“I love you too,” I said, not looking up.
My dad walked to the front door, and we watched him go.
“It appears,” I said into the awkwardness, “that my dad thinks we’re going on a date.”
Mik had no response. Not even a sideways look. He kept his hand on the gearshift as though he had no idea where to go.
“Moonville,” I said a little too bossily. “Please. You know how to get there?”
Mik’s answer was to pop the car in reverse and drive. I hadn’t been in a manual transmission for a long time, and the way he maneuvered the stick from gear to gear was mildly hypnotic. I could also feel the engine rev up in my legs in a way that I hadn’t ever thought about before. All of which put me on edge, which meant that my mouth started running.
“Thanks for the two a.m. Natalie Cheng home delivery. I was up to my eyeballs in puke.” Holy crap, Jayce. Say something non-gross. “I guess it’s good. We got to have a long overdue heart-to-heart, even though she kind of poisoned me. You know what she actually said? ‘You’re a day past graduation now. You already made it further than Jake ever did.’ Who points out that someone’s made it further in life than their dead brother?”
I brought out Jake’s journal from under my knees and hugged it to my chest. “Now I’m going to be gauging my life events off that. When I turn twenty-one, I’ll be sitting there thinking, ‘Three years older than Jake ever got to be.’ When I hit eighty? ‘Sixty-two years past Jake’s allotment.’ What happens if I get married or have kids? ‘This is my son. He’s the kid my brother never got to have.’ Damn.”
I stopped talking about five years too late. Mik gave me a really strange look, and I felt warm all over. “Sorry. Sometimes I think you only get to see my morose side.” I wanted to have something better to say, but all I thought about was Jake. What else was there to tell Mik? All I could scrounge up was what had kept me excited all day.
“I got into Jake’s urbex journal today. And I found this map.” I dug into my pocket and held up the little paper football. Just holding it brought back hints of the vibe I’d gotten while standing on that chimney stack—the sensation that Jake was not far away at all. That he was actually really close. I’d do anything for that feeling again. “I’m going to go to all the places on this map this summer. Do the things that Jake did. You could come with me…if you wanted.”
Mik didn’t respond, not even to nod. We were headed down a twisty stretch, and I stared at him, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to look away from the road and catch me. He seemed younger than usual. How old was he after all? Twenty? Twenty-one? Jake would have turned twenty-three this year, and Mik was exactly in the middle of the five-year age difference between my brother and me.
Perhaps it was the absence of the trench coat that made Mik seem young, or the fact that he must have shaved his face, like, five minutes ago. Either way, I spent a little too long looking over his black T-shirt and cargo pants, at his boots that seemed as large as shoes could be without being built for snowboarding. By the time I looked back up, we were at a stoplight, and he was doing the same thing to me that I was doing to him.
Taking inventory.
I flipped Jake’s journal open, sweating even worse now. “So Moonville is on Jake’s map. The TB ward is too, along with the marker we found on the porch. Jake was leaving messages—dares—in all these places and taking notes. He wanted to have his own danger-hunting reality show. Do you remember that?”
Mik nodded.
“I’d kind of forgotten until Natalie reminded me. That girl remembers everything. But there’s something weird here. I’ve been reading Jake’s journal, and you’re…not in it,” I said, angling my question as a statement to avoid the weird pause of his silence. “You didn’t go on any of these trips with him. And I kind of remember that you and Jake didn’t hang out a lot in high school.” I paused, feeling a strange twist in my chest that probably had something to do with heartburn. “That sort of makes me feel better about Natalie. Maybe all childhood friends grow apart. Maybe that’s just part of the deal.”
I flipped to the Moonville Tunnel entry that Jake had left-hand scribbled across one page. “The writing is warped like he wrote it when he was wet,” I said. “Is there a lake or river out there?”
Mik shook his head. Did he not know? Or was he saying that there wasn’t a body of water? My next words flew out like a sneeze. “I saw you talk to my dad.”
