On the way over, Adam had considered this. What he truly wanted was to be left to his own devices. Not by his actual father, who could no longer truly intrude on Adam’s life, but by the idea of his father, a more powerful thing in every way. He replied, “Every time I can’t tell where someone’s calling me from in a room and every time I smash my head into the side of the shower and every time I accidentally start to put my earbuds in both ears, I think about you. Do you think there can be a future when that’s not the only time I think about you?”
He could tell from their faces that the answer to this was not likely to be yes anytime soon, but that was all right. He hadn’t come with any expectations, so he was not disappointed.
“I reckon I don’t know,” his father replied finally. “You’ve grown up into someone I don’t like very much, and I’m not afraid to say it.”
“That’s fair,” Adam said. He didn’t much care for his father, either. Gansey would’ve said I appreciate your honesty, and Adam borrowed from that memory of polite power. “I appreciate your honesty.”
His father’s face indicated that Adam had just illustrated his point perfectly.
His mother spoke up. “I’d like you to call. I’d like to know what you’re doing.”
She lifted her head, and the light through the window made a perfect square of light on her glasses. And just like that, Adam’s thoughts flashed along time, his logic following the same channels his psychic sense used. He could see himself knocking, her standing on the other side of the door, not answering. He could see himself knocking, her standing around the back of the trailer, holding her breath until he was gone. He could even see himself calling, and the phone ringing as she held it in her hands. But he could also see her opening the college brochure. He could see her clipping his name out of a newspaper. Putting a photo of him in his smart jacket and nice trousers and easy smile on the fridge.
At some point she had released him, and she didn’t want him back. She just wanted to see what happened.
But that was all right, too. It was something. He could do that. In fact, that was probably all he could do.
He knocked on the cabinet beside him, once, thoughtful, and then he took out the BMW keys. “I’ll do that,” he said.
He waited just a moment longer, giving them the opportunity to fill the space, to exceed expectation.
They did not. Adam had set the bar at precisely the height they could jump and no higher.
“I’ll let myself out,” he said.
He did.
On the other side of Henrietta, Gansey and Blue and Henry were just climbing out of the Pig. Henry was last out, as he had been riding in the back, and he squeezed out from behind the passenger seat as if he were being calved. He shut the door and then frowned at it.
“You have to slam it,” Gansey said.
Henry shut it.
“Slam it,” Gansey repeated.
Henry slammed it.
“So violent,” he said.
They were here in this remote location because of Ronan. He had given them vague instructions that afternoon – apparently, they were on a scavenger hunt for Blue’s graduation gift. She’d been out of school for weeks, and Ronan had implied that a gift was waiting, but he’d refused to relinquish directions to it until Gansey and Henry had also graduated. You’re meant to use it together, he had said, ominously. They’d asked him to come – both to graduation, and on this scavenger hunt – but he replied merely that both locations were full of bad memories for him, and he’d see them on the other side.
So now they walked down a dirt drive towards a dense tree line that hid everything beyond it from their view. It was pleasantly warm. Insects made themselves cosy in the teens’ shirts and around their ankles. Gansey had the sense of doing this before, but he couldn’t tell if he had or not. He knew now that the feeling of time-slipping that he’d lived with for so long was not a product of his first death, but rather his second. A by-product of the bits and bobs Cabeswater had assembled to give him life again. Humans were not meant to experience all times at once, but Gansey had to do it anyway.
Blue reached over to take his hand as they walked, and they swung this knot of their fingers between them merrily. They were free, free, free. School was over and summer stretched before them. Gansey had bid for a gap year and won; Henry had already planned on one. It was all convenient, as Blue had spent months planning how to cheaply hike across the country post-graduation, destination: life. It was better with company. It was better with three. Three, Persephone had always said, was the strongest number.
Now they broached the tree line and found themselves in a massive overgrown field of the sort that was not uncommon in this part of Virginia. The furry lamb’s ears was getting tall already among the grass; the thistles were still short and sneaky.
“Oh, Ronan,” Gansey said, although Ronan was not there to hear it, because he had just realized where Ronan’s directions had taken them.
The field was filled with cars. They were all mostly identical. They were all mostly a little strange in one way or another. They were all mostly white Mitsubishis. The grass growing up around them and the pollen clouding their windshields made the scene rather apocalyptic.
“I don’t want any of these for our great American road trip,” Henry said with distaste. “I don’t care if it’s free and I don’t care if it’s magical.”