Come Find Me

by Megan Miranda

  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—”

  She swings her arm in the direction of his head, but he catches her wrist, laughing.

  “You’re such a jerk,” she says, but she’s smiling.

  I don’t get it. I really don’t. Sutton Tanner is an asshole, and she can’t get enough.

  God, I have to get out of here.

  “Want a beer?” he asks, fishing through a backpack. From the way he can’t keep still, there’s like an eighty percent chance that can of beer explodes if he’s the one who carried it in here.

  “No thanks, I’m…” I’m what? Trying to find out what pi has to do with my brother’s disappearance, in the middle of the night, believing he’s sent me some sort of clue? Searching for the paranormal, and this is the prime spot? They stare at me, waiting.

  A twig snaps in the distance, and Lydia jumps again, her head twisting.

  “Did you guys hear that?” she asks, her voice shaky.

  “Calm down, babe,” Sutton says.

  Marco peers over his shoulder into the dark. “She’s still jumpy from this afternoon.”

  “What happened this afternoon?” Sutton asks, looking between Marco and Lydia. You can tell, even now, he doesn’t like to be the last to know something.

  Lydia shrugs. “Kennedy happened. Wanted me to take a look at something for her, and then she left me there.”

  “She left you at the house?” he asks, shuddering.

  “No, the shed.”

  “Just as bad,” he mumbles.

  “Right, and then I…heard something. I could’ve sworn she never left. Only she says she was at the police station, meeting with the prosecutors or something. She had the paperwork and everything.”

  Sutton frowns. “Why were you even at Kennedy’s house?”

  “She asked me to, Sutton. God. But really, you didn’t hear anything just now?”

  “I heard something,” I say.

  They both look at me, surprised. Like they’d already forgotten I existed. Forgotten that they had just thirty seconds ago called me nearer, introduced me to their group, offered me a beer.

  “Sutton, come on, I want to go,” Lydia says, tugging his arm.

  He presses his lips together. Shrugs. “All right,” he says. Okay, not a complete asshole, I think.

  Then he turns the whole thing around with a wicked grin. “Always give a girl what she asks for, my friend.” Nope, definitely an asshole.

  Lydia nudges him as he walks past, then quickly falls into step. Even Marco trails after them. Back down the path, out of the park. No one really cares what I was doing here. No one wonders. It should probably feel more like relief.

  Their voices carry, and I wait for silence. Sitting still, in the dark, with my eyes closed, I can feel the memory of the signal in the palm of my hand, the way it buzzed, in a rhythm. I picture a circle, myself at the center.

  And then I try to listen for my brother. For whatever he’s trying to tell me. I focus on the way he looked during the fever dream, his mouth moving, trying to decipher the words he was saying: Help us. Please.

  It takes a minute for everything to still around me, for every sound to have a place, until I feel it. Something else. Someone else.

  I open my eyes.

  The voices fade in one direction, but I remain behind. At first, the three of them were like a pull, like I could see my own shadow, see where it should be as I followed them. The hole left behind, an ebb of darkness. But the farther they get, the less I feel the need to catch up.

  But now I’m stuck. I don’t want the guy in the clearing to notice me—since Sutton knows him, I’m assuming he’s not going to abduct me. But I also don’t want him telling Sutton that some girl was out here, watching them all. By reasonable deduction, they would probably realize that it was me.

  I crouch lower behind the row of bushes, peering between the branches near the ground, watching the guy in the clearing. He’s lying back on the table, staring up through the circle of trees. It feels like I’m witnessing something I shouldn’t. Or maybe I’m witnessing something I should. Someone should be here
, other than the nothingness, to bear witness. How many things happen to us in the dark, alone?

  There’s a bag at his feet. It looks like he’s asleep, but his eyes are open, the whites reflecting in the moonlight through the clearing.

  I imagine his story: running away, using his bag for a pillow, hiding out in the park at night. Sutton called him Nolan. Sutton didn’t really care, though, didn’t think it odd that some guy was in the park alone.

