Page 78 of Come Find Me
“Wait,” I call, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.
He weaves through the trees, his hand slightly in front of him, like he’s following a ghost, or a memory.
The path diverges up ahead—to the right, it slopes downward, and to the left, it angles up. Another broken sign, with an arrow pointing downhill for a picnic area. But we go the other way. Nolan doesn’t even pause, just veers left, on instinct. It’s like he doesn’t even notice me.
His hand grabs a branch as he passes, and his steps pick up speed, until we’re almost running, and I can suddenly envision it myself: the scene he told me about on the drive up.
Two young boys, in bathing suits, racing through the trees, for the clearing. Running, the older one laughing, the younger one struggling to keep up.
And then we’re there. We’re at the top, at the circular clearing between the trees, overlooking the quarry. Nolan stands in the middle of the open area, panting. He paces, then steps closer to the trees. The wind blows, and you can hear it coming through the trees, like a warning.
Up here, the sun does something odd to the granite, turning it gray-white, and it looks unnatural, like blocks of stone placed down one by one, balancing precariously. The dust blows over them like chalk in the wind.
Nolan runs his hand through his hair, staring off into the woods.
“Liam?” he calls into the trees.
The word is heart-stuttering. It freezes everything; me, and him, and time. It’s like he’s crossing some barrier, giving voice to what he believes might be true, and possible. And then, louder, “Liam!” The name echoes, fading into the distance.
We listen, but only the wind calls back. He steps closer to the trees, and I start to feel sick. The kind of sick I don’t want to think about too deeply, to examine the source. The sort of sick that says it knows something, in the sinking pit of my stomach.
My hands start to shake.
He’s yelling off into the trees, and I can picture it again: the brothers together. Two young boys, in bathing suits and life jackets, the sun cutting through the trees, cutting across them. They counted down together.Three. Two. One.
It’s the reason we’re here. It’s the reason he knew to come here.
“Liam!” he calls again, just inside the tree line now, and it makes me jump.
I press my knuckles to my mouth. He’s not looking in the right place. I step away from him, turning around, though I don’t want to. Instead of walking toward Nolan, I approach the edge.
One step closer, and my mind goes somewhere else: to the shadow house. The horrors I can only imagine. I kept my eyes closed then, because I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t.
But if I look now, he won’t have to.
My foot breaks a branch in the clearing, shattering the silence of the woods. I look back over my shoulder just as Nolan turns around, his brow furrowed, like he doesn’t understand.
I look away. I can’t bear to see this, either, the moment when he understands what I’m doing.
And then I lean forward, peering over the edge….It’s a long way down. The distance is disorienting, and it makes my stomach drop. The earth below is brown and green between slabs of granite. It’s an empty crater, dry and thirsty, but it’s not barren, the green pushing back up, like it’s beginning anew.
My eyes skim the surface quickly, only with the edge of my vision. But then something catches, and I have to look again. Really look this time. In a circle of green and brown is a different color, not of this landscape. But it’s a color I’ve seen before, in a picture enlarged on Nolan’s living room table. The deep maroon of the fabric of a shirt.
I stumble back, squeezing my eyes, trying to undo it.
“Kennedy?” he asks as I backpedal farther from the edge.
I breathe heavily, trying to quell the twisting in my stomach, spreading everywhere. But Nolan’s across the clearing, asking.
Here’s the thing about the shadow house: In my mind, everything is blurred, and so when I think of my mother, I still see her laughing, sliding a plate of pancakes in front of me. Or holding my chin in her hands years earlier and telling me to keep very still as she dabs the ointment on a cut under my eye. I can still feel the press of her lips on my forehead after, her breath as she says,Be careful, my wild one.When I see her now, her eyes crinkle in joy.
And at this moment, Nolan still sees a boy holding his hand, counting down and jumping. And that will be gone, I know it will be gone, five seconds from now, as soon as he walks my way.
I walk toward him instead and put a hand on his chest. Firmly. Until he looks me in the eye, asking. He’s been asking all along. But this is not the answer he was searching for.
“Nolan,” I say, trying to hold my voice stable, not to cry, not right now, because it’s not about me right now. My other arm wraps around his side, to hold him this way. “Don’t look.”
I feel his muscles give, everything just exhale, like some great hope has left him. And I hold on tighter, though he doesn’t fall. He lists slowly to one side, and I guide him to a tree stump, farther from the edge. He sits with his head in his hands, and I think:He’s in shock; he’s only part here; he’s going to fall apart, but not yet.
