Hysteria lifts me to my feet, and my skin stings as something—a rusty nail? a chink in the wood?—snags my necklace and rips it clean off. My hand flies to my collarbone, but the necklace is gone, lost in the darkness and completely irrelevant anyway.
Did I cry out? Did the sudden, terrifying chokehold of the chain make me shriek? I don’t know. Squeezing my eyes shut, I wait for the shout, for the moment when my hiding place is found and the inevitable report of one last gunshot splits the night. But it doesn’t come.
Back door. The barn has a back door, and it’s my only hope. I’m not safe here, and though I don’t know if my feet will carry me or if I’ll collapse, I have to try.
One tentative step. My leg trembles but holds. Two. I’m damp and filthy, cobwebs in my hair and dust clinging to the backs of my sweaty thighs. But that doesn’t matter now. Nothing does, except getting as far away from the Murphy farm as I can.
The barn door is still open, and outside, the yard is bathed in the dim glow of headlights. He left them on because he’s coming for me. I know it. The thought makes my knees tremble, but I take another step. Go! I silently scream. Go.
But then a real scream rends the night.
“No! No, no, no, no, no…”
It’s a chilling refrain made all the more terrible because I know that voice.
I don’t pause to think, but it wouldn’t do me any good if I did because I’m so far past reason. My feet pound in the opposite direction, away from the back door and into the light, toward the only person who can make sense of this horror. Who can fix all that has gone wrong in this monstrous, unimaginable night.
Jonathan.
He’s on his knees beside Cal, and in the headlights of his truck I can see his hands bloom crimson when he pulls them away.
“No, no, no, no…” he says again, carving a rut with the word. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way? I open my mouth to call out to him because I’m not sure my legs will carry me any farther, but what escapes my lips is an incoherent howl. At first I think an animal is dying, but when Jonathan’s head snaps toward me, I realize the sound is mine. I’m making it, and it’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
“June?” He pushes himself up, sliding a little on the gravel or on spilled blood, I don’t know. For a moment he hovers there, half bent over his fallen friend as he looks between me and Cal. He’s deciding, maybe, who to help. Who to scoop up in his arms and spirit away from this nightmare.
It’s too late, I want to tell him. Save me. But the words won’t come.
When I try to take another step, the earth shifts below me and instinct shatters Jonathan’s indecision. He’s before me in an instant, fingers digging into my arms as he tries to keep me from falling.
“What are you doing here?” Jonathan growls. His voice is a strangled cry wrenched from somewhere deep inside. Somewhere secret. He’s sobbing, but his eyes are so crystalline, so hard, it scares me.
I’m falling away; I can feel myself going. It doesn’t matter that Jonathan is leaving bruises on my skin, I cannot hold myself up anymore, and together we sink to the ground. But Jonathan isn’t about to let me just sit there. The second I hit the gravel he wraps his arms around me and heaves me back to my feet, pushing me toward the barn, away from Cal.
“Go!” he screams. “Get out of here!”
There is a streak of blood on his cheek and I can’t stand it. I reach for it, brushing it away with my hand, but my ministrations only smear it across his jaw and into the whorls and dips of my own fingerprints. Guilty, I think, turning my palm up to see what I’ve done. Though I know it’s illogical, I moan at the thought. Maybe we’re all guilty. Maybe we’ve never, not for a second, been innocent.
“Juniper Grace, look at me.” Jonathan lets go long enough to see if I can stay standing on my own. I can, though the world still sways and I cannot focus on him. So he cups my cheeks and forces me to face him. He’s backlit in the glare of his headlights, and I can no longer see his eyes. They’re holes in his head, black pools. I can hardly look at him, but I make myself comply.
A grimace mars his features, leaving his mouth little more than a sharp slash. “Right here, that’s right. Listen to me, June. You have to get out of here.”
I shake my head because I know I can’t leave him.
“Go. I mean it. I will never forgive you if you don’t run. You can do this, June. Through the barn, out the back door. Take the path around Jericho Lake and go home. Take a shower and crawl in bed. Just remember: you were never here.”
I nod because he wants me to, but I think we both know that I’m not going anywhere. My legs are trembling so hard we are both lurching, caught in a frantic dance that makes my stomach pitch.
“Go, damnit!” His thumbs dig into the soft flesh beneath my cheekbones, and when I cry out, he only presses harder.
It’s just a second, gone in a flash, but the look in his eyes is murderous. What have you done? The thought rips through me, shredding everything I believed I knew about my brother and best friend. Then Jonathan blinks and lets go, and in the absence of his touch I can feel the cool, damp breeze. It helps, a little.
“What are you going to do?” I ask, my voice breaking.
“Call 911.” His phone is already out of his pocket, but he stops before punching in the numbers. “Go, June. Please. Take the path by the lake and through the fields. I’ll meet you at home later, but you need to listen to me: you were never here.”
“My necklace.” It seems like such an inconsequential thing, but my fingers are brushing the place where the chain is supposed to fall. I can feel the narrow welt on my skin. I know it’s important somehow.
“What?” Jonathan’s brow furrows.
“I lost it. In the barn. It’s—”
Understanding dawns. There’s evidence that I was here. But he waves his hand, shooing me away. “I’ll take care of it. Just go.”
“But—”
“Later.” He shakes his head. “We’ll talk later.”
“We were together,” I say, backing away slowly. “After the Pattersons’, we met at the farm and watched the fireworks from the bed of your truck.”
“With Sullivan.”
I don’t understand, but there’s no time to question him, so I say, “Of course. With Sullivan. Then he went home—”
“And you went upstairs to shower,” Jonathan supplies.
“But you heard gunshots.”
“I did,” he says, but he doesn’t sound like my brother anymore.
I rush forward and give him a quick, hard hug, wrapping my arms around his neck as if I’ll never let go. “Everything is going to be okay,” I lie.
Then he pushes me away and bites off one last word: “Go.”
I do. God help me, I do exactly as he says. I turn around and run blindly, working from muscle memory and all the years I spent playing on this farm.
Rides on Penny with Cal holding her halter, picking flowers with Beth. “The key to zinnias,” she once told me, “is to pinch back the lead when the plant is still young.” She took a pair of clippers and lopped off the tallest shoot on a plant that looked nearly ready to bloom. I don’t remember what I said, but she laughed and motioned for me to follow her farther down the row. “See?” she said. Here was another small zinnia, but instead of one tall stem, there were half a dozen shorter ones, each centered by the tight fist of a bud all orange and pink like a ripe apricot. “Early adversity leads to an abundant harvest.”