Page 17 of Where the Darkness Goes

I mean, she always looks pretty, but this is different. And it seems everyone here knows it, too. Before she makes it to us, Brendan steps into her path, holding his hands up. He’s practically leering at her.Jesus. Wipe your drool, bro.

She looks up at him, and everything in me holds a breath as I wait to see how she’ll react. But how else did I expect her to react other than…Oh god. She’s laughing.

She’s laughing at stupid Brendan and his stupid, fucking joke. I hate him. Why did I invite him anyway with his stupid hair and his stupid rich parents and his stupid jokes?

He’s not even that funny. I’ve heard his jokes.

Plenty.

Oh my god, I sound like my sister.

“Dude, what is wrong with you?” Will’s back. Or maybe he never left. Honestly, I have no idea because I feel like I’m on another planet right now watching this all play out on a TV show calledMy Worst Fucking Nightmarestarring me and Tessa Becker and my douchebag ex-friend, Brendan Taylor.

“What the hell does he think he’s doing?” I ask with a wave toward the absolute car crash happening in front of me.

“Who? Brendan?” Will, on the other hand, is completely unfazed. Cool as a cucumber, apparently. La-dee-fucking-da. “Talking to my sister, I guess. Why do you look like you haven’t shit in a week? He’s a good dude.”

“You’re okay with him talking to her?” The floor beneath my feet is gone, and I’m falling. Dropping. Plummeting. “Seriously?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Tessa’s only a year younger than us, so it’s not weird. I date girls in her grade all the time. I mean, obviously, if he breaks her heart, I’ll pummel him, but I’m not about to be one of those obsessive big brothers who tries to control who she dates.” He wraps an arm around Cassidy Cole, stopping her dead in her tracks. She looks shocked to see him at first, then registers who he is and relaxes. “Besides,” Will adds, “I’ve got my hands full.”

I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my hearing because there’s this ringing in my ears I can’t seem to dull, and the entire room is spinning. But nope, it’s not, because Emily Gray just wrapped her hands around my waist and I’m here, on planet Earth, but also not planet Earth. Just hell.

As in, what thehellis wrong with me?

“You look like you saw a ghost, birthday boy,” she says, planting a kiss on my cheek. I’m not looking at her, though—at the girl I was into not that long ago—I’m looking at Tessa.

And for the first time in my life, she’s not looking back at me.

CHAPTER NINE

TESSA — PRESENT DAY

Sunset Cemetery is one of five cemeteries in our town, but easily the largest. It’s also located next to the town park. As a kid, I was both terrified and fascinated by its proximity. Childhood in this town isn’t complete without at least a single time of you sneaking away from the playground, racing across the paved drive of the cemetery, and daring to touch a headstone without getting attacked by zombies or ghosts, all while your friends watch and cheer you on, fists clenched with hope you make it back alive. More importantly, that you don’t get caught by a parent. Any parent.

This is still one of those towns I hear people wistfully lamenting aboutnowadays. The ones that are truly a village. The ones where, if any adult sees any child doing something wrong, they won’t hesitate to get on to them as if they were their own child. And chances are, before you make it back home, they’ll have already called your parents, so you’ll be hearing it from them, too.

Most of us got caught by someone’s parent while sneaking into the cemetery at least once, but a few legends made it without anyone noticing.

I even heard a rumor that one kid spent the entire night in the cemetery, but I have yet to be convinced he didn’t start that one himself.

As we got older and had less parental supervision and even less interest in the playground if it didn’t involve writing our initials on the plastic equipment, kids moved from the playground to the cemetery to seem edgy, getting drunk or making out—usually both—against a gravestone.

Most of us didn’t know anyone who was buried here. For the rare few of us who knew someone who had died, it was usually a grandparent or a much-older family member, and their deaths at that age felt less impactful. Will and I were one of the rare exceptions, with our dad’s passing, but he was cremated, so still, whether or not we were being respectful of the graves wasn’t something any of us concerned ourselves with.

They were just stones. Meaningless names. Until they weren’t.

When people started dying, when we started putting people we knew in the ground here, everything started to feel different. It didn’t change anything. People still came here to get drunk and fool around, but suddenly it wasn’t without a stop by a gravestone of the girl you used to sit by in chemistry or without putting a flower next to the grave of the kid you once considered a best friend.

Driving around the cemetery isn’t without its pangs of nostalgia, but mostly, this place just feels sad now.

“We may have to park at the playground and walk,” Garrett says, jutting his head in the direction of the ball court where my brother and his friends once spent so much time. It’s clearly been fixed up now, with a new goal and painted concrete.

“That’s fine.” I don’t love the idea of walking across so much wet ground, but it doesn’t seem like we’ll have a choice. There is no parking lot here. You either have to park at the playgroundand walk over or park on the road that encircles the cemetery. We’re on our second lap around when Garrett notices a spot.

It’s a tight squeeze, but we make it.

I glance down at my hands in my lap, then look up at the sight in front of me.

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