by Lisa McMann
“He’s fighting with everyone,” Kendall says. The water shuts off.
Marlena shrugs. “He’s really not a bad guy. He’s actually got a very sweet side.”
“Well, what about you?” Kendall asks. “What did you leave behind? Do you hate it here too?” Kendall feels a bit of protectiveness bubble up. She knows very well that Cryer’s Cross is an odd kind of town and that things move a little slower out here than they do in big cities. She knows that riding your horse into town is unheard of in the rest of the country, but here it happens now and then with one of the old-timers.
Marlena smiles. “Me? Oh, I love it out here. It’s so pretty with all the mountains, and the air is so clean, and you can see the stars. I’m glad we got to move here. Living in the hot, dirty city—it just wasn’t my gig.”
“Well, that’s cool. Do you think your parents will stay out here? Like, for a year, or indefinitely?” Kendall hears a door open, and a moment later another door closes.
“I think we’re here forever, as long as my grandfather is. It’s kind of tradition with our culture, you know? It’s very important to my mom that we take care of Grandpa now that he needs help.”
“That’s cool. I like that.” Kendall hugs her knees and rests her chin on them. She likes Marlena. It’s actually not bad having a girl to hang out with now and then.
Kendall’s mother calls. “The car has a dead battery, and Dad’s out in the back forty with the truck. He’ll be out till late. Can you ask Hector to run you home?”
“Sure. He’s not actually here right now.”
“Well, maybe Marlena’s parents or Jacián can do it, then? I’m kind of stuck here. If they can’t, call me back and I’ll walk over and we can walk home together. But the help are working extra hours for the next few weeks, and I’d like to offer them something to eat.”
“It’s cool, Mom. I’m sure I can get a ride. See you in a bit.”
Kendall hangs up the phone. “So, uh,” she says, “any chance your parents are coming home soon? My mom’s car has a dead battery.”
“Not until dark.” Marlena turns her head and calls, “Jacián!”
“No, that’s okay,” Kendall says. “I can wait for Hector.”
“Jacián!” she yells again, and then she says something in Spanish.
A moment later he comes down the hallway. “I’m going to tell Grandfather you said that,” he says. “What do you want?”
“Kendall’s mother’s car has a dead battery so Kendall needs a ride home. And you also need to cook dinner for me, Mama said. I’m starving for a Whopper and fries or something. When are they going to get a fast-food place around here, huh?”
Kendall glances away. “Sorry, Jacián.”
He’s silent for a moment and she doesn’t want to see the look on his face. “Okay,” he says. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah.” She is painfully conscious of her smelly sweat-damp clothes. She grabs her backpack and soccer bag and leans down for a quick hug. “Bye, Marlena. Hope you feel better tomorrow.”
“Are you coming again?” Marlena asks, hopeful.
“I—I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I hope you can. Come tomorrow.”
Jacián strides to the door and heads out to the barn. Kendall follows and gets in the truck as he starts it up.
“You reek,” he says, wrinkling his nose.
“Thanks,” Kendall says.
They travel in silence, Jacián taking much more care with the truck on this ride compared to the previous one.
Kendall thinks ahead to tomorrow’s drive, and her anxiety kicks in. “Can you pick me up a few minutes earlier tomorrow?”
“Why?”
“I just . . . I just like to get to school a bit earlier.”
“I like to get to school when it’s time for school to start.”
Kendall feels the stress building. Her mind starts whirring again, worrying about not getting the room set up the way it needs to be. Worrying about wanting to deal with seeing Nico’s empty desk before the whole class gets there. She bites her lip and looks out the window. “Fine,” she says. She’s going to have to handle it.
He glances at her, brow furrowed, and then turns his eyes back to the road. A moment later he’s pulling into the driveway. He drives up to the apron and stops next to Mrs. Fletcher’s car. Puts the truck in park, rolls down the windows, turns off the ignition, and pops the hood.
Kendall looks at him. “What are you doing?”
