Come Find Me

by Megan Miranda

  The shoulder of the road is pretty narrow, dropping off to a grassy ditch, but from this angle it looks worse than it is. “Barely anyone ever drives this way at night.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better,” he says, tightening his hold on the wheel.

  This time, he slows down early enough to turn into my driveway on the first pass. “Turn off the headlights,” I tell him when he pulls off the road.

  “What? No way. I’d really rather not end up wrapped around some tree.”

  “Just go slow. I don’t want someone to call Joe and tell him someone’s here.”

  “It’s almost one in the morning, and this is your property, right?” He looks my way and lets out a sigh. “When we’re closer to the house and I’m sure I can see, I will, okay?”

  I hold my breath until we reach the roundabout in front of the house and he flicks the lights off. The house is a shadow in the night, with the moon hidden behind clouds. We exit the car as quietly as we can, which isn’t really quiet at all with the rocks and dirt kicking up in our wake.

  I’ve got my flashlight with me, like usual, and keep it aimed low to the ground so no one will notice unless they’re already here. My bike is still hidden underneath the porch, and I mumble a thanks to whatever higher power was looking out for it while the prospective buyers were here.

  Nolan is not nearly as good at stealth mode as he thinks, closing his car door too firmly, stepping too loudly, kicking at a pebble with every other step. “Shh,” I remind him.

  “What?” he says.

  I gesture to his feet, to the ground. The problem is sort of…all of him. He makes an impression. He leaves a mark. I give up and continue on, hoping for the best.

  At the shed around back, the door squeaks when I push it open.

  “I thought we were coming for your bike,” he whispers.

  “While we’re here, I might as well check the new data,” I say, stepping inside.

  Nolan flips the switch on the side of the wall, on impulse, but I flip it off again. “Trust me,” I whisper, thinking of Marco and Lydia and Sutton, who’ve been spending a lot of time out there.

  Instead I turn on the computer screen, which illuminates us in the dark. Nolan’s face glows an eerie yellow, and his eyes keep darting around the room. “What is this place?” he whispers.

  “A computer shed. That used to be a storage shed. That used to be a stable.”

  “I see,” he says, like that makes perfect sense.

  I download all the data we can get, storing it on my flash drive, then gesture to the box of Elliot’s things, left behind from when Lydia was in here. “Can we bring that with us, too?” I ask. I want to take advantage of the fact that we have a car. I want to spend some time looking through everything.

  “Sure.” Nolan scoops it up, then pauses at the door, and I realize he’s waiting for me. Or he’s waiting for the flashlight.

  “Just a sec.” I finish up, shut everything down, and follow him back outside, illuminating his path with my flashlight. I shine the light under the porch and wheel the bike out, walking it back to his car.

  He pops the trunk, and I see a baseball bat wedged in the corner, along with his gear. He pushes it to the side, making room for Elliot’s things, then takes out a couple of bungee cords to secure my bike.

  “Ready?” he asks as he closes the trunk.

  But I stare up at the house, then back at Nolan’s car. “There are a few more things I want to grab. In the house.”

  He pauses before nodding once.

  “You don’t have to come in,” I add.

  “I’ve already been in there,” he says, and I narrow my eyes at him over my shoulder. I knew he had been at my house, not in my house.

  “I know, I’m sorry.” He puts his hands up, surrendering.

  “Okay, well. I left handprints all over the back window of your car to freak you out,” I say, since we’re in the confessing spirit.

  “I sort of figured,” he says, and even in the dark, I can tell he’s grinning.

  He follows me around back, but he pauses at Elliot’s window, like he’s considering changing his mind. I’m expecting him to tell me he’ll wait for me out front, when he finally climbs in after me. He doesn’t move from Elliot’s room at first, once we’re inside. It’s different in the dark, I get that. Instead, he stands across the room from me, a shadow in the dark house.

  “Come on,” I say.

  “I can’t see.”

  “Sorry. No lights, or someone will notice.”

  “Are you trying to freak me out again?”

  I cross the room and grab his hand, pulling him behind me, his dry palm pressed against mine, fingers locking, like it’s nothing. I’m thankful for the dark as we walk, tethered together. And I’m thankful for his hand, which at the moment is for me and not him. The scent of paint, the stairway before me—the shadow house is here.

  My free hand grips the banister, and I hear nothing—no breathing behind me. Nolan knows what happened here, too. He must. His steps follow mine, in grave silence.

  At the top of the stairs, I finally turn on the flashlight, shining it back and forth. To the right is the loft area. To the left, the room for storage, with the boxes of Elliot’s things. My eyes meet Nolan’s. “Do you think this will all fit in your car?”

  * * *

  —

  The backseat is full of Elliot’s boxes—if Elliot won’t talk to me, maybe I can still decipher his intentions, his thoughts. Maybe there will be a note about the program on December fourth. Maybe I can figure out how he knew the kid on Nolan’s wall. There must be answers in here somewhere.

  I know this isn’t everything, that the police took things from his room, as evidence. But this had all been left behind, or stored in the shed behind the house, until the cleaning company was called in, followed by the stager and the Realtor.