This time when he looked at me, there was pure panic in his dark eyes. He opened his mouth a fraction, closed it. Pressed his lips.
My pulse slammed a warning, and my sudden guilt was weirdly stressful. “Sorry. I just don’t understand when you talk. When you don’t.” I buried my face in the journal. “So anyway, Jake was hanging out with two guys. Heberman and Ferris. Ferris,” I repeated like an idiot. “Zach’s older brother?”
Mik’s hands went tight on the steering wheel, and he nodded. He did more than nod, really. His face seemed to take on a shadow.
“Okay…” I cleared my throat. “So you and Jake drifted apart for a few years, but then you guys were hanging out again when he graduated. You were there when Jake…”
When Jake…
“Hell.” I pressed my hands over my eyes. “You know what? I’m going to stop talking for a little while.”
Mik pulled off the main highway and onto a tight, twisting back road. In a few places, the incline was so steep that he had to downshift into second, the engine striving. I’d never been in Mik’s car before, but I already kind of loved it. It was old and lived in. It had a pep to its forward surge and a vanilla scent that was doing an amiable job at masking the smoke smell. If I’d never met Mik, I’d probably be able to tell several things about him from this car. That he was laid-back, clean but disorganized. That he had a somewhat problematic Subway addiction from the wrappers in the back and that he wasn’t on the MP3 player bandwagon. “May I?” I asked, holding up a folder of CDs.
He nodded, and I flipped through them. “Ryan Mikivikious, you have an eighties addiction,” I said. “Oh, wicked.” I pulled out a disc, popping it into the player. The Cure’s “Lullaby” filled the car, and embracing the way Zach had blazed music through my stereo last night, I turned the volume way up.
The dirt road continued to narrow. The surrounding woods were thick and dense, spinning a kaleidoscope of twilight greens. We soared past a few swampy areas, and I let the music fill me up with something that was equally creepy and, well, sexy. I hadn’t anticipated that angle, and by the time we pulled over, my mouth was dry and my pulse seemed to have confused this drive with a walk on a tightrope.
The dark had come on fast, and there were no other cars. Mik’s headlights illuminated a flat hiking path. The train tracks had been removed years ago, leaving a platform-type walkway, and yet trees were crowding in, disrupting the memory of the wood crossbeams and iron rails.
We got out, and despite the heat, Mik grabbed his trench coat out of the back. He threw it over his shoulders, and the worn cloth snapped. Instantly he looked more like the boy I was used to. More like the boy I didn’t feel like a silly girl around. I breathed easier, and we walked toward the creek and the cement supports leftover from the now-missing train trestle. It was getting darker by the moment, and I had the weirdest feeling that we were being watched.
We stood on the blocks, avoiding the raised spines of metal rods. “This place is supposedly really haunted,” I said, looking into the gathering shadows of the woods. The last trickle of dusk was leaving everything blurrily edged. “Jake wrote about a prank he and his friends played on some hikers. They pretended to be the ghost that haunts the tunnel.”
We climbed the rocks that made a walking path over the creek. Halfway across, I heard a crashing sound and froze. I felt Mik’s hand on my shoulder, and I reached back to grab his wrist. We dashed the rest of the way across the water, soaking my left shoe b
efore we reached the other bank. When I looked back at the other side of the river, I gasped. A dark figure stood on the concrete block where we had just been.
Stood and stared.
“Do you see that, Mik?”
The whole woods went too quiet. And something huge splashed in the river beside us.
I whipped around to find another ghostly person on our side of the river. It released a demonic cry, and Mik and I ran up the gravel embankment, colliding. We slid toward the water, landing in a pile of old leaves and poking pine branches.
Two figures stepped out of the woods, and I recognized them painfully slowly.
“Vengeance!” Zach crowed. “How does it feel to have the piss scared out of you, huh?”
Natalie leaned over Mik and me while I made sense of Bishop’s silhouette on the piling. She flicked on a headlamp, illuminating her altered appearance. She looked like she’d gotten dressed in my closet, her hair in an all-business ponytail. “Greetings,” she said. “A nice night for a hike, don’t you think?”
