Page 19

“Hold on, I’ve got something.” I pull the reel nice and slow, and it comes up empty… I lost my fucking fish. “Damn it.” Tensing my jaw, I immediately bait the hook and try again.

Maison senses my frustration.

“Micah, it’s almost dusk, man. We should head home.” Maison pulls out his fishing line and starts packing up. “The fish aren’t biting, and I want to be good for our game tomorrow. You should rest up, too. It’s really your game.”

The sun. That determines when we have to leave. Our mom always threatens that if we aren’t back before dark and she has to send a search and rescue party out for us, she will chain us in our bedrooms until we graduate high school.

The regional finals are tomorrow, and the scouts are coming… My future could be determined this week if I play to win. I have an opportunity to play for an NHL field team, which is the only outcome I will be okay with for my life.

“Ten more minutes,” I say without looking at him. Catching a fish is the only thing that matters at this moment. “I don’t want to go home and fight with Mom again about my medication.” I overheard her and my dad talking about my mental health issues, and it triggered me. Maison overheard them fighting about it, too. He gave me a knowing stare and started packing to come out here.

He shrugs and casts his line deep into the lake, then sits down and cracks open another beer from our cooler without a fucking care in the world. “Fine,” he says, staring off into the sunset, “but you can deal with Mom’s wrath. I’ll tell her it was your idea.”

Usually, Mom couldn’t give two shits about where I am, but if the two of us are at the lake alone, she has an absolute meltdown. She relives the trauma of almost losing us when we were eleven, but it’s not my problem. It certainly won’t stop me from living my life.

Because I relive it every minute of every day anyway.

Despite my trauma, I still love fishing. Unlike normal people who probably would avoid the place or activity that fucked them up, I attacked it, and fishing became one of my favorite activities. It must take a special kind of fucked-up person to cope with trauma by learning to master it. Because I have a weird fascination with death, like how close to it I can get before I tip over the edge.

Maison only comes fishing with me because he doesn’t want me to go alone. He worries about me constantly—he understands the depth of the thoughts I have, even if he won’t admit it. And I usually only go fishing when something shitty is happening in my life. I don’t invite him—he invites himself—and I suppose it’s become our thing over the years, even if I would prefer to do it alone. I swear, he talks too damn much and scares the fish away.

Like now.

Maison presses his lips together as his fishing line goes buck wild. He looks at me, arches his eyebrows, and smiles. “I got something.”

Fucking Maison. Of course, he would catch something before me.

“Damn, it’s something big, too,” he boasts, pulling the line and pretending to struggle with it for dramatic effect. He pauses and looks at me. His face grows serious and darkens. “Don’t fucking hurt her, man… Deal with your shit.”

My head whips up to nothing, just the same trees and the same searing and sparkling wintery sky. “What the fuck did you just say?” A deep chill runs through my bones, much colder than the Arctic air around me.

Maison’s talking to me. His voice is clear and unyielding, the same tone he took when our relationship turned sour and he started hating me. “Don’t fucking kill her, Micah. Don’t fucking kill her like you killed Olivia, like you killed me. Got it? Don’t fucking kill her, man. I’ll never forgive you.”

Jesus, fuck.

My eyes shoot to the sky and find the position of the sun hovering westward.

Shit.

I’ve been gone for hours, sitting silently in my fishing spot. I must have fallen asleep, and the last thing I remember is my eyes growing heavy since I refuse to sleep at night. I must have passed out or fallen into one of my trances. The weather warmed to balmy after a two-week-long deep freeze, and I had to try to get us some food.

“Get the fuck out of my head, Maison,” I say out loud to myself.

Earthly silence

I sense him beside me—through the twin bond we’ve had from birth. His presence is thick in the frosty air.

I recall every word we said to each other that day we went fishing. It was also the last time Maison and I had a normal conversation. It was the night before we met Olivia and everything changed between us. My parents mistakenly thought I was heartbroken, but I wasn’t. And I wasn’t fucking jealous, like Maison assumed. He couldn’t have been more wrong, and his jealousy almost destroyed us. Now I understand how he felt because I am jealous of him when I should be mourning him. I’m jealous of a fucking ghost to the point of insanity. Because, no matter what, he’s still the better twin.

“Maison?” I say again, swallowing all the emotions built up in my throat. For the first time since he died, a nagging desperation to see him sits in my core—to hear his voice one more time. When I close my eyes, he is right fucking here. I see him, every memory of him leaving me stiff, senseless, and numb. Now that I’m alone and away from London, it’s Maison who consumes my thoughts.

Fuck. I won’t do this. I refuse to lose my mind. I can’t mourn him because that would mean his death was real. Mourning him will end him, and I’m not ready to lose him yet.

I shake my head to snap out of it, pulling my hood over my head. Maybe the isolation is finally getting to me, like London keeps saying. Either that, or the lack of sleep. I try not to sleep while she’s sleeping since I almost lost her the last time I let myself relax. Since she risked her life to go and chase a ghost in the dark woods, there has been a noticeable shift in her I can’t ignore. That was a couple of weeks ago, and things have been off between us ever since.

Every day, she slips further away from me. Her mind is shattering, causing me to doubt her ability to rely on her own judgment.

I lean down and pull on my fishing line, hoping I don’t come up empty. London’s hungry, and I can’t seem to keep her content anymore. She longs for something more than what I can give her right now.