As expected, it was a text from James. This time, only a single word:
Dig.
Lee’s hands trembled. Maybe he’d been wrong all along. Maybe somehow, cruelly, James had survived. Maybe, despite his eyes being ripped out of their sockets, his teeth scattered down the stairs, his skull caved inward and brains spilling across the tiles, he was still alive. People had survived gunshots to the face, falls from rooftops, blazing infernos of plane crashes.
Lee ran across the yard and hurled his phone into the well. It clattered against the stones and splashed at the bottom, but Lee still couldn’t shake the feeling that James was right there on the horizon, crawling out from the white sand of the missing sea.
Lee ran back inside and bolted the door just as the gas stove clicked on. He hurried down the hall, hoping it was Hina, but it was only his father. He caught Lee’s strange look and offered a half smile. “We’ll have to fend for ourselves again for a while,” he said.
For a while, Lee thought, as if it was only a matter of weeks before his father could find a replacement, someone to stand over the stove in Hina’s place.
Lee stood in the doorway, so close to the stain he had seen on the first day he came here. His mind was a carousel he couldn’t get off, spiraling faster and faster as the colors blurred together. He was close. He could feel it now, in the nauseous blur of colors and lights—the truth. It was just on the other side, like he was at the bottom of a pond, staring up at the sunlight through the veil of water. He could just barely make out its shape.
“Sit,” his father said, nodding toward the table.
His father had rearranged the chairs and set out plates to erase Hina’s absence. Lee’s seat was no longer facing the closed door. He was so relieved not to have to stare at it that he didn’t question anything. He sat with his back to the forest, watching his dad make ramen.
Steam filled the air and Lee could close his eyes and pretend this was all fine, that Hina was here and Sen wasn’t dying just beyond the wall and that his father cared for him.
“I got an email from your college advisor yesterday,” his father said.
The words were so unexpected that for a moment Lee didn’t process them, as if his father hadn’t spoken English or Japanese but another language entirely.
Then the words sank in, water bleeding through paper, and Lee’s blood went cold. He sat rooted in his chair, wordless, his father’s back turned to him.
“I was under the impression that you were taking a formal leave of absence,” his father said, “not just disappearing in the middle of the semester. You had a lot of people concerned when they started looking for you.”
They must have lost the paperwork—you know how they are, Lee could have said, wanted to say. He could taste the easy lie on the back of his teeth. But somehow, he couldn’t bring it forth. His father’s words were stilted, and Lee felt there was something else he was trying to say.
“Then this morning, I got a call from the police.”
Lee went perfectly still, a mouse under the shadow of a fox, waiting for his father to turn around. When he didn’t answer, his father glanced over his shoulder questioningly.
“Your roommate is dead, Lee.”
Silence fell over the kitchen. Lee couldn’t hear his own heartbeat, or his father’s heartbeat, or the water weakly simmering on the stove. Coldness bled across the soles of his feet and crawled up his legs, like a frigid ocean pulling him under. He was going to drown right here in this kitchen.
“Lee?” his father said. “Did you hear me?”
Lee’s gaze snapped up to his father’s wary expression, the same way he looked at Lee when he said something strange. He wasn’t looking at Lee like he was a murderer. He wouldn’t be cooking ramen if he thought he was in front of a murderer, would he?
Lee pressed his lips together, tried to bring feeling back into some part of his face. Surely his father could hear his thunderous heartbeat. “Wh-what happened?” Lee said, his mouth full of sea foam.
“Well, the police aren’t sure yet,” his father said, turning the heat up on the stove. “That’s why they wanted to talk to you.”
Lee gripped the arms of his chair. He needed to run to his room and smash his hard drive, but he couldn’t feel his legs.
“Where was he?” Lee said.
His father paused his stirring, looking over his shoulder. “What?”
“Where did they find him?” Lee said.
Where is James Baldridge?
His father shut off the burner and set down his spoon, then turned around and faced Lee.
“In the well, of course.”
