“So you two have really been here all this time?” Nora asks. She’s looking at the spot I pointed to earlier, which both Aisha and Sloane have vacated, but the fact that she’s trying to address them directly makes my heart swell.
Margot jumps in to the bridge the gap, translating between the three, and I step back, taking in the little team we’ve assembled.
Three teenage girls. Two teenage ghosts.
The five of us against whatever is waiting inside that building.
Thirty-Three
If the circumstances were different,there’s no way my mom or Paige would buy the sleepover story Margot and I feed them. After nine months of tucking myself away in a tower of my own creation, the fact that I’m voluntarily leaving should be a red flag.
When Margot and I tell the pair that we’re spending the night at Nora’s to get away from all the stress for a while, they look more relieved than anything. A bit of a surprise on my mom’s part, but mostly the two were so busy planning what to say on the news tomorrow morning, they barely glanced up.
But if we can pull this off, my mom and Paige won’t need to go on the news, pleading with the public for help in finding Jasper. If we pull this off, we’ll walk him through the front door ourselves.
Even if we weren’t about to waltz into those woods with a half-cocked rescue plan, I’d have found some way to get out of the house tonight. Before I fell asleep last night, I swore I heard a voiceechoing down the halls. A soft, low voice. A little boy asking where he was.
I know it was Jasper. I know what it means. Whatever is happening to those kids, it’s started. A three-year countdown has lit up above his head.
And Finn’s countdown edges closer to a zero I can’t see. It may have already passed.
Margot and I head out the door after dinner—takeout we all picked at—with full backpacks. Instead of toiletries and pajamas, the bags are full of dark pants, dark jackets, and the hiking boots we both got for Christmas a few years back. My boots have only been worn a few times, but the tough fabric on Margot’s is peeling.
Margot frowns as we head down the steps and onto the grassy lawn. Her indecision is as strong as mine.
“What if they’re not in that building?”
If they’re not in the building, all the hope I’ve let myself build up will come crashing down. We’ll be back to zero, with no chance of climbing back up. I’ve created this false narrative of cracking open this mystery. Finding Jasper. Bringing back the metaphorical dead. But if there really is nothing to find, I’ll be as powerless as I’ve always been. Forever on an icy embankment, unable to save my best friend, incapable of doing anything but waiting to be saved.
“I don’t know,” I say. Our plan is to meet Nora out front; she’ll drive us down the street, up a few blocks, around to where the creek curves so we don’t have to add a freezing swim to our already treacherous evening. We’ll leave the car and wind through the woods and back onto our property.
I pause at the end of the driveway, glancing down at the curb. The property line.
Unthinking, I turn back around, and call out, “Finn?”
Silence hangs all around me, painful even if I knew it was coming.
“It’s not too late to save him,” Margot says softly.
“I don’t know what the hell I’m going to say to Nora if he’s…” I stop, unable to say the words aloud.
If he’s really, truly dead.
Eventually, Margot says, “No more bullshit, Jo.”
“Margot—”
“Uh-huh.” She faces me, hands on her hips. “I’ve held my tongue for the last nine months, but Jasper is gone, our house is full of non-ghosts, and we’re about to break more than a few laws, so I’m done playing nice.”
There’s no stopping Margot once she gets going, but even knowing that, I can’t help the desperate urge to shut her off. To shove her from whatever path she’s careening down. Margot knows me better than anyone left in this world, meaning her judgments and observations carry more weight than I would always like them to.
And I’m really not in the mood for a truth bomb.
“I know that losing Harper broke you,” she says, and part of me appreciates her lack of sugarcoating. “That you decided to shove your heart into a box and lock it up so tight, even you forgot where the key was.”
I want to rebuke her, but she’s not wrong. I hadn’t realized she was paying attention.
“You may not want to admit it, Jo, but I saw the way Finn looked at you. And the way you looked at him.” She shrugs. I’m grateful she’s too caught up in her own words to notice the blush rising to my cheeks. “I know it’s scary. Or maybe I don’t really know why it’s scary for you, but I am old enough to understand how fucking terrifying it is to let another person see you. But isthere really any other choice? Is locking yourself away better than never being seen again?”