Her tone reminded me that I was all over Mik. Or he was all over me. In trying to get up, I got seriously familiar with his thigh, and he totally grabbed my under-boob area. By the time we were both standing, I couldn’t look at him.
“Well, well, well,” Zach said. “Isn’t this a romantic spot? Hey, where’s my ice cream?”
I scowled at him. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re as predictable as a Thanksgiving table spread. I knew you’d come as soon as I saw that map,” Natalie said. “And now we’re coming with you.”
“You’re not invited.”
“We’re already here.” She shrugged, completely unaffected.
Bishop joined us. “Sorry about the scare,” he said. “Zach was so determined.”
“It’s fine,” I forced. “I managed not to pee my pants, although I can’t speak for Mik.”
Mik shrugged, and Bishop laughed.
“This way to the tunnel.” Natalie started through the woods, down a path marked by gray rock chips. Bishop followed, and Zach jogged to catch up with Natalie, taking her hand.
I supposed they were back together. How possibly wonderful, I snarked.
Mik cleared his throat, and it was the loudest sound I’d heard from him in years. I looked over, realizing that it had gotten doubly dark over the last few minutes. It would be pitch-black soon. Mik held out a green apple like he was presenting me with a bunch of flowers.
I rubbed it on my jeans. “Cheers,” I said, hoping that the lack of light hid my scorching blush. Reality was doing that hellish thing that it always did—it was sneaking up on me. To Mik, this really was something like a date.
Chapter 15
Natalie
Natalie still tasted something horrible in her mouth from last night, but she smiled. This could work. It would work. It had to work.
After making up with Zach, she’d done research on Moonville, packed supplies for the outing, and got Bishop and Zach ready to go like toddlers for a picnic. She’d even let Zach orchestrate his little shock-the-hell-out-of-Mik-and-Jaycee prank, which, she had to admit, had worked fairly well. Now Natalie just had to muster the courage to be cool. Relaxed. Chill. Whatever people called it. A cool, relaxed, chilled person didn’t implode under pressure.
And didn’t hook up with the worst person on the planet and then get psychotically drunk to cover it up.
Natalie stomped up the embankment beside the river, passing the cement pilings and heaving each breath. She thought about her amended two-step plan over and over.
1. I am Natalie. Which means a lot of things, and that’s okay.
2. I can do this. Which means I can also fail while trying to do this, and that’s okay.
Natalie knew only one thing for sure: she had to start living now. No more waiting for New York. No more being terrified of how everything could go wrong in the blink of an eye.
Natalie swallowed back that awful taste. Was it the vomit or the liquor that stayed with her like that? Or was it just the memory of that guy. She couldn’t even think his name, because it made her body go cold and her mind freeze. Clothes off. His laughter. His pinching fingers…
Slumping over with her hands on her knees, she nearly retched into the undergrowth.
Zach stopped beside her and rubbed her back. “You all right?”
She stood up and pressed her face to his T-shirt. If Zach ever found out what had happened, he’d never speak to her again. Hands down. “I’m fine,” she lied.
Zach gave her a sweet kiss on the temple, and they walked on until they beheld the Moonville Tunnel. Her head craned back to see the top; it was easily twice the height she’d thought it’d be. By the silver-clear light of the moon, she read the jutting bricks over the mantel of the tunnel. The first letter had long since fallen.
O O N V I L L E
“Holy shit.” That was Bishop, but Natalie had to echo the sentiment. He held up his arm. “Goose bumps. Anyone else?”
Natalie felt the prickles on her own arms. “Yes,” she whispered. “There’s something old and angry in that stonework. It feels like we’ve time-traveled.”
Bishop looked over at her and flashed a smile. “Cool. Yeah.”
Zach’s mouth had fallen open as he stared up. “How tall is that?”
“Easily two stories,” Bishop said. “The other side comes out in the underworld.”
Zach snapped his head toward his friend. “Huh?”