  We leave Nolan’s car at the corner where he picked me up earlier and slowly transport my bike and the boxes, one by one, to the base of my window. I decide I’ll move them later, once Joe is up and in the shower and won’t hear me banging around in the next room. Except when we’re depositing the last boxes, the outside light turns on. The back door swings open and Joe is there, staring at us both. He’s in gym shorts and a T-shirt, and his eyes look bloodshot, and I can’t tell if I’ve just woken him or if he’s been awake for a while now.

  He stares from me to Nolan. Nolan puts the last box down. “I should go,” he says, taking a step back.

  “Yes, you should go,” Joe says, in a voice I’ve never heard before.

  Nolan looks at me and cringes, mouthing Sorry. I’m still watching him stride toward his car on the corner when Joe’s booming voice cuts through the night. “What the hell is all this?”

  “Elliot’s things,” I say, even though surely he can see this for himself. The boxes are labeled in black marker, with his name.

  “Where did you get all this?”

  When I don’t answer, he throws his hands in the air and spins around, retreating into the house once more.

  “Joe,” I say, following him inside.

  He stops walking down the hall but puts his hand up, cutting me off.

  “You sneak out, sneak out with a boy, and what, take a joyride to your old house?”

  “He’s not some boy, Joe. It’s not like that.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad to hear it’s not like that, Kennedy. What’s it like, then? Go ahead. Tell me. Is he the reason you’ve been skipping school?”

  I stare at him, frozen.

  He nods, every movement tight. “Yeah, the school called. They called, and I thought you were sick, thought that’s why you looked tired when I got home. I told them you weren’t feeling well. Thought it was my fault, that there was something I missed, but you were just planning to meet up with your bo
yfriend—”

  “Nolan,” I say. Joe looks at me, confused. “I was planning to meet with Nolan, Joe. Because something’s happening. At the house, something isn’t what we thought.”

  “Kennedy, stop.” He puts his head in his hands. “I don’t know how to help you.”

  “Well, you can start by not selling my house, Joe!”

  He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “You’re grounded. For the week. School and back, that’s it.”

  I shake my head. “You can’t do that.”

  “Yes, I can. I can also take your phone, if you want to push it.”

  I clamp my mouth shut. These were his rules: no skipping school, no boys.

  As if this is the source of the change in me.

  Not the signal, not the photo, not Elliot at the jail. But a boy in the night.

  “Joe, please.”

  “Kennedy. Go to bed. Now.”

  I listen, but only because this is not the right time. And before that time comes, I need my phone.

  Grounded for a week

  That’s all I hear from Kennedy the next day. Meanwhile, if my school has called about me skipping a day, it doesn’t seem to register. Or else no one has checked the messages. Though from the way my parents looked this morning, my guess is it wouldn’t make their Top 10 list of Things That Require Attention, either way.

  When I arrive home from school, Dave, Clara, and Mike are there, along with the remainders of their day: three energy drinks on the desk, two sandwich wrappers, and an open bag of Doritos. I can feel Clara’s eyes on me as I walk past, but I don’t look. I have to tap the table in front of Mike to get his attention. He reminds me of a college kid pulling an all-nighter, only he’s in his forties and he does this all the time. Sometimes I wonder if this is my future, the sibling left behind, a life dedicated to searching.

  God, I have to find him.

  Mike looks up but doesn’t remove his headphones at first. “My parents?” I ask.

  He holds up one finger, then points to the headphones, like maybe he’s listening to a message.

  “They left,” Dave says. “With some dude in a suit.” I close my eyes. Agent Lowell. “Think it was about the picture,” he continues, obviously the master eavesdropper.

  Clara perks up, opens her mouth to talk just as my parents walk in the front door, clearly disoriented.

  They thank the group working in the living room, then excuse them for the day. They drift through the downstairs, my mom tossing her purse onto the couch as she wanders to the sink and sticks her mouth directly under the faucet. That is, for the record, the most un-Mom-like move.

  I’m transfixed.

  I jump when my dad puts his hand on my shoulder, and then tense. This is the parent move I am familiar with. I’m even more shaken by this than by the un-Mom move. Because I know what this means. Nolan, we have something to tell you.

  “Dad,” I start, before he can say something, sucking us back in. The reason I was looking for him when I got home from school. I pull him to the kitchen, pointing to the new picture up on the wall. “That kid on the end. My friend was here yesterday, and she says she saw him around here.”

  He narrows his eyes, steps closer to see the details. If he thinks anything of me having a girl in the house when they were gone, he doesn’t say, doesn’t seem to care. “Hunter Long,” he says slowly, like he’s pulling the file up in his brain. “Here? Is she sure? When did she see him?”

  “In the fall.”

  He nods slowly. “Seems unlikely. But we’ll make a note. Give me her name tomorrow.”

  But he’s not paying attention. Usually, when they get a bite of promising information, their movements quicken, their eyes brighten, fueled by the hope.

  My dad turns away from the photo, letting out a sigh. “Nolan, we have something to tell you,” he says, and my stomach continues its precipitous plummet. No point in prolonging this, but still, I plan my escape route.