“Can you get your mother’s car keys, please?”
“She leaves them under the floor mat.”
Jacián stops and stares at Kendall. Shakes his head a little. “I will never get used to this small-town crazy shit,” he mutters. “It would have been stolen within ten minutes where we’re from.”
Kendall shrugs. “Not here.”
“I suppose you don’t lock your doors at night, either.”
Kendall’s eyes widen. “What do you mean by that? And yes, we do lock them. All of them. So don’t bother testing it.”
Jacián gives her a quizzical look. “I didn’t mean anything by it.” He gets out and pulls jumper cables from the big toolbox in the truck bed. “Sheesh, not you, too.” His voice is bitter.
“No, I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” Roughly he pops the hood to the car and attaches the clips to the dead battery. Then he hands the other two to Kendall. “Don’t let them touch,” he says.
“I know that. I’m not stupid.” Kendall clips the black and red pincers to the proper spots on the truck battery. “You want me to start up the truck?”
“Yeah.” Jacián gets into Mrs. Fletcher’s car.
Kendall starts it up, and when it’s running strong, Jacián tries starting the car. It turns over on the second try.
He smiles to himself, satisfied. And then he gets out and retrieves the cables, disconnecting them in reverse order. “Okay, you’re set. Let it run for a few.” He winds up the cables and puts them back into the toolbox. “Take it for a drive, even.”
“I can’t. Remember?”
“Right,” he says. “Forgot already. Must be a big pain in the ass.”
Kendall gets out of the truck, leaving it running. “Yeah. Pretty much,” she says and pauses. “Thanks for the ride, and for jumping my mom’s car. She’ll really appreciate that. I’ll . . . see you in the morning, then.”
He slides into the seat and closes the door. Leans his elbow out the window. “Bring your soccer gear if you want. If you’re coming over after.” He puts the truck in gear.
Kendall feels her face get warm. “Maybe,” she says lightly. “And hey,” she remembers out loud, “your girlfriend called while you were in the shower. Marlena forgot to tell you.”
Jacián’s face doesn’t change. “Oh. All right,” he says. “Thanks.” He pulls his arm inside and backs up, turning around. Drives off without another word.
WE
Achingly close. We sense the warmth but We can’t reach it. Want. Need! Thirty-five, one hundred. Thirty-five, one hundred. We cry out to be touched, fear gripping Our scratchy voices. Fifty cold years in the darkness, boiling in regret. Come closer! We want you, more than We wanted the last. Torturously.
Please.
Save me.
FOURTEEN
He’s early.
Kendall’s ready, sitting by the picture window, thinking about Nico, and her heart almost breaks, wishing he were here. Wishing she could talk to him. When she sees the cloud of dust at the end of the driveway, she thinks it’s him, before reality bashes her in the head yet again.
By the time Jacián’s truck reaches the house, she’s already kissed her mother good-bye and is waiting. She hops into the truck. Wants to thank him for coming early, but feels suddenly embarrassed about bringing it up again. She wonders, briefly, why she allows herself to get flustered by him. He’s just so . . . unreadable.
At school she passes old Mr. Greenwood on his way out, and she rushes to take
care of as many things as possible before Jacián catches up to her. She gets the wastebasket, markers, window locks, and drapes aligned before she hears his footsteps. Then she straightens the desks one by one. Feeling relief as she passes her fingers over each one, reading the graffiti like it’s comfort food for her brain. Not even caring that he’s staring at her.
When she gets to the senior section, Jacián is already sitting at his desk, reading. His desk is slightly crooked. Not enough for the average person to notice, but for Kendall it’s like a musical note that is slightly off pitch, playing constantly. She itches to ask him to move but knows how weird that would be. She knows people without OCD have a really hard time understanding it. And she’s okay with that. Still. She’ll wait until he gets up. She finishes the desks around her—Eli’s, Travis’s, Brandon’s, and she can’t bear to look at Nico’s quite yet. She glances at Jacián’s desk, and she’s bothered beyond ordinary by it today. But people are starting to stream into the room.
