Tabitha spoke but barely moved her lips. “I don’t know.”
The nature of their relationship—if he was even allowed to call it that—had always seemed strange to Jared. They spent a lot of time together but only in the most narrow, limited way. Tabitha’s father insisted she come home right after school every day, which meant they rushed out of the building carrying their books. Only a couple of times—including today—had Tabitha defied her father and done something else. Mostly the two of them ate lunch together and talked all through study hall in the cafeteria, to the point that Jared’s best friends—Mike and Syd—had taken to shaking their heads at him for being so quickly and completely in love.
Tabitha texted him from time to time outside of school, but she never called, and the messages stopped in the early evening, long before either one of them would have been going to bed.
They crossed Washington Street, lights glowing in all the houses. Through some of the windows, Jared saw families sitting down to dinner together or watching TV, like some kind of sickeningly perfect Norman Rockwell scene. He’d never had that in his life, at least not in the ten years since his dad left. But how many kids did? Half of his friends’ parents were divorced, and he’d been in enough homes and around enough families to see the strain and tensions that simmered in even the most normal places.
A few blocks later, the houses started to change. He and his mom lived in what she called a “working-class neighborhood,” which as far as he could tell meant they were surrounded by store clerks and mechanics and men and women who worked in factories. They all took good care of their yards and kept a careful eye on their kids. Occasionally somebody threw a party, and there’d be loud music and whooping and hollering and beer cans in the yard the next morning. But the beer cans always got picked up, usually by the homeowners themselves, tired and looking hungover, sweating out their booze as they tossed the empties into an orange recycling bin.
The few blocks around Washington Street were nicer. The homes were older and bigger, made out of brick with wide front porches and bay windows. Those houses had beautifully cared for yards as well, but the people who lived there didn’t do the work. They paid someone else to cut and trim and weed and plant. Jared knew a few kids from school who lived there, the sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers and executives.
But across Washington, as they headed into Tabitha’s neighborhood, the houses looked different from the way they did anywhere else. They were small and dirty, the yards filled with toys and trash. The cars in the street were dented and damaged, leaking oil and hoisted on blocks. People sat on their porches a lot over there when the weather was nice, but Jared didn’t get the sense it was because they were looking out for anybody else. Those people gave off a boredom that bordered on desperation, a thick, palpable sense of being lost and adrift. He couldn’t imagine what else they did with their time, if anything.
And with a woman kidnapped in the town, they probably grew more scared, more withdrawn and suspicious.
Tabitha’s house was two blocks ahead on a little side street called Nutwood. He’d walked her home nearly every day for the past three weeks, but not once had he so much as set foot in her yard. At her insistence, they always said their good-byes at the corner, and while she’d once pointed her house out to him—four doors down on the left, a boxy little structure with a cramped porch and a loose shutter—he’d never come any closer than that. He should have known the cave comment would hurt her feelings. Even compared to the modest house he shared with his mom, Tabitha’s looked small and dingy. Was it simple embarrassment that kept her from letting him get any closer?
Once again, they stopped at the corner. Fewer cars went by, and the ones that did pass made their presence known through their apparent lack of mufflers. The houses on Nutwood looked darker too. Most of the shades and curtains were drawn, smothering any light that might have escaped.
“Oh, shit,” Tabitha said.
“What?”
She turned toward Jared, placing both of her hands on his chest and giving him a hard shove that sent him stumbling back on his heels. “Go,” she said, her voice cutting through the dark like a laser. “Just go.”
But Jared stepped forward again, closer to her. “What is it?”