“He’s lying down!” shouts Katie, and Ginny adds, “He hates the trampoline!”
Sam says, “Jess can do aflip!”
“Can she?” says Beth, but I’m pretty sure she’s looking at me instead of Jess. Doesn’t matter, I’m looking at Jess enough for everyone out here. Probably enough for the whole entire world. She’s mostly still now, just the occasional wobbly wake of Katie and Ginny’s movements toward the safety net’s opening. Her hair is a wild, wavy tangle, one sleeve of her T-shirt pulled up high on her shoulder.
She raises her eyes to mine and I’m pretty sure I stop breathing.
Please don’t go, I want to say.Please let me find out how you learned to do a trampoline flip.
“Should we go check on him?” I hear Beth say, overloud, which means I’ve probably missed out on a good chunk of conversation. But I don’t want to take my eyes off Jess, especially not when she’s got hers on me.
“Brownie!” screams Ginny, a non sequitur as far as I can tell, but kids are like that.
“Hmm,” Beth says, tapping her chin. “Is it too late for brownies?”
“NO!” the girls scream, and Jess’s lips quirk.
“Ialsowant a brownie,” Tegan says, but there’s a little something in her voice, an abrasive texture I recognize—usually reserved, in the van and in our interviews, for her sister. It’s enough to get me to look away from Jess, if only for a second.
But when I catch Tegan’s eye, I realize that the tone is meant for me. She’s got her eyes narrowed at me as if I’ve been hiding postcards in a curtain rod for ten years. Probably in any other circumstance, I’d feel uncomfortable, but instead, I’m strangely glad. I want Tegan on Jess’s side, even if that means I’m their common enemy.
Katie and Ginny are on the ground now, greeting me quickly and bounding off again, as though I’m just another springy part in the jumping chaos of their evening. Beth herds them toward the house, sparing me a quick eyebrow-raise before she goes, and then it’s just the three of us—me and Jess and Tegan, missing one of our original compass points, but still spinning with a strange, million-things-unsaid energy.
Tegan crosses her arms and continues staring at me even as she speaks to her sister.
“Jess, do you want a brownie?”
“I’m good.”
Her voice sounds different, slightly breathless. A relic of her laughter and movement up on that netted-in trampoline. Now it seems like a cage. Keeping her in, or keeping me out. I wipe my palms on my jeans. Tegan’s looking at me as if she’s sitting in a recliner with a shotgun in her lap.
“I’ll be in, in a few minutes,” Jess adds, but Tegan doesn’t move right away.
I follow her eyes to Jess, who gives her a short nod, and then Tegan’s looking back at me with anI’ve got eyes on you, palshotgun threat in her eyes. Given what I know about Tegan’s priorities up to this point, that look might be less about protecting Jess and more about the Baltimore story and her desperation to continue searching for it.
But I have the feeling it’s both, and I mimic Jess’s short nod even as Tegan turns and stalks past me, following Beth and the girls back to the house, leaving an icy chill in her wake.
I’m weirdly proud of her. Weirdly happy she’s learned some things from Jess, after all.
We both wait in silence until we hear the back screen door bang shut behind them, and then it’s only us—night nature sounds coming to life in the air and grass and trees, me staring up at Jess through the black net she stands behind. I imagine myself as a defendant in court, her the judge.
Adam Hawkins, I imagine her saying,this court finds you—
“Do you want to come in?” she says, and thank God for that. Obviously my imagination has leaned fully into my sleep-deprived, stressed-out state of mind.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, but then hesitate. She smirks.
“Are youalsoafraid of the trampoline?”
“No.”
But actually, sort of. When it comes down to it, I’d rather be on firmer ground for this conversation.
Still, I move toward the net’s opening, toeing off my boots and tucking my socks inside, and mumbling a quiet thanks as Jess holds the flap back for me. It’s not the most graceful thing, being a grown man—a taller and more-built-than-average grown man—getting up onto a trampoline. Frankly it’s a little lowering, which maybe is the point. The springs around the edge creak as I hoist myself up, and I wish I’d read a few of those articles Mace keeps an eye out for. Maybe they mention something about weight limits.
Once I’m on—in, whatever—the moment grows impossibly more awkward, both of us standing here on a surface that’s meant for play, for joy, for the opposite of being serious. Are we going to . . . jump? Is Jess going to . . . do a flip, and then tell me she’s leaving?
“Jess, I’m sorry,” I say, hoping to head off either of those other options.
