Six Weeks Later
“Wait, no,”I say, glancing around.“I think it’s this way.”
I take off without waiting for Hunter to answer, mostly because I know he’s going to disagree.
“It’s not,” he says, but he follows me anyway.
I round the corner and stop.It’s just another row of ugly, half-dead cornstalks.A dead end.
“Goddamnmotherfucker,” I mutter, clenching my fists in the pockets of my fleece.
“It’s back there,” Hunter says, pointing.
“We went that way already,” I say.
“We went this way too.”
“Well, we didnow,” I say.
“You could try believing me,” Hunter says.
A breeze blows through the corn maze, shaking the stalks and rattling the leaves, and I realize that we’re about to get into a fight over a Halloween attraction for children.
I think Hunter realizes it too, because for a moment, we just look at each other.
“Want to be that couple who gets into a fight in the Great Maize Maze?”I ask.
“Only if we can air our dirty laundry at the top of our lungs,” he says, and pushes his hands into his pockets, relaxing a little.
“I was thinking we could argue about our sex life in detail near a group of children,” I say.
NowHunter laughs.
“C’mere,” he says, walking toward me.He puts one arm around me and points with the other toward the wooden tower in the middle of the maze.
The wooden tower wecannot fucking seemto find, by the way.
“Didn’t that kid enter the maze with us?”he says.
I blow my bangs out of my eyes, because I need a haircut.
“Magenta jacket?”I ask.“Yeah, I think she did.”
We stand there for a moment, and I’m pretty sure we’re thinking the same thing: webothnavigate the wilderness as part of our jobs.How the hell are we so bad at this?
“I bet she cheated,” he says.“It’s not like these are real walls, she’s probably small enough to just run between the cornstalks.”
“Probably,” I agree.“Kids are cheating jerks.”
Hunter kisses me on the cheek, the tip of his nose cold against my face.
“Want to go try your way?”I ask.
We findthe tower without getting into a fight.Turns out neither of us was right, and the turnoff was further back than either of us thought.
From twenty feet in the air, the corn maze isembarrassinglysmall.We both look at it for a while, considering the best exit strategy.
“Looks like we start by going north,” I say, pulling out my compass.
