“Rose is a big girl,” Jeremy says. “She can make up her own mind.”
“Is that what you tell yourself to sleep at night?” Ian asks calmly. Too calmly. “It’s not your fault the pills you pushed destroyed lives? It was their choice to take them. Not yours?”
Jeremy’s arm drops from my shoulders. “Shut up.”
Ian takes one step forward. I move on instinct, blocking his path. “Enough, Ian.”
A sudden shift draws my gaze to the treetops. The light behind the canopy. It’s fading like someone hit the dimmer switch. Shadows lengthen and stretch all around us. The wind tapers off until it dies down completely. The stillness hovers like a sword above our heads.
When Ian doesn’t respond, I plead with Jeremy instead. “If we’re going to find Charlie, we have to do it now. Come on.” I tug on Jeremy’s arm. He doesn’t budge.
“Is that what you told yourself when Will came to you?” Ian continues like I’m not even there. “That he was a big boy? He could handle it?”
“What do you want from me? Do you want to hear that I’m sorry? That I hate myself?” Tears streak angry paths through the dirt on Jeremy’s cheeks. “Because I am so fucking sorry, Ian.” Jeremy’s voice seems to shatter.
“Your apologies can’t give me the past two years of my life back. They won’t bring—” Ian’s chest hitches.
“I know,” Jeremy pleads desperately. “But you don’t know the whole—” The words are drowned out by a fit of coughing. Once it starts, it doesn’t stop.
“Jeremy!” I pat him on the back to clear his lungs. I think the coughing will go on forever, when Jeremy’s eyes fly open.
Darkness swirls in his growing pupils.
Not now. Please, please not now.
“Jeremy.” I reach for his hand, searching for some of that Kennedy warmth, wanting to give it back.
He steps away from me. The darkness leaks out of his pupils into his irises, staining them black. “I can’t take it anymore,” he tells Ian. “I can’t take you punishing me over and over for something I can’t change. If I could go back and do it differently, don’t you think I—” A violent hacking takes him over. It ends in a choked gurgle. Jeremy kneads a fist against his chest. “There are things you need to know.”
“So tell him,” I say quickly. If Jeremy can get out the words, maybe he’ll step back from the ledge he’s teetering on. Maybe he’ll be able to breathe.
We can’t afford to lose Jeremy now. Not with Charlie so close. Not with the storm bearing down. And if Jeremy goes, I have a terrible feeling he’ll be taking Ian with him.
“I’ve been trying,” Jeremy cries. “But the words get stuck in my throat, like, physically stuck. And whenever I try to push them out, it feels like I’m coughing up razor blades.”
His words creep up my spine. “It’s the dark pulse,” I say. “It’s working on Jeremy physically.” Just like it did Becca. And Charlie. “Don’t say anything else. Please, Jer. You’ll only make it worse.”
“I don’t care.” Tears leak through butterfly lashes. The hacking starts up again. Tremors bend him over at the waist, and his face turns an alarming shade of red.
“Shut it.” Ian’s voice is cold, but there’s a touch of something that wasn’t there before. Worry.
“No,” Jeremy rasps. “I’m going to tell you what happened, and you’re going to lis—” The next wave of coughing brings him to his knees. When he looks up again, his jaw is set in an obstinate line. “You’re going to listen,” he finishes, spitting out a mouthful of saliva. “Even if it kills me.”
He smiles. Blood stains his teeth.
“Ian.” His name comes out panicked.
But Ian isn’t listening to me. He stares at Jeremy bleeding on the ground in front of him like it wouldn’t be the worst thing to watch his friend choke to death on whatever dark truth has driven this wedge between them.
“Ian!”
This time, he looks at me with swirling pupils.
I take a few steps backward. Ian watches me go, a frown cutting across his brow. Muscles tense in his neck, his arms. Like it’s taking everything in him not to follow me. The darkness in his eyes breaks for half a second, and I can almost hear his voice yelling in my head.
Run. Before it’s too late.
Ian makes a sound deep in his throat and twists away from me. His hand moves to grip his hat, knuckles gleaming white against the faded bill.
