Page 88 of Breaking the Dark

“I’m just trying to get a handle on things, you know, the Belle situation.”

“Oh.” She nods. “Right.”

“Could I have a word with you, do you have a minute?”

“Yeah. I guess. I have a study period now, but the teacher never minds if I show up late.” She gestures at a glass door open to a small, manicured garden area, where a couple is making out in the shadows of a conifer. They move apart as Jessica and Lark enter, giggling together nervously.

Lark sits on a bench and starts picking at her fingernails.

“So,” says Jessica, “listen. I picked up on a strange vibe this morning, from your brother. Is everything okay there? I mean—is there anything you’d like to tell me? About Belle? About the summer?”

Lark’s eyes darken. “Not that I know of.”

“Not that you know of?”

“I mean, yeah. There were kind of…things.”

“Things. What kind of things?”

“I don’t know. It’s just like…” Her gaze goes to the glass doors and around the garden and she lowers her voice. “It feels like a blur now? All of it. The summer. I can’t really remember most of it. But it did feel like there was something wrong. You know?”

“Can you remember the first time you felt like something was wrong?”

“Not really. I mean, at first it was just so great, Belle was so fun, and Debra was so sweet, and it was just nice to have something to do, somewhere to go, and then one day, I guess about a week in, maybe more, this guy showed up.”

“Guy?”

“Yes, and he had this, like, RV? Like in Breaking Bad, and he pulled it up out front, and Debra definitely knew him, the dogs knew him too. And we went into this RV with Belle, and we were all playing with our phones and then—I can’t remember much after that. I just know that everything felt great. And that we had the best summer ever. And then we got back to New York, and everything still felt great, but slowly that feeling faded, and the other day I realized I felt normal again, and the weird thing was that I liked it. I liked feeling normal again.”

“But Fox…?”

She twitches slightly. “Yeah, Fox doesn’t like it. He’s kinda pissy about it. He wants to…”

Lark pauses, watches some kids moving past a window.

“He wants to what?”

“I don’t really know. I just think he’s…”

Jessica holds her breath, waiting for Lark to finish.

“He keeps making phone calls. I don’t know. I feel like…” She gazes up at Jessica with watery eyes. “I feel like I’m losing him.” A tear slides down the side of Lark’s nose and she wipes it away with the sleeve of her sweater.

Jessica touches Lark’s arm, gently. “Lark,” she says. “I can help get him back for you. But I need you to tell me everything you know.”

“But I don’t know anything. Fox won’t tell me what’s going on. He’s cutting me out. He keeps disappearing. He’s got this new friend….”

“Who?” asks Jessica. “Who is this new friend?”

“Some guy named Sly. We met him at boxing class a couple of weeks back. He literally came from nowhere and now he and Fox are, like, best friends or whatever. And last night, when we were meant to be home we went to Five Guys, and we met Sly there and I came home but Fox and Sly went off somewhere.”

Jessica’s nerves jangle like a bag of dropped dimes. “Somewhere?”

“Yeah. I don’t know where. I just came home. But they said they were meeting someone? I don’t know.”

“Where is he now?” she asks. “Where’s Fox?”

“He’s in class, I guess.”

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