Without a word, and still reading his book, he stands and steps out of the way. “Go on, then,” he says.
She gives him a look of surprise, but he doesn’t notice. Hesitates and pinches her lips together, debating. Then she swiftly adjusts his desk so it’s perfectly aligned. Slides into her own desk chair and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Almost done. “Thank you,” she says.
His mouth twitches, but he keeps reading.
She turns to Nico’s desk, more prepared today for him to not be there. It still feels awful. She moves the desk slightly, lovingly, to line it up with hers. Runs her fingers across it, tentatively. Lifts the lid and looks inside, but there’s nothing in there anymore, so she closes it again. It’s so cold and stark. Empty. She reads the graffiti, but it all means something different this time with him gone. It’s Nico’s desk, but there’s something unusual, something niggling at the back of her mind that she can’t quite figure out.
And then she realizes what it is. A new phrase etched into the top of the desk, but it doesn’t look new. It looks ten or twenty or fifty years old, like all the other graffiti. Kendall leans to the right to get a closer look. Definitely not a fresh one. If Nico had done it, it wouldn’t look so smooth.
Ms. Hinkler begins class by passing out papers. Kendall glances around to make sure she’s not acting too weird, and then she leans over again. It’s near the center of his desk, and it says, without a doubt:
Please.
Save me.
How strange that she hasn’t noticed it before. How could she have missed it?
All day, she doesn’t hear a thing that Ms. Hinkler is saying. She can’t concentrate, wondering about the desk, the graffiti. She studies it, focuses all her attention on it. Remembers that this desk isn’t one of the desks that has been in this classroom forever. It is just as old as all the others, but it had been kept in storage until it was needed. Old Mr. Greenwood brought it upstairs last spring when another one broke.
She knows who used to have this desk. Tiffany Quinn.
And then, after the schoolroom had a cleaning over the summer, the desk ended up as Nico’s.
Kendall draws in a sharp breath, loud enough to make Jacián look over. He raises his eyebrows in a silent question.
Kendall looks at him for a moment, and then smiles shakily and waves him off. “Nothing,” she says.
And really, when she thinks about it rationally, it truly is nothing. Nothing more than a strange coincidence.
At lunch she stays inside and studies the desk, wanting to be sure, but she’s not entirely certain what she wants to be sure of. Finally she takes out a piece of notebook paper. Writes down the things she’s sure of, and what she’s almost sure of. In the “sure of” column:
• Tiffany Quinn and Nico Cruz each were using this desk when they disappeared
• The desk in question has new graffiti on it that looks old
She erases the second point and puts it in the “almost sure” category.
Then she erases the first point, accidentally ripping the paper with her eraser in her haste, and puts that in the “almost sure” category too. Because now she’s not entirely sure about anything.
All afternoon her brain buzzes with thoughts she can’t control. She wants to yell, wants to make them stop. But they whip around in an endless loop. After a while she just puts her head down on her desk and gives up.
“Kendall.”
“Yeah?”
“Time to go.”
Kendall sits up slowly, wearily. She has no idea what Ms. Hinkler has talked about all day. Doesn’t care, either. Her body feels like it’s filled with lead. She sits for a minute, realizing everybody is already gone except for Jacián. She slips out of her seat and grabs her backpack and bag.
“Are you okay?”
Kendall nods. “I think a lot of junk just caught up with me.” She glances over her shoulder at Nico’s desk as they walk to the door. “I’m starting to imagine things.”
Jacián pushes open the door and holds it for Kendall to walk through. He doesn’t say anything.
“How did you know?” she asks.
“Know what?”
“Know to stand up this morning so I could straighten your desk.”
“Oh, that.” Jacián gets into the truck. “It was pretty obvious just by watching you.”
“Oh.”
“And Marlena told me.”
“Told you what?” Kendall’s starting to feel paranoid.
“That you told her you have OCD.”
