Page 77 of Come Find Me
“Go,” I say, and I suddenly understand why she said the same to me, outside the college. There are things you want to protect from each other. Pieces of you that you’d rather not let them see.
I hold my breath when the key in the lock turns, but it’s Mike who pushes open the door. “Nolan?” he calls.
I exhale slowly. “Hey, Mike. Sorry. You scared me.”
He enters the house slowly, closing the door behind him, looking confused. “Uh, your parents have been looking for you.” He looks away, then back. “Everyone’sbeen looking for you.”
Meaning: the police. Meaning: I’m in trouble, even if I don’t understand why or how.
“I’ve been worried about you, Nolan.”
“Mike, I have to go. I’ll be back. Just, please don’t tell them I was here?”
He shakes his head, then stops. I wonder if he’s remembering his own sister, how she disappeared. If he remembers how it feels to lose someone; if he remembers the desperation to find them.
He walks to the dining room, sits in front of the sole computer, and pretends not to notice me. “The others will be pulling up within the next five minutes,” he says.
“Thank you.” And with that, I’m gone.
—
It takes an hour and a half to make it to the quarry parking lot, as navigated by the familiar tone of Kennedy’s cell phone.
“Is this it?” she asks, leaning around me.
There’s no sign at the turnoff, and the road is blocked by an old, rusty metal gate.
“I think so.”
She gets out of the car and pushes the gate, which swings open slowly. It looks stiff and heavy, from the way she digs her heels in, leaning her weight into the metal. I inch the car forward and she hops back in.
The road from here is dirt, and it all comes back to me. Bouncing in the backseat with Liam as the car drove over the uneven ground, littered with bumps and potholes. Up ahead is a parking lot, now abandoned. Just a circle of dirt now, surrounded by trees.
The dirt settles when we exit the car, the path ahead leading the way through the trees. I think there used to be a sign here for the quarry ahead, but it’s been replaced with one that instead says:WARNING. NO TRESPASSING.
We take the path, which is only wide enough for one of us at a time, and eventually it opens up at the old ticket counter. The open window area is surrounded by rotted wood from being left uncovered, and it breaks off at the corner when I lean my hand on it. Around back, there’s a storage area, with a locked door.
I push my hip into it, and the door gives with a gust of stale air, like it’s been holding its breath all this time.
Inside is dark and dust-streaked, but there’s a pile of old forgotten furniture—some chairs I can remember my family renting—and there’s a desk with a mini-television on it.
No one has been here for ages. Maybe I was wrong.
I step outside and Kennedy’s looking up, at the corner of the building. She’s frowning. “What?” I ask.
She points up, and I see it: a narrow camera, angled off to the side, like it was meant to keep track of the people coming and going. She turns around, and I do the same, as if we are the camera, seeing the same perspective.
It focuses on the path heading back into the trees. Where, I remember now, the quarry is located.
I see the photo in my head, of Liam, the dog, heading into the woods, surrounded by trees.
Maybe the leaves are a little different, the angle slightly off, because we’re lower, and it’s a different time of year. But I think I was right.
The photo came from that camera. From this shed.
Liam was here.
“This is the path,” Nolan says, taking off.
