Fadeaway

by E. B. Vickers

  Then we all put our phones down and sit there, sick, while cheap candles weep wax onto Luke’s cake.

  Maybe it’s just the candles, but there’s a fire in Mrs. Foster’s eyes now as she reaches for Luke’s phone. “He’s alive, and he’s asking for help. That’s what this is. I’m calling the police. No, I’m taking this to the police. They have to be able to figure something out.”

  “I can stay with Luke,” Daphne says. “If you want.”

  Mrs. Foster nods. She pulls Luke close and kisses the top of his head. “I can’t sit here waiting or wishing. Not anymore. I have to find my son.”

  She throws Luke’s phone into her purse and strides out the door. Part of me wants to follow her, to say Screw it to the world like she did. But at least she had somewhere to go. Where would I even start?

  I read the text again. What does “when this is all over” mean, anyway? That he’s thinking about suicide? That he’s about to overdose? That he was so desperate for drugs that he crossed the wrong kind of people and really is locked away somewhere, taken prisoner or brainwashed or something worse? Daphne catches my eye, and I can tell her mind’s going to the same dark places.

  When her phone rings, we all jump. She relaxes a little when she sees the screen.

  “It’s Seth,” she says, silencing the call and forcing a smile for Luke. “I’ll talk to him later. Luke, it’s your birthday. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to find my brother. I want to go look for him and find him. Tonight.”

  I rake my hands through my hair. “We’re trying….”

  Luke looks up at me, serious as a heart attack.

  “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

  I’ve never seen Luke look so determined—or so much like Jake. And he’s right. Something fundamental needs to change if we’re going to go from try to do, like Mrs. Foster did tonight. I could kick myself for all the time I’ve spent scrolling through the garbage on the “Find Jake” page and waiting for the police to take me up on my offer to help. For all the hours I’ve wasted hanging posters and following the rules instead of following my gut and actually finding him myself.

  Kolt tips back in his chair. “Well, sure. I should have realized all we were missing was a Yoda quote.”

  “Not helping,” I snap at him. Then I turn to Luke. “You’re right,” I say. “But maybe we have to start with the try. We know he’s not in this house, so let’s look somewhere else.”

  I turn back to Kolt. “You coming?”

  He looks down. “He’s my best friend. Of course I’m coming.”

  “Good,” I say, stacking the dishes and scribbling a note for Mrs. Foster. “Let’s go.”

  Luke leans forward and blows out the candles, and nobody needs to ask what he wished for.

  Outside, Kolt strides to his truck, then falters. “Wait, I’m almost out of gas.”

  “Are you ever not almost out of gas?” I ask.

  “Nope,” he says, and changes direction. “But I could drive Jake’s truck. Maybe there’s some kind of clue there anyway.” He lifts the handle, but the door’s locked again.

  “I know how to open it,” I say. “I’m going to pull up on the handle, and you grab it from the bottom….”

  Right as we’re reaching for the door, Luke pulls the key from his pocket and slides it in the lock.

  “Did you have that all along?” I ask, feeling like an idiot.

  “Yes,” he says. “So if he ever came back, he couldn’t leave again without saying goodbye.”

  He climbs in first and slides all the way across to unlock the driver-side door, and then all three of us are on the bench seat.

  “Okay,” Kolt says, taking the key from Luke and turning it in the ignition. The truck coughs and sputters but eventually starts.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “Whenever I lose something,” Luke says, “I’m supposed to retrace my steps. So maybe we can retrace Jake’s steps.”

  “Okay,” Kolt says. “We know he drove the truck home, and we’re in the truck. So now we go…”

  “Back to the school?” I say. “I mean, we know he’s not there, but maybe there’s a clue, or it could trigger a memory for one of us.”

  “Sure,” Kolt says, gunning the truck backward down the driveway.

  Luke reads the text again. “ ‘Maybe when this is all over…’ What does that mean?”

  Kolt and I look at each other. “We don’t know for sure,” I say, although it’s hard to interpret it as meaning anything good.

