“Freddy Krueger was here,” he said. No one laughed.
“It’s art,” Bishop said. “Someone set this up as a statement. The mannequins are watching everything fall down around them.”
“I don’t see it,” Zach said.
“You don’t try,” Bishop countered. He started to walk away and then came back. Zach wondered what kind of woe-is-me Marrakesh crap he was about to be subjected to. “Zach, we need to talk about your brother.”
Zach laughed hard. “My brother?” At first it was a real laugh, and then he was just faking it, holding his sides and slapping his leg.
“What’s wrong with you?” Bishop asked.
“My brother is not my problem.”
“He’s sick, Zach. There’s something I need to tell you about the other night.”
Zach pushed past him. What the hell was wrong with Bishop? Didn’t he know that Tyler was the last thing he wanted to think about? Tyler with his hands all over Natalie? Tyler who’d kissed her? Tyler who’d probably put his dick on her? Didn’t Bishop know that Zach was doing his damnedest to pretend like Tyler didn’t even exist?
Zach swore, wanting to have it out with Bishop once and for all. Maybe Zach would run through his grievances: Bishop’s endless moping and his horrible girlfriend. Maybe he’d even let Bishop know how shitty it felt to have him floating in and out of his life whenever Bishop didn’t feel like scribbling a poem. Zach’s sharpest thoughts edged toward his heart with each beat—just like that chest-dagger scene from the second Hellboy movie. Maybe he, too, would need to venture into the underworld for salvation while Natalie traded in her soul’s eternal happiness to save Zach from Bishop’s treachery.
Okay, maybe Zach was being melodramatic. He kicked at a dark mass on the ground. His foot tangled in something that made a weird whipping-kite’s-tail noise when he tried to stomp it loose. Using his phone’s screen, he illuminated a nest of filmstrip that someone had left in ribbons on the floor.
“Help,” he called out. Everyone had left him. “Anyone have a knife? Hello?”
Natalie came back. “Oh, who would do such a thing?” She stooped and helped him free his sneaker. “Film is one of our most important cultural treasures.”
Zach read the label on the canister. “Well, this was Wild Hogs. I think even the Smithsonian would pass on treasuring this Tim Allen slash John Travolta travesty.”
“Oh, you used the word ‘travesty.’” Natalie kissed him. “I love when you talk like me.”
Despite the fact that Natalie had had sex with him three times yesterday afternoon, he wanted to dump her on the spot. Her IQ might outstrip his IQ, but it didn’t make him an idiot. Zach didn’t dump her though. He was never the one who broke up with her. He was the one who swallowed all her backassward insults and treated her like a queen. He was the one who got dumped and then opened up the covers to let her snuggle back in.
He freed himself from the rest of the filmstrip and walked away fast. Yep. This whole summer was turning into a dagger to the heart. And sadly, Zach Ferris was no Hellboy.
The hallway opened up with early morning light. The front entrance of the cinema was all glass, and though it was dirtied from birds and leaves, it streamed daylight over the chaos. The concession stands had been raided. The food displays were smashed and register drawers dangled, spitting out coupons and napkins.
They walked from the theater section into the grand central heart of the mall. Zach wasn’t prepared for what he saw. “This mall was open ten years ago? No way.”
“It’s like it tore itself down,” Jaycee said. Mik was touching her lower back, and both of their heads were tilted up in unison, looking at the black empty spots in the ceiling where the panels had fallen two floors to become spongy piles. They walked through the endless crunch of broken glass, past planters filled with shriveled brown plants, and water fountains displaying their plumbing and lighting guts like they’d been victims of an anatomy class.
The floors were flooded in several areas. Blue, carpeted ramps climbed in a crisscrossing pattern from the first floor to the second and from one side of the mall to the other. Wheels marked where skateboarders had broken in and made use of the ramps, while everywhere else, there was unbelievable, mad destruction.
“You think people just come here to break things?” Zach asked. He was the first person to speak in what felt like hours.
