“It is still plenty cool.” All I can see is the outline of her tiny figure and her curls. “The houses where I grew up look nothing like this, trust me.”
She moves to the empty side of the bed, kicks off her shoes, and gets in under the covers without asking. A week ago, my heart would’ve been racing from her being so close to me, lying in bed with me like Iris and I did. But it’s not the same as Iris and me. What Emil and I have—had?—is closer to what I had with Iris. When I think about being with Rafaela, I’ve never thought of anything deeper than how we would connect physically. I need more than that, I think—someone I can trust.
She shivers and moves closer. “I’m freezing.”
I lie down again because it is cold, too cold to not have the blankets wrapped around me. But I look at her and say, “You should probably go back downstairs.”
I can’t see her face but I can feel her smiling when she says, “Would your parents freak out if they walked in right now?”
I’m not thinking about my parents, though. I’m thinking about Lionel’s accusation, that I’d be with Rafaela if I could get away with it. I’m thinking about Emil, and what he would think if he saw us in my bed.
“I just really don’t need anything else to go wrong right now, okay?”
“I don’t like being in the guest room alone. It’s too quiet. And I’m scared.” She pauses. “What if we don’t find him?”
“Don’t say that.”
“He didn’t seem sick to me. If he had…”
“That’s the thing. By the time we notice, he’s usually already in the middle of an episode.”
“He told me himself about the meds.… He told me everything, the day after you did. I didn’t say I already knew. And he said he doesn’t become totally manic.”
“But it’s still hypomania, and with him… he can get overly angry about things. And sometimes that’s followed by really bad depression. We don’t really know his patterns because he started taking meds as soon as he was diagnosed.”
She sighs. “I hated being told what to do with my body and I thought it was the same with him and his meds. Like he should have the choice, you know? But I guess it’s not the same.”
“No, it’s not. Not really.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “If I made things worse for him.”
“Lionel was going to do what he wanted no matter who was around.” I don’t say that maybe we wouldn’t be lying here worrying about him if she’d used her powers for good and convinced him to get back on track with his treatment. Because that’s not something she would have had to think about at all if I’d gone to Mom and Saul from the start. “He doesn’t let himself get close to a lot of people. There was a girl before you—”
“Grayson?”
“Yeah,” I say, surprised that they’ve talked about her. “And he liked her a lot… but not as much as you.”
“Really?” Even through the exhaustion and concern, happiness comes through in her voice.
“Really.”
“Emil is one of the good ones, too,” she says after a pause.
“The best,” I say without having to think about it.
She reaches out to touch me, but I lean away from her until she gets the hint and slowly slides her hand back to her side of the bed. I don’t know what she was going to do—touch my hair, touch me, try to kiss me. I don’t know if it was an innocent gesture or if she was testing my loyalty to Emil.
I don’t want to know.
She gets up and smooths the covers back over that side of the bed and pads down the stairs to the guest room without another word.
I don’t sleep. I just lie there, waiting for the sun to come up.
Waiting for my brother.
twenty-three.
I must have dozed off for a bit because the next thing I know, my room is bathed in sunlight.
I rub my eyes and look at my phone, charging on the nightstand next to me. Ringer turned all the way up. Nothing from Lionel, but there are a couple of texts from our friends, saying they’ll let me know if they hear anything. It’s eight o’clock; he’s been missing for almost twelve hours now.
I don’t have the energy to shower, but I change my clothes and brush my teeth before I go downstairs. The kitchen is a disaster, but there’s fresh coffee and food everywhere. Most of it looks like it’s hardly been touched. I have no appetite, so I pour a cup of coffee and head into the living room.
Mom, Saul, Emil, and Rafaela are all there, joined by Emil’s parents. Catherine immediately folds me into a hug, murmuring comfort in my ear. Emil’s dad passes us on the way to get more coffee and squeezes my arm, giving me a kind smile.
“No news?” I say to the room, even though it’s a stupid thing to say because I would know if there were news.
“None,” Saul responds. He doesn’t look in my direction, but at least he’s still talking to me. Kind of.
“We’re going to organize a search party for the afternoon,” Mom says. “Emil told us you went to some of his favorite places, but it won’t hurt to check again. And we should definitely look at as many parks and hiking trails as we can during the day—it’d be easy enough to hide out there at night.”
A search party. For my brother. This isn’t the first time I’ve wished I could turn back time and have a do-over, but it is the one I’ve most earnestly hoped for. My brother being gone is the biggest problem I’ve never been able to fix.
“Wait a minute.” Emil’s back goes straight, and I notice he’s wearing different clothes. His parents must have brought them over, or maybe he went home and came back. Either way, I’m glad he’s still here. “Has anyone checked the tree house?”
No one says anything—we just all get up and start running, a flurry of hope headed toward the backyard. Emil reaches the tree first and climbs up in record time. The rest of us wait below, breathless, but it’s only a couple of seconds before he pops back out, shaking his head. “Empty.”
He doesn’t come down right away, and everyone goes back to the house, shoulders slumping. Hope gone.
I stay. And when Emil still doesn’t come down, I go up.
He’s sitting on the futon, his elbows on his knees, head resting in his hands. “I thought he could be up here, you know? That kind of shit that happens in the movies. People are always in the most obvious place you don’t think to look.”
“It was smart,” I say. “We have to try to think of everywhere. No one else thought of it, not even me.”
He doesn’t respond.
“And it could be worse. You could be me. I really fucked up.” The most obvious statement of the year, if not my lifetime.
I guess he’s back to ignoring me. And I deserve the silent treatment, for a number of reasons. But I’m so relieved when I hear his voice. “We’re sixteen. People expect us to fuck up.”
I sit down next to him, tentatively. “They don’t expect us to put someone’s life in danger.”
“You did what you thought was right. And yeah, it was fucked up, but I get it.”
I look at him. “You do?”
He sighs and meets my gaze. “I’m sorry I said all those things to you. That wasn’t cool. Especially…”
“You didn’t know what was going to happen, Emil.”
“It still wasn’t cool.”