All this emotion, all this need tugging on her. Mack is tired. She’s been tired for so long now. She climbs into the access hollow. It’s exactly what she hoped, perfect for their needs. Rather than going back down and telling the others, though, she curls around herself and closes her eyes.
Three more days. Is it? Is it only three more days, or is it forever left hiding, afraid of what she knows and what she doesn’t know, feeling safer in the nebulous stalled space between them? Wasn’t it better to still be up in the pantry, terrified of what happened, suspecting what was being done, what had been done, but still not sure?
She should have stayed up there forever.
At some point, another body crawls in and curls up next to her, facing her. She doesn’t have to open her eyes to know it’s Ava. Her Ava. Somehow, in this dark space that smells of dust and decay, an errant board jabbing her hip, the dread of knowing the morning will bring someone—something?—looking for them, somehow Mack is as happy as she’s ever been, with Ava’s fuzzy head tickling her chin, Ava’s solid body an undeniable presence, Ava’s hand draped on Mack’s waist, holding her in place.
It makes her want to scream, this feeling, this hope that feels more dangerous than anything stalking them. Because the hope has already found her, already snared her, already sunk in its claws that will absolutely eviscerate her when it’s ripped away.
“I killed Maddie,” Mack says, without preamble.
Ava says nothing.
“That night. It was her hiding spot. It was the best spot in the whole house, the only one where our father had never found her. I never won the game. But she showed me a few weeks before, after I saved her from a spider in her room, to say thank you. She showed me the ledge over the pantry door, big enough for one small body, where no one would ever think to look. And that night, I took it. I took her spot. She cried and glared at me and begged me to make room, but there wasn’t room, so she hid on the bottom shelf, instead. And he found her, and I watched as he dragged her out. And I was safe.”
Mack’s never told anyone before. Now Ava knows. She knows that Mack is alive because her sister is dead, and her sister is dead because Mack isn’t. Ava knows that when the knife comes out, Mack will stay hidden and let someone else be found.
Ava nods. She keeps her arm around Mack, and she nods her head, and she doesn’t say it wasn’t Mack’s fault, or that she’s sure Maddie wouldn’t blame her, or try to make Mack feel better. She just says, “I’m sorry that happened.”
And something breaks in Mack. She gasps for air, putting her arm around Ava, pulling her closer.
“When Maria died,” Ava whispers, as the darkness around them begins to soften incrementally, “I lost everything that defined my borders. I lost Maria, and I lost my friends, and my job, and my purpose. And I couldn’t even be mad, because lying there in the hospital, waiting to see if I would lose my leg, too, I tried to imagine what the man who did it must have been thinking, must have been feeling. And I knew, without a doubt, if I were him, I’d do the same. So I couldn’t hate him anymore, and I couldn’t feel any sort of purpose anymore, and I couldn’t love Maria anymore, and there was nothing holding me in. I was evaporating, becoming less and less solid until I didn’t even know who I was. If I was. Does that make sense?”
It doesn’t make sense, not to Mack, because Ava has always seemed so strong, so solid; the idea that not even Ava’s body is enough to hold her in terrifies Mack.
Mack felt the opposite. She had taken herself and pushed who she had been, who she could have been, so far down, so deep, that it became super-compacted, a well of gravity pulling everything—happiness, sadness, joy, fear—into itself so she didn’t have to feel any of it. So she could walk around, go through the motions of living, a protective, cavernous shell around an impossibly heavy nuclear core.
If Ava needs borders to feel real, Mack needs the opposite. She needs to be cracked open. And Ava has done just that tonight.
Mack doesn’t want it, though. It makes her heart race with panic, worrying that the cracks will let all the vile guilt and shame and terror leak out. Does she really want to remember her mother’s laugh, if it means remembering everything else? If it means remembering Maddie’s angry face looking up accusingly at her as she took Maddie’s hiding spot? If it means remembering the glimpses she saw as the officers rushed her out of the house?
But shouldn’t she remember those things? And the things that came before the blood and the endings? If the people we love live on in us after they die, Mack has kept them buried, and she can’t think about that, can’t wonder what that means about her that her father might have killed her family, but she buried them again and again, every moment of every day.
“I didn’t have a choice with Maria,” Ava whispers. “I don’t care if you want to leave. I have a choice with you, and I’m not letting you go.” Her hand twitches, catching in Mack’s shirt, twisting there. And then Ava takes a deep, shuddering breath, and she releases her grip. “No. I’m sorry. You can go, if you want to. There’s still time to hide alone. But Mack. Please. I’m asking you not to. I’m asking you to stay with me. To remind me I’m here. Because I’m scared shitless that none of this is real, or all of it is, and I don’t—I can’t—” Ava’s voice cuts itself off.
Ava’s afraid, and Mack wants to hide from it, because holding someone else’s fear means opening her shell even more. Letting her own fear out.
But she has her mother’s laugh again, and the way Maddie wrinkled her nose up like a pug when she was trying to look extra angry, and it’s precious and devastating and she wants to feel it. Wants to feel anything, for the first time in years. And knowing that Ava—strong, bold Ava—needs help makes Mack feel a little less alone. She puts her hand against Ava’s cheek, presses her forehead to Ava’s. Wonders if the explosion of releasing all the pain and guilt at the core of her will be worth a little happiness, a little joy.
“Yeah?” Ava asks, and neither of them knows exactly what she’s asking, but they don’t need to.
Mack presses her lips against Ava’s. It’s her first kiss, and it’s soft and scared and hopeful, surrounded by darkness and suffused with it.
* * *
—
With the dawn deadline nearing, Brandon steps outside. Mack and Ava have been up in the hiding spot for a few hours now, and he can’t be sure, but he’s pretty sure they’re a thing now. Which makes him happy for them but also feeling a little left out. He doesn’t want their team to pair off, to create bonds he’s left out of.
At least he doesn’t have to worry about that with LeGrand. Maybe LeGrand will become his best friend. It doesn’t seem likely—LeGrand hasn’t really been friendly, even if he hasn’t been unfriendly—but there’s a chance. Brandon can imagine it. Becoming roommates. Staying up late playing his secondhand Xbox. Pooling their money for new games. Inviting the girls over for pizza. Sharing the out-of-date snacks he brings home from the gas station.