“Who is they?” Brandon asks.
“That’s the question.” Ava takes her bag and shoves things haphazardly inside. “If it’s a game, I want Jaden out before us. And if it’s not, well, we stick together. All of us,” she emphasizes, looking at Mack. Is she mad that Mack didn’t join them, or does she want to keep Mack where she can see her? Does she suspect that Mack did something, something bad, something to Rosiee?
It’s the wrong suspicion, but it feels deserved. Everyone should suspect her, all the time. But it hurts, because she wants Ava to believe her.
No.
She wants to be free of them all. To release Ava to the night, to walk away, to sever the ties and be nothing and no one and just…hide. Hide and never stop hiding. Like the bird in the shelter, up in the dusty rafters, isolated and hidden and safe. She wants that life.
“I know a spot,” Brandon says, obviously feeling better with a plan and friends.
“Hey,” Ava shouts. “Ava Two. You can come with us, if you want.”
“She doesn’t,” Jaden answers.
Ava gives Ava Two a few seconds, then shrugs. Her face is grim. “Okay. Lead on, Brandon. Let’s go hide.” She grabs Mack’s arm. “I need your help in the dark,” she says, and Mack doesn’t think it’s true, but she walks into the bleak empty blackness of earliest morning with Ava holding her in place because she can’t hide when Ava’s anchoring her here.
* * *
—
Brandon leads them to the Lovers’ Hideaway. It takes some time to find in the dark—everything in the park takes some time to find—but they make it. Farther down the path, a skinned demon hangs in eternal watch over his realm.
“What if Jaden followed us?” Brandon asks, on high alert. This was his idea, his hiding spot, and he feels responsible for everyone now. Though the game is no longer fun, it’s exciting in a different sort of way. All his friends moved out and moved on after high school, and he hasn’t really been close with anyone since Grammy died. Out here, in the dark, full of adrenaline and questions, he feels close to Ava, LeGrand, and even Mack.
Though she kind of scares him now, too.
“If I see that motherfucker, I’ll destroy him,” Ava says. Her voice is tight and strained. Brandon wonders if her leg is hurting her. He has so many questions. Not only is she the only lesbian he’s ever met—if she is, he doesn’t want to assume, but she has to be, right?—but she’s also a veteran. He hopes they’ll get close enough that he can ask what happened to her leg, and if she knows any amputees. He’s always been curious about amputees, if that ghost limb syndrome thing is real. Ghost limb? Haunted limb? Something like that. Ava will know.
He wants to talk to Mack, too. To ask her about what happened to her family. But no, he doesn’t want to. He wants her to decide to tell him. He wants to prove to all of them that he’s worth their friendship. Maybe after this, whatever this ends up being, they’ll keep hanging out. Maybe they’ll all move to Idaho, and they can work at the gas station together, and after their shifts they can sit on the curb watching the sun rise, laughing about all the inside jokes they’ll have.
First things first, though; he has to take care of all of them so they’ll know what a good friend he is.
It’s not fun anymore, but it’s important now, and he likes that.
* * *
—
LeGrand wonders if he died. If this is outer darkness, the hell he knew he’d go to if he sinned. Or if God made an exception for him and is punishing him right now instead of waiting.
Mack meets his eyes in the dark, enough moonlight for them to see by. She gives him the slightest nod. She understands. They are being punished, and for the first time since he was excommunicated and banished, a thought rises to the top, burning bright and holy like a bush on the mountainside:
I don’t deserve this.
And, for the first time in as long as he can remember, long before he was shoved out into this cold, baffling world, LeGrand isn’t scared anymore.
He’s angry.
* * *
—
“So, what’s the plan?” Brandon asks as they huddle inside the musty interior of the Lovers’ Hideaway. It’s a lightless void, impossible to navigate far past the entrance. When it’s closer to dawn, then they’ll be able to see well enough to pick a place. But Mack already doesn’t like it. Too exposed. Too many people. Too many ways to be found.
“We set up a base camp here.” Ava sits on the floor, easing her bad leg out in front of herself. Mack can’t see the grimace, but she can sense its outlines in the way Ava moves and the way she speaks. “No more going back to the other one, not for anything. Treat Jaden and the other Ava like enemies, because if this is a game, they are, and if it’s not, they still are.” She pauses, and her normally strong voice gets tentative. “Am I crazy?” she whispers. “There’s something wrong here, right? Because I know I have shit—acres of shit—in my head, but…” She trails off.
Mack hovers near the gaping entrance, looking out into the night. Who is she to tell someone whether or not they’re crazy?
And who is she to say whether what’s going on here is more wrong than anything else? She knew she was being preyed on from the moment she stepped into that office at the shelter. She knew, and she came anyway, and now all she can do is all she has done:
Keep hiding.
“Mack, don’t you dare,” Ava hisses. Mack pauses, her feet on the warped, uneven threshold between the rotting wooden planks of the tunnel of love and the path back outside into anonymity, where the only thing she has to hide and protect is the only thing she trusts herself to.
“We are sticking together,” Ava says, her words as much an anchor as her hand in Mack’s had been.
LeGrand drops his pack on the floor next to Ava. “Gonna climb a tree,” he says, in the same tone someone might say, Gonna run to the store for milk. LeGrand, somehow, is handling this better than any of them. That, or he knows what Mack knows—something was always wrong here—and isn’t surprised by a potential detour into violence and death. Business as usual. “I won’t go far.”
Ava nods. “Good. Better vantage point. Whistle if you see anyone coming.”
“Can’t whistle.”
“No one ever taught you to whistle?” Ava sounds sad about it.
LeGrand makes a clicking noise with his tongue. It carries well in the night air. “Good enough,” Ava says, allowing him to leave. Ava stares down at her hand, her fingers curled around the shape of a phantom gun. “Brandon, look for weapons.”
“Weapons?” Brandon says the word as though someone has fingers around his throat.
“Anything sharp that can function as a knife. Chunks of concrete we can hold easily in our hands. Metal bars.”