But I missed dreaming so, so, so much. I missed the way you could dream about something you’d seen on TV or overheard during that day, even if you barely remembered noticing it. Or the way dreams could be completely-utterly-totally random and have nothing to do with anything at all. Like this one time when I dreamed I was dragged onstage during a Wiggles concert, and it was so embarrassing because what was I even doing at a Wiggles concert in the first place?
And just like all those million fireflies that had been there that night at Devil’s Hole—appearing right before the flash of light, their sticky feet clinging to my skin and their wings tangling in my hair as they forced their way up my nose and invaded my ears and my mouth—that ache for Tyler crawled over me, making me itch and burn and want to scream for some sort of relief. Even seventeen days later, it was maddening. Exhausting. Every time the sun came up, I got this sharp ache in my gut like I was one day closer to something.
One day closer to missing him more maybe. Or to finding him possibly. Or to never seeing him again . . .
I didn’t know what it was, but it was like a knife twisting my insides each and every morning, and each morning it was worse. As if each passing day the knife turned a notch, tangling into my viscera, becoming so enmeshed it was almost a part of me, and if I couldn’t relieve it soon, it would eventually rip me apart.
All I could do was pray that finding Tyler would be the cure.
I was desperate to see him one more time. To touch him or taste the mint on his breath. Each night I prayed for sleep . . . just so maybe I could dream of him.
But even without the dreams, I still saw his face every time I closed my eyes, with every blink . . . blink . . . blink. It was like my own personal hell, torturing myself with what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. My dreams had been replaced by pacing and journaling and drawing, anything to find some way to extinguish my guilt.
I was haunted by what I’d done, and by all the unanswered questions: What really happened to Tyler the night he vanished? Where had he gone?
Had he even survived?
Except the thing was, if the NSA really did have Tyler, the way their email said that they did, then they’d had him for weeks, because Jett had given me the numbers—the Returned always came back within forty-eight hours.
Well, everyone but me, of course. I had to go and be all different.
March to the beat of your own drummer, my dad always said.
Simon reached over and gripped my knee. “I need you to do one thing for me.” He leaned closer so I could smell the peppermint on his breath. “I’ll do everything I can to help you with this, but I need you to keep quiet about it for now. At least until I can talk to Jett and Willow and figure this thing out.”
I nodded once, and he stood abruptly to go.
“Simon,” I said, stopping him. His hand was on the doorjamb as he raised a dark eyebrow and looked down at me. I suddenly wished I hadn’t been so hard on him all this time. “Thanks.” It didn’t seem like enough to say to someone who was about to risk so much for me and for Tyler, who he’d barely known at all, but it was all I had to offer him.
“If Tyler’s really there, we’re gonna find him, Kyra. I swear we’ll get him back.”
CHAPTER TWO
NATTY WAS THE EXACT POLAR OPPOSITE OF CAT, who used to swoop into a room and take up every spare iota of space with her energy until you sometimes felt it would suffocate you because there’d be no air left to breathe. Except, there always was, because Cat just had this way of making room for you.
Natty, on the other hand, moved like a shadow, to the point that you sometimes missed her if you weren’t paying attention. It probably should have freaked me out, the way she’d just out-of-the-blue clear her throat, letting you know she’d been there all along waiting for someone to notice her.
This time, Natty made a point of being noticed as she knocked at my door.
“Oh, hey,” I said, which had become kind of our standard greeting. Like, Hey, I almost didn’t see you. Or Hey, you’re just sitting there, watching me . . . that’s not weird or anything.
Except, the thing was, it kinda wasn’t, not with Natty. It was just her way. Her quiet, reserved Natty way.
“Hey. You left this.” She held out the journal I’d had with me in the old church-house dining hall when Jett busted in all bright-eyed, telling me I had to come with him when he’d first intercepted the NSA email about Tyler. Natty had been with me then, doing her Natty thing: making sure I actually ate something. She was like that, the mother hen type. She seemed to know what I needed, when I needed it. Ever since we’d arrived at Silent Creek, Natty had taken me under her wing. She understood me in ways no one else seemed to—knowing to stay quiet when I didn’t want to talk, or talking to fill the space when she somehow sensed the silence had grown unbearable.
We hadn’t known each other long, and we didn’t finish each other’s sentences or anything, but she didn’t have any expectations of me, and right now Natty was the closest thing I had to a friend.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the journal from her outstretched hands. I ran my finger along the already worn cover, where I’d written: “I’ll remember you always.” It was the same phrase Tyler had written in bold sidewalk chalk outside my house, right after I’d been returned, when he’d first told me he once had a crush on me.
While I hadn’t aged a day in the five years I’d been gone, Austin’s kid brother, Tyler, had grown up during that time, and while everything else in my life had changed beyond recognition, the change in Tyler had been . . . steadying. I’d finally seen him for who he was.
Now his words filled my head, reminding me I could never forget Tyler, not as long as I lived . . . even if I never laid eyes on him again.
Natty watched curiously. I’d never told her what it meant, the saying, or why I’d spent hour upon hour drawing the fireflies, although that part was no great mystery. I’m sure she knew their link to the abductions, the same as any of the Returned. The way they seemed to swarm right before the aliens came.