  I back out of the room so I’m hovering between the dining room and living room. “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “The photo of Liam appears to be authentic,” my dad says. “The photo is proof.”

  My mother appears then, her eyes glassy, her weight leaning slightly to the right, and for a second I wonder if she’s been drinking.

  “Proof of what?” I ask.

  “Proof that the park wasn’t where he disappeared from,” she says, the faraway look still in her eyes.

  I shake my head. It has to be the park. It’s where I’ve centered everything. Every test. Everything I’ve been looking for. My brother and his dog disappear without a trace. A forest of ghost stories and legends. Some crack in the universe. Everything happened against his will; he didn’t choose to go anywhere, without telling us.

  I feel sick, like the world has tilted. I can’t orient myself. No. They’re wrong.

  “They’ve enlarged the photo for us,” my dad says, gesturing to the living room. “Agent Lowell is asking all of us to take a good look again. To think about where it was taken.”

  The room is practically spinning. It feels like I’m falling, like something is slipping from my grasp—

  “Nolan,” he says, like he’s repeating something he’s already said.

  It’s then I notice the printout on the living room table. Enlarged Liam, in the center of the room.

  I picture my brother, in the corner of this very room. The fever dream. His mouth moving. Help us. Please.

  I picture him over the sink the morning he disappeared, the drop of blood. The hiss of pain, the razor clattering in the sink.

  “Someone went to a lot of trouble to disguise where the email was sent from,” my dad adds. “They’re still working on it, at the field office.”

  It’s then I think: They won’t find anything. It’s a thought that suddenly feels absolutely true: from somewhere beyond, my brother did this. He’s been trying to reach me, with the dream, the email, the signal; and now he has.

  When my parents leave the room momentarily, I snap a photo of the printout with my phone, and I text it to Kennedy.

  This is the photo that was sent to my brother’s old girlfriend.

  And then I walk up the steps to my room, staring at the photo on my screen, at the grainy pixels. It’s just trees. Trees, and my brother, and Colby’s tail in the corner.

  My phone rings in my hand, but it’s a video call. When I hit Accept, I see Kennedy sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room, with notebooks and papers spread out all around her, empty boxes in the background. The phone must be propped up on one such box.

  She leans closer to the screen for a moment, then shakes her head. “You don’t look that much like him.” Then she looks down again, shifting a few papers around.

  “So I hear,” I say. I’ve been told that most of my life. Liam really was the golden child, both in actions and looks. We were like opposite sides of the same coin: his hair was a dark blond to my fully brown; his eyes blue to my brown; his face perfectly symmetrical, whereas my nose still bent slightly to the left after getting too close to a swing in Little League. I bet I’m as tall as him now, though. The thought hurts my stomach.

  She stops moving then, looks up from the work around her. “That wasn’t a slight. I was just picturing someone more like you.” Her eyes flick away and she turns her face to the side, her hair falling over her features so I can’t read her expression.

  She goes back to multitasking, or whatever it is she’s doing. She called me, but it’s like she’s expecting me to lead the conversation here. “Uh,” I say, “what are you up to?”

  “Well, there’s definitely no signal coming through anymore. So I’m looking through all of Elliot’s things, seeing if I can figure anything out. See where it came from. Trace it back.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Not real
ly. I wish I could get back there, though. I want to try rebooting the electricity. It seems that’s what knocked it out the first time. You?” She pauses, tipping her head over, twisting her dark hair up into a haphazard ponytail on the top of her head, as if she needs it out of her way to think clearly.

  “Well?” she asks, still upside down.

  When I forget to answer, she flips her hair back and looks at me head-on.

  “Sorry, was just waiting for you to finish.”

  She gives me a look like I’m ridiculous. “Can you not do your hair and speak at the same time?”

  “I don’t really think about my hair all that often.”

  She smirks, then flips her hair back and forth, like a joke. But now it’s all I can think about. Dark hair, cascading over my vision. I clear my throat.

  “Sorry, nothing here, either. I told my parents about the photo of Hunter Long, but he was reported missing this past winter. Still, can I give them your name?”

  “Sure, though I don’t think I’ll be much help. I saw him in the fall.”

  “Sorry, Kennedy, about last night. I hope I didn’t get you in even more trouble.”

  She winces. “I’m in trouble, but it’s not your fault. My idea, my plan. Sorry you got caught up in it.” She smiles then. “Could be worse. At least I still have my phone.”

  She goes back to the papers, but I don’t want her to hang up. “Can Lydia find out what’s in the signal?” I ask.

  “Eh. She’s, like, a computer expert. Heard she got suspended in middle school for hacking into the school email and sending out a snow day closure alert. So yeah, she’s crazy talented, but I don’t think she has the right equipment.”

  “And Elliot won’t talk to you. Do you think he would talk to someone else?”

  “No, I don’t. His trial is coming up, and the lawyers are focused on helping him remember….” She sighs, her thoughts drifting. But then she sits straighter, leaning closer to the screen so her brown eyes look twice their normal size. “There are people at the college who can do this, though. My mom worked there. They know me.” She looks quickly over her shoulder and lowers her voice. “But I have to talk to Joe first.”