The Leaving (12 page)

She said, “They’re not telling me what I said yet. They want to preserve the integrity of what I recall when I’m under for at least a few sessions.”

Lucas looked at Scarlett, who was staring at the ground.

Were
they hiding something from him?

“I won’t hold my breath,” he said.

“It’s worked for people before,” Kristen snapped. “There were a bunch of kids who were kidnapped on a school bus in California years ago. They managed to escape, and the bus driver remembered a license plate under hypnosis and they caught the kidnappers, so . . .”

“I have to go.” Sarah started to walk away.

“But you just got here!” Lucas protested.

She turned. “I snuck out. I don’t want to get caught. I shouldn’t have come.”

“Don’t you want to find who did this?” Lucas ignited again, but this time low heat. He said, “We all need to work together,” but wasn’t honestly convinced Sarah would be any help at all.

“I don’t know what I want.” Sarah starting walking in circles like the night before, and now talking in circles, too. “I want to go back. I want to move on. I want to know why it was us and not some other kids, and I don’t want to know anything at all!”

So many questions.

So many ways in.

Why us?

Why then?

Why now?

Why here and not any other town?

“At least give me your phone number,” Scarlett said, “in case anything urgent comes up.” She and Sarah exchanged information via text and Sarah walked out of the playground. They watched her go until they couldn’t anymore, then listened until distance silenced the slip-slap of her sandals.

“Let’s
all
exchange numbers,” Lucas said. “So we can be in better touch.”

And as they did that, headlights fell on them.

A local news van pulling up right at the gate to the playground.

“How did they find us?” Lucas said as he finished typing the word—“Scar”—into his phone.

“That’s my cue to go home.” Kristen stopped her swing and stood. “We don’t know anything more than we did yesterday anyway.”

Lucas actually wanted her to leave. She put him on edge in a way he couldn’t explain.

If he were alone with Scarlett, he thought he might tell her about the gun—the tattoo.

“Maybe Sarah and Adam have the right idea,” he said. A news crew of two were now standing by a curly slide.

A woman called out, “We just want to talk.”

What else would they want? “What do you mean?” Scarlett asked Lucas.

Lucas had the urge to take a photo of her, framed as she was by the chains of the swing, her face lit softly from the van’s headlights. “I’ve been avoiding them,” he said. “But why? We don’t have anything to hide.”

Nothing that anyone needed to know about, anyway.

“I just mean maybe they can help,” he said.

“How?” Scarlett asked.

“Follow my lead.” He walked toward the slide, stopped, and said, “Whenever you’re ready.” The cameraman hoisted his machine.

The reporter held out a microphone.

Lights burned on.

Lucas could almost see into the camera—lens after lens in there reflecting and capturing.

“Why are you all meeting in secret?” the reporter asked.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a
secret
.” Lucas stood up straighter, pushed his hair out of his eyes. “We’re in a public place. We arranged to meet when we were dropped off here because we had no idea what was going on. We wanted to check in on each other. To make sure we were all okay.”

“Who remembers the carousel that Avery Godard is talking about? Why aren’t Sarah and Adam here? Has there been a falling-out?”

“I’m the one who remembers the carousel,” Lucas said. The light was near blinding.

“And I remember riding a horse in a meadow,” Kristen said.

When the microphone was presented to Scarlett, she said, “I remember riding in a hot air balloon.”

“So
maybe
,” Lucas said, “the person who owns the horse or the hot air balloon or runs the carousel will remember us?”

“What about Adam and Sarah?” the reporter pressed. “Do they have memories, too?”

Lucas said, “They’ve shown that they’re quite capable of speaking for themselves. Anyway, there hasn’t been a falling-out. We’ve all just had a lot to deal with, obviously. That’s all we remember. We really hope they’re able to find out what happened to Max.”

Would Avery see this report? He hoped so.

Hoped that maybe she’d believe him now.

He turned to look at Scarlett and Kristen, then back to the camera and said, “That’s all we have to say right now. Thanks for your time.”

The reporter smiled with large white teeth—“Awesome”—took out her phone, and started to walk away. “I’ve got the new lead on The Leaving,” she said. “We’re heading in.” Then the cameraman opened the van’s back door, put the camera in, and closed it. They both got in—their door slams loud like gunshots. Lucas realized he didn’t even know what station they represented, but it was already too late; they were gone.

“And now we wait,” Lucas said.

“I can drive you home if you want,” Scarlett said to both of them. In her car, stopped at a light beside an RV camping site, Lucas thought about getting out. Grabbing her hand and just abandoning the car right there. They’d hop in an RV and just drive and drive until they found a place where no one knew them.

But then . . .

Max.

Avery.

Wherever he went, this need to know what had happened would dog him. It had its teeth sunk into his flesh now and would need to be dealt with . . . extracted . . . properly.

The light changed and Lucas said, “It’s up here on the right.”

Opus 6 appeared like a jack-o’-lantern, sections of it glowing golden with solar-powered lights. It seemed to have eyes, and a mouth out of which a winding tongue of lava pulsed weakly down toward where the car pulled up.

“What on earth—” Kristen said.

“This is Opus 6?” Scarlett asked.

Of course.

They hadn’t ever been there.

Scarlett got out of the car at the base of the driveway and left it running, her door open. She took large, confident strides up the main path, casting her own shadows on the glow, and in a minute she was standing at the top plateau—where the final stone was supposed to go. She spun around, taking a full rotation, making Lucas think of sacrificial virgins on altars and ceremonial dances. She said, “This is amazing,” like a prayer. “I saw it mentioned in some old clippings I looked through . . . but wasn’t really sure what it was.”