“Yes,” Jaycee and Natalie said together.
“I’m going to look upstairs,” Bishop said, heading for the frozen escalator. “I want to know what this place looks like from up there.”
Jaycee and Mik headed toward the black hole of a massive storefront.
“Come on,” Natalie said as though she expected that Zach would go along with her. She walked after the misfit couple, not even waiting to see if he was following.
Zach stayed put. He turned his face up to the numerous skylights that poured in warm morning light. He imagined that at any moment, the mall doors might open to music playing and fountains springing. People would wander in for the blowout shoe sale or a Robert De Niro movie or to kill time on a bench with a mouth full of soft pretzel.
An echoing creak sounded through the abandoned mall like the wind was breaking in. Zach blinked away his daydream and felt the weight of the huge empty building all around him like something carved hollow and leaning in to collapse. November’s jack-o’-lantern.
“Wait,” Zach called out to Bishop. “I’m coming with you. We need to talk.”
Chapter 43
Jaycee
“Does anyone else feel like this place just might…collapse?” Natalie’s voice was tiny. A mouse scurried through the cavernous floor of what had once been a Dillard’s.
Large, boxlike stands for clothing displays littered the store, and the dark doubled as we stepped farther from the glow of the central skylights. I took it all in. Unlike all the other places, looking for Jake’s marker wasn’t distracting me. I hoped someone would find it, but it wouldn’t be me. Whenever I searched for Jake, his absence only grew larger, and I was done screaming into that hollow blank space.
I stepped on something that made a warbling, plastic crack. Mik squatted down to look at it, finding a huge, dust-coated customer service sign that someone had ripped from the ceiling.
“The destruction here is…”
“Palpable,” Natalie finished. “From everything I’ve read, urban explorers don’t ruin things. ‘Take nothing but photographs. Leave nothing but footprints.’ That’s their motto.”
“Yeah, but there have clearly been vandals here. Probably homeless people too,” I said. Mik left us to check out a strategically piled collection of sale signs, and I noticed his ears, specifically the left one, which had a slight point to it that the right didn’t manage. How could I have known him forever and never noticed such a perfect imperfection?
“You love him,” Natalie said. “Admit it. You’re totally standing there thinking about how cute he is and how much you want to kiss him.”
I turned away. “If you must pry, I was thinking that he has one hobbit ear.”
Natalie groaned. “You’re hopeless. I almost give up.”
“Almost?”
“Well, you know I don’t back down.”
“Truth or dare, Nat?” I asked.
She glowered.
“So you do back down.”
“I hate you,” she said, and I wanted to be friends again. Not urbex partners or trip schemers, but real friends. I dragged a circle in the thick layer of dust on the ground and stood in the center. “Nat, do you remember when we tried to figure out how to disapparate?”
“Of course.” Natalie grinned and drew her own circle to stand in. “We spent the whole summer trying to magic ourselves from one hula hoop to another. Every time I wanted to give up, you’d blindfold me and make me concentrate harder. Some days, I reall
y thought we’d make it.” Natalie closed her eyes, and I remembered all the muttered incantations, wands whittled from tree branches, and eyeliner lightning bolts drawn on both of our foreheads.
“I should have been Hermione,” Natalie said, opening her eyes. “Why did you always insist that we were both Harry Potter?”
“Because Harry is the best.” I shrugged. “And you’re not Hermione.”
“Well, I am the token overcautious know-it-all.”
“No, you’re brave like Harry. You never let Jake get away with anything you thought was wrong, no matter how he tried to punish you for tattling.”
“Technically, that would make me Neville.”
Natalie edged forward like she needed to say something, but I shook my head. “No, we don’t have to get into it. I know you didn’t like Jake, but I know you didn’t want him to die either. It’s okay, Nat. Really.” I squinted into the black veil at the back of the store until I found the small flame of Mik’s Zippo.
