I don’t see the gun.
I don’t know how, but Charlie’s gotten the better of Russell. Digging his knees into the bigger man’s chest, he brings his fist high into the air, and smashes it right into Russell’s face. I see the exact moment when he breaks Russell’s nose, a wet crunching sound and flood of blood.
Russell roars, links his huge hands together, then slams them like a battering ram into the side of Charlie’s head. Charlie topples over onto the grass with a heavy thud beside a still-stunned Julian.
I see the gun.
Charlie and Russell and I all move at the same time—but Russell’s faster. Charlie tackles him like a linebacker and there’s another firecracker blast. It’s still echoing in my ears when Charlie and Russell fall. Now both of them lie still, the front of their shirts blooming blood.
Arms tighten around me. I try to get away.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay, you’re okay,” my mom is saying over and over. I half-hear, half-see the yard full of friends, most of them crying, some of them placing panicked phone calls.
I pull away from my mom and drop to the grass. “Charlie?”
He doesn’t move.
Julian’s sitting completely still, like a photograph of a painting. Julian, twice removed.
“Charlie!” I yell.
He grunts and sits up.
“Jesus!” I take in a huge breath. “Are you okay?”
He looks down, touching his blood-soaked chest, confused and scared. “I’m not hurt,” he says. “Unless it’s shock. Am I in shock?”
I laugh, a crazy, hysterical noise. “No. I think it’s his.” I nod to Russell, who’s watching me with malevolent and not-quite-dead eyes.
I half-hear my mom organizing, sounding counselor-composed while she gathers crying kids and tells them to come inside. Emerald takes Julian by the hand and leads him away like a child.
“I didn’t—it was an accident,” Charlie stammers. “I was just trying to—” He scrambles away, rubs his shaking, bloody hands in the grass, and falls back against the fence. “He was gonna take Julian. He was gonna kill you.”
“I know.”
“I stopped him.”
“I know.”
I’M NOT SURE how Emerald found me way the hell out here. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. Just took off and didn’t stop till I reached the lake and couldn’t walk any farther. She takes a seat on the wet grass beside me, and for a few minutes we watch the blue-green water without talking.
She breaks the silence. “I remember coming here when we were kids. Wasn’t there a rope tied around that branch?” She points over my head to a tree with limbs that extend over the lake.
“A hose,” I answer. “They took it down after someone drowned.” I made that up—I actually have no idea why the Tarzan-swing garden hose is gone. Now she’s looking bleakly out at the water like she can see someone’s ghost. That feels appropriate.
“Are you okay?” It’s only been a week since I sat in the backyard with Charlie and watched Russell die. I looked him in the eye, while Charlie looked at the sky, then something happened that I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain later if I tried. Russell’s eyes were so full of hate. So full, then just empty, just glass, just nothing.
After everything that’d happened, I expected Julian to get even worse. Instead, he seems stronger, actually speaking at a normal volume now. It’s almost like he was afraid to talk before, afraid Russell could hear him no matter where he was.
I remember when Julian was a little kid, he was so stubborn, but maybe that’s a good thing to be—a force of will that doesn’t die no matter how many horrible things happen to you. But me, I just have this one thing, this one bad night, and I’m—“I’m fine.”
“What did I do?” Emerald shouts, startling me and the ducks swimming just a few feet away.
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Then why won’t you talk to me?”
Because I’m an idiot—like as stupid as Brett was, if he’d actually existed. Because I blamed her for what happened to Julian even though it’s really on me.
“Do you know how scared I was?” She’s crying, her face all blotched like she rolled around in poison ivy. “I thought he was going to kill you. And when you were okay, I never felt so grateful in my life. I didn’t want to take anything for granted anymore. I thought you’d feel the same way, but you didn’t. I love you, and you won’t even talk to me. I told you.” She sobs. “I told you I would break.”
It’s like we’re back inside the center of the labyrinth and I’m struck with so much regret and so much love, it’s worse than a heart attack. “I’m sorry, Emerald. I can’t. I’m not helping anyone right now.”