by Barry Lyga
She didn’t ask Liam about that. She didn’t say anything at all at first. She didn’t tell him how she’d gotten a butter knife and broken open the plastic shell of the old Wantzler cassette, about the fire she’d lit one cold morning by the trash cans on the concrete pad in the backyard, the way the ribbon of tape had curled in and in and in on itself as it burned into a black smudge that could hurt no one.
Would she ever tell him?
Purple shadows bulged under his eyes. He was thinner, noticeably so even when hunched and folded in on himself. His hair was longer, unkempt. Couldn’t be bothered. His beard stubble was uneven and too heavy to be stylish.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asked.
He shrugged.
She sat next to him. Close enough to touch. And—oh!—how she wanted to touch.
Still wanted.
This boy.
This almost-a-man.
His flesh called to hers. They were two halves of a perfect whole.
Not touching.
The intolerable, infinite silence stretched on. She broke it.
“I’ve been having weird dreams,” she told him. “Since it happened. Every night. Not the same dream, but all my dreams are about fire. Sometimes just, like, a match is lit. Sometimes it’s all around me. Always fire. Do you think that means something?”
He regarded her with nearly empty eyes and shrugged helplessly. Then returned to staring off to the horizon.
“I can understand,” he said after a while, “if you can’t be around me. I get that. But, man… I can’t handle you hating me.”
“I don’t hate you.” The thought was impossible. The words didn’t belong in the same language, much less the same sentence. “I just haven’t figured out how to be around you. How to reconcile everything.”
“I guess I don’t see what there is to reconcile. Yeah, my dad, he, you know. And your uncle, too. And I’ve been in love with you forever. Why can’t that be what matters to us instead of the stuff that happened before we came along?”
“I don’t know. Not entirely. But I know that we have to learn to live with the past. We can’t avoid it and we can’t change it.
“We carry it with us. Into the future.”
A slow nod from him. “I don’t know how to make it right.”
“Maybe you can’t. But maybe understanding is just as important.”
He shifted his position, leaning back on one elbow so that he turned to her, his hand now resting on the dying grass between them, only a finger’s width from her own. She thought she could feel the sensation of him through the air, the ground, the ether, the spirit plane, whatever medium there could be.
“What happens next?” he asked. “For us, I mean. Is there even a chance?”
His hand, next to hers. The shivering touch.
She did not take his hand.
Neither did she move hers away.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “Time will tell.”
EPILOGUE
It happened more than a week after she saw Liam on the hill.
Ten more days as the story spread.
She was home with her parents. Missing Liam. Wishing to live in a different world. Knowing she was stuck in this one.
Dad actually cracked a grin at something on TV. That was something. Progress. She and Mom exchanged a brief, knowing, relieved glance, then pretended they hadn’t noticed.
Dad’s phone rang during a commercial. He stared at the screen. “I don’t recognize this number.”
Elayah sighed heavily. “It’s spam, Dad.”
But he answered anyway. Because there was some Gen X reflex to answer a ringing phone that he was powerless to conquer.
“Hello?” he said.
And then: “What did you say?”
And then: “Yes, this…”
And then his breath hitched in his chest. He trembled. Elayah noticed it first, choked out a warning to Mom, who spun around from her place on the sofa. Dad was shaking now, completely out of control. Tears began to stream down his face.
“Dad!” Elayah shouted. He was having some sort of fit. A seizure. Oh, God, a stroke?
Mom was up from the sofa and at his side. “Marcus? Marcus, honey, are you okay?”
Elayah’s heart slammed at her ribs and then—in an instant—she saw it.
The tears.
Were tears of joy.
Her dad, weeping, said one word.
“Antoine?”
Acknowledgments
There are so many to thank with this book in particular. I want to begin with the four sensitivity readers of ethnicities and orientations that are not my own, some of whom read a rather ramshackle version of this story and provided their thoughts. They are anonymous to you because they are anonymous to me, as it should be.
I’d also like to thank my early readers, Rana Emerson, Eric Lyga, and Morgan Baden, who helped me—among other things—keep the timelines straight and the mystery consistent.
My agent, Kathleen Anderson, once again led the charge in getting this book into the right hands. Those hands belong to Alvina Ling, my editor now on eight books, who did her level best to wrangle my intentions for your reading pleasure. I hope you find our compromise enjoyable.
The team at Little, Brown has been in my corner for ten years now, and I am indebted to them for their faith in me. My thanks to Megan Tingley, Ruqayyah Daud, Marisa Finkelstein, Victoria Stapleton, everyone in Production, Marketing, and Sales. And a special shout-out to Chris Koehler and Jenny Kimura, who put together a really striking cover that I loved the moment I saw it. (Those of you who know me know how rare that is.)
Many thanks to the experts who guided me but who could not prevent what I am sure are many liberties I’ve taken with reality: Dr. Deborah Mogelof, who answered my questions about our frail human bodies, and Cara Lewis of the Carroll County state’s attorney’s office, who guided me through Maryland law in 1986 and now.
A big Jersey shout-out to Bruce Springsteen, for allowing me to realize the dream of using his lyrics in a novel, as well as to those who secured those permissions for me, Alison Oscar of Jon Landau Management and Mona Okada of Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, P.C. I raise my kid’s toy guitar to you in salute.
Last but not least, my thanks to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose obscene blend of sniveling cowardice, convenient tears, abject dishonesty, and blustering toxic masculinity turned this project from a simple thriller into what it is today.
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