“No.” Lucas came to her side and stood there quietly for a second, then said, “Who knows if it was anything anyway, I guess?”
Lucas stood very close to her now—so close that she could smell his sweat, see his pores, imagine what his skin would feel like.
Sam wouldn’t like any of this, wouldn’t like how much she liked it.
She didn’t care.
It wasn’t going to be like that.
She couldn’t let it be.
She read her brother’s bullets:
? MOTHER, JILLIAN, DEPRESSED.
? FATHER, PAUL, TRAVELS FOR WORK. MOSTLY TO SEATTLE. WORKS FOR A TECH COMPANY.
? SISTER, AVERY. ONE YEAR YOUNGER.
She didn’t like seeing her name, still there in Will’s notes after all this time, didn’t like that he’d kept caring long after she’d stopped.
“What was he like?” Lucas said. “Max. Do you even remember?”
Avery turned to him. “Yes and no. I just remember everything being happier, you know? Everybody just . . . normal?”
He nodded. “We used to all be friends?”
“Me and Max and you and Ryan, yeah.”
She remembered a fort they’d built out of sheets. Flashlights under there on a rainy day, shadow animals.
“What about Scarlett?” he asked. “Were we friends, too?”
Oh please no.
“. . . and the others?”
No no no.
Because why would he ask about Scarlett first? Why would he separate her from “the others”?
They’d been standing so close in that playground.
Hadn’t they?
Were they . . . involved?
She said, “We knew Scarlett. I remember being sad about her being gone, but I’m not sure about the others. Why?”
Why else?
“Just wondering.” He looked away. “I remember certain things from before . . . like my dog and my brother . . . but I don’t remember any of the others in any specific way, really. You said Max and I were best friends?”
“Yeah. You were at our house a lot. I remember being annoyed about it. Because you were boys and you didn’t want me around.”
“What did we do? Me and Max?”
She felt like she was digging deep and hitting stone. Then felt a strange panic about how much she had forgotten, just in the course of a normal life. People who were gone only lived on in your memory if you had memories. Why hadn’t she held on tighter?
To Max.
To everything.
She said, “You made forts and tents. You played with LEGOs and action figures. All that stuff is still there if you can believe it. His room. My mother turned it into a shrine.”
“I don’t think they saved anything of mine.” He nodded up toward the house.
“Sorry,” she said. “Your father. I guess he wasn’t the most sentimental guy. Not in the traditional way.”
“Did you know him well?” he asked.
Did she? Not really. What had she been doing all this time?
“Only really through your brother. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Seeing all this research, and Opus 6. It’s better than old toys, right? And it shows that he . . .”
“Loved you,” she said, and her face pulsed hot.
He nodded and turned away from her and sifted through some clippings. She faced the whiteboards, overwhelmed with useless facts.
“Did you really mean what you said?” He had moved over to a small desk and was riffling through the papers there. “That you think we’re hiding something?”
Avery looked at him, felt him transforming before her eyes—from an alien fake person into a real-life boy. Someone not to fear or distrust. Someone, maybe, to . . . pity? Or love?
“I’m really sorry I said that,” she said, pretty sure that she meant it.
“Why the change of heart? Why trust me now?”
Why.
Why.
Why?
She wanted a good reason.
She said, “I guess if you really were hiding something, you’d come back with a better alibi—not this crazy story about not being able to remember anything.”
He nodded.
She nodded.
Some kind of agreement.
They both went back to looking around.
But she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t hold her tongue. Needed to know whether he was with Scarlett without actually asking . . .
She said, “It seems like Adam and Sarah are a couple. Which would be really weird, right?” Her face felt hot. “Like if they somehow remembered that?”
“Yes,” he said flatly. “That would be weird.”
And the way he said it, she just knew.
She’d had a calendar once—one she’d made by hand with a ruler and pen. It was a countdown to the approximate day she’d be able to go away to college. She wondered where it was now. Wondered whether anything—anyone—could get her to stay.
“My father is going to post a reward,” she said. “For information leading to finding Max.”
Lucas said, “That’s great.”
“He thinks it’s just going to bring the crazy people out, but I said he has to do it anyway.”