Kristen wasn’t even interested enough to get out of the car. She’d lit a cigarette that glowed the same color as the solar lights.

She was far enough away not to hear.

The wind blew Scarlett’s hair into her face and she pushed it away.

Lucas said, “Do you have the feeling that you and I were . . . together?”

He had no better way to phrase it.

Then, for a long moment, he stared at her, waiting.

CAROUSEL FIRE

CLICK HISS

She said, “I think so, yes.”

AVERY

There would be no break in spring break—no sleeping in, no time-wasting.

She had set an alarm and was waiting for her dad when he came down into the kitchen. She’d heard him on the stairs and had abandoned the maze on the back of the cereal box to pour coffee for him. Black, two sugars.

“You’re up early,” he said when he entered the room, a tie draped around his neck.

“We need to offer a reward for information leading to Max being found.” She delivered his mug to him. “A big one.”

“I’m not really sure—”

“Dad.” She perched on a stool by the center island. “It looks bad, you not really doing anything. There is someone out there who did this and who maybe has Max, and right now they think they are going to get away with it. But someone out there
knows
something—they have to—and money talks. I mean, if the note’s real, and he’s really out there? We have to act. Now.”

Her dad took a long sip of coffee, then put the mug down and adjusted his watch. “How much are we talking?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Ten grand? Twenty? Twenty-five?”

“That’s a
lot
, Avery.”

“You can’t put a price tag on Max, can you?”

“That’s not fair.” Another sip and a minute of silence. “And the note probably isn’t real. You get that, right?”

She nodded. “Still.”

“I’ll think about it.” He put the mug down but didn’t let go of it.

She said, “While you’re thinking, time is being wasted.”

“If I do this, you need to not go on the news again.”

“Deal.” This was almost too easy.

“It is weird, though, isn’t it?” he said.

“What’s weird?”

“The carousel, the hot air balloon, horseback riding.” He let go of his coffee to sort through a stack of mail.

“Hot air balloon?”

“It’s on this morning’s news.” He opened a bill. “They each have one unique memory.”

“I hadn’t seen.” She turned the TV on. They were doing the weather, but it would cycle back soon; if not, she could look for the story on her phone. “So you’ll do it?”

He tossed the bill back onto the pile. “I’ll do it. I just need to, you know, figure out how one even goes about doing that, talk to my lawyer, speak with the police, the FBI. And you realize it’s going to bring out some crazy people.”

She went and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Dad. You’ll see. It’s the right thing to do. The right message to send.”

He went to finish getting ready for work, and she just sat at the kitchen island and waited for the segment to air again, which it did. She watched as Lucas and Scarlett and Kristen stood together in a
playground—looked like the one over by the Publix—and stated their memories one by one.

Sam would have more theories, for sure, but Avery could now think of nothing other than Scarlett. She remembered looking up to her as a kid, remembered chasing her around the playground, playing games about fairies, and hunting for treasure.

Now she was back, alive, gorgeous, and she was standing next to Lucas. She was standing so
very close
to Lucas that it annoyed Avery, and then she was annoyed that it annoyed her. She needed to find Max—or his body,
Sam!
—and move on. She did not need to be daydreaming about Lucas or any of them. She did not need to be replaying her conversation with him at Opus 6, rewriting it so that it ended with her in his arms. So that it ended with an embrace, a kiss.

This was why she’d distanced herself from Ryan in the first place. So that she could go forward, pass Go. Lucas would be a backward move.

She could not stop thinking about him.

Finally, she heard the sound of the garage door opening, and the car pulling out, and the door closing, and the car going away down the street. The coast clear, she went into the garage and rooted around for the bolt cutters. Her dad had bought them during a brief period a few years back when her mom had taken up biking around the neighborhood. Mom kept forgetting the combination for her lock, so she kept calling, needing to be picked up at random places. Or she’d end up walking home, then sending Dad out to retrieve the bike.

Thank god that was all over with.

The bike was collecting dust and spiderwebs over by the subzero freezer.

Cutters in hand, Avery headed out on foot, taking a back way through the Youngs’ yard—so as to avoid walking past the strip-mall
security cameras with the clippers in hand—and down the bike path that ran along the bay.

She slowed and watched a guy who was paddleboarding by. His dog was on the board with him—a tiny burst of gray-and-white fluff, just sitting by the guy’s feet as he paddled past.

People could really be ridiculous.

She didn’t feel like talking to Ryan.

She didn’t feel like asking for permission.

If she had, she wouldn’t have bothered bringing the cutters.

She needed to get into the RV, didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it yesterday. So when she finally got to the back end of Opus 6, she bypassed the house and approached it. Would the old video-game console she and Ryan had hooked up out there when they were like ten (her) and thirteen (him) still be there? Would their secret candy-bar stash in the oven have been eaten by mice? Would she hear the echoes of their younger selves talking, all those years ago, about their messed-up parents and how it was okay because in a few years, they’d be able to leave town?

The lock was open, just dangling there as her foot crunched a branch.

“Who’s there?” came a voice. “Ryan?”

The door creaked open and Lucas popped his head out. “No.”

No
.

No
.

No
.

“I came to apologize,” she said. Would he see it in her eyes? That she’d had . . . thoughts . . . about him?

He scratched his neck.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned the carousel.” Saying it made it feel true.

“Come in.” He swatted the air. “It’s too buggy out here.”

Climbing up the entry steps, she followed him in, ducking around cobwebs lit white by sun rays peeking from behind curtains. The walls were just as she remembered them—covered with corkboards layered thick with newspaper clippings and police reports, and whiteboards covered in wild writing.