Not as long as you’d think, Caro had said, and then she’d asked him if she could drive.
They’re saving time, going to Story instead of St. John. But Ash is convinced they’ve made the wrong choice. She can picture the truck missing a turn, careening over the edge, their broken bodies and the twisted metal coming at last to rest at the bottom of a canyon, the lockbox still intact.
She’s gotten so morbid.
“The road isn’t like this for much longer,” Caro says, glancing over at her again. The truck is old, old enough that there are keys swinging in the ignition, attached to a faded plastic keychain.
“I have a better car at home,” Spencer says, noticing Ash’s expression. “This is the one I take when I’m going camping or to one of the parks.”
“Oh my gosh,” Caro says, very briefly diverted. “Do you remember that Suburban you drove in high school? That thing that was twenty years older thanweare? You could start the ignition with apopsicle stick?”
“Of course I remember the Suburban,” Spencer says. “Everyone made fun of me for that car.”
“Are you kidding?” Caro asks. “I think that carmadeyou. Remember how anyone in student government with us would go out to the parking lot and take it whenever they wanted?”
“I caught Corbin Harris and Stacy Holt making out in the back seat once,” Spencer says. He seems completely unconcerned with the way Caro is driving, with how close the edges are. Ash’s hands are in tight fists, while he rests his elbow on the open window. The breeze coming through is cool.
“Ugh,” Caro says. “If I’d known that, I never would have made out withyouin the back seat of that car.”
They both laugh. Ash feels their bodies shake next to her.How can they laugh when their friends are missing?she wonders. As if they’ve had the same thought, Caro and Spencer both seem to tense up. Ahead, the roadhas narrowed even further and the three of them are silent as they twist again, turn. For a split second, the wheels hit the softer dirt of the nonexistent shoulder, and Ash can’t breathe. Then Caro has them back on the road. They’re all quiet while she navigates them along this eternal spine at the top of the world.
There. The road straightens, widens.
“Okay,” Caro says to Ash. “The worst is over.”
And then they fall silent.
Because all three of them know thatthatisn’t true.
Story is a small town with, as far as Ash can tell, two restaurants (one the Devil’s Backbone Grill that Caro has mentioned before, the other a diner), three rock/souvenir/gift/convenience shops, a gas station, a dollar store, a hotel that might or might not still be in operation, and the hint of houses marked by cottonwood trees and smaller streets branching off from the highway.
“This one,” Spencer says, pointing to the rock shop at the edge of town. The headlights flash on a sign, which is a board painted white and hand-lettered in green:COOPER’SROCKANDPAWN. The shop itself has aCLOSEDsign in the window, but it looks like there are other rooms behind the shop, and there’s a light on at the back. “You two can wait here,” Spencer says, opening the passenger side door of the truck. “I’ll go and get him to open up and we can figure out the box there.”
“Sounds good,” Ash says, because she suddenly feels safer inside the truck with Caro. Spencer shuts the door, and she reaches out to grip her friend’s hand. “What are we doing?” she asks Caro, despair tightening around her.
“The only thing we can.” Caro’s voice is steady, even.
“We should be looking forher, not her phone,” Ash says.
“We’re not trained for that,” Caro says. “We need to stay out of the way.” She squeezes Ash’s hand.
“We should be talking to the police,” Ash says.
“And telling them what?” Caro asks.
It’s a good question.
In front of them, the door opens and light spills out from the room behind. It silhouettes the man standing inside the doorway. Spencer is talking to him, gesturing with his hands. Ash bites her lip, watching. She wonders who—or what—else is inside that run-down building, the houses she can’t see. Watching them.
Hope, where are you?
And for the first time Ash truly realizes: If they don’t find Hope, Ash will be looking for her everywhere she goes, all her life.
30
CARO
CARO HAS ALWAYS LOVEDa rock shop. While Ash, Spencer, and Spencer’s friend, who appears to go simply by Coop, huddle around the lockbox, she walks up and down the rows of shelves to distract herself. Enormous geodes that look like portals to another world, bins of smaller rocks sorted out by type: quartzes, fluorite, obsidian. Her dad used to bring her here. She always planned to bring her own kids. Caro swallows, hard.