  Behind the hedge, I open my phone for comfort. There’s a new message from Visitor357, sent sometime during the last hour.

  I’m not in that county, but close. Next one over.

  I pull the phone closer to my face, my heart racing. So, this is a location thing. I think about asking Visitor357 to meet up with me at the college. I’m thinking of how to explain that I don’t know much about the instrumentation, or how to decipher it on my own.

  I write back:

  Do you know anyone else who could analyze this signal? My contact didn’t exactly work out.

  I stand, ready to retreat from the scene, imagining that the situation is reversed and there is someone watching me when I want to be alone, when the guy on the table suddenly darts up. I panic, thinking he’s heard me. I stand perfectly still, in hopes that I will blend into the surroundings. But he doesn’t look my way. Instead, he feels around beside him, and I see the light of his phone illuminate his face. It’s the first time I’m getting a good look at him, but the light cuts him into angles and shadows. Like he’s half here, half gone. His hair is dark, and sort of messy, and he runs a hand quickly through it, pushing it to the side, before bringing the phone close to his face for a few moments, his fingers darting across the screen. Then he places it on the table as he lowers himself again.

  Maybe he’s meeting someone. A girl. Or a guy. Or the second person of some drug-deal-exchange thing.

  I’m still holding my phone, so I see it light up with a new alert. Another message notification. The message says:

  No. But I’m trying to get some more info tonight.

  I look back up at the boy on the table. No, I think. It can’t be. But…the next county over, he said. This park runs the line between two counties. Still, it’s most likely a coincidence. We all live and die by our phones. It wouldn’t be too unusual for someone to send a message at the same time I happen to receive one.

  Visitor357 is not some teenager in the middle of the woods at night, looking for ghosts. Not some friend of Sutton’s. Not some kid who won’t know any more than I do. He can’t be.

  Test, I write back, then stare across the open space of the clearing.

  He sits up again. Types something, lies back, and then I have a new notification.

  The message is blank, except for three question marks.

  Oh my God. My hands are shaking as I type.

  Please tell me you aren’t sitting on a table in the middle of Freedom Battleground State Park right this second.

  He sits up slowly this time, turning his head in every direction. His eyes are wide, and his mouth hangs open, and he grabs his bag, like he’s afraid, like he’s got something in there to protect himself. As if I am the thing, suddenly, to fear.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.

  I’ve got my bag in my hands, ready to make a run for it—someone’s watching me, right now—except the voice doesn’t sound like the voice of a killer. It’s soft, but cutting. I assume it’s one of Sutton’s friends, who was supposed to meet up with the group. But then a girl steps out from the hedges, and she looks just the slightest bit familiar.

  “Please tell me you’re not Visitor357. Please.”

  I’m still holding the phone in my hand, and she’s got one in hers, the screen lit up, and everything clicks. She’s the one who just sent me a message asking if I was in the middle of the park.

  “What the hell,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “You’re KJ?”

  KJ. I was picturing a man. A much older man, maybe a professor, a scientist, someone with graying hair and wire-rim glasses and a crooked bow tie, just somebody—someone who might have some real information I could use.

  She tips her head up, like she’s angry at something. “I said please,” she mumbles.

  “Wait, but I thought you had a satellite dish. I thought you—”

  She puts a hand on one hip and leans into it. “Yeah, I do. In the field, on the other side of the park. Where I live. KJ. Kennedy. Jones.” She spells it out for me, like I’m a moron. And maybe I am. Kennedy Jones, of the Jones House. The stories Sutton told us. The girl who must’ve been there when I showed up yesterday morning, taking readings. The girl who must’ve decorated my back car window with her handprints, trying to spook me.

  I hop down from the table, stepping closer. “Were you following me? Tracking me or something?” I ask.

  She makes a face that in any other setting would have me running, regardless of the fact that she’s practically half my size. “No, I wasn’t following you. I was following them.” She tips her head in the direction of Sutton’s crew.