He flipped the lid closed and walked toward me so unwaveringly that I flushed. When he was close enough for me to reach for him, I did. It was so strange. So compulsive. Parts of my body felt like they were taking cues from my hormones or my subconscious, or something that clearly wasn’t ordinarily in charge. And the weirdest part? I loved it.
His fingers slid between mine, and I remembered them beneath my shirt in the gray dim of the hotel room, and it made my mouth dry. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered. Mik started out of the store, and I followed him, our hands linked.
“It’s sweet,” Natalie said. “You guys are sweet.”
“Don’t,” I warned her, a smile creeping up my face.
“What?” She motioned to our hand-holding. “Looks like you guys are aboveboard now. I was simply commenting on how much I liked it.”
“Don’t take credit,” I said, even though I was pretty sure she deserved credit.
We left the old Dillard’s and walked down row after row of storefronts. The ones that had been glass covered were now smashed, making each step crunch, and the ones that had been barred were mangled, their accordion-styled gates bent outward like some giant had yanked on them.
“Really, this is a commentary on the decline of the American economy,” Natalie said. “Did you know that this was once the largest shopping mall in the country?”
“Yes.”
“You did?” Natalie asked, surprised.
“No, but I thought I should teach you a lesson about phrasing your know-it-all-isms as a question.” I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at the pinched look on her face. Mik pulled me close, and he was grinning so hard that I was dying to hear his thoughts.
“Nice. Real nice,” Natalie said. “You’d think that no one wants to hear what I have to say, but you guys would still be peering into the mall windows without my research.”
My laugh died away while happy tears dotted my eyes. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. I really am glad that you’re so ana—” She glared. “Prepared,” I said.
“Nice catch.”
I caught the ghost of a smile on her face. Mik’s hand was on my waist, and I glanced up, and he was looking down, and our smiles morphed into wanting. That fast.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Natalie said, breaking my staring contest with Mik. She peered up at the second-floor balcony. “What did Jake do when he was here?”
“He climbed things,” I said.
“Surprise, surprise. I’m going to murder whoever thought up parkour.”
“He was mostly excited about climbing the elevator suspension ropes. He called it ‘spidering.’” As if fate wanted me to have a window into my brother’s weird brain, we turned a corner and faced the guts of a partially stripped elevator. The doors were held open by a broken chair, and inside, someone had piled red, fake Christmas presents that the mall must have decorated with during the holidays.
I stuck my head inside the shaft. Looking up, the dangle of rubber and metal and chains greeted my eyes like a scene from a horror movie. Bloody finger streaks ran down one of the metal panels as though someone—maybe Jake—had cut themselves while attempting the climb.
Natalie stuck her head in, glancing up at the wires and ropes hanging down. “Get out of there. It’s psychotically dangerous.”
“Of course it is! Everything he did was psychotically dangerous.” I kicked a Christmas present before storming out. Mik and Natalie stepped back while I removed the chair holding the doors open and then pushed them shut with my shoulder. When I turned around, Mik was looking down, and Natalie’s eyes were too large.
“Give me a second, will you?” I walked to the other end of the mall and sat on an old planter, scuffing my shoes against the dried, curled leaves on the ground. The poor tree at my back had been abandoned along with the mall. Its death pose reached toward the skylight, and I wondered how long it had tried to grow when no one came to water it. A month? A season?
For five years, I’d put Jake in the center of my life. At first, I’d felt better. Close to him. Then I’d started to forget him and grew desperate, and now…was I crazy? My dad’s threat to send me to Stanwood didn’t scare me as much as my own fear that I belonged there—that I would never be able to get myself out of this black hole.
And if I did, what would my life look like without Jake? What would it feel like?
Would I be as ashamed of myself as I was with my dad for forgetting him?
Mik and Natalie crept up on me, and I demanded a bottle of water from Natalie’s pack. I emptied it into the flaky soil at the base of the tree.
“It’s dead,” Natalie said. “Long dead.”
