Текст книги "In the Afterlight"

Автор книги: Alexandra Bracken

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to keep the tightness out of my voice. “I realized what was happening a second too late. I should have...”

“It’s my fault he figured it out,” Cole said sharply. “Don’t take that blame, Gem, it’s not yours to shoulder. You told me he was involved with Project Jamboree. I should have checked myself instead of acting like a monster, it’s just—dammit!” He slammed his fist against the door. “I wasn’t thinking at all. I just—it won. For a minute, it won.”

His words wrapped around my heart like a fist. I knew that feeling. It didn’t matter how much power you possessed, how useful your abilities were. They had a will of their own. If you weren’t constantly on top of them, they found ways to crawl out from under you.

“Those kids, those Greens and Blues especially, it all comes to them so easily, doesn’t it?” Cole said quietly. “Easier to control, easier to hide. It doesn’t f**k up their lives the way it does for us. We have to be focused, otherwise we slip. And we can’t slip.”

Liam—and Chubs, and Vida, and all of them—hadn’t been able to understand how much work went into controlling what I could do, so it didn’t control me. Loosening my grip on the leash even for a second could mean hurting someone. Hurting myself.

“It feels like I’m always at the edge of it, and I can’t...I can’t step in, not without feeling so damn scared I’m going to ruin everything. I want to stop ruining every good thing that comes my way. I couldn’t control it for a really long time—”

“And you think I can? Jesus. Half the time I feel it boiling me alive under my skin. It simmers and simmers and simmers until I finally release the pressure. It was like that even when I was a kid.” Cole let out a faint, humorless laugh. “It wasn’t...it wasn’t like a voice or anything, not one that whispered to me. It was just this urge, I guess. It was like I was always standing too close to a fire and needed to just stick my hand in once, to see how hot it really was. I couldn’t sleep at night. I thought for sure it was because my dad was actually the devil. Really, truly, the Prince of Darkness himself.”

“Harry?” I asked, confused.

“No, bio dad. Harry’s—”

“Right, forgot,” I said.

“Lee talks about him a lot, then?” He didn’t wait for me to confirm before continuing. “Yeah, our real dad...that man...dumb as a bag of hammers, mean as a snake. Not a good combination. I still fantasize about looking him up, breaking into the old house, and setting his whole world on fire.”

“Liam only brought him up once,” I said, trying not to pry no matter how much I wanted to. This was the one part of his life Liam wasn’t willing to share, and as horrible as it was, it only made me want to pick at the scab more. “When he lost his temper.”

“Good, hopefully that means he doesn’t remember the half of it. The guy was—he was a monster. He was the devil himself when he got his temper up. Guess one of us was bound to be a chip off the old block. I used to wonder, you know, if the abilities we have are somehow dependent on something we already have inside us. I thought, this fire—this is his anger. This is my dad’s rage.”

I knew it wouldn’t do anything, or at least reassurance had never done much when it was delivered to me, but I had to say it. I had to tell him. “You’re not a monster.”

“Don’t monsters breathe fire? Don’t they burn down kingdoms and countries?” Cole sent me a wry smile. “You call yourself that, too, don’t you? No matter how many times others tell you it’s not true, you’ve seen the proof. You can’t trust yourself.”

I settled back against my seat, wondering, for the very first time, if he wasn’t just as desperate as the rest of us for a cure.

“This isn’t about the camps for you...is it?” I asked. “It’s about the cure.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Got it on the first try. Feel free to think I’m an ass**le.”

“Why? Because you don’t want to suffer like this?” I asked sharply. “Because you want to be normal?”

“What’s ‘normal’?” Cole asked. “Pretty sure none of us remember what that feels like.”

“Fine,” I pressed, “then because you want a life where you’re free from all of this bullshit. I want the cure more than I want my next breath. I never used to. I never let myself think of the future, and now it’s like a compulsion. I want that freedom so badly, and it seems like the more I strain to try and reach it, the further away it gets.”

Cole rubbed his hand over his face, nodding. “I underestimate it sometimes...you forget, because you function, and each time you get kicked down you manage to pick yourself up. But now, it’s starting to get harder, right?”

“Yes.” It was the first time I’d admitted it. The word was as hollow as I felt.