“Oh.” Kendall can’t think of anything else to say. She’s a little bit mad that Marlena squawked about it, but thinking back, Kendall hadn’t said not to.
Jacián gets into the truck. “Have you always had a problem with it?”
Kendall eyes him suspiciously. “Why?”
He starts it up as Kendall gets in on the passenger side. “Just making conversation. Sheesh. You really are a little paranoid, aren’t you? Is that part of the OCD, or is it just natural?”
“There you go, being jerkish again. Is that just natural for you?” She turns her face toward her window so he doesn’t see her grin. She’s glad he’s being normal about it.
He sighs and pulls out of the school parking area. “You’re coming home with me, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Look. I know about OCD. I was a junior counselor at a soccer camp for two summers before we came here. I had a lot of campers with secrets. You’re not the only one in the world with it, you know.”
Kendall humphs. “Feels like it sometimes.”
“Aw, poor you.”
“Shut up.”
He shrugs.
They get to Hector’s, pull into the barn, and get out of the truck. Jacián picks up the soccer balls. “You bring your clothes?”
Kendall debates. She has them, but she doesn’t like where the previous conversation went. Still, she feels like a slug, and her brain desperately needs a break. “Yeah.”
They walk up the porch steps and go inside. “There’s a bathroom upstairs you can use,” he says. “Or just use Marlena’s room. She’s not using it until she can actually get up there.”
Kendall sees Marlena with her eyes closed, lying on the sofa. Walks softly upstairs and changes, then tiptoes back outside so she doesn’t wake her friend. Jacián follows a minute later. They stretch in silence. Kendall feels the pull in her back, her thighs, and scolds herself for not dancing at all lately. But when your best friend since birth disappears, I guess maybe sometimes you forget to dance. She eases down into the splits and leans over her right knee.
“Does the workout help?”
Kendall is distracted from her thoughts. “Help what?”
“Your OCD.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I thought. The kids I worked with—they were always so much . . . I don’t know. Happier? Calmer, maybe, after playing hard all day.”
Kendall is taken aback by his attempt at conversation. She’s skeptic
al, unable to figure out why he’s suddenly willing to talk, but she’s too tired to question it. “It definitely helps me. During, mostly, but a little bit after, too.” Kendall shifts and bows over her other knee. “Wish I could play all year.”
“Why can’t you?”
Kendall looks at him. “Uh . . . because of the snow?”
“Oh. Forgot about that.”
“Yeah.”
“So what do you do when it snows?”
She gets an unexpected lump in her throat, thinking about ice fishing with Nico, snowshoeing with Nico, skiing in the mountains with Nico. And dancing. Not with Nico. “Dance,” she says. “Theatre. Only once so far, but I want to do it again someday.” She gets to her feet and grabs a soccer ball, kicking it wide and chasing after it, ending the conversation before it gets dangerous. She’s tired of crying.
They work on their own for a while. It’s a lot more comfortable today than it was yesterday, and eventually they fall into a scrimmage. Jacián’s bigger, stronger, and can run a little faster, but Kendall is a tiny bit quicker changing direction on a dime. If she can get past him, she’s got it made.
Problem is getting past him.
Jacián plays rough, just this side of dirty. He always has, and he doesn’t go easy on girls—not on Marlena or on Kendall. It’s something Kendall noticed the first day, and she actually really appreciates that. She always tries to take him down too. Can’t let him get too cocky. And while she plays, he is the enemy. Kendall focuses all her brainpower on the win.
She doesn’t even notice when Marlena hobbles out the door with Hector and they sit on the porch, watching as Kendall goes in for the kill shot. She races Jacián to the ball, every muscle in her body screaming, stretched to its limit. He steps in, and she slams into him. Her body flies and she lands on her back, hard. It knocks the wind out of her and she lies there, stunned for a moment, before she starts fighting for air. It’s the worst feeling in the world, trying to breathe but not being able to. At least Jacián went down too.