  My phone rings, and I glance down.

  Seth. Again.

  Kolt sees it too and rolls his eyes. “Might as well answer it, or he’ll just keep calling. Dude doesn’t know when to give it a rest.” He grabs my phone and answers the call on speaker.

  “Hey,” I say, hoping Seth will hear in my voice that I’m not looking to talk.

  “Hey,” he answers, his voice tinny over the rumble of the truck. There’s a silence long enough that I wonder if he thinks I called him first.

  Kolt sees his opening. “I gotta be honest, bro. We don’t have time for whatever this is.”

  “Kolt?” Seth sounds confused. “What are you doing there? Daphne, who else are you with?”

  “Well, technically, she’s with you,” Luke says. “Because you stole her from my brother. That’s you, right? Seth Cooper, center, six four, two hundred ten pounds,” he recites. “Team leader in rebounds and foul-shot percentage and not much else.”

  “Is that Luke?” Seth asks. “What’s going on, Daphne?”

  “We’re trying to find Jake.” I don’t say it to hurt him, but I don’t care that it might.

  Seth clears his throat. “Okay. Look, I was just calling to tell you not to come over tonight.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.” Seth knows me, knows I’d never put up with a boyfriend who tries to control me. But there’s something off in his tone. Something different from the ridiculous jealousy in the gym the other day. “Why shouldn’t I come over? What are you doing tonight?”

  “Staying home,” he answers, quick and suspicious. “I’m not feeling great, to be honest, and I thought maybe you would want to go home in case it hits you too.”

  What’s he hiding? It can’t have anything to do with Jake or the text, can it?

  “Good talk, bro. We gotta go.” Kolt picks up my phone and thumb-stabs the screen to end the call.

  Two seconds later, it rings again, and I grab it away before Kolt can turn this into another group conversation. “I’m not coming home,” I say. “I’m going to find Jake.”

  There’s a few seconds of silence before Dad answers, his tone tight and tense. “Absolutely not.”

  “That’s not your call to make,” I say.

  “Absolutely not,” he says again, as if repeating the words will make me obey. I’m used to him trying to protect me, but he’s never sounded this afraid.

  “I’ll be safe,” I promise. “But I’m not coming home, and if you call again, I’m not answering.” Then I hang up and turn my phone on silent. I’ve had enough of men trying to tell me what to do or not do tonight.

  I’m looking for a place to stash my phone when a small white triangle catches my eye. Something’s stuck in the space above the ashtray.

  I tug at the corner of the paper and unfold it to find some indecipherable scrawl on the back of a McDonald’s receipt. Jake hates McDonald’s. Plus, the handwriting isn’t his, and it’s pretty much impossible to read.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  Luke shakes his head, and Kolt says, “Looks like a receipt, genius,” but I pocket it, anyway. Maybe if I tell the police I have new evidence, they’ll actually talk to me.

  When we pull into the gym parking lot, Kolt swings his door open before he’s even in park.
“Okay, so, retracing his steps. We all went in the locker room for a minute to deliver the trophy. I can get us in.”

  Luke and I watch as he shimmies through a high window, and thirty seconds later, the door groans open.

  “How long have you been doing that?” I ask.

  “Since sophomore year. Caruso showed us.”

  “The creepy custodian showed you how to break into the school?”

  I shiver, but Kolt only shrugs. “He’s not creepy. Just socially awkward or something. And be nice. He might still be here.”

  Luke and I follow Kolt through the maze of stalls and showers and lockers. From the tile to the smell to the buzz of the lights, it’s both different from and the same as our locker room across the gym. Familiar, yet somewhere I’ve never been.

  We search Jake’s basketball locker for any hint or sign or anything significant, then make our way to his regular locker and do the same thing. Between Kolt and me, we can patch together Jake’s full schedule, and even though the classrooms are locked, it feels significant to walk the halls as he would have walked them.