“It’s not that I don’t think I won’t be able to get up. It’s that I’m afraid one day I’ll just...explode. Combust. Take out everyone I care about because I can’t stop myself from feeling so damn angry all the time.” He pulled up his hand, holding it in front of his face, waiting for it to spasm again. When it didn’t happen, his gaze shifted down to Clancy. “They keep them locked in these white rooms. Lights are on the whole time and there are voices. Voices that don’t stop, that are constantly telling them shit like, you’re wrong, admit you’re wrong so we can fix you. They hurt the kids—they really hurt them, over and over. It was...I could barely stand to see it, and I wasn’t the one getting beaten. Was that...real? Can he make stuff up?”

My hands tightened around the wheel. “He can plant any image he wants in your mind, but I think the truth is bad enough that he doesn’t have to embellish it.”

“I don’t know what pisses me off more—what they did to the kids, or that they figured out how to contain the fire in them. Shit, Gem. How the hell...” He shook his head as if to clear it. “If he tells any of the others, if he tells Liam, what am I supposed to do? None of the kids will come within a hundred feet of me.”

“He’s not going to,” I promised. “How much more of that stuff do you have?”

He unzipped the pouch. “Three more vials.”

“Then he’ll stay out until we get to the Ranch and we get him secured,” I said. “We’ll keep him separated at all times, and I’ll be the one he interacts with.”

“Killing him would be simpler.” There was nothing heated or furious about his words, and maybe that was why they were so disarming. Just cold, ruthless pragmatism. It was unsettling how fast the switch flipped.

“Can’t,” I reminded him, recycling one of his own arguments, “he’s the only one who knows where his mother is. You can’t do anything to him, not until we find out where she is. I need the cure. Whatever it is, I need it. I hate him more than anything in the world, but I hate living this way more. I hate the idea of there not being an end to this.”

Cole turned back toward the window, watching the buildings around us blur around us. “Then you and me, Gem, we’ll have to figure out a way to stay one step ahead of our monsters.”

I nodded; my throat was tight with the need to cry, with the surprise of finally having someone who understood—who struggled not just with everything and everyone around them, but with themselves.

“Are you sure this isn’t a nightmare?” he asked quietly. “And that we won’t just wake up?”

I stared ahead at the road, the way the dust blowing in from the desert covered it with a faint golden sheen even as gray clouds began to gather over us.

“Yes,” I said after some time.

Because dreamers always wake up and leave their monsters behind.

4

THE RAIN STARTED IN WITH a clap of thunder just outside of Mojave, a small town situated at the base of the nearby mountains’ craggy slopes. In the distance, over their jagged crowns, I could see the first hints of green.

“That Days Inn,” Cole said, pointing to the small, two-story complex hugging the corner. “Pull in there. We need to get them another car, and we need to switch ours out.”

The town had been drained of its life some time ago, that much was clear by the complete and total lack of upkeep of its businesses and homes. It was a sight I’d grown used to over the past year, to the point that I didn’t feel the creeping sense of dread that came with seeing empty playgrounds, or fresh dirt in graveyards, or homes that had been chained and boarded up. So not even California, which had run independently from the rest of the nation under the Federal Coalition, had been immune to the new normal of economic strife that the rest of the country had been clawing through.

“People could be staying here,” I said. “They would stake it as their territory—”

“Look at the cars here,” Cole said, “the amount of dirt on them. They’ve been sitting here awhile. I haven’t seen any movement through the hotel’s windows or around the perimeter, have you? Park. Pull up right there, next to that gray Toyota.”

I turned off the engine as he double-checked that Clancy was still out and still secured with zip ties. He went to inspect the other cars to find a working one with gas, and I jumped down from the driver’s seat and all but ran around to the back to untie the tarp. The three of them sat up in unison, blinking against the dull light.

Cool rain streaked down my face and neck as I helped the others down from the back. The air was thick with that strange, wonderful, indescribable smell that was unique to storms in the desert.

“Hey,” I said, my hands closing around Liam’s arms to steady him as he slid down off the bed. “Are you all right?”

Liam nodded and squeezed my shoulder as he passed by. “Chubs—wait—dammit, buddy—” Without his glasses, the kid couldn’t see a thing. Chubs caught his toe on a pothole in the pavement and went down before Liam could reach him. After he used his good arm to get his friend back on his feet, he led Chubs toward the edge of the motel’s parking lot and they disappeared around the corner. By the lack of explanation and how quickly they were moving, I took a guess about what kind of business they were conducting.

