A headache is building behind my eyeballs from running on so little sleep the past two weeks. I rub my temples and try to remember what I was thinking of when he appeared before school—Overton, the bagel I had for breakfast, the humanness of his thigh on the park bench yesterday—but none of that works, so I decide to go to him.
I drive first to my school, to outside the window of the music room, because I’m not sure where else to start.
But nothing is there.
I drive around the perimeter of Bentley Lake and the park surrounding it, but there’s nothing.
Then I try the mall, because he “works” there, and presumably he could be there now, even if it is nearly one in the morning. I climb out of my car and wander around the closed mall entrance.
No sign of him. The parking lot is deserted, covered in a layer of snow and tire prints.
At this point, I’m at a loss, so I whisper, “Bus Boy?”
There is, of course, no answer. And I jump, terrified at the sound of my own voice, and hurry toward my car, a little relieved there’s no answer.
I have no idea where to go to find him. How to find him.
I’ve never activelytriedto make him appear. Am I just not trying hard enough?
What was the last thing he said to me?
Don’t forget about me.
Still holding on to the door of my car, I shut my eyes and try to think back to the night I first saw him. I think about the concert and the bus. His bright, contagious smile.
No sooner do I hear footsteps crunching in the snow than I jump into my car and lock all the doors. My heart thumps hard in my chest as the red-haired, smiling boy only I can see, nowhere in sight a second ago, walks toward me. He has his hands in the pockets of his jeans, a shirt too thin for the cold, and a completely casual expression.
As if he’s been waiting out here for me. As if I did not just conjure him up out of thin freaking air.
He raps twice on my window, and I take a couple breaths and then slide it down an inch. My skin is littered with goose bumps.
“You okay?” he asks.
No,I think.No, I’m not evenalmostokay.
But what I say is, “Tell me you’ve figured it out by now. Who you are. Something.”
He gives an apologetic shake of his head.
“Nothing?”I say, exasperated. “Not even a little bit?”
But, of course, I know in the back of my mind that this isn’t about him. It’s about me. If I can conjure him up, if I can see him and nobody else can, if I can speak to him and hear him when he’s not really here, this is all on me.Ihave to figure out what’s going on.
I stare at him, trying to superimpose the image of the baby that Caleb showed me over this tall, red-haired boy. He looks nothing like my brother. They don’t even have the same color skin.
And yet, they have to be connected somehow.
Is Bus Boy just some kind of beacon? A signal meant to make me question my sanity, to lead me to Overton and the truth about my family? But now that I know, why is he still here?
Apart from looking nothing like my brother, I can’t be related to him because of the butterflies in my chest when he’s nearby, that turning of my stomach at his smile. I know I’m crazy, but having a crush on someone I’m related to would just be another level of insanity. Not to mention repulsive.
If Bus Boy and the brother I lost are related, it’s not in that way.
“Can I get in?” His breath is visible in the night, and his nose is bright red. I must’ve said yes, because Bus Boy jogs around to the passenger side door and waits for me to unlock it. And the whole time I wonder if I’m imagining this—seeing him, speaking to him, letting him in my car. My head is spinning with so many thoughts I have to fight the urge to scream.
The car feels so much smaller with him inside, like we’re inches apart and not a couple of feet. His long legs take up too much room, and I hear his hand fumbling in the dark, struggling to push his seat back. I lean across him, trying not to breathe him in—laundry detergent, sweat, cigarette smoke—and press the lever under his chair that makes it slide.
“Thank you,” he says, and I’m thinking he means for his seat, but he adds, “for coming back.”