  But, of course, that doesn’t mean actual evidence, and pretty soon we’ve walked the whole school.

  “Now what?” Kolt asks. “We go back to the arena where we played the championship game? I mean, we know he made it back to Ashland, but I guess that makes sense….”

  “Not yet,” Luke says. “I felt closer to him in the gym. Let’s go back there.”

  The gym is eerie in the glow of the one emergency light in the corner. Without another word, we sit in a circle at center court: Kolt splayed out and leaning back on his hands, me with my knees tucked to my chest, and Luke chewing on his bottom lip so quickly I know he’s working through something in his mind. Is he discouraged that his idea didn’t work? Wondering what was behind all the locked doors we passed? When he finally speaks, his words are soft but clear.

  “ ‘In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.’ ”

  “What?” Kolt asks. “Wait, are you quoting Yoda again? You know this isn’t Star Wars, right? We’re not your princess and your Wookiee or something.”

  “Of course,” Luke says. “But I’m still a Luke trying to save somebody I care about. And Yoda helps me think.”

  “It helps me too,” I say. “And we are a little bit of a Rebel Alliance. But we still need a plan.”

  “Not a plan,” Luke corrects. “A little more knowledge.”

  “To light our way.” Kolt doesn’t sound totally convinced, but he shrugs and decides to go with it. “It actually is easier to think in here. Maybe because we don’t have Seth distracting us with his drama.”

  Kolt’s right, but his words catch inside me. My boyfriend—if that’s still what he is—is not drama. Something is up, and the timing of his call so soon after Jake’s text makes me wonder if they’re related. Does Seth know where Jake is? Has something happened and he doesn’t want me to see? Doesn’t want me to worry?

  Everything is upside down; somehow Seth has become the ghost I can’t stop thinking of when all I want to do is focus on Jake.

  “Seth is trying to do what’s right, same as you,” I say.

  “You really believe that, don’t you?” Kolt asks. “Even after that crap he pulled with the police.”

  I feel my eyes narrow. “I’m still not sure who to believe on that one.”

  “Me! You should believe me. Seth told them I picked up Jake at midnight that night. I don’t know if he grabbed the wrong cup at the party or made up a story or what, but that’s straight-up not true. I never saw Jake after the locker room.”

  I hadn’t thought about it before, but Kolt’s right. I’ve trusted Seth so completely that I had assumed Kolt was the one bending the truth to keep himself out of trouble. But what if Seth felt so bad about not checking in on Jake like he’d promised me he would that he made it all up? And then he couldn’t back down and had to repeat the lie to the police?

  Still, I bristle. “Seth wouldn’t lie to the police.”

  “Lots of people lie to the police,” Luke says. “I did. I mean, I tried to tell them the truth, but the last part turned into a lie.”

  “The truth about what?” I ask, trying to approach it gently. “Can you tell it to us?”

  And then he tells us the real story of Jake’s accident on the roof, a story I lived too but saw through a lens I refused to remove. By the time he finishes, I’m crying and pulling my knees closer, fat tears falling to my arms as guilt slices me open again.

  I didn’t see.

  I didn’t listen.

  I told him to push through the pain to get himself back on the court.

  “I lied to the police too,” Kolt admits, tipping his head back like he might be trying to keep the tears in. “I knew he might have a problem with pills, and I didn’t tell them. They asked me straight-up, and I didn’t tell them.”

  “I didn’t lie,” I say, my voice soft but full of false strength. “But I’m the worst of all. I’m the one who made him take them. When he first got injured, he didn’t want to. I told him he had to if he wanted to recover.”

  Jake’s words circle the room. So sorry…all over…forgive me.

  “They think he robbed the pharmacy.” Luke whispers the words. “Do you think that’s true?”

  Kolt stares at the ceiling. “If he did, he’s probably getting ready to run. That’s what my brother would do.”

  “What do you do when you are getting ready to run?” Luke asks.

  Kolt thinks a second. “Try to get some cash. Anything else you can’t live without.”