“Was it as special up front as it was in the back?” Vida asked, hopping down next to me. Her joints popped as she stretched her arms and back.

“No one’s killed each other,” I said. “Was it terrible back there?”

“Nah,” Vida said with a shrug. “A little uncomfortable and cold at some points. You took a sharp turn somewhere and Grannie copped a feel by mistake. He looks like he wants to die of shame each time I bring it up. Basically, I’m going to milk that shit for all it’s worth.”

“Do you have to?” I asked pointedly.

“Whatever. He was more pissed off by us playing a game of who could think up the worst nickname for him.”

“Let me guess, you won?”

“It was Boy Scout, actually. I mean, come on. Even I couldn’t top Chubby Chubby Choo Choo. I almost pissed my pants laughing.”

I made a mental note to give Chubs a good, long hug before we set off again.

Glancing over to make sure the boys were making their way back toward us, a pop of color caught my eye. Shielding my eyes against the rain, I took a step toward the two small cement homes that were oddly positioned a short distance from the corner of the street. A crude array of graffiti marred the cracked cement wall that separated the side of the house from the nearby parking spaces.

“What?” Vida asked. “What’s with that face?”

Most of the art wasn’t really art at all, and a good portion hadn’t been spray-painted. I wiped the rain from my face, tucking my wet hair out of the way. There were names scrawled there in permanent marker—a Henry, a Jayden, a Piper, and a Lizzy all written in great looping letters under a large, black, outlined circle with what looked like a crescent moon inside of it. Vida trailed me as I walked over to it to get a better look.

My eyes skimmed over the wall, vaguely aware of the steps coming up behind us. One of the tags, this one done in blue spray paint, was fresh enough that the letters there—what looked like a K, L, Z, and H—were running, drooping down to the ground. I pressed my fingers against it, unsurprised that they came away sticky and stained.

“Oh. Wow.” Liam let out a startled laugh, stepping up next to me to get a better look.

“Oh, wow, what?” Chubs asked.

“It’s road code. Remember? At East River?”

I glanced at Chubs as his brow furrowed, clearly as confused as I felt. Liam had dived into camp life headfirst, befriending anyone and everyone, but I had kept mostly to Clancy, and Chubs had kept mostly to himself.

“Well,” Liam said, undaunted, “it was the system they worked out for safe travel. We used it to mark how to get back after going out on supply runs, and it was taught to all of the kids who left and went out on their own.”

He flattened his palm against the crescent moon. “I remember this one. This means that this is a safe place. To sleep. To rest. That kind of thing.”

“And the names are what, kids who have passed through?” Vida asked.

“Yeah. They were supposed to do that in case they had to split up, or they were trying to leave a trail for another group to follow.” The rain was coming down harder, forcing him to stop and wipe it off his face. “There are different ones for places to pick up food, where you can find supplies, a house of friendly people who might be willing to help you, and so on and so forth.”

“Clancy thought of this?” I asked.

“Amazing, right?” Liam said. “I didn’t know he was capable of thinking of anyone other than himself for two seconds without killing himself in disgust.”

“Huh.” Chubs held up one of his broken lenses and peered through it like a magnifying lens, ignoring Vida’s snicker. “Kids actually made it all the way out here from Virginia?”

We did, I almost said. But our circumstances had been...different, to say the least.

“I bet...” He took my arm, leading me away from the others, walking to the corner where the house’s fence met the fence running along the end of the parking lot. Down the street on the opposite corner was some kind of church. Painted there in bold, black strokes were two inverted Vs, one on top of the other like arrows, surrounded by a circle. “That’s a directional marker to show them which road to take.”

“Wow,” I said, “I’ve been seeing those since we left Los Angeles. I had no idea—I just assumed it had something to do with road construction.”

“What’s funny is that I remember them from before—when we were driving through—” He hesitated. “Through Harrisonburg?”

I looked up at him, confused. But it hit me soon enough, and the question in his tone registered like the sharp ache of a repeat injury.

“We did drive through there...together, I mean? I’m not—I’m not remembering the wrong thing, am I?”

What killed me, almost more than the frustrated expression on his face, was that there was no accusation in his voice. I knew that what I had done to his memory had mostly been—undone, I guess. But he still had moments of overlap between what had really happened, and the story I had planted in his mind. I’d overheard him asking Chubs for clarification a few times, but this was the first time I’d ever been so directly confronted with it. My whole chest ached. If I’d had the option of melting into a puddle and letting myself be carried down into the storm drain, I would have taken it.