  “That’s not any less creepy.”

  She shakes her head. “They cut right through my yard. I was just…” I feel her grasping for something, not just the word, but some way to explain. Her face shifts, and she shakes it off. “What’s it to you? I live nearby. I should be asking if you were following me.”

  I give her a look right back, and she raises an eyebrow. “Well, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  I gesture around me, in a circle. “This is it.”

  “This is what?”

  “Where my brother disappeared. You never heard of it? Liam Chandler? Two years ago? You live right there….”

  Her mouth forms the word oh, but no noise comes out. “We moved here last year. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  “It was on the news.”

  “Not by me, I guess. I lived near DC most of my life. People disappeared a lot. Or worse.”

  As if missing brothers happen all the time. As if this isn’t the defining moment of my life, and everything that’s happened since.

  “So…,” I begin, looking her over but trying not to seem like I am. She’s smaller than I realized at first. Her legs not as long, when she’s standing in front of me. And her hair, it’s hard to tell in the dark, but it’s not quite as wild. Her eyes are wide, and dark, and unflinching.

  I’ve obviously failed in keeping my observation of her a secret, because she does the same to me, only she doesn’t try to hide it. I try not to shrink into myself as her eyes skim over me slowly. She presses her lips together. “So, Visitor—”

  “Nolan,” I say. “Nolan Chandler.”

  “Nolan, Nolan Chandler,” she repeats, “what were you hoping to find out here?” She gestures to my bag. “Is that what I think it is?”

  I open the top and show her the contents, but she doesn’t move to touch it. Just nods slightly. I remember, then, this girl is looking for aliens. I think she mentioned that someone was looking into it for her. “Wait,” I say, remembering the conversation that just happened between Sutton and his friends. “Was that girl—Lydia, right?—was she your, quote, contact?”

  Kennedy crosses her arms over her chest. “She’s smart. She knows computers. She knows that stuff almost as well as anyone else. Besides, doesn’t sound like you have anything to add. So far, you’ve sent me a No and three question marks. At least I’m trying something.”

  “Fair enough. I’m trying something, too, though.”

  “I think—” she starts, just as I say, “Want to know what I’m thinking?”

  We both grin. “You first,” I say.

  She shakes her head, looking up at the sky, then back at me. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it means. Any of it. The signal stopped happening, and I never would’ve thought it was anything
real if it weren’t for the fact that you were seeing the exact same thing.”

  I smile then, without even thinking about it. Because I suddenly don’t feel so out of my element. I feel exactly in my element. I have been living in uncertainty for two years. “Me too,” I say. “But it’s not happening at my house anymore, either. And if I hadn’t taken that video, I would’ve thought I was just remembering it wrong.”

  She wrinkles her nose either at me or at the equipment, I’m not sure. But it turns her suddenly vulnerable. “There’s someone else. I know someone else who can help, who might be able to tell us what it means. I’m going to talk to him tomorrow.”

  “Who?”

  She looks at me as if to say she doesn’t trust me yet. Well, she ran into me in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods—who can blame her? The silence eventually reaches peak awkward levels, and I clear my throat. “Okay, well, on that note, I think I’ll be heading back to my car now.”

  She steps back at the same time, like it’s a race to see who gets away the fastest. “Okay, well, guess I’ll be making my way back to the house now.”

  “I thought—”

  She turns around. “You thought what?”

  “I thought no one lived there anymore.”

  She smiles, and it catches me off guard. “They don’t.” And with that, she’s gone.

  The next morning, I end up getting on the bus at the same stop Marco and I both used to use, before he got his license, and a car. I sneak on between two students, head down, headphones on, but the stealth mode is unnecessary—the driver doesn’t even look my way.

  This was my bus at the start of the year, anyway, before I moved in with Joe. My seat is still empty, third row from the back, where Marco would sit beside me. The whole row is abandoned now, like we’ve just vanished and nobody noticed.