Page 33 of Together We Rot

“Weird but not homicidal, Vee.” Lucas drums his fingers against the wheel. “I guess your mom is magically in a cult too now. Wonder how she juggles the bake sale and dancing naked under the full moon.”

“Gross visual,” Veronica gags. She turns to me, and despite her boyfriend’s snark, her face is surprisingly sincere. “Did they say my mom was in on it too? I know she’s super into the church, but I never thought she’d murder someone.”

“Veronica, it’s not real,” Lucas gripes. He massages the bridge of his nose with one hand before Veronica swats at him to keep both hands on the wheel.

We take a turn and suddenly the town is alive with “Missing” posters. They’re everywhere. Stapled to telephone poles, taped to store windows, probably slid under every residential door. I’ve sprung up as the unofficial town mascot overnight.

“So... is that why we’re going to the library? Looking to see if Mr.Clarke checked out any books on Charles Manson lately?” Lucas asks.

“He hasn’t,” Kevin offers readily. “If anyone was wondering.”