Page 79 of Come Find Me
Not yet.
I don’t know what to do. Everything feels urgent, and yet it’s also not. What am I racing for? It’s already happened. Like the shadow house.
It exists, and so do we, and now so does this, and nothing will change that.
It isn’t fair.
That’s all I can think: It isn’tfair.This isn’t how his story ends. It can’t be.
I take out my cell phone and place the call. Someone picks up, but it seems like dead air. No, it’s static. It sort of connects, but I can’t hear the voice on the other side. “It’s only static,” I tell him. Static, cutting in and out. Like the voice is too far away, unreachable.
Out here in the quarry, there must be no signal. Not this deep in the woods. But I know we had a signal out on the road. My GPS on the phone got us here, after all.
“We have to go,” I say, but he doesn’t budge, and I have no idea if he’s heard me. I crouch down in front of him. “Nolan, all I get is static. We have to—”
“No,” he says, and he looks up then, this haunted, hollow look that I don’t think I will ever forget. “I can’t. I can’t leave—” He shakes his head, and I nod, understanding.
“Okay. Okay, stay here,” I say, standing up. “I’ll be right back.”
I look behind me once, to see him still sitting in the exact same position, before the trees close in around him as I move farther away. And then I start running. I’m only half-paying attention as I race back down the trail, looking at my phone to see when the signal comes back, so I almost trip on a root before steadying myself on a trunk nearby. I shake out my leg and try again, but all I get is static once more. I keep going, veering at the cutoff, back past the shed. I’m almost all the way to the parking lot, and I try again, begging the phone to connect.
I pace beside the shed as the phone in my hands rings. And then the phone connects, and I grip the phone tighter. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”—a memory of a call I made months ago. The same greeting. The same response.
“I hear you,” she responds. “Miss? Are you okay?”
Something’s happening. Something terrible.
“Help us. Please,” I say. Because Nolan needs something that no one can give him anymore. I don’t know how to help him. I think this must be how Joe felt, standing in the doorway of my hospital room, watching me sit there, staring off at the white curtains.
I give the woman our location and tell her it’s an emergency.
I tell her what we’ve found.
I’ve just hung up and am about to turn around and run back to Nolan when I catch another glimpse of color through the trees, in the parking lot. This time, a flash of blue.
I step closer, until I can make it out: the light reflecting off the blue of a car.
Someone else is here.
I turn in a circle, confused. I’m not sure whether this car belongs to the developer—someone who can help us. Or whether it belongs to someone who knew Liam was here and sent that picture. “Hello?” I call. I didn’t see anyone on the path on the way back, but they could’ve veered to the right at the cutoff, heading to the base of the quarry.
The car looks familiar, in a vague sort of way. It’s parked beside Nolan’s, and it reminds me of earlier today.
I walk closer until I’m out in the dirt lot and quietly step around it—until I see, on the back, the decal for the foundation Nolan’s family runs, and I know this belongs to that guy who works at his house, though I’ve never seen him before. Mike, I think he said.
I wonder if he knew what we were doing and followed us here. Nolan trusts him, and it’s possible he’s here to help. Though I don’t recall seeing another car behind us on the back roads, or when we arrived.
I stare back into the woods, remembering what Nolan said—that the picture of Liam was sent from the library. It could’ve been anyone. And yet, it could’ve been sent from the library to make itseemlike Nolan. He used to pretend he had a job tutoring there. Mike would think he worked there. Nobody knew it was a lie.
In the pit of my stomach, there’s the feeling ofwrong.
I try to open Nolan’s car door, but it’s locked. Thankfully he’s left the windows half down, because his air conditioning is always broken, so I reach my arm in until I can disengage the lock, stretching down until it clicks.
Then I open the door and pop the trunk. The noise cuts through the empty parking lot, and I pause, looking around—with the feeling that someone is watching me.
His baseball gear is still tucked in the corner of the trunk, the mitt beside the bat. I can feel his hands on my hands, his body pressed behind mine, his words, explaining how to get more power.
Don’t swing like you’re afraid,he said.