I watch him hold on to that last piece of himself, and something moves deep inside of me. I don’t know what to call it or what it means, but I know one thing for certain.
It won’t run. Not from this.
Ian follows my approach with inky eyes. He jerks his head. One last warning. I ignore it and move until I’m standing right in front of him. “Think of Becca,” I say, the only thing I can think of to get through to him.
Seconds fall like dominoes. The light comes back into Ian’s eyes. He nods, and the relief has my knees going soft.
Ian drags Jeremy to his feet and pushes him in the direction of the caverns. “Move your ass, Kennedy.”
“Just leave me.” Jeremy drops back down to the ground. A two-hundred-pound child throwing a tantrum. “We both know it’s what you want to do.”
A crack of lightning flashes in the sky as Ian grabs Jeremy by the front of his uniform and hoists him to his feet. “And tell Becca I left you out here to die?” He grunts. “Not happening.”
Jeremy shoves Ian off. “Screw you.”
Another rumble of thunder. This one closer. When I try to take Ian’s place, Jeremy pushes me away. “I didn’t know what he was going to do,” he tells me desperately. Blood and spittle fly out of his mouth to speckle my arms where they hold on to him.
“Jeremy, please!” I beg, but he’s past the point of no return. His eyes are open, every last trace of hazel drowned in a sea of pure black.
“I should’ve come clean with you,” he tells Ian. “I should’ve told my old man to go to hell when he tried to brush my part under the rug. I couldn’t stop him from pressing the charges, but I swear, I never spoke against you.” Every word sounds like it’s torn out of his throat by a pair of pliers. “He signed me up for boot camp. Told me his lawyers would make it worse for you if I didn’t go quietly. I convinced myself I was doing it for you, but I was a coward. I was afraid to embarrass my family, or let Will down or have you hate me, and now it’s too late to fix any of it. It’s too fucking late.” Agony contorts Jeremy features. The coughing escalates into frantic hacking.
Jeremy’s arms thrash, one last desperate strain for air. Then he slumps to the ground, utterly still.
I lean over and place my cheek against his chest. Panic sends my eyes shooting to Ian’s. “He’s not breathing.”
The words are barely out before Ian is on Jeremy’s other side. He tilts his head back to open his airway and places both hands over Jeremy’s breast bone. He starts to push. One. Two. Three dozen times.
Ian covers Jeremy’s mouth with his own. The soldier’s chest rises and falls with each breath Ian gives him. It doesn’t rise again.
“Come on, Jeremy.” Ian restarts compressions, throwing his whole body into it. “Come. On.”
Four more breaths. Two more waits that end in disappointment.
“Don’t you do it. Don’t you fucking die on me.” Ian pushes. Again and again and again. I sit on the ground next to them, hands folded in a prayer that won’t come. There are no prayers now. No words. There is just this moment and the weight of Ian’s desperation about to cave in Jeremy’s chest.
Tears stream down my face as I watch Ian try to beat the life back into his friend.
More breaths. More compressions. More rolling thunder in the dark.
“Breathe.” Another flash of lightning highlights the sheen of sweat covering Ian’s face. “Goddammit, Jeremy. Breathe!”
A gasp sounds through the woods as Jeremy draws a ragged breath. Then another. He’s still unconscious, but at least he’s breathing.
Ian slumps to the ground beside him.
It starts to rain. Stinging drops cut vertical trajectories through the canopy, driving the reality of the situation right into our faces. The sky has turned the color of an old bruise.
The air crackles. Branches creak and groan as microbursts shred through the forests.
Ian rips off his jacket and lays it over Jeremy’s body. “Go back to the cavern.” He raises his voice to be heard over the rain. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“You can’t carry him the whole way,” I yell back. Jeremy weighs almost as much as Ian does. Besides, we both know the storm isn’t the worst danger facing Jeremy now. “If we don’t go in there after him, he’ll fade into the Black Nothing,” I say. “His body won’t matter because his mind will be gone.”
I reach for Jeremy’s hand. Ian catches my wrist. “This isn’t your mess. It’s mine. I have to clean it up.”
