you awake enough to drive?”
“Yeah, just, maybe you can talk to me on the way home, to make sure?”
She smiles then. “Pretty sure I can manage.”
Come Find Me Page 20