Page 47 of Fragments of the Lost
“Max, did you go through his email?” I ask.
He shakes his head, his mind trying to catch up. “Did I what?”
“His email. You went through his room, looking for money. And his email password was changed.”
We’re standing in the dimly lit kitchen, just to the side of his front door. “And you think that was me?”
“I’m running out of options as to who else had his password.”
“I didn’t know his password.”
“You never saw it?”
He doesn’t answer at first. He doesn’t just lie and say no. “I don’t try to look. But I know part of it.”
“Which part?” I press.
“Thirty-six. His lacrosse number.”
I nod. “Yes. And now it’s changed.”
“So he changed it.”
But I’m shaking my head. “After, Max. Someone changed itafter.”
He has frozen, both believing and disbelieving. “What do you want me to say, Jessa? I said it wasn’t me.”
I want him to tell me the truth. I want to look in his eyes and know. I want to see the lie, the expression shutter, his gaze shift to the side. Instead I unzip my bag and pull out the binoculars, watch as his throat moves as he swallows. The way he instinctively takes a step back, as if remembering that night himself.
The binoculars hang from my hand. “Are these yours?” I ask, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Oh,” Max says, reaching for them. He lifts them to his face, but the string is still wrapped around my hand. “Maybe. I think so. Where did you find these?”
“In his room,” I say, and Max’s gaze fixes on my own. “You didn’t give them to him?”
He shakes his head. “No.” His eyes narrow on the binoculars, and he says, “The last time I saw these, I think they were still in my car.”
The moment hangs between us, all the unspoken things filling up the space around us.
—
Things changed after the day in New York. The way Caleb looked at me. The way Max looked at me. Each the inverse of how it was supposed to be. At the river; at Julian’s graduation party; at the beach.
In August, Caleb went on vacation, a family trip. This was after Sean left, and Eve pulled Caleb in closer, relying on him a little more. They went away to a cabin in the Poconos, where there was no cell reception, and no Internet. Caleb was just gone.
In August that same week, I ran into Max at the mall—Julian had driven, and I said I’d call if I needed a ride later—and we hung out just like we would’ve if Caleb were there. Going to a movie, hanging out in the food court, all normal things, it seemed. Unless you paused to think about it. Unless you noticed the part that was absent.
It was me who suggested going somewhere else, who didn’t want the day to end, who saidIce cream,and then, when it turned dark,Did you know you can see Saturn tonight?
The day had been a string of moments that I didn’t want to pause, or stop. There was a pull of momentum, and we had to keep going. “There’s too much light,” he said, staring up between the streetlights by the ice cream shop.
It was Max who suggested grabbing the binoculars from his house. He left me in his idling car while he ran inside to get them. They were small, the type I’ve seen people use at ball games. But it was me who suggested driving out to the fields behind the school, now abandoned. Who found a spot to sit in the middle of the goalposts. The night air cooled and the grass tickled the backs of my legs as I raised my finger and pointed it out.
I took his binoculars and tried to focus on the object in the sky, but everything blurred as I moved them too fast.
“I mean, I think that’s it. Maybe we should look it up,” I said, laughing to myself.
Max took out his phone, pulled up some night sky app.