  Luke sits up straight, like a bolt of energy just came through the floorboards. “Cash and your favorite sweatshirt? Is that what you would need?”

  “Luke,” I ask gently, “what are you talking about?”

  “When Kolt’s brother came to my house yesterday, that’s what he took. That plus I’m not sure what else.”

  My pulse quickens; I feel it throbbing at my temple. “Kolt’s brother came to your house?”

  “Yes,” Luke says. “Yesterday.”

  I spin to Kolt. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

  Kolt sighs. “Because it’s not true. I didn’t know about the rest of it, but apparently Luke gave stuff to some rando who claimed to know Jake—which is its own problem. But I promise you it wasn’t Kmart. Luke just thought it was him because he’s projecting. That’s when—”

  I cut him off. “I know what projecting is. Luke, did he say anything else?”

  Luke hesitates, and there’s a little fear in his eyes.

  “You can trust us. Did he tell you not to tell anybody?”

  Luke nods. Thinks. “Well, maybe he just said not to tell the police….”

  “Yes!” I say. “I’m sure that’s what he said. So you can tell us.”

  Luke presses his lips together for a few long seconds, but then he lets the words out in a whisper. “He said Jake would be okay but I couldn’t tell them.” He looks up at me, eyes big and pleading. “Did I ruin it?”

  “No,” I insist. “You didn’t ruin anything. Kolt, tell him.”

  “She’s right,” Kolt says. “You did the right thing telling somebody. And I wish it was my brother, but it wasn’t. You want to see who my brother is?” He pulls out his phone, and two seconds later, he’s showing Luke a mug shot. “This is him. Kade Martin, a.k.a. Kmart.”

  Luke takes the phone. Studies it. “Yes. That’s him.” He swallows. “But we still can’t tell the police.”

  Kolt and I stare.

  Finally he speaks. “You saw my brother.”

  Luke nods. “The scar above his eyebrow is smaller now. Is this an old picture?”

  Kolt answers with questions of his own. “And all he took was cash and some sweatshirt? What did he say?”
r />   “He said not to call him Kmart and not to call the police. He said Jake will be okay.”

  “Are you sure it’s him?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says, and I have to believe him.

  We’re finally getting somewhere, and I realize it’s happening because we’re finally sharing everything we have—and finally taking each other seriously. So I pull out the receipt from Jake’s truck. “Look closer,” I say, pointing to the indecipherable words on the back. “Could this be his handwriting?”

  Kolt grabs the receipt and flips it over. “No way,” he whispers. “No way no way no way.”

  He gapes, then takes his phone back from Luke and taps the screen. My phone dings, and I look down, hoping it’s Seth or, even better, Jake.

  But it’s that same mug shot staring up at me. I’m struck by how much it does look like Kolt.

  “Send it to Seth,” Kolt says, and he’s up on his knees, bouncing. “He might not answer if it comes from me. Ask him if that’s who picked Jake up at midnight that night. If he’s with my brother, that’s seriously bad news.”

  So I forward the photo and ask the question. We all stare at my screen, but the answer never comes, which is not like Seth. The call wasn’t like him, either. What’s he doing that he wants me to go home so badly? I’d be worried about him if I had any room at all left for more worries.

  But I don’t, and I can’t wait any longer for an answer. If it really was Kmart who came for Jake’s stuff, then it’s looking more than ever like one or both of them might have been responsible for the pharmacy break-in. And the text makes it sound like things have gone downhill from there.

  Still, this new information seems to mean Jake is finally found—and with his life on the line, that’s all we need. It feels like a wall has cracked open right in front of us, and we have to keep moving even before the dust settles enough for us to see what’s waiting on the other side.

  “Do you know where he lives?” I ask Kolt.

  “No,” he says, and my heart falls.

  He gets up and paces along the half-court line. Then his head snaps up. “But I think I could figure it out.”

  “A little more knowledge lights our way,” Luke says, and nobody can argue with that.