Words crowd my mouth. I want to tell him to forget it. That it’s too big of a risk, but he has to do this, and I have to let him.
But it’s hard. Trusting is hard. And it never gets any easier.
“You’ll feel a thread pulling you back to your body,” I tell him. “Concentrate on finding the other one. The one between you and Jeremy.” I squeeze his hand. “Find it and bring him back.”
Ian meets my eyes through the driving rain. His face moves with an emotion I can’t place. “Promise me you’ll find cover if the storm gets worse.” His grip on my hand tightens. “Say the words, Rose.” He looks at me like I’m the only thing he sees.
“I promise.”
Ian offers me a tense nod. He drops my hand and swaps it out for Jeremy’s. As soon as their skin touches, Ian’s face contorts in agony before going completely blank.
“Ian.” I shake him. “Ian!” He doesn’t respond.
And the driving rain around us turns to hail.
Drops of ice the size of golf balls shred through the canopy, releasing a rain of leaves and branches from up above. Pain lights up my back and shoulders. I raise my hands to protect my face. A piece of hail hits Jeremy on the forehead, opening up a cut over his eye. Another splits Ian’s knuckles where they grip Jeremy’s hand. The sight of their blood running together acts like a bucket of ice water, bringing me to my senses.
Stinging shards slice into my cheek as I scramble for Ian’s pack. Folded at the bottom is a familiar flap of silver.
Hail becomes sheets of freezing rain as I shake out the tarp. I can barely see, so I go by touch, tucking the free end under Jeremy’s body while I hold up the other side, forming a crude tent over the two of them.
Gusts of air tear through the trees, flinging dirt into my eyes and threatening to rip the tarp out of my fingers. The wind runs wild through the forest, playing the branches overhead to an ominous tune of creaks and groans.
The sound of splitting wood fills my ears. Several branches fly from the treetops to hit the ground behind us.
Branches that could easily cave in a titanium roof.
My gaze cuts to Jeremy and Ian lying helpless beside me. Ian made me promise to leave if things got bad, but it’s too late for that now. The Fold has cracked my world wide open. It isn’t just the dark pulse. Blaine and Becca. Jeremy and Ian. I can feel the fragile bonds between us growing stronger with every passing minute. Tying me right to the spot.
I risk a quick glimpse at the sky just as a thick band of lightning splits the world in half. The flash is accompanied by a crack of thunder that sets the ground trembling beneath me. It happens again, and I realize what it is. Not thunder. Not another earthquake. The sound of a massive tree hitting the ground nearby.
My breathing comes in short bursts.
Another tree hits the forest floor, close enough to set my back teeth ringing.
Ian and Jeremy have been gone too long. We’re never making it out of here. Not unless I find some way to bring them back.
The world breaks down into a series of stimuli.
The scent of ozone and dirt.
The cold rain on my face and the slap of the wind as I let go of the tarp.
The warmth of Ian’s and Jeremy’s skin as I grab hold of both of their hands, forming a circle in the center of the storm.
The hook rises out of the chaos around me to coat my insides in liquid fire, and then the Black Nothing is there, just like I knew it would be.
I fall sideways into the dark.
The dark pulse slams into me. The sound is enough to make me wish I was dead. Once I can think past it, I focus on what’s around me.
Down below, Jeremy is curled in on himself in the Black Nothing. The light around him is holding steady, fed by a deep blue thread that runs through him from somewhere to my right.
Ian.
I can feel him there, a solid, steady presence. The only bearable thing in this darkness. I reach for him with my mind, and at once, a storm of images assaults me.
Two boys playing in the woods in the back of a white house with crumbling shutters. The quiet one carrying a trash bag because he’s not supposed to leave until all the beer cans are cleaned up. The black-haired one pretending he doesn’t notice the peeling paint, or the car on cinder blocks, or the way his friend tries to hide his shame and his bruises under the bill of a hat.
The same two boys a few years later, following an older boy to a pool in the middle of the woods, because for two of them, these woods feel so much safer than home. Their laughter echoing through the clearing. The black-haired boy’s attempts to distract the brothers from their scars glinting in the sun by diving backward off the waterfall without paying attention to the rocks below.
