Bo
“You sent me toa fucking swamp, Robin,” Bo hissed into his phone, hiking his backpack higher. Why the fuck did this airport have so many damned escalators? “I thought you loved me. Is this revenge for something?”
Robin made a sound Bo decided to take as a laugh. Better that than a goddamn snicker.
“You’ve known where you were going for six months, Bo,” Robin said with another ‘laugh.’ Bastard. “You told me, and I quote, ‘I hate all of these fucking places. For your birthday, I’ll let you be an asshole and pick which one I go to.’ Aunt Jan has it on video.”
“Aunt Jan is a fucking snitch.”
“Yeah,” and Bo could hear the bastardgrinning. Betrayed by his own brother. “She is. You’ll be here for her birthday?”
A ring of cautious hope hung in those words. Despite being thrown to the dangerous swamplands of North Virginia, Bo didn’t have the heart to say something that sounded like “no.” There was this kind of joking with Robin, and then there was the ‘joking’ that pushed too many buttons they both shied away from.
Bo could be adult enough not to poke their still-healing wounds.
“So long as I don’t die in a fucking swamp, I will be.” Or get run over by some asshole who really needed to get on that fourth escalator. “Promise.”
“Wetlands, Bo.Wetlands.Besides, people destroyed loads of them. You should be safe.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Learned from the best,” Robin said, their Aunt Jan’s star fucking pupil. “Don’t drown. I hear it’s possible in two inches of water. Have fun with the ghosts.”
“Love you too. Don’t forget to water my plants if this place really is haunted, and I go all Casper.”
Robin laughed, a real one this time, distant as he disconnected. Bo glanced up in time to see the airport train about ten seconds from leaving, the man who’d nearly knocked him off the escalator comfortably inside.
Fuck it. Bo leaned against one of the pillars and watched the train doors shut. He had a few minutes. Enough time to take a quick selfie, mostly hair and tired eyes and pillar.
I would like to be 4.9k higher, please, he typed. The message might send some fans to do the math and try to figure out where the fuck he was. But that was part of the game. Bo’d checked the schedules to make sure no flights from Denver to Dulles would line up. If the post happened to track with flights from Denver to east Alabama or Philadelphia, that sounded like someone else’s problem. He’d told his fans, more than once, not to try and find him. The places he went to were dangerous, and he worked better alone.
That and stalking was fucking creepy.
Bo finished scheduling the message to go up in eighteen hours just as the next train arrived. Pocketing his phone, he scrubbed his hand through his hair. Time to face the semi-drained wetlands. That, and a big-ass abandoned house in the middle of historical suburbia. He sent Robin a string of alligator emojis and sad faces as the doors closed, just in case the HOAs ate him alive.
Northern Virginia was so… full of trees.
“A different palette,”Aunt Jan had called it, once.“It’s not the same as anywhere else.”
He’d been what? Seventeen. Sulking, and sure she was full of shit. There’d been gray skies lying about later snow, trees stripped of any life, and a deep cold that iced the roads and lungs. It’d taken a couple years of living in a place with proper seasons to see the beauty in trees readying themselves for spring, forests shifting into something peaceful and settled. The taste of snow, melting bright on the tongue and lips.
Mid-November, the road Bo found himself driving down didn’t have much in the way of greenorwhite. Bronze and goldenrod and the occasional rich jade filled the stretch of land on either side by turns. Occasionally, an exit sign for a place named after a founding father interrupted. Then, back to trees.
Probably fucking beautiful after a heavy snow.
Bo nearly missed his exit, mind on leaves and future snowdrifts. He got fucking lucky, not skidding at the sign for Skyler, with pointedly pristine lines directing left for gas and right for the town. Bo checked the gauge and turned left.
The gas station feltworn. Faded paint and chipped asphalt, surrounded by old trees and a single goddamn light outside of the store itself. At least the gas pumps were new. It didn’tsmelllike he stepped into a horror flick. The inside of the store was clean and shiny looking, except for the scuffed floor. No longer adhering to that ‘about to be murdered vibe.’
Except Bo was alone. No one at the counter or stocking or making noise from behind theEmployees Onlydoor. Zero customers. Not even music.Just Bo and the background hum of the ice cream freezers.
“Uh,” Bo said, too loud in the near silent space. “Hello?”
A sound from the back. Possibly a voice.
Fuck. Thank fuck.
There’d been a moment, a breath, where the turn off the road became more than that. A twist of old memories, the whisper ofwhat if.Go down the wrong path, and the creatures will take you. Lead you astray and leave you sleeping under a goddamn tree for ten years.
