“So he couldn’t be too far. Unless he hitchhiked.”
I sent out a text to everyone. And then I called August, but it rang out. I texted him too: Where are you? If you’re somewhere close we’ll come pick you up I amended it:
Or if you’re not
We’ll pick you up anyway
Dash tried calling too, to the same result.
Please answer if you get this, I added as Dash started up the car.
We drove through town—past school, and the athletic fields, past Fairview Park. Clouds were gathering, the branches of the willows swaying as the wind made patterns in the surface of the pond.
Texts began to roll in:
I checked at dollar depot, they said he wasn’t in today but he was scheduled, Flora said.
I’ll ask around downtown, Terrance sent.
Go to Bygones, I replied. Just in case.
We crossed the railroad tracks, wound through the industrial part of town—the grain elevator, the manufacturing buildings. We circled back and went down Main again, this time turning down 40, through the neighborhood back there. I don’t know what I expected to see, but I know what I wanted—August walking down the street, his backpack on. Sitting conveniently on a park bench. Easily spotted, easily convinced to come home.
We were heading out toward the fields when the first raindrops broke through the clouds overhead. A few warning ones, like the first couple of fireworks they send up on the Fourth to signal the start of the show. Then the sky opened up.
My phone buzzed with a message from Brit:
You should check Megan’s house
I blinked.
forty-six
We rolled to a stop in front of the Pleasant place. It had lost all appeal to me since the Bloomington trip. I could hear Brit’s voice at band practice—Maybe that’s pretty messed up too, if you actually think about it.
The rain was coming down heavy, water streaming in sheets through gaps in the roof of the front porch. Dash shut off the car and we ran around to the back, shoving the piece of plywood aside and ducking in.
It was hard to see inside, with how dark it had gotten outside. Dash pulled out his phone and it cast a pale white light, illuminating the probably kitchen of Megan Pleasant’s almost-house.
The pound of rain was loud. We were both soaked through, our forest-green Safeway polo shirts turned dark.
I moved through the kitchen, peering down the hall of the new addition.
“Look,” Dash said suddenly, and shone the light toward a backpack sitting on the ground in the wide doorway leading to the old side of the house.
“August?” I called, moving back that way.
A muffled shout sounded in response, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
I spun around. “August?”
“Sophie?”
I stepped into the old part of the house, and with the relatively little light coming in through the windows, I could see an irregular patch at the center of the floor that was darker than the rest of it.
I moved toward it immediately, and heard a strangled “DON’T” from below, followed by an incredible string of expletives. I froze.
“Don’t move!” August yelled. “Don’t come closer. It’s not stable.” Another run of curses, which ended, “God, I’m glad you’re here.” There was a desperate edge to his voice, like he was on the brink of bursting into laughter or tears. Or both.
“Are you hurt?” Dash called.
“Dash?”
“Yeah.”
“Stay back. And yes. Yeah. Will you call Kyle?”
I pulled up Kyle on my phone and threw it to Dash. Then I got on the floor, lying down on my stomach.
“What are you doing?” Dash said.
“Call him.” I inched forward, slowly, the way you’d approach a break in the ice of a frozen pond. I didn’t go to the very edge of the break in the floor, but close enough that I could see through a narrow gap between two of the broken-off floorboards.
It was dark down there, but I could just make out August’s form, lying below.
“Can you move?”
“Get back,” he said, voice hoarse. “It’s not safe.”
“Can you move?” I repeated. “Wiggle your fingers and toes?”
“Yes,” he bit out. “But I can’t get up. My leg …”
“Do you see stairs? Some way we can get down there?”
There had to be an entrance from outside. I could hear Dash on the phone, but I could hardly pay attention to what he was saying. I felt electrified, awash in how incredibly, monumentally stupid it was to have ever come here at all, and the knowledge that August never would’ve even known about this place if it weren’t for me. It was all I could do to keep my voice steady, to sound as though my heart wasn’t trying to escape my chest.
“August,” I prompted, when he didn’t reply.
