A chill ran down my spine. “What happened?”
“Don’t know. They never found a body. I tried to look it up but couldn’t find anything. Didn’t you notice that form you had to sign about not going into the woods? It basically excuses the school from liability. And a few years ago, the school finally raised enough money to build a new student center so we could stay more centralized.”
I stared off into the trees, thinking about that kid who disappeared. I wondered what the end was like for him—was it fast? Slow? Was he scared? Resigned? Was it violent? Gradual? But then I realized it didn’t matter. Dead is dead is dead.
The wind blew and Reid narrowed his eyes at the woods. “Sometimes I think I can feel . . .”
I shivered and cleared my throat. I didn’t want to talk about ghosts. “Anything else I should know?”
“Jason’s an ass. Don’t let him get to you.”
I shook my head, about to explain that it wasn’t Jason I was running from, but I wasn’t about to offer up yet another secret for distribution. If secrets were currency, I was holding onto the ones I had left. “Noted,” I said.
“So come on,” he said, holding his hand out for me. I stared at his open palm, at the lifeline running down it.
Colleen traced mine once, back in middle school. She ran the dark nail of her pointer finger along the crease toward my wrist and said, “Better live while you can.” I had laughed uncomfortably, and Colleen had smiled, even though she’d been trying to keep a straight face. “Just kidding,” she’d said. “We’re going to live forever.” Because that’s exactly the type of thing you think when you’re twelve.
Reid’s arm eventually dropped to his side. “Come on,” he said again, but this time without the open palm.
I pictured us walking back together, side by side on the narrow trail. Either in awkward silence, where I’d be thinking about how he used to be, or with him telling me stories about Monroe, like almost kissing me wasn’t something worth remembering.
“I like it here,” I said. “Quiet.”
He dug at the dirt with the toe of his shoe, but didn’t make any move to leave.
“I won’t get lost. Promise.”
“Okay,” he said, making his way through the rubble again. “So I’ll see you later?”
“Later,” I said.
After he’d left, after I couldn’t hear his footsteps, even in the distance, and after I couldn’t really even hear the scurrying of animals anymore, I maneuvered my way back over the piles of bricks and shuffled down the dirt path, back toward Monroe. I stood in front of the apparently not-main gate watching the students weave around in pairs and clusters. But before I went back through the gate, I had to know. I had to get close enough to check the license plate—check to make sure it was her. Before I called Dad. I skirted the edge of campus, easing my way slowly down the street, watching for the car.
I kept moving until I could see the main gate that Reid had been pointing out. Smaller and single arched, but smack dead in the middle of the school. From here to the gate, no car. And beyond, as far as I could see, no car. I squinted, straining to differentiate the shades of green on the shoulder of the road. The sun had sunk below the tree line, and the shadows loomed again. I tiptoed down the road, the noises from campus getting farther away, and eventually darted to the other side of the street, where I was sure I’d seen the car.
Weeds tickled my calves and the backs of my knees as I made my way through the underbrush. Nothing. I turned around to go back, wondering if I had imagined it all, if my brain put it in my head—like how I’d see Brian’s shadow against my furniture in the dark. And then I stepped into a hole. A flattening of weeds. And beside it, another. And ahead, two more. The indentations from the tires of a car.
I whipped my head over my shoulder and stared into the trees—no, into the forest. I closed my eyes and listened for sounds from a car. The shadows stretched farther, crisscrossing the street, making the gate to Monroe contort backward, concave, like a spoon. I swatted at a mosquito on the back of my arm. And then the first firefly of the evening flashed in front of me. Light on. Light off. Here and not here. Like a signal to the rest, they lit up the roadside.
One flittered in front of my face, black as night. Light off, it flew.
The night Brian died, Colleen was catching fireflies on my back patio when I stepped outside. She had one cupped in her hand, and when I walked down the steps, she released it into my face, laughing as I swatted it away. “I think that’s bad luck,” she said. “Like breaking a mirror or walking under a ladder or something.”
“I thought you were grounded,” I said, looking over her outfit: black miniskirt, tight blue top.
“I was. Until Martha next door got in a fight with her husband and my mom went over, and my bedroom window just happened to slide open a little, and I just happened to fall out of it. And then I just so happened to remember that Brian is having a party this very instant.”
“There’s late, there’s fashionably late, then there’s God-where-were-you-you-missed-everything late. Guess which one we are.”
“He’s your boyfriend. Or something.” She smirked.
I grinned. “My parents will be home in two hours. What’s the point?”
“What’s the point? What’s the point?” She gripped me by the shoulders and shook. “Cody fucking Parker, that’s the point!”
“He called?”
“No, he texted.” She fumbled around in her bag and pressed a few buttons on her phone and held it in front of my face, the screen illuminated like the firefly.
where U at Classy.
“I’m not ready,” I said.
“So get ready.”
I smiled. Colleen smiled back, big and toothy. “Two minutes, Mallory.”
I took three. Exchanged my boxers for a jean skirt and threw on a black tank top. Since we were God-where-were-you-you-missed-everything late, we didn’t walk up to the beach, down the boardwalk, and cut back in, even though it was safer according to my parents, who didn’t like me walking in the alleys after dark. Especially since people came and went so quickly in the summer, renting homes for a month, or a week. Then they’d be gone and replaced with more people we’d never get a chance to know.
So as we walked, Colleen took out her black mini canister of pepper spray with the key ring on the end and swung it around on her pointer finger.
“It’s probably not effective if they know you have it.”
“This is preemptive,” she explained. “They see I have it and that I’m not afraid to use it. You should get one.”
“That’s why I have you,” I said. Also, I never carried a purse if I could help it, just stuffed my back pocket with a few dollars and hid my house key at the base of the gutter beside the front porch.
Colleen skipped ahead, spun around, and struck some made-up martial arts pose. “You wanna mess with this? Do ya?” Then she tilted her head back and opened her mouth, and her laughter echoed down the alley, across the ocean, and back again.
I crossed the street and entered campus through the main gate. As I walked back toward my dorm, I noticed a few people looking at me. I finally understood Colleen’s feeling of power as she walked to the party that night. I could walk across campus and people would know. They’d know what I was capable of.
And I didn’t even need the pepper spray.
A girl with long black hair, short black bangs, and thick black eyeliner put her hand on my arm as I walked through the lounge. “Do you remember me?” she asked. She moved a piece of gum from one side of her mouth to the other. “Chloe. Remember? You came to my mom’s wedding. I was a bridesmaid. Orange dress. Big bow. You can’t forget something like that.”