Bishop laughed. “No, but really, if anyplace leads to the River Styx, my money is on that path.” He pointed into the black.
They walked closer to the strange, looming relic. It felt ancient in a way that nothing in America seemed to muster—European old or true old. Forgotten old. It didn’t help that the trees crowded out any sense of history and the whole shebang was frosted by a lunar glow. The end result was that Natalie felt more creeped out than she had in the dense, dust-coated silence of the TB ward.
“Where are all the ties and tracks?” Zach asked, firmly holding Natalie’s hand.
“Removed. Like the trestles,” she said. “The railway stopped running in the seventies, and then hikers kept getting hurt, so they dismantled the tracks and turned it into a state park.”
“Strange that everything is gone except the tunnel, which still looks rather…imposing.” Bishop’s voice held awe as he stepped beneath the archway.
Jaycee and Mik brought up the rear, and Jaycee let out a string of wonder curses that almost sounded like poetry. Natalie wondered if she’d catch them holding hands, but Jaycee’s were firmly in her pockets.
Natalie did what Natalie did best: she whipped up the history into a picture. “Moonville isn’t just the tunnel. It was a town that popped up around a small coal-mining settlement from about 1860 to the 1940s. The railway gave the area life, but it didn’t last long.”
“It’s pretty damn spooky,” Zach said. “How many people died here?”
“A few. Including a ten-year-old-girl who was fooling around on the tracks.” Natalie risked a look at Jaycee, remembering her fascination with Margaret Schilling’s death. “There’s also a rather infamous ghost known as the Brakeman. He’s supposedly seen at the other end of the tunnel, with a long, white beard and holding a lantern.”
Everyone stared into the dark, seemingly endless tunnel. Natalie felt like she was peering into a black mirror, briefly remembering a childish game she used to play with Jaycee.
“We have to see the other side. Come on.” Bishop held out a flashlight while Mik used his Zippo. Zach left Natalie’s hand and entered with the guys.
Natalie was rooted to the spot, and she wasn’t alone. Jaycee stared up at the missing M.
“You were here,” Natalie heard Jaycee murmur. The boys had become small dots, their voices fading into the hushed echo of the tunnel’s acoustics.<
br />
“Do you…talk to Jake?” Natalie asked. “Do you think he hears you?”
Jaycee’s glare was sharp by the small beam of Natalie’s headlamp. “Why did you bring them here?”
Natalie picked her words carefully. “Bishop needs to get his mind off his heartbreak. Zach needs to do something that doesn’t land him at the bottom of a bottle every evening. And I…it’s like you said. I need to climb the roof or whatever.”
“This is you climbing the roof?” Jaycee flicked Natalie’s headlamp.
“There’s nothing wrong with being prepared.”
“Sure, except it takes a little of the fun out of it.” Jaycee smiled. There was something familiar in this back and forth, reminiscent of the personality brawling they’d done as kids.
Jaycee took a few steps into the tunnel, and Natalie moved next to her. The brick walls were covered in names, dates, and swears. Most of the graffiti was rough and slapdash, but some of it was pure art.
“Bishop must be in heaven,” Natalie said. “Look at that!”
They paused before a gray-and-black stenciled image of a huge train. Painted railroad tracks reached out in front of the image and a dress-clad woman stood in its onrushing path.
“It’s a picture of the girl who died.” Natalie’s mouth felt dry. “She was ten, but lots of people tell the story incorrectly. They say that she was a young woman on her way to see her lover. Stories always fracture over time.”
“That’s why you love history,” Jaycee said. “You love the cracks.”
“You remember that?” Natalie looked at Jaycee, blinding her with her headlamp.
“Watch it!” Jaycee yelled, effectively killing the moment. They walked slowly, toward the distant light of Mik’s flame and Bishop’s flashlight at the other end. When Jaycee tripped over a rock, they grabbed hold of each other.
“Mik looks like he got dressed up tonight,” Natalie said. The dead air of the tunnel was messing with her nerves. “His clothes are extra black. He might even have combed his hair.”
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