“No,” I managed to get out. “You’ve got it right. We drove through on the way to that Wal-Mart.”

I started to turn back to the motel, but he caught my wrist. I braced myself for whatever he was about to say.

Which, apparently, was nothing. He looked down, his thumb stroking the soft skin on the inside of my wrist.

Finally, Liam said, “I remember the other motel—it looked almost exactly like this one, but the doors weren’t red.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a rueful grin on his face. “I acted like an idiot trying to give you a pair of socks.”

In spite of myself, I smiled. “Yeah. What about serenading me with The Doors? Come on baby, light my fire....”

“I probably would have put on a whole song-and-dance routine if you hadn’t started laughing,” he said. “That’s how badly I wanted you to smile.”

My heart hurt in a completely different way now. I rolled up onto my toes, pressing a soft kiss onto his cheek. There was a sharp whistle from the parking lot. Cole waved us back over from where he stood next to a compact white sedan. Liam rolled his eyes at the sight of it, but started toward the driver’s side. Cole shook his head and pointed to Vida.

“She’s driving.” He cut Liam’s protest off before he could get a word in. “No attitude. Your shoulder needs to rest. Trade off later.”

“You’re such an ass**le! I’m fine—”

“Is this what they call brotherly love?” Chubs wondered aloud.

“Hey, this works for me,” Vida said, ignoring him. “Maybe now we’ll break forty miles an hour. Laters—try not to drive us directly into another military patrol, ’kay?”

“Be careful,” I called after her, pointlessly.

“Ready, Gem?” Cole asked. Instead of heading back to the red truck, he turned me in the direction of a new, blue one. “I got us new wheels. Someone probably reported the red one. The Little Prince is already inside and secure.”

I noticed he was already walking toward the passenger side. “Don’t you want to drive?” I asked.

“Why? Do you need a break, or are you okay to go a few more hours? I could use a second to close my eyes. We can switch when it gets dark.”

It startled me a little bit to see how quickly Cole crashed once we were driving again. One minute he was leaning his head against the window, telling me to take the next right and turn up my windshield wipers, and the next he was dead to the world.

I could do this. The truck was new enough to have an electronic compass on its display, and I really just needed to keep heading north until I started seeing signs for Lodi or Stockton.

But the only signs I was seeing now were the ones spray-painted onto the sides of buildings. Along walls. On marquees and storefronts in shopping centers. Once my eyes were open to them, I saw them everywhere. They dragged my eyes over to them again and again, screaming for my attention.

When I saw the next set in the distance, I felt a reckless thought sneak up on me. I hesitated, looking over at Cole, trying to weigh how angry he’d be. We were flying toward the road symbols, and if I didn’t turn now, I might lose the trail completely—

Does it matter? You don’t even know these kids....

It did. Because I knew what it was like trying to survive on the road, and if they needed help, I wanted us to be the ones who gave it to them.

I made that first right turn when the arrows suddenly shifted. They took me away from the two highways that would have gotten me over and through the mountains to Oak Creek Road, which in another life might have been the scenic route to take through these parts. Another right turn, onto Tehachapi Willow Springs Road, which skirted the city of Tehachapi. All of the signs announcing the approaching city were marked with a large X with a small circle around the letter’s center. The shape reminded me enough of a skull and crossbones that I didn’t want to risk ignoring it.

It was up near an aquatics park that my mind started to go a bit soft. I caught my eyes closing and jerked back awake more than once. Stop it, I thought, wake up wake up wake up. Cole needed to finally be able to recharge after the two hellish weeks we’d had on the run in Los Angeles. I could handle this. I could at least stay awake until we had to stop again for gas.

The light dimmed with every minute that passed, the winter sun setting even earlier behind the silver storm clouds. In the gray-blue light, the cement sign for the recreation area seemed to glow, and the tags there seemed especially dark in comparison. The initials I saw gave my brain something to play with, at least, while I watched the road.

PGJR...Paul, George, John, and Ringo...parrot, giraffe, jaguar, rabbit...pistol, Glock, Jericho, rifle...

HBFB...Hazel, Bigwig, Fiver, Blackberry...hash browns, bacon, flapjacks, bran flakes...Harrisonburg, Bedford, Fairfax, Bristol...