A thirteen-year-old Jeremy with skinny arms and shaggy hair, doing something stupid that gets him yet another detention. But not before making Ian laugh so hard his split lip starts to bleed. Jeremy’s grin of satisfaction as he’s removed from class, and Ian’s voice following him out into the hall, calling him a dumbass.
Ian as a teenager, scaling the side of a mansion in the dead of night before climbing through Jeremy’s window. Jeremy tossing him a pillow and a towel with a grumbled warning about leaving blood on the sink before pulling the inflatable mattress out from under his bed. Waking up the next day and acting as if nothing had happened.
Jeremy going to the caverns to look for Ian when he doesn’t show up at school. Saying something stupid to push Ian’s buttons. The sound of flesh hitting stone as he tackles Ian to the ground. Not because he wants to fight, but because he knows Ian needs to.
The images stop, and suddenly, I’m hurtling out of the abyss and back to the middle of the storm.
Something hits me across the face. The tarp, flapping wildly in the wind.
I push it down to see Ian blinking at me. My heart lifts even higher when Jeremy groans at his feet. He’s battered. They both are. But they’re alive, and they’re here.
Ian’s eyes move from the raging storm to the flapping tarp to me. “You can yell at me later,” I tell him. “Right now, let’s move.”
Ian nods. “Come on, Kennedy.” He throws one arm around Jeremy.
“Careful,” Jeremy groans as Ian helps him to his feet. “I’m starting to think you don’t actually hate me.”
Ian laughs, and in spite of the blood flying from his mouth and the world falling apart around us, Jeremy actually grins.
They’ve both lost their minds.
Another crack of lightning cuts through the forest. During the flash, I catch a glimpse of the clouds rolling toward us. A wall of solid black, twisting in a circular motion.
I’ve seen clouds move like that before.
A narrow funnel drops down from the sky.
I break into a run. Ian and Jeremy stay close beside me. Debris flies through the air. Ragged blasts of air hit us on all sides. The light has bled out of the sky. It’s hard to see what’s in front of me. Almost impossible to keep my feet.
I have to keep my feet. I have to—
An earsplitting howl fills my he
ad. Gusts of wind hit me like hammers, driving me sideways into Ian’s solid weight. He catches me with both hands and we tumble across the forest floor.
My head is still reeling when someone reaches down to yank me up. Jeremy. Together, Ian and I climb to our feet.
The sound of roots being torn from the earth comes from directly behind us.
I stumble back into a run even though I know it’s useless. The tornado is too close. The caverns too far. We’ll never make it.
My eyes dart frantically around the forest. They zero in on a tree lying on its side a few dozen yards away. Directly underneath it, a trench snakes through the ground. It could be a few feet deep or it could be a mile.
It’s a chance I’m willing to take.
I yank on Ian’s sleeve and drag him toward the tree. Jeremy follows right on our heels.
We’re almost at the trench when Ian pulls me in close to his side. The wind tears a cry from his lips. He staggers. A moment later, he’s standing straight again, pushing me ahead of him into the ditch.
I roll several feet down to the bottom and come to a stop under the solid trunk. Needles prick my neck and the smell of sap fills my nostrils as I press my body flat to the earth. A moment later, Jeremy is crawling over me. Seconds tick by, but Ian doesn’t show.
I’m about to crawl out after him when he rolls down into the trench, slamming to a stop beside me. Something crashes into the tree from up above, releasing a flood of needles onto our backs. Ian throws his body over mine, pinning me to the dirt with his weight. The world comes apart over our heads.
Branches break. Trees fall. The wind screams.
It feels like the whole forest is crashing down on top of us. We’re not going to make it. We’re going to die right here in this trench.
I’ll never see Charlie’s face again.
The thought fills me with sadness just as there’s another massive thunk on the trunk. More needles fall. It goes on and on and on, until, gradually, it stops.
The howl turns into a gentle keening. The ground stops shaking.
I lie there for a few minutes longer, not daring to lift my head.
Jeremy sits up beside me. “The sky. It’s starting to clear.”
Before I Disappear Page 21
