It’s Miles.
He wasn’t a figment of my imagination at all.
He was someone pretending not to know me.
CHAPTER FOUR
SUMMER, NINE YEARS AGO
The hard lines of a body—aboy’sbody?—flash through the darkness, running straight for the dock.
Maybe if I hold still, they won’t notice me,I try to convince myself.
I bunch my knees up to my chest in an attempt to make myself smaller. The constellations in the sky illuminate the space between us, but no matter how hard I squint, I can’t make out more than a faceless form about three feet tall.
The person with a cropped hairline comes to a sudden stop at the edge of the grass.
It must be a boy.
He looks about my age too, but it’s hard to tell. He’s not my height.
Jerking his head from side to side, he scours the yard for somewhere else to go.
I swallow. He must have detected me. But my hands aren’t shaking like his, and my heart isn’t racing in my chest. I don’t feel all the things I thought I would feel, alone in a momentwith a stranger like this, and that’s when I realize thatI’mthe intruder in this situation.
It’s not as if I can stand my ground and claim that this is my dock. I just moved here. Our properties share it, or he wouldn’t be using it to seek refuge.
There’s no way back to my cabin except right at him, so I remain motionless to see what he’ll do next.
He takes his first hesitant step from the grass onto the wood planks, then another, inching closer to me. The beady blacks of his eyes scrutinize me with every movement. With only a yard separating us, I’m sure it’s a boy.
Now feet apart, it’s his eyes I make out first, and they’re not black at all. Flecks of gold in a rich hazel brown glow against the moon’s light. They’re rimmed with dark lashes that crinkle at the corners.
He looks scared. Sad, even. But harmless.
“You can sit with me if you want?” I offer into the darkness.
He falters, waiting to see if I’ll move. I don’t. I let him close the rest of the gap.
When he sits down next to me, we both face the lake. I’m far too nervous to look at him.
The shades of dark swirl together—the midnight of the water, the espresso of the mountains, the charcoal of the sky.
It’s quiet when I say, “My name’s Teddy.”
He doesn’t answer right away, but it’s okay. I don’t want him to be scared, and I have time.
“Miles,” he whispers back.
A voice escalates into a scream from the trailer. When the screen door slams behind us, we both flinch.
Miles twists his hands in his lap like a pretzel, refusing to turn around. But I can’t help it. Someone moves toward the red car.
The engine hums, followed by a pair of tires peeling out of the dusty driveway behind our cabins.
Before I turn back around, I catch a frail-looking man with a fishing hat watching from behind the screen of the doorway. His eyes scan the yard until they land on us, and it’s plain to see all over his face; he looks even sadder than Miles does.
When I look back at Miles, he’s drawing a never-ending circle in the palm of his hand—over and over like he’s wearing a hole right through it.