Below that line of initials was another faint one. I slowed the truck, squinting through the sheet of rain at it. The downpour had nearly carried the letters away, but I could still see the faintest hint of KLZH.

Kia...Lexus...Z-something...Honda...Okay, that one didn’t exactly work. Kansas, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, The Hollies. Damn, Z was hard—zebras, zoo, zero, zilch, and Zu. And that was it. That was all my brain had.

I yawned through my smile. K-something, Liam, Zu, Hina. Oh—Kylie, Kylie from East River, that worked. Kylie, Liam, Zu, Hina. Or even Kylie, Lucy, Zu, and Hina—

The air whooshed through the vents, louder now that my mind was completely still and silent. It filled my ears until my heart started banging against my ribcage, hard enough for the sound to reach my ears.

Kylie, Lucy, Zu, and Hina. My mind was singing out the names over and over again until I felt almost delirious. Stop it. I tried to move on, tried kangaroo, lion, zebra, hyena, but I couldn’t shake the fizzing sensation in my blood.

If they were kids leaving that tag, then we couldn’t have been far behind them. And if they knew how to follow the code, then they were...they had to be from East River, right? I’d only seen one group of kids actually leave East River, and that had been Zu’s group.

Stop it, I thought, sucking down a long gulp of the air coming through the vents. I reached over to turn the heat up slightly, trying to drive out the chill. There were other kids, plenty of other kids, with those same first letters. And regardless of who the other girl had been, if it was Zu’s group, then there should have been a T there for Talon, the teen boy who’d gone with them. I tried to call up each of their faces, but Kylie, Lucy, Talon, and Hina were blank. Weird how I could remember their hair, the way they’d worn their black bandanas, the sound of their voices, but not what any of them really looked like. My mind had blocked out so much of our time at East River as a defense against the pain, it all might as well have happened to a different person.

But Zu—I remembered everything about Zu, from the way her hair spiked up first thing in the morning to each freckle across her nose.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw yet another code tag—two of them, on a sign with directions to the nearby freeway that was counting down the miles to the next city. One was the crescent moon in a circle, the other was a set of arrows, pointing right—east—not straight ahead like the others.

I switched the truck’s headlights on, letting them flood the clusters of trees on either side of the road. I started to pull the truck over onto the shoulder, wishing I had some other way to talk to Liam and Chubs, but I stopped myself.

These past few days had been hard enough on Liam already. Giving him this thrill only to have it ripped away seemed especially cruel. Chubs could bear the disappointment, but Liam...I didn’t want to see his face fall when it all turned out to be nothing. I’d already let him down so many times, in so many ways. I couldn’t add this to the list.

But there was that small voice rising above the other thoughts, whispering, what if it is her, though?

Kylie, Lucy, Zu, and Hina. KLZH.

This was dangerous—this was letting myself think that sometimes life had the near-magical quality of working out. It could unfold in a way that’s so much better and easier than what you could have imagined.

That paint—it’d been fresh enough to run under the insistent stroke of rain, hadn’t it? They couldn’t have been that far ahead.

Don’t do this to yourself, I thought. We were farther north than where Liam thought her uncle’s home was, and the initials were still missing Talon’s T. Maybe it was exhaustion, or desperation, or some kind of need to prove that life could sometimes be kind. Whatever it was, I couldn’t ignore it.

What was the risk in following this trail through, just to see what was waiting for us at the end? What if this was the one chance we’d ever have of finding her?

Jude would have done it. With him, it wouldn’t have even been a debate.

I still felt crazy taking the next right, and clearly the others felt the same way. Vida tapped the horn, a quiet question. It was a dark access road, not even paved. The truck settled into the mud, rolling through the fresh tracks left by another set of tires. The overgrown trees lining the road were gnarled and twisted into each other; I kept the truck moving fast enough to tear through them, snapping branches and ripping away leaves.

It was that noise, not the earlier, inquiring honk from the other car, that finally shook Cole out of his two-hour nap. I saw him tense, running his hands over his face once, twice, trying to clear up the disorientation brought on by such a deep sleep.

“You should have woken me up!” He squinted at the glowing dashboard console. “Wait...where the hell are we? Why are we going east, not north?”

“I have a hunch,” I said.

“Yeah, and I have a pain in my ass—and surprise, it’s you,” he said, glaring at me over Clancy’s prone form. “What’s this about?’

