Page 6 of New Year

“But it’s not over,” I say, my voice not betraying the tremble I feel all through me as I push his chest, pushing him away. “It will never be over. You’ll always be with Lindsey.”

He turns to lean on the side of the car, dropping his head back, his palms resting on the edge of the hood as he stares up into the dark sky that’s still spitting cold drops every now and then. “Until we know about Preston,” he says quietly. “It would break her heart to do it now. And you’d hate yourself, and I’d hate myself, and you’d hate me for making you hate yourself.”

Nothing I can say would make his words untrue. So I don’t say anything. I lean my head on his shoulder, and we sitlike that for a while, an incredible sadness descending, enough to fill the dark pit in front of us and seep into the night around us like fog.

“So that’s what you brought me up here to tell me,” I say at last.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I just had to see you. You’re—you’re the music for me. Don’t you get it?”

“Chase…” I say, my throat so tight I can hardly speak. “I really—”

“Don’t make it harder than it is,” he says, reaching back to grip my fingers in his.

I squeeze back, holding on tight, even though I know it will never be tight enough, that I can’t hold on anymore. I can’t wait forever. “Yeah,” I say at last. “I get it.”

three

Now Playing:

“Ticks & Leeches”—TOOL

Mom discovers an empty whiskey bottle in Lily’s backpack when she goes to get it ready for going back to school. It doesn’t take my sister long to confess that she got it in my room on New Year’s morning, and she thought it looked cool, so she was going to bring it to school to show her friends.

At least I’m not the only dumbass in the family.

I am, however, the one who gets grounded again. I’m so used to it I don’t even bother arguing. I’ve just accepted that I will never be able to leave the house until I’m eighteen and can get the hell out—for good. I’ll be sixteen soon, and then it’s just a few more years. I’m more annoyed that Mom takes my phone, but at least I can’t obsess about Lindsey not texting me back if I can’t look at my phone. Instead I trade in that worry for the super fun fear that she will text me back and then get mad at me for not answering.

I’m busy sulking in my room the next day after finishingTess of the D’Urbervilleswhen Mom sticks her head in. “Honey,” she says, her face all weird and serious in a way that makes my stomach drop out.

I sit up quickly, my heart lurching in my chest. “Is it Dad?” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

Luckily Mom is too distracted to want to sit down and talk about my lapse. Her lips tighten, and she shakes her head. “A couple kids have gone missing,” she says. “There’s a city-widesearch party. We’re going to go down and help out for a few hours. I thought I’d see if you wanted to come.”

“It’s pouring rain,” I say, pointing to the window. Because that’s the thing to focus on right now. Not the fact that my heart has stopped beating in my chest and a cold, clammy terror has gripped my entire body. Is that why Lindsey didn’t call me back? Did something happen to her?

“Meghan has an extra raincoat,” Mom says, holding out a light blue Patagonia.

“Who—who was it?” I ask, my voice a croak. It feels like a betrayal to wear blue when Lindsey didn’t allow it, like I’d be celebrating her being gone.

“A couple kids from Willow Heights,” Mom says. “Hurry and get dressed. Carl’s taking the van.”

“So children have to die before you’ll let me out of the house,” I mutter, climbing off the bed. “Good to know.”

Mom doesn’t dignify my petty comment with a response, just hands me the raincoat and goes off to get Lily. I grab a pair of jeans and layer on a hoodie before the raincoat, since it’s cold and miserable out. Apparently Arkansas makes up for its lack of snow with a shit-ton of gloomy, grey rain.

Twenty minutes later, we pull up to where the search party is gathering. Cars are parked on the dead grass on both sides of a winding, two-lane road on the north side of Faulkner.

“Let me drop you off up front, so you don’t have to walk a half a mile through the rain,” Uncle Carl says. “I’ll come back and park and then meet you there.”

He creeps along through the cars, since people are streaming down the road toward the meeting spot, heads down and shoulders hunched against the cold drizzle. Finally, he lumbers onto a one-lane wooden bridge where the pavement ends and a gravel road begins. Carl turns around in a mud-pit forming where everyone is doing the same thing he is,then lets us out back on the paved side. There must be a few hundred people gathered in the rain, their colorful raincoats bright against the grey backdrop. The murmur of voices is nearly drowned by the rain and the roar of the churning, muddy water rushing under the bridge. After the days of rain we’ve had, the water is high up the banks.

Mom hurries over to the crowd, wearing a full-body rain suit that makes me cringe with embarrassment and edge away from her. I’m about to lose myself in the crowd so I can enjoy the few hours of freedom, as shitty as that is under the circumstances. But just as I’m about to ditch them and try to find someone from school, she throws her arms around a tall man in a navy Patagonia.

My stomach lurches.

Has she been seeing someone?

What about Dad?

---