“The water is for its next life.” I stared Mik down. “Let’s do something unbelievable. No talking about Jake for the rest of the day. Just us.” I glanced at Natalie. “Sound good?”
Natalie grinned.
“Look less happy about it,” I warned.
Her grin halved.
“Better.”
We turned down a new corridor of the mall, one that had been painted sunshine yellow and held the remains of the food court. Farther on, we came across a Hot Topic. The signature rusted-iron gates were relatively intact, and we pushed through to look around the graffiti of wall skulls and dated Twilight references. Mik took a look at the back of the store, and Natalie got close to me like she was afraid.
Wrong. She wasn’t afraid. She was prying.
“Did he kiss you yet?” she asked. “Did he ask you out? What’s your status?”
“Cease and desist,” I said. “We haven’t talked.”
“Are you doing what I told you to do? Are you making it easy for him to answer?”
“I’m…I’m trying!” I said wildly. “I don’t know if it’s working.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Natalie twisted my elbow and hauled me into a narrow fitting room. The door banged shut behind me, and before I could even attempt to escape, Mik was shoved inside as well. He rammed into me in the dark, and I hit the wall.
“Sorry,” he said so automatically that I knew he hadn’t meant to speak.
We pushed at the door, but Natalie was putting all her weight into keeping it shut. “I’ll let you out once you know what’s going on,” she yelled. “I’ve been patient long enough. It’s time for you to talk to each other.”
“I’m not talking to him while you spy and give pointers!” I yelled back.
“I’m putting my headphones on,” Natalie said. “Full volume!” I pictured her sitting against the door on the other side, earbuds in. I even heard the thunder-rumble of her classical music. Mik’s Zippo clicked as he opened the cap.
“Don’t,” I said. “Leave it off.” I wanted the dark. I wanted to keep my eyes open and touch him and not have to worry about him seeing how much I blushed and fumbled. My pulse started to run downhill. Doubts turned me around inside. Wa
s I really going to let Natalie force this? I shook my head. This wasn’t just what Natalie wanted. This was what I wanted. “Mik,” I started.
“Ryan,” he said.
A moment pushed between us.
“I haven’t called you Ryan since I was in second grade.”
“Jake gave me the nickname,” he said. “He thought it was cool. I didn’t speak up to correct people, so I’ve lived with it ever since.”
“And that’s how you became Mik? And you don’t even like it?” I was suddenly angry with my brother, and then I was mad that I was thinking about him. “We weren’t going to talk about Jake. Remember? This is about us today.”
Us was a big word, and it blew energy into my hands. I grabbed his trench coat by the lapels and pulled him closer. My fingers found his neck, his scruffy jaw. His lips. I was so amazed to be touching him that I didn’t realize right away that he wasn’t touching me. His arms hung at his sides, and I sensed more than the rush of being close; he was shaking.
“Are you going to kiss me? I’ve never been kissed for real, and I’m probably terrible at it. Natalie and I practiced on each other like a decade ago, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count.”
Nothing. Not even a chuckle.
“Ryan?” His name felt wrong. This whole thing was starting to feel very wrong. What had I done to screw it up? I stepped back, bumping into the wall.
“I have to tell you something.”
“What?” I waited, but he’d frozen up again. “What?”
“It’s the truth, Jayce. I respect how much you value the truth.” Mik’s voice seemed to punch me on a spot that was already bruised. “Jaycee, I have to tell you if…if you want…this.”
He touched my cheek, and I clenched my jaw. My heart thundered, and I felt dizzy—like my body knew what he was about to say long before my mind did.
“I dared Jake.”
Chapter 44
Bishop
Chapter 45
Zach
Zach’s attempts to unload on Bishop weren’t going well. Bishop had retreated into one of his graffiti spray paint whatevers on one of the old mall directories, and Zach had been forced to sit against the second-floor balcony, glaring at Bishop’s back.
You Were Here Page 20
