“I can’t go to the hospital. I can’t. Please do it, Noah? Please?”
Noah’s eyes flicked to the clock on the dashboard, and then he checked the rearview mirror. He sighed and turned off the highway. When we pulled into a dark, empty parking lot, I checked the backseat. Joseph was still out.
“Come on,” Noah said, as he got out of the car. I followed, and he locked it behind us. We walked a short distance before Noah stopped under a tangle of trees behind a strip mall.
He closed his eyes, and I noticed that his hands were balled into fists. The muscles in his forearms flexed. He shot me a dark look.
“Come here,” he said.
I walked over to him.
“Closer.”
I took another step, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. My heart pounded in my chest.
Noah sighed and crossed the remaining distance between us, then stood, his chest against my back. I felt the length of his body pressed tightly behind mine and I shivered. From standing outside in my wet clothes or the feel of him behind me, I didn’t know.
He circled one arm around my chest, aligned with my collarbone, and snaked the other beneath my arm so that his hands were almost touching.
“Hold very still,” he whispered. I nodded, silent.
“Right then. One.” He spoke softly into my ear, tickling me. I could feel my heart beating against his forearm.
“Two.”
“Wait!” I said, panicking. “What if I scream?”
“Don’t.”
And then my left side ignited in pain. White-hot sparks exploded behind my eyes and I felt my knees buckle, but never felt the ground beneath me. I saw nothing but blackness, deep and impenetrable, as I floated away.
I woke up when I felt the car turn wide on the pavement. I looked up just as we passed under the sign for our exit.
“What happened?” I mumbled. My wet hair had stiffened in the artificial air, caked with filth. It crunched behind my head.
“I put your shoulder back in,” Noah said, staring at the brightening road ahead of us. “And you fainted.”
I rubbed my eyes. The pain in my shoulder had simmered to a dull, throbbing ache. I glanced at the clock. Almost six in the morning. If this was real, my parents would be awake soon.
Joseph already was.
“Joseph!” I said.
He smiled at me. “Hey, Mara.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just tired a little.”
“What happened?”
“I guess I just fell into the ditch by the soccer field where you guys found me,” he said.
I cast a furtive glance at Noah. He met my eyes, and gave a slight shake of his head. How could he possibly think Joseph would buy that?
“It’s weird, I don’t even remember going there. How did you guys find me, anyway?”
Noah rubbed his forehead with his filthy palm. “Lucky guess,” he said, avoiding my stare.
Joseph looked directly at me, even as he spoke to Noah. “I don’t even remember texting you to pick me up. I must have hit my head pretty hard.”
That must have been the companion lie to the one Noah told about the soccer field. And I could tell by Joseph’s stare that he didn’t believe either one. And yet he seemed to be playing along.
So I did too. “Does it hurt?” I asked my brother.
“A little. And my stomach feels kind of sick. What should I tell Mom?”
Noah stared straight ahead, waiting for me to make the call. And it was obvious what Joseph was asking—whether he should out me and Noah. Whether he should trust us. Because I knew that if Joseph did tell our parents the lie Noah told him, my mother would lose it. Absolutely.
And she would ask questions. Questions Noah said he couldn’t answer.
I looked behind the seat at my little brother. He was dirty, but fine. Skeptical, but not worried. Not scared. But if I told him the truth about what had happened—that someone, a stranger, had taken him and tied him up and locked him in a shed in the middle of the swamp—what would that do to him? What would he look like then? A memory returned of his ashen, downcast face in the hospital waiting room after I burned my arm, of his body slumped and stiff and small in the waiting room chair. This would be worse. I could think of few things more traumatic than being kidnapped, and I knew from experience just how hard it would be to come back from something like that. If he even could.
But if I didn’t tell Joseph, I could not tell my mother. Not after my arm. Not after the pills. She would never believe me.
So I decided. I looked at Joseph in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think we should mention it. Mom will freak out, I mean—freak out. She might be too scared to let you play soccer any more, you know?” Guilt flared inside of me at the lies, but the truth could break Joseph, and I wouldn’t be the one to do it to him. “And Dad will probably sue the school or something. Maybe just use the pool shower outside, get into bed, and I’ll tell her you didn’t feel well last night and asked me to come pick you up?”