“What happened out there?” Nix said, asking the question that had hung burning in the air for a week.
It took Benny ten minutes to tell her about the Rot and Ruin. But Benny didn’t just talk about zoms. Instead he talked about three bounty hunters on a rocky cleft by a stream in the mountains. He spoke without emotion, almost monotone, but long before he was finished, Nix was crying. Benny’s eyes were hard and dry, as if all of his tears had been burned away by what he’d seen. Nix put her hand on Benny’s, and they sat like that for more than an hour after he was done, watching as the day grew older.
As they sat Nix waited for Benny to turn his hand, to take hers in his, to curl his fingers or thread them through hers. She had never felt closer to him, never believed in the possibility of them more than she did then. But the hour burned away and turned to ash, and Benny did not return her grip. He merely allowed it.
When the evening crickets began singing, Nix got up and went out through the garden gate. Benny had not said another word since he’d finished telling his tale. Nix really wasn’t sure that he knew she’d held his hand. Or that she’d left.
She cried all the way home. Quietly, to herself, without drama. Not because she had lost Benny, but because she now knew that she had never had him. She wept for the hurt that he owned, a hurt she could never hope to remove.
Benny sat outside until it was fully dark. Twice he looked at the garden gate, at the memory of Nix carefully opening it and closing it behind her. He ached. Not for her, but because she ached for him—and he could feel it now. He’d always known it was there, but now—somehow, for some indefinable reason—he could feel it. And he knew he wanted her. He wanted to break his oath with Chong and forget that they were just friends and …
He wanted a lot of things. But the world had changed, and when he had the chance to take her hand, he hadn’t.
Why not?
He knew that it had nothing to do with the oath. Or with friendship. He knew that much, but the rest of his mind was draped in weird shadows that blinded his inward eye. Nothing made sense anymore.
He could feel the heat of her touch on his hand even though she was now out of sight.
“Nix,” he said. But she was gone, and he had let her go.
He got up and slapped dirt from his jeans, then looked up at the yellow August moon that hung in the sky beyond the garden fence. It was the same moon, but it looked different now. He knew it always would.
14
THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS COOL FOR THE FIRST DAY OF SEPTEMBER. Benny lay in bed and stared out the window at the dense white clouds stacked tall above the mountains. The air was moist with the promise of rain.
Benny was awake for more than an hour before he realized that he felt better. Not completely. Maybe not even a lot. Just … better.
It was the last week of summer break. School started next Monday, although with his new job, that would only be half days. He lay there, listening to the birds singing in the trees. Tom once told him that birds sing differently before and after a storm. Benny didn’t know if that was true, but he could understand why they would.
He got up, washed, dressed, and went downstairs for breakfast. Tom set out a plate of eggs for him, and Benny ate them all and then scavenged the frying pan for leftovers. They ate in silence almost to the last bite before Benny said, “Tom … the way you do it … Does anyone else do it that way? Closure, I mean.”
Tom sipped his coffee. “A few. Not many. There’s a husband-and-wife team up north in Haven. And there’s a guy named Church who does it in Freeland. No one else here in Mountainside.”
“Why not?”
Tom hesitated, then shrugged. “It takes longer.”
“No,” Benny said. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”