“I think—” The trees suddenly pulled back, and I saw that the road we’d come in on hadn’t really been a road at all, but a long driveway up to what once must have been a gorgeous mountain home. The thing was massive—two stories, a double-wide garage. The face of the house was stone and wood, as if despite its hulking presence it was still meant to blend in.

“Still waiting on that answer,” Cole said as I threw the car into park.

“I think there may be some kids hiding here,” I said. “I just want to have a quick look around—I swear, I swear I’ll be fast.”

Cole set his jaw, and I wondered what kind of expression I had that ultimately made him nod and say, “Fine, but take Vida with you. You have two minutes.”

The others had opened their doors, but only Liam had stepped out into the rain. “What’s going on?” he called.

“I just need Vida for a second,” I said. “No, just her. Her. It’s a quick...thing.”

Chubs groaned. “What kind of thing? A Ruby-walks-into-mortal-danger thing?”

I shut the door on any further questions, wincing as I saw the hopeful look Vida shot me as she walked over.

“Is this about...is it Cate?”

Her whole face was glowing with hope, almond eyes wide, full lips parted as if she was uncertain if she should smile. God—if Cate hadn’t made it, if she wasn’t there waiting for us, I didn’t think I’d be able to put Vida back together.

“I think there might be kids hiding out here.”

That perked her right up. I saw her hand slide back into the pocket of her sweatshirt, reaching for the gun hidden there.

“All right, cool,” she said. “How do you want to play this?”

The front door and the first-story windows were all boarded over—the back and side entrances were, too. Vida’s initial excitement quickly faded as we trampled through the mud and tall grass in the dark, slipping and sliding our way around the house a second time. There were no ladders that I could see to help someone up to the second floor. No lights on, no sounds coming from inside the house. The odd, shadowy shape on the garage door took form the closer we got, stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a crude crescent moon, cut out of some kind of metal. Someone had hammered it up with a single nail.

Safe place. I took a deep breath and reached for the cold metal of the garage door handle. Vida hung back but brought her gun up, aiming—

At nothing at all.

No cars, no bags, no kids huddled on blankets. Aside from rows of gardening tools and trash cans, there was only trash. The bright wrappers were scattered in heaps around the dark space.

Vida dragged her boots through the trash, scattering it. Now that my eyes were adjusting to the light, I could see other signs that there’d been at least one person here recently. A small pile of blankets and an abandoned duffel bag.

“Come on,” she said. “If anyone was here, they must have peaced out days ago.”

“There were tracks in the mud on the drive in,” I said, wondering if my words sounded more solid than my thoughts did. I started toward the door that led into the house, only to be stopped short by the sight of the padlock hanging from it.

Cole honked the horn, and it was the slap in the face I needed.

You are acting crazy, I thought. Pull yourself together. There are more important things—

No. No there weren’t. Because the truth of it was, I would have walked here. I would have walked here all the way from Los Angeles, alone in the dark in the pouring rain, if it had meant finding Zu again. I wanted it that badly—I needed to know she was safe and that she was okay, and that I hadn’t failed her the way I’d failed all of the others.

Even the part of me that had expected this felt sad and small and foolish as I followed Vida out. I was glad for the rain now; anything to hide the fact that one wrong word, one bad stray thought, would push me to tears.

Vida put her hands on her hips, surveying the dark line of trees that formed a high wall around the house. “This would be a good place to crash for a couple days. I saw the signs too, you know. And I think if you hadn’t come and looked, it would have bugged the shit out of you forever.”

“Sorry to drag you out here,” I mumbled. Vida waved me off as she moved back toward the other car. Liam had left his door open, and the light inside gave me a clear view of two very concerned faces.

Vida stopped in her tracks, slowly bent down at the edge of the driveway, and picked something up—something white and filthy with mud. “Hey boo,” she called, tossing it over to me. My fingers were shaking and slick with rain, but I somehow managed to catch it.

It was a small shoe, clearly kid-sized. The white fabric was nearly black with mud and grime, but the laces were still a rosy shade of pink, like not even dirt could put a damper on it. I studied it, running my fingers over the swirled stitching along its side.

Cole made it perfectly clear my hijacking of our drive was over. He’d taken my place behind the wheel, and was in the process of rolling down his window when I tossed the shoe back onto the ground and said, “I know, I know.”