“Calm down, babe,” Sutton says.
Marco peers over his shoulder into the dark. “She’s still jumpy from this afternoon.”
“What happened this afternoon?” Sutton asks, looking between Marco and Lydia. You can tell, even now, he doesn’t like to be the last to know something.
Lydia shrugs. “Kennedy happened. Wanted me to take a look at something for her, and then she left me there.”
“She left you at the house?” he asks, shuddering.
“No, the shed.”
“Just as bad,” he mumbles.
“Right, and then I…heard something. I could’ve sworn she never left. Only she says she was at the police station, meeting with the prosecutors or something. She had the paperwork and everything.”
Sutton frowns. “Why were you even at Kennedy’s house?”
“She asked me to, Sutton. God. But really, you didn’t hear anything just now?”
“I heard something,” I say.
They both look at me, surprised. Like they’d already forgotten I existed. Forgotten that they had just thirty seconds ago called me nearer, introduced me to their group, offered me a beer.
“Sutton, come on, I want to go,” Lydia says, tugging his arm.
He presses his lips together. Shrugs. “All right,” he says. Okay, not a complete asshole, I think.
Then he turns the whole thing around with a wicked grin. “Always give a girl what she asks for, my friend.” Nope, definitely an asshole.
Lydia nudges him as he walks past, then quickly falls into step. Even Marco trails after them. Back down the path, out of the park. No one really cares what I was doing here. No one wonders. It should probably feel more like relief.
Their voices carry, and I wait for silence. Sitting still, in the dark, with my eyes closed, I can feel the memory of the signal in the palm of my hand, the way it buzzed, in a rhythm. I picture a circle, myself at the center.
And then I try to listen for my brother. For whatever he’s trying to tell me. I focus on the way he looked during the fever dream, his mouth moving, trying to decipher the words he was saying: Help us. Please.
It takes a minute for everything to still around me, for every sound to have a place, until I feel it. Something else. Someone else.
I open my eyes.
The voices fade in one direction, but I remain behind. At first, the three of them were like a pull, like I could see my own shadow, see where it should be as I followed them. The hole left behind, an ebb of darkness. But the farther they get, the less I feel the need to catch up.
But now I’m stuck. I don’t want the guy in the clearing to notice me—since Sutton knows him, I’m assuming he’s not going to abduct me. But I also don’t want him telling Sutton that some girl was out here, watching them all. By reasonable deduction, they would probably realize that it was me.
I crouch lower behind the row of bushes, peering between the branches near the ground, watching the guy in the clearing. He’s lying back on the table, staring up through the circle of trees. It feels like I’m witnessing something I shouldn’t. Or maybe I’m witnessing something I should. Someone should be here, other than the nothingness, to bear witness. How many things happen to us in the dark, alone?
There’s a bag at his feet. It looks like he’s asleep, but his eyes are open, the whites reflecting in the moonlight through the clearing.
I imagine his story: running away, using his bag for a pillow, hiding out in the park at night. Sutton called him Nolan. Sutton didn’t really care, though, didn’t think it odd that some guy was in the park alone.
Behind the hedge, I open my phone for comfort. There’s a new message from Visitor357, sent sometime during the last hour.
I’m not in that county, but close. Next one over.
I pull the phone closer to my face, my heart racing. So, this is a location thing. I think about asking Visitor357 to meet up with me at the college. I’m thinking of how to explain that I don’t know much about the instrumentation, or how to decipher it on my own.
I write back:
Do you know anyone else who could analyze this signal? My contact didn’t exactly work out.
I stand, ready to retreat from the scene, imagining that the situation is reversed and there is someone watching me when I want to be alone, when the guy on the table suddenly darts up. I panic, thinking he’s heard me. I stand perfectly still, in hopes that I will blend into the surroundings. But he doesn’t look my way. Instead, he feels around beside him, and I see the light of his phone illuminate his face. It’s the first time I’m getting a good look at him, but the light cuts him into angles and shadows. Like he’s half here, half gone. His hair is dark, and sort of messy, and he runs a hand quickly through it, pushing it to the side, before bringing the phone close to his face for a few moments, his fingers darting across the screen. Then he places it on the table as he lowers himself again.
Maybe he’s meeting someone. A girl. Or a guy. Or the second person of some drug-deal-exchange thing.
I’m still holding my phone, so I see it light up with a new alert. Another message notification. The message says:
No. But I’m trying to get some more info tonight.
I look back up at the boy on the table. No, I think. It can’t be. But…the next county over, he said. This park runs the line between two counties. Still, it’s most likely a coincidence. We all live and die by our phones. It wouldn’t be too unusual for someone to send a message at the same time I happen to receive one.
Visitor357 is not some teenager in the middle of the woods at night, looking for ghosts. Not some friend of Sutton’s. Not some kid who won’t know any more than I do. He can’t be.
Test, I write back, then stare across the open space of the clearing.
He sits up again. Types something, lies back, and then I have a new notification.
The message is blank, except for three question marks.
Oh my God. My hands are shaking as I type.
Please tell me you aren’t sitting on a table in the middle of Freedom Battleground State Park right this second.
He sits up slowly this time, turning his head in every direction. His eyes are wide, and his mouth hangs open, and he grabs his bag, like he’s afraid, like he’s got something in there to protect himself. As if I am the thing, suddenly, to fear.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.
I’ve got my bag in my hands, ready to make a run for it—someone’s watching me, right now—except the voice doesn’t sound like the voice of a killer. It’s soft, but cutting. I assume it’s one of Sutton’s friends, who was supposed to meet up with the group. But then a girl steps out from the hedges, and she looks just the slightest bit familiar.
“Please tell me you’re not Visitor357. Please.”
I’m still holding the phone in my hand, and she’s got one in hers, the screen lit up, and everything clicks. She’s the one who just sent me a message asking if I was in the middle of the park.
“What the hell,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “You’re KJ?”
KJ. I was picturing a man. A much older man, maybe a professor, a scientist, someone with graying hair and wire-rim glasses and a crooked bow tie, just somebody—someone who might have some real information I could use.
She tips her head up, like she’s angry at something. “I said please,” she mumbles.
“Wait, but I thought you had a satellite dish. I thought you—”
She puts a hand on one hip and leans into it. “Yeah, I do. In the field, on the other side of the park. Where I live. KJ. Kennedy. Jones.” She spells it out for me, like I’m a moron. And maybe I am. Kennedy Jones, of the Jones House. The stories Sutton told us. The girl who must’ve been there when I showed up yesterday morning, taking readings. The girl who must’ve decorated my back car window with her handprints, trying to spook me.
I hop down from the table, stepping closer. “Were you following me? Tracking me or something?” I ask.
She makes a face that in any other setting would have me running, regardless of the fact that she’s practically half my size. “No, I wasn’t following you. I was following them.” She tips her head in the direction of Sutton’s crew.
“That’s not any less creepy.”
She shakes her head. “They cut right through my yard. I was just…” I feel her grasping for something, not just the word, but some way to explain. Her face shifts, and she shakes it off. “What’s it to you? I live nearby. I should be asking if you were following me.”
I give her a look right back, and she raises an eyebrow. “Well, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”
I gesture around me, in a circle. “This is it.”
“This is what?”
“Where my brother disappeared. You never heard of it? Liam Chandler? Two years ago? You live right there….”
Her mouth forms the word oh, but no noise comes out. “We moved here last year. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“It was on the news.”