CHAPTER TEN
Afew nights later, well after the fire dimmed and I fell into a restless sleep, I sprang awake from a vivid dream.
I ran through the forest, fleeing from a wall of people that made up a quickly approaching search party. Dad was linked arm-in-arm with Bobby, Tate, and Leonard, along with several other faces I recognized, all dressed in bright pink shirts.
Were they looking for Janine? They weren’t calling out her name, though.
They were shouting mine.
I sat up. Panting hard, my sleep shirt clung to my chest, soaked in sweat nearly down to my belly button. I wiped at the moisture on my upper lip.
“It’s too hot in here, it’s giving you bad dreams,” Charlie said, speaking quietly into the dark. He was curled up in the chair by the fire, exactly where he’d been when I fell asleep.
“Are you still cold?” I asked, voice thick.
He smiled softly. “No, Reece. I’m not cold anymore. No more fires after tonight. Let’s open the windows for a breeze.”
I reached for the one next to my bed, and he opened the opposite across the cabin. “You’re getting good at that,” I remarked.
I swore I saw the faintest blush darken his cheeks. Was that even possible? It made me want to reach for my sketch pad again.
His eyes tracked theVof sweat down my chest, honey-bright in the gloom. “I want to try leaving the lookout tomorrow.”
My eyebrows rose in surprise. “Can you do that?”
He shrugged, still staring at my chest. “I don’t know. I couldn’t before. If I tried, I’d only end up going back to that other place. The only time I’ve ever managed it was when you nearly fell. But…” His eyes darted up to mine. “I think I want to try again.”
“What does it look like? That other place?” I asked.
He turned toward the smoldering fire, face hidden in shadow. “It’s like I’m here, and not here,” he whispered. “I’m in the lookout, but it’s full of shadows. There’s no color, or light, or warmth. The windows are all boarded up. There’s no door. I don’t think it’s really death. Or, it is, but not the final place you go when you die. It feels more like… Waiting.”
What have you been waiting for?
Instead, I asked, “So then how do you find your way back?”
Charlie looked at me again, eyes molten. I feltseenby him. Like all the layers separating life from death peeled away, and he gazed at the truest heart of me. His lips parted in answer, and my breath caught.
A piercing scream interrupted the moment, cutting through the forest all around us.
I shot out of bed, wide awake. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie replied, striding over to look out the windows. His voice shook. “I can’t tell which direction it came from.”
We heard the scream again, and again. Three, four, five times. They were short, wordless staccato wails, like someonecrying out for help. Charlie grew increasingly distressed with each.
“Reece, what do we do?” he cried, spinning around, as if searching for a way to make the sound go away.
Abruptly, they stopped.
Panting, we stared at each other in the near dark, panic-frozen in fear.
And then Charlie pointed at something over my shoulder. “There,” he whispered.
I spun around. A light, bright against the inky darkness, bobbed and darted around below the tower. It was far enough away to be well into the trees, had we been able to see where they began.
And then I realized.
“That’s a flashlight,” I said, frantically tugging on my boots. I didn’t bother lacing them. “It could be Janine.”