“Not that I can see.”
Dash stayed in the doorway between the old house and the addition. “Kyle’s on his way,” he said. “They’ve called EMS.”
“Good. They’re coming,” I told August.
“Keep him talking,” Dash said.
“Can you see anything else down there?”
“Like what, an elevator?” August replied, and the tiniest bit of relief trickled through me, because if he could still be a smart-ass, he was probably at least a little bit okay.
“Yeah, any elevators?”
“No.” A pause. “But there might be raccoons. I hear rustling.”
“Don’t think about them.”
“They’ve got tiny thumbs. They could rip my face off.”
“I’ll fight them if they try.”
He huffed a laugh, which turned into a hiss of pain.
“You okay?”
“Hurts.”
I glanced up at Dash, who said, “They’re coming,” again, like he knew I needed to hear it.
“Will you guys do something for me?” August asked.
“Yeah.”
“Sing Terrance’s song about the boots?”
I let out a breath. “I can’t think of a more inappropriate time for that song.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly why we have to sing it,” Dash said, smiling the slightest bit.
So we did, pausing line by line to quiz August on what might come next. He had only heard it twice, back at that first party at Tegan’s house, but he had absorbed the lyrics surprisingly well. Maybe Terrance really was a good songwriter—catchiness is a definite asset.
We got to the chorus (“And I just do love you / and those boots that are bluuuuuuue”) when the slam of a car door sounded from outside.
forty-seven
Kyle made us go outside while the firefighters worked to get August out of the basement. I didn’t want to leave, but Kyle’s expression brooked no argument, so Dash and I waited in the Cutlass. It was still raining, but not quite as hard as before.
Eventually they wheeled August out on a stretcher. He was covered in dust and dirt, and held one arm against himself. His face was gray, his expression pinched.
Dash and I jumped out of the car.
“We’ll take him to Saint Anthony’s,” one of the EMS guys was saying to Kyle.
“That sounds expensive,” August said tightly. “I’m fine. I can walk it off.”
“You’re seriously making jokes right now?” Kyle’s expression was a complex mix of relieved and exasperated. I could tell because I felt exactly the same way.
“Didn’t break my funny bone,” August replied, and managed a smile.
* * *
Dash offered to follow Kyle to Saint Anthony’s. Kyle just shook his head, said we should both go home and get some rest, that we had done a great job.
I didn’t want to go home, though. I wanted to go where August was going, and luckily Kyle seemed to understand that.
So he and I drove to Saint Anthony’s together, thirty minutes of Kyle nervously drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.
When we arrived at the ER, a nurse took us back to a room full of monitors and machines. August wasn’t there. The nurse told us he was headed for some X-rays, that we could wait here for him.
I couldn’t sit. Just moved back and forth, looking at the different machines. There was a tightness in my chest that only eased slightly when they wheeled August back in.
The ultimate diagnosis was a broken ankle, bruised ribs, a sprained wrist.
“One in every flavor,” August said with a weak smile.
“You’re like the Yum Yum Shoppe of bodily harm.”
He shook his head. “Fourteen flavors of fun. I would need eleven more injuries.”
“You’ll probably have a bunch of bruises.”
“Eleven of them?”
“Yup.”
“Then I’m the Yum Yum Shoppe.”
I went outside eventually to call my mom. I had texted on the drive here, but it wasn’t the same as hearing her voice on the other end of the line, calm and reassuring.
I had about fifty texts from WWYSE. Dash had told everyone what happened. I sent off a quick message and then sat down on the curb. Dropped my head, breathed in deep and let it out slow.
* * *
I sat with August while Kyle went out to call Heather with an update.
We were in a room off the center of the emergency department, glass windows lining one side so we could see the nurses at the station in the middle, see Kyle pausing to talk to the nurse who had shown us in earlier.
August had an IV taped to the back of his hand, a plastic sensor attached to one of his fingers. He tapped it absently against the bedsheets, looking out in Kyle’s direction.