Page 14 of Ticket to You

“I’ve been on the press tour for the documentary, so you’ll be lucky to find anything.”

Eloise comes back from the kitchen with two cups and a bottle of kombucha that’s been sitting in the back of my fridge for months. “This feels a little stereotypical for anOutdoorsyjournalist—or, soon-to-be-exOutdoorsyjournalist, but it’ll have to do.” She pours us each a small glass and holds hers up in the air. “To new adventures?”

I snort and click my drink against hers.

“What?” Eloise chuckles. “It was that or ‘to the great unknown.’ All toasts are cliché.”

She swings her cup back and coughs, sputtering with her tongue out. “Ugh, how can you drink this stuff? It tastes like a mouthful of mold.”

My phone rings with another call from the same unknown number, and again I silence it.

“So, have you told Mom and Dad yet?” Eloise asks, tapping her fingers on her glass nervously.

“Not yet. You’re the first to know.”

Eloise grimaces. “That’ll be a fun conversation.”

A humorless laugh rumbles out of my throat. “Of course. They already thought I was throwing my future away by not going to med school. And that was when I still had a dependable job lined up with insurance benefits and a 401(k) match. I can already imagine the lecture I’ll get when they learn I’m risking everything.”

Eloise opens her mouth, probably to sprinkle me with encouragement, knowing her, but my intercom buzzes, cutting her off. She looks at me questioningly as I walk to the intercom. I shrug. I’m rarely home and even more rarely have visitors, aside from Eloise who has her own key.

I hit the button on the intercom. “Yeah?”

Silence.

Eloise’s lunch breaks are short, and I need every minute to get her help brainstorming ways to break the news to my parents. I press my thumb against the button again, harder this time. “Hello?”

“Just go peek out your window,” Eloise suggests, pouring the rest of her kombucha into my glass. “MaybeOutdoorsyhired a hitman to teach you a lesson for leaving them.”

“I would be honored,” I grumble, taking long strides to my street-facing bedroom window. As always, the window sticks a bit and groans loudly in protest when I force it open.

Outside, rain is falling steadily, but I stick my head out anyway, leaning out over the windowsill.

There, three floors below, Ophelia is standing with her arms folded. She looks up, startled by the sound of the window. Water runs down her long dark hair, and her makeup is smudged from the rain.

“Ophelia Brooks?” I call down.

“Adam Abrams?” she mimics in a sharp voice, wiping the rain from her eyes.

“What’s going on?”

“Can you let me in? I have something I need to talk to you about!”

“I don’t know, Brooks. I kind of like having the high ground.”

“It’s important,” Ophelia yells, her voice breaking at the end.

Something’s wrong.

“Third floor.” I duck my head back inside and run to buzz her in.

“Who was it?” Eloise asks as I comb my fingers through my hair.

“It’s no one.”

Eloise coughs to cover up a laugh. “‘No one’ sure has you on edge. And fair warning, your shirt has a stain. Not sure if that’s something you’ll want ‘no one’ to see.”

Sure enough, there’s a dark splotch of something on the bottom of my shirt. I rip it off and hurry to my bedroom, pulling out the first shirt in my drawer, a heather gray one plastered withOutdoorsy’slogo.

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