“So, I want to try something again,” he said, his lips curving up into a smile. God, I loved that look. “Do you want to do something sometime?”
I smiled back, big and stupid, and didn’t even bother trying to stop it. “Yes. But maybe we should specify this time.”
“Hang out. Somewhere. Sometime.”
I heard my heartbeat echo inside my head—not nerves, not quite, but something close. “You mean besides upside down in my car?”
“Yeah. Definitely besides that. Like…my house. Or the movies. Or the park. Or here, right now.” He gestured to the iron gate in front of us, the house hidden behind it.
I chewed the inside of my cheek, picturing Ryan filling up my room with that smile. “I’m not allowed to have people over. I’m also not exactly supposed to be out right now. It’s going to be hard enough for me to sneak back in alone.”
Ryan was eyeing the keypad, the camera, the gate. “Why all the precautions?” he asked.
“Makes her feel safe,” I said before I could stop myself. This was a trick I had taught myself: act before the fear. And now there was a dare in my words. What kind of person would he be? What would he do with the information?
He nodded slowly. “My dad has a closet of guns, same reason. I don’t really get why we need more than one. Sometimes I think he’s preparing for the zombie apocalypse.”
“No guns here. We’re only good with keeping zombies out. If they breach, we’re screwed.”
I turned to go, my hand connecting with his, leaving the medal with him. He grabbed my elbow as I approached the gate, spinning me back around, his hand trailing from my elbow to my hand. “So there’s no confusion this time,” he said, and his cheeks flushed, “I’m asking you out.”
Then he backed away, his hands in the pockets of his suit pants. He was smiling, but he was also waiting.
“And I’m saying yes,” I said.
He leaned against his car, and before I could talk my way out of it, before I could let all the fears work their way into my head, all the uncertainty, before I could question what I should do or should say, or shouldn’t do or shouldn’t say, I took three quick steps toward him, and I stood on my toes, and he said, “Oh—” in the second before my lips connected with his, and then his hands were around my back, and he was pulling me closer, and I melted—my body sinking into his. I felt his lips curl into a smile as I pulled away.
“Bye, Ryan,” I said.
He laughed. “Bye, Kelsey.”
I turned back to the gate, still smiling. I could see the house lights on in the background. I’d probably be caught. I didn’t even care. Ryan was still watching me from beside his car. And I didn’t wait for him to leave first this time.
I pressed my thumb to the keypad, but nothing happened. Maybe they were shaking with adrenaline. I tried again, first wiping my hands on the side of my pants. Again, nothing happened. No click.
Something soured in my stomach, in my mouth—and my hands started shaking again, for a very different reason.
“What’s the matter?” Ryan called. He started walking toward me. I leaned to the side and looked up at the cameras, where I’d usually see a faint red light—but there was none. I felt the wrongness through every pore of my body. I pushed at the gate, and it opened on its own, and my heart plummeted into my stomach.
The system was off, and the gate was unlocked.
“Something’s wrong,” I said.
Ryan followed me through the gate, which no longer automatically closed behind us. The gate would normally be unlocked only if someone entered the override code to hold it open, or if the electricity was out. But I could see lights on inside.
“Stay here,” I said, once we got to the porch. “I don’t want her freaking out.”
Understatement. If she realized I was missing, that would be the least of my concerns.
I checked the front door handle, but it was unlocked. And when I pushed open the door, there was no beep of the alarm. The air felt different, too. Like the expanse of the world—the vastness, my mom would say—was inside the house. Too much, too unknown.
“Mom?” I called, and the word echoed off the tiled floors, the white walls. “Are you okay?”
The first thing I noticed was the silence. The music I’d left running in my room was off. There were no footsteps. No shuffling in the halls. Just the slow drip of a faucet from somewhere beyond.
I left the front door cracked open for Ryan as I checked each room. She wasn’t in her bedroom, or the office, or the living room. I passed the foyer again on the way down the hall to my room, barely registering Ryan standing in the open doorway.
My stomach dropped as I approached my room. My door was open, and she’d definitely been in here. I stood in the entrance, assessing the damage. My phone was thrown onto the floor. My desk drawers were pulled open. The floor was a mess of clothes and paper and electronics. I nudged a pile with the side of my foot and picked up my phone, placing it on my desk.
There was a chill to the room, like her anger lingered. Something had happened to change the taste in the room. Something empty and hollow and unusual. It was no longer safe and known and mine.
The hairs on my arms stood on end—this was not her typical behavior. This was a version of her I didn’t know.
“Mom?” I called again, more tentatively.
The alarm was off, and nobody was here. I picked up the landline phone in the living room, and it clicked, repeatedly—no dial tone.
I opened the door behind the kitchen—it was also uncharacteristically unlocked—and called her name into the dark of the backyard. Went back to the hall, slid the lock at the top of the basement door, stood in the entrance as the door creaked open. The lights were off and it had been locked, but still, I called her name. Only a chilled gust of air came back.
I heard footsteps behind me, and turned to find Ryan standing in the foyer, his eyes roaming over the bright rooms, the white walls, the immaculately clean surfaces. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
I stared at him, trying to find the words, terrified of giving voice to them. The thing I had never imagined. Never even so much as feared. It snuck up on me, this one, and I felt myself getting sucked down with it.
“I can’t find my mom,” I whispered.
Ryan paced the foyer, picked up a picture of the two of us from the entryway table. He held it close to his face, his eyes shifting from her face to my own. “This is your mom?” he asked.
My mother was young and beautiful—she was thirty-five, but looked even younger in her casual clothes, long hair, makeup-free face. She looked perfect, in that picture. We looked perfect together. Big smiles, windows behind us, sunlight streaming through. “Yes,” I said.
“So give her a call,” he said. “See where she is if you’re that worried.”
If I was that worried…
I took a deep breath. Took the picture from his hand, felt a tug in my chest as my eyes searched her frozen face. Tried to tamp down the panic, steady my hands, steady my voice.
“She hasn’t left the house in seventeen years,” I said.
—
Ryan held my gaze as the words settled in, and I noticed him processing, refitting everything he thought he understood about me and my family. He opened his mouth, closed it again. Seemed to reconsider everything he was thinking. “Okay,” he said, “so let’s double-check.”
And even in this moment of terror—even as this emptiness was clawing at the inside of my skull, and the uncertainty turned into panic, my breath coming too fast—I found myself falling further for Ryan. That he could just take it in stride, and do what needed to be done. He walked down the hall, and I could imagine him doing this in his uniform, assessing the threats, trying to calm those inside. He projected calm and confidence, and I wished I could do the same. At the moment, I wished I could be anyone other than me.