by Lisa McMann
She rolls onto her side, and they lie on the grass, heaving.
When Kendall can speak, she says, “You suck.”
Jacián grins at the sky.
Later, Kendall joins Hector and Marlena on the porch. She sits on the steps and guzzles a giant glass of water, listening to Hector and Marlena talk.
“Aren’t you going into town today to visit with old Mr. Greenwood?” Marlena asks.
“Not today. I have some paperwork to take care of.”
“What will he think if you don’t show up?”
“Ah, he’ll be fine. It’s not the first time. Sometimes he doesn’t show up either. We are good friends for a long time and understand each other.”
Kendall turns. “I think it’s cute that you sit together and never talk to each other, like an old married couple.”
“Ha! We talk sometimes. I didn’t know the whole town was worried about us.” He grins.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard old Mr. Greenwood say more than a few words at school, like if he’s yelling at us to clean up or whatever,” Kendall says. “He’s kind of cranky. How long have you known him? Has he always been that way?”
Hector shakes his head. “It’s been a long time. Since we were about like you two . . . maybe a few years younger, each.” He gets a strange look in his eyes.
Marlena leans in. “Did you meet here? Did you always live here, Grandpa?”
“We met here in Montana, yes.” He turns to explain to Kendall, “I was born in Texas, and my parents only spoke Spanish, so I didn’t learn English until I went to school. They were good field-workers, and we migrated here one spring to work when I was fourteen. I was . . .” He pauses. “I was not a good boy. I had a lot of troubles with other kids.”
“Because . . . ?” Marlena demands.
“Because . . . Well, partly because I am Mexican. Here in Montana there were Native Americans and Caucasians. Not so many Mexicans.”
“So what happened?” Kendall turns around on the steps so she can watch his face.
“I got into fights. And my parents couldn’t have me doing that. They worked very hard for long hours, and I was bad. So they found me a new place to live.”
Marlena’s mouth drops open. “You mean, like, with another family? With the Greenwoods? Is that how you became friends?”
“No, no . . . nothing like that.” Hector glances at his watch. “My goodness, I have to go. I have to get some invoices together pronto for Jacián. He has deliveries tonight. Miss Kendall, do you need a ride home?” He slowly eases out of his chair.
“My mother’s going to pick me up at six, if that’s okay.”
“Aren’t you all busy harvesting those delicious potatoes? Seems like the right time.”
“Yeah,” Kendall says guiltily. “They let me off the hook because of Nico. They think it’s good I’m spending time talking with friends. Whatever that means.”
“It means you’re not all alone and brooding on a tractor or in a field,” Hector says.
“Whatever it means, it’s practically the first September I’ve had off from harvesting since I could walk,” Kendall says. “Still . . . I’d rather have Nico back.”
“It’s very hard to lose a friend at your age. I have been through it,” Hector says. He shakes his head and shuffles into the house. “Be careful out there, Miss Kendall. I’d be sick if we lost you, too, or anyone.”
When Kendall’s mother picks her up, she hands Kendall a letter. “It’s from Juilliard,” Mrs. Fletcher says.
Kendall stares at it, her stomach jumping into her throat. Takes it, not quite sure how she’s supposed to feel. Slips her finger under the flap and slides it across. Pulls out the folded piece of paper and opens it.
She reads for a moment with held breath, and then skims the rest of the letter. Lets it drop into her lap.
“It’s a no.” Kendall gazes out the car window, focusing on the distant mountains. Mrs. Fletcher squeezes Kendall’s hand and starts driving home.
It’s what they thought. What she’d expected. And to be honest, Kendall hasn’t thought about it much since Nico disappeared. It doesn’t really seem to matter anymore. Nothing does.
Still, she wonders, why does it hurt so much?
That night Kendall checks all the doors and windows six times each before she goes to bed. She’s exhausted, but her mind is revving up again, recalling everything that happened today. Blocking out the Juilliard letter as best she can. But it doesn’t matter, because her brain keeps bringing her back to earlier in the day.
All she can think about is one thing.
Desks.
WE
Only a faltering brush of warmth today.
Cold, so cold. We move Our cast-iron anchors, creaking, slowly inching across the floor, hours and hours of strain in search of heat and life. Now butting against a soulless We, now pushing the dead one out of Our way into the empty space. We breathe, ache, rest, strain again. We make Our move. Stalking the next soul to trade for one of Us.
FIFTEEN
When Kendall and Jacián get to school, she senses it, and a shiver goes down her spine—something’s off. She moves through her rituals and straightens the desks. When she gets to the senior section, she stops.
“These desks are switched,” she says. “Nico’s and Travis’s. Did you switch them?”
Jacián frowns. “You’ve been with me the whole time. Did you see me switch them?”
Kendall wrestles Travis’s desk out of the way and moves Nico’s desk back to where it belongs. “Who could have done this?” She rips her fingers through her hair, distressed. “This is Nico’s desk. It’s staying right here next to me. Totally not funny.”
“It was probably the janitor moving desks to clean. So it got moved. No big deal.” Jacián goes back to his book. “I’d ask how you even noticed it’s not Nico’s desk, but I’m scared to know the answer.”
“I know all the desks,” Kendall says, straightening Travis’s. “I have them—”
“No.” Jacián holds up his hand. “What did I just say?”
Kendall stops abruptly as the rest of the class trickles in. She takes a closer look at the spot on Nico’s desk that had the new/old graffiti yesterday. It’s still there, same as before. Looking like it’s been there for years. She shakes her head. Must have just missed that one, or forgotten it somehow. It’s not like she’s been exactly stable the past few weeks. And maybe because it says help, she actually really noticed it in a different way this time. Almost as if Nico were crying out for it.
But, like a good portion of Kendall’s thoughts, that one is just ridiculous.
Halfway through the day, when she’s supposed to be writing a book report, she stops short and lays her pen down. It really hits her. She’s not going to Juilliard.
She has no reason to ever dance again. Add to that, no reason to play soccer again. No reason to do anything without those things in her life. Without Nico. She slumps to her desk, suddenly very, very tired. On her notebook she doodles the word “LOST,” making the last letter dangle precipitously down the right margin.
Jacián glances at her notebook. Frowns. But says nothing.
Day after day after day goes by in black and white for Kendall now. She puts herself in a mind-numbing routine of school, farm, homework, sleep. She rides silently in the pickup to and from school with Jacián and Marlena, making small talk but not remembering any of it. Sitting quietly at her desk, moving automatically through the days, just getting by, and doing whatever her OCD tells her to do, no more, no less.
There is no more visiting Hector’s ranch once Marlena comes back to school. Marlena starts hanging out with the other tenth graders, who begin to get to know her, help her out when she needs it.
There’s no more soccer with Jacián either. Kendall’s parents need her desperately on the farm. It’s the height of harvest, and Kendall has work to do. Everything is one dull event after another now. She plunges her hands into freezing water, pulling lea
ves and bad potatoes off a belt for hours every day after school, and all she can do is think.
The thing is, for Kendall it just doesn’t matter. Nico is gone. Juilliard is no longer a goal. There’s no future with either one of her two favorite things—both dreams shattered within a matter of days. What else is there to think about? The truth is that Kendall might be tough on the outside. She can take a hit, and she can stand up for herself. But inside, in her scared heart and in her stupid, unstoppable brain, Kendall knows that she will stay in Cryer’s Cross forever. She will work on this farm until she inherits it someday. She will probably marry somebody like Eli Greenwood or Travis Shank and have children who play soccer on a too-small team until they graduate.
Or maybe not. Maybe she’ll shake up the town and stay single, adopt a baby or two, and just hide out at the farm.
And wait.
Wait for Nico to come back.
WE
Sapped. Our energy drained, only to be manhandled away. The rage! Oh, but the touch . . . It’s there. It’s near, within reach. We must become stronger. Draw Our next victim to Us from afar.
We simmer, day after day, hoarding what strength remains.
And We wait.
SIXTEEN
By mid-October, Kendall is stuck in a loop of depressing thoughts that won’t leave her. Lost without a goal, lost without her best friend, lost in a thousand acres of potatoes. There is no meaning, no plan. No sense in anything. All she can do is just plod through it. Get the work done so she can get up again the next day and start over. Go to bed before eleven so the missing phone call doesn’t hurt so much. Get to school early so she can do what she has to do, her OCD ball and chain dictating her every waking hour.
Every night she stands by the upstairs window and looks out toward the Cruz farm. She doesn’t know why. It’s just . . . for memory’s sake. And every night it is a dark and lonely view. “I’ll say I’m your girlfriend if you just come back,” she says, her breath fogging up the window. “I promise.”
Tonight she sees a vehicle go down the gravel road slowly, and she watches its brake lights flicker as it navigates potholes. When it’s gone from view, the world is dark again except for the stars and the harvest moon that casts an orange glow over the fields. “I know you can see this moon too, Nico,” she whispers. “Somewhere.”
Just as she turns away from the window, something moving halfway down the driveway catches her eye. She squints and makes out a figure standing there. Her heart jumps. Could it be Nico? She stares harder. It can’t be! In a daze she moves down the stairs, telling herself it’s not him. Someone would have called with the news. By the time she reaches the door, she’s growing scared. If it’s not Nico, then who is standing in their driveway at this hour?
Kendall stops short of flying through the door to gather her senses. Maybe it’s the abductor, ready to grab her. She sucks in a breath and slowly pushes aside the curtain of the window next to the front door and she peers out, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness again.
But there’s no one there. No one that she can see, anyway. Not with so many places to hide . . . long grass, trees, barns, tractors to hide behind. She spins around and runs back upstairs to the window. And from there she sees a figure—a man, she’s sure—running away, cutting the corner of the front field.
She flies over to her phone and dials Eli Greenwood’s number. Sheriff Greenwood answers. “Hello.”
“I just saw a man watching my house.” She’s breathless.
“Mrs. Fletcher?”
