Lysander drums his fingers on the laminate. “And you don’t think she ran?”
“Iknowshe didn’t.” It twists out of her, sharp, and Lysander studies her anew.
“You love her.”
It’s not a question. He can see it in the color of her cheeks. He can hear it in the stutter of her pulse. He can sense it, pinching the air in her throat. He waits as she scrambles for something to say, her fingers knotting in the fabric.
“I haven’t told her so, but yes. I think I might.”
“What is that like?”
“Loving someone?” Her eyes lift to his. “That’s an impossible question. I don’t have an answer.”
“I don’t believe you,” he says. “You’re a know-it-all.”
Her nose crinkles. “You know, some people might consider that rude.”
“It isn’t rude, it’s true. You have an answer for everything.”
“That’s hyperbolic,” says Poppy. “I don’t knoweverything. And love isn’t an exact science. There are no set parameters. It looks different for everyone.”
Outside, the sun has set. Moonlight trickles down in broad, leafy shafts. From where Lysander sits, he can just make out the lines of Shea. She’s on her feet, gazing up at the cosmos. Sometimes, in his very worst moments, he thinks he’d like to black out all the stars—cast the whole of the universe in darkness so there’s nowhere she can go where he isn’t. But whatever that is, it isn’t love.
At least, he doesn’t think so.
“That’s a hideous scarf, by the way,” he tells Poppy, heading for the door.
Her smile is small. “It is, isn’t it? I’ve decided it’s the perfect metaphor.”
“For what?”
“For love, I guess.”
He looks back at her, half in and half out. Cold careens in through the crack. “Love is a scarf full of holes?”
“Love is hideous.”
And there they are again—thoughts of Shea, pulsing through his head.Occupying far too much space in his brain. We’re doing an ugly thing. He hopes she never thinks about anything half as much as he thinks about her. He wouldn’t wish this feeling on his enemy.
“See?” he says, smirking up at Poppy. “You did have an answer.”
•••
He finds Shea seated on a swing, its steel joists overgrown in wood sorrel. The November air is warmer this far south, but she’s layered as it gets. She’s stolen his hoodie and it peeks out from beneath her flannel, hood up and sleeves overlong, the cuffs engulfing her hands so only the pale buds of her fingers are visible. Her cross gleams silver at her throat.
It’s meant to ward him off. A holy relic, intended to burn. It doesn’t matter that it’s only superstition—it could sear him to bone, and he’d still be out here, lowering his skeleton into the vacant swing beside her. Silently, he wills her to look at him. She doesn’t, even when the chains grind noisily beneath him. He kicks out his feet and joins her in looking up at the stars, feeling resentful.
“Barry Bonds,” he says, when the quiet begins to corrode his patience.
She blinks over at him. “What?”
“He holds the career record with seven hundred sixty-two home runs.” There’s a stick on the ground and he leans forward to swipe it up, poking holes in the dirt with the stunted end. “I don’t really care about baseball. It was Nel’s thing, but there wasn’t a whole lot else to do out in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania.”
When she’s quiet, he continues.
“There was a ghost town about three miles out from the farm. Blackburgh. There’d been an outbreak a few years back, and the watch came through and cleared it out. No one was left. At night, we’d hop the fence and go through the houses. We’d find all kinds of shit, most of it useless. Nel liked baseball cards, so that’s what we took.”
She’s looking right at him, her temple pressed up against the rusted links, and there’s no light in her eyes at all. The look on her face is a fist around his guts. Her wool cap is askew beneath his hood, her nose nipped pink by the cold. She picks at a run in her stockings, her skirt ruffling in the wind.
