Page 26 of Come Find Me
Well, lesson learned and then some. The friends I made here were all friends-of-Marco first. There is no rallying group remaining.
I keep about fifty yards behind them now, and Lydia’s right—they never even notice me. I’m righthereand no one turns around. If they spotted me now, itwouldbe creepy, I’ll give her that. But it’s their own fault.
They duck between a row of trees, following a path deeper into the park. Their voices stay low, as if they’re trespassing and afraid of getting caught. It’s a Sunday night, and Sutton’s got a bag with him, and every once in a while someone shines a light on the path with their phone.
Eventually they veer off the trail into a larger clearing, and Sutton lets out a cheer as he climbs on top of a tire swing, swinging like a pendulum in the dark night. He swings back my way, where I’m standing behind a row of hedges, but he never notices me. I feel the rush of air as the tire brushes by me; I’m close enough to reach out and touch him. We’re in a playground in the middle of the park, next to some picnic tables. I think there are probably grills around; I’ve been in here before, but only in the daylight.
Marco opens Sutton’s bag, pulling out a can of beer.
Wow, mystery solved. Apparently they need to trek from their neighborhood, across my property, into a state park, off hours, in order to carry a backpack full of beer to the center of a playground in the middle of the night. Completely logical. Completely.
Marco sits on top of a wooden table, his feet on the bench, focused on the now-opened can of beer in his hands and nothing more.
“Where are you, Lydi?” Sutton says, his voice coming and going as he swings.
“Here, you idiot.” He reaches forward for her in the dark but she jumps back, laughing.
He swings back in my direction once more, and I get a whiff of coconut hair product. What to say about Sutton: He’s got locks. Like, not hair, but locks. Like a hair commercial, and he knows it. They trail behind him in the wind. Sutton always makes sure there’s some sort of wind blowing in his direction. And if there’s not, he creates it, like now.
“Sutton,” Lydia says, but he ignores her. “Sutton.” Louder now, until he drags his heel in the dirt, bringing himself to an abrupt stop.
“Someone’s here,” she whispers.
I freeze, trying to decide between running away and letting them find me, and I’m not sure which would be more embarrassing. Except Lydia tips her head in the other direction, away from me.
It’s then that I see him.
A fourth person, in the shadows. I can tell he’s taller than the rest of us—except for maybe Sutton. And he’s got a backpack on. I quickly run through the list of possibilities: hitchhiker, drug dealer, teen runaway. Serial killer. Killer.
Instead of getting quieter, Sutton gets louder. “Who goes there?” he calls, like nothing can touch him. Like the chance of there being a knife (or a gun) is so outside the realm of possibility. Six months, that’s all it’s been. Six months, and everyone’s gone back to believing themselves untouchable. That the evil is behind bars and can no longer exist out here.
The belief, once more, that they are the center of their universe.
That this story is theirs.
Sutton Tanner is an asshole. “Who goes there?” he calls, like we’re actors in some Shakespearean play, and the play is about him.
I raise my hand. “Hey. Sutton?” I ask, even though of course it’s Sutton. Of course. We don’t go to the same school, but every winter there’s this tri-county baseball clinic, and so I’ve sort of half-known him for years. He has this easy demeanor that everyone loves in the dugout, something to lighten the mood, something to distract from the cold, or the crappy play. But the act never really falls away, and then it’s just grating. Either way, he’s easy to pick out, I’ll give him that.
“Hey, man. Nolan, right?” He smiles, his teeth glaring white in the moonlight.
“Yep.” I don’t know what to say. How to explain what I’m doing here, if he asks. But he doesn’t.
“Welcome,” he says, stretching out his arms, like he owns the place.
God, they don’t even know. Where they’re standing. What they’re doing.
They’re drinking beer in the middle of a state park, and I don’t get it. What the allure is of meeting up to drink beer outside on a hot night in the dark, when the mosquitoes are eating you alive.
Get a little more creative,I think. Sneak inside someone’s room. A basement. Something with air conditioning. Maybe use a cooler. A refrigerator. This cannot be the peak of adolescence.
He hops down from the tire swing and steps closer, the two other people with him drawing nearer. There’s a guy, tan and skinny, kind of sullen-looking. Though maybe it’s on purpose; from what I can gather from the girls at my school, the moody look is in. And there’s a girl with brown skin and long, dark hair, who stops to look at something over her shoulder every few steps.
“Marco, Lydi,” Sutton says by way of introduction, rapid-fire.
“—ah,” the girl adds. “Lydi-ah.” She looks me straight in the eye, and even in the dark, I can tell: she’s beautiful.
Sutton smiles wide. “You can only call her Lydi if you’ve—”