“No, it’s Kendall. There was a man standing halfway down our driveway just a couple minutes ago, and I thought it might be Nico, but then he turned and ran away when I went downstairs for a closer look.”
Sheriff Greenwood is quiet. “I’ll head out. Can you give me any description? Do you think it really was Nico?”
Kendall hesitates. “I did at first, but that was probably because I was thinking about him. If it was Nico, I’m sure he would have come to the door. So it couldn’t be.” Could it? She’s so confused.
“I’ll take a look. Could be somebody out for a walk. Just lock up tight, all right? Your parents home?”
“Yes. They’re sleeping.”
“You try to get some sleep too now. Hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
They hang up.
Kendall rechecks all the door locks and windows and goes back upstairs to her room. She lies in bed but knows there’s no sleeping now. She thinks about waking her parents, but in the middle of harvest they are exhausted. Besides, what could they do? The guy ran away.
Her heart is in her throat and she can’t stop getting up to check her bedroom window over and over. Because the way it works in her brain, if somebody breaks in, it’ll be her fault for not checking the lock enough times.
When she finally falls into a troubled sleep, she dreams about Nico.
Kidnapping and stabbing her to death.
SEVENTEEN
In the morning the ride to school is awkward and silent. After Kendall does her school rituals, Jacián pulls her aside.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” He looks troubled.
“Sure,” Kendall says, without enthusiasm. She’s tired from lack of sleep and paranoid about the kidnapper on the loose.
They step outside and around to the back of the school as students begin arriving.
“What’s so important that you can’t say it in the classroom?”
Jacián presses his lips together, and then he says, “Look. I don’t know how to say this without you freaking out at me. Can I just ask you to listen until I’m through?”
Kendall shifts and narrows her eyes. “What? Why would I freak out?”
“Last night . . . that was me in your driveway. Sheriff Greenwood told me I could explain it myself, and he’s going to call you this evening.”
“What? What were you doing watching me? God!”
“Please . . .”
Kendall is quiet, but her brain is on fire with new fearful thoughts.
“I was out for a walk. I couldn’t sleep, and I had a really shitty evening, and the sky was awesome and, well, yeah. I went past your house and saw the upstairs all lit up from the road. On my way back it was darker, but I could see your silhouette in the window, just standing there. And, I don’t know . . . I just started walking down your driveway for some insane reason. I was feeling bad, and I figured you were too, and so I thought maybe you’d want to . . . I don’t know. Talk or something. It was stupid.” His eyes are hard and he looks off toward the parking lot.
Kendall stares at him.
“Then I saw you disappear and I sort of came to my senses, realized how late it was, and how you can’t stand me anyway so why the hell would you want to talk, and I got scared and took off running. I swear that’s the truth.” His jaw is set. “Greenwood picked me up five minutes later and questioned me for more than an hour. Then he told me he believed me and drove me home. He said he wanted me to tell you it was me. And that he’s going to call you after school to make sure I told you. And that . . .” He pauses. “And that you can press charges for trespassing if you want.”
Kendall doesn’t know what to say.
Jacián shoves one hand in his pocket and rakes through his hair with the other, leaving it standing up wildly. “I just figured you were hurting. I mean, after the way you’ve been acting the last few weeks. And thought . . . well. Fuck it. Never mind. It was a stupid thing to do.” He sighs. “I’m sorry, Kendall. Okay? I didn’t mean to scare you. Hell.”
Kendall looks at the dirt. Shocked. Embarrassed, a little, but angry, too. And there’s something sad about it all . . . sad that it wasn’t Nico out there, even after her nightmare. But still, she doesn’t explode like she thought she would when he first started talking. She just turns away. “Okay.” She shrugs and walks back into school, leaving him standing there.
A minute later he slides into the desk next to her and stares straight ahead.
Kendall just stares at Nico’s desk, thinking. Thinking about how Tiffany Quinn sat there and disappeared. And how Nico sat there and disappeared. And now it’s all she can think about. What would happen if she sat there? Maybe disappearing would be better than all this. And at the very least, sitting there would be like wearing one of Nico’s shirts. A comfort, being where he was. Maybe it could help her get over him.
Maybe tomorrow she’ll sit there.
Things are tense in the truck on the way home. Unaware, Marlena chatters about how she can’t wait until she gets her cast off, and Jacián and Kendall stare straight ahead until they’re all sitting in front of Kendall’s house.
“Thanks,” Kendall mumbles as usual. As she slams the truck door shut, she catches Jacián’s eye and sees the fear in it. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and then he glances away as Marlena says goodbye through the window in the midst of her babbling. Kendall stands there for a minute, puzzled, and then turns toward the house. It’s not until she’s outside harvesting potatoes that it dawns on her why he had such a scared look in his eyes.
He’s from a big city. A place where people steal cars if you don’t make it too difficult for them not to. He really thinks she and her family are going to press charges against him for trespassing.
Kendall stops what she’s doing for a moment, and she nearly laughs out loud for the first time in weeks. Poor Jacián. He’s probably been worried sick about it all day.
