CHAPTER 15
BY THE TIME I ARRIVEat the Martin farm the following morning, the sun is already blazing hot, hanging from a cloudless blue sky. I pull out my phone and send my mom a text.
Hey, I made it. Only took out two kids.
The only way she would let me drive myself to Nora’s today was if I updated her on my whereabouts, which… I would’ve done anyway. Well, except for why I’m here.
Not funny,she replies.
I juggle two iced vanilla lattes in one hand as I step out of my car and spot Nora on the other side of a few beat-up pickup trucks. She’s sitting on a fence, facing the fields, her legs dangling over the other side. My shoulders relax a little—I’m thankful that I didn’t have to park outside the meat shop and risk running into her mom again. Maybe Nora was thinking the same thing when she told me to pull all the way back here in between two gigantic grain silos.
As I approach from behind, I notice that the green cutoff Class of 2023 shirt she’s wearing is from Wyatt High. She must’ve graduated this year too.
I lean against the fence beside her and she looks down at me.
“To make up for the other day. It’s oat, so it’s vegan.” I hand her one of the drinks and she lifts the lid to give it a precautionary sniff. “I didn’t make them,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“Had to be sure.” She grins, taking a sip. “Well, you ready?” She flicks her head to some far-off point across the field.
Am I ready to see the place where I almost died? I’m not exactly sure. I mean, is it even safe? I fell once, so I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that it could happen again. But I take a deep breath and nod anyway, because I’m still holding out hope that when I see it, I’ll remember why I was even there in the first place. Besides, this time I won’t be alone. I’ll be with Nora.
We walk side by side, away from the road and along the split-rail fence, which soon turns into welded wire laced around thick wooden posts. I try my best not to make eye contact with the hundreds of cows that lift their heads to look in our direction as we pass by. Our local grocery store stocks Martin’s meat, so I’d say about 100 percent of the beef I’ve consumed in my life is probably from this farm, and unlike Nora, I don’t have any plans to go vegan, so I’d prefer not to look my food in the eye.
“So what exactly is it that you do on the farm?” I ask as we walk past a couple of grain silos.
She shrugs. “Whatever my mom asks. Right now I’m putting up a new fence along the eastern field. So that’ll probably take me another two months or so. Sometimes I work the shop when they need a fill-in, but I prefer to be out here if I can.” She squints at me, holding her hand to her forehead to block the sun, and I notice a couple of bruises on the inside of her forearm.
“Hey, what happened there?” I ask.
“What?” She turns her arm to inspect it. “Oh. Just one of the perks of the job.” She shrugs and tucks her hand into her pocket. “How’d the rest of your shift go?”
“A bit better. They let me stay on register the rest of the time. Thanks for… uhh…” I’m actually not sure what she did to make me feel so much better, so I don’t know what to thank her for.
“Sure thing,” she replies anyway. I swipe my arm across my brow to mop away the sweat. It feels like the temperature has gone up about twenty degrees since we left the parking lot, and it’s got me wishing I had brought water instead of lattes.
I watch my feet as we wade through the tall grass; then I come to a stop, recognizing something sticking out of the dirt.
“What is this?” I ask, bending down to pick up a small orange-striped rock, just like the one I found on my desk. I drop it into Nora’s outstretched hand.
“Granite. There’s a whole bunch of it under the dirt all over the farm. Sometimes the rototillers pull it up.” She underhands it back to me. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” I reply, but really I’m wondering how it made its way ontomydesk and if it means I’ve been here more than just that one time.
“Come on, we’re almost there,” she says, and I let the rock fall back into the grass.
I let out a big sigh of relief as we make it to the tree line, beyond thankful for the beautiful,beautifulshade. Nora laughs, shaking her head as she takes a few more steps, using her boot to stomp down a jagger bush for me. I hop over it and then dropback behind her, letting her lead me through the trees. Soon the leaves are so thick overhead that barely a single ray of sun breaks through.
How could I have found myself all the way out here alone?
Under the sounds of birds whistling and crickets chirping, I begin to hear the rush of water. It grows louder as we head deeper into the woods, sounding more like a river than a crick, until finally, we break through an opening. Nora looks back at me hesitantly and then steps to the side to reveal a massive tree lying across a ravine that I can’t even see the bottom of from this angle. I carefully step closer to the bank, my heart jumping up into my throat as I look over the edge.
“Oh my God, Nora. How did I end up down there? What the… It’s gotta be fifteen, twenty feet to the bottom. How the hell did you get me out of there?” I ask as she steps up beside me.
“I, uh… I don’t know how it happened. But given the placement, it seems like maybe you tried to walk across the tree trunk and fell. Like I told your parents and the paramedics, though, I just heard you scream and when I got here, you were at the bottom, unconscious. So I used those to climb down.” She points at some scattered tree roots poking out of the wall of dirt and creeping down toward the water. “By the time I got down there, you were completely underwater. I—I thought you were…” She looks away, clearing her throat as she digs the toe of her right boot into the mud. Her eyes are slightly glassy when she looks back at me.
Dead.She thought I wasdead.
“Youreallydon’t recognize any of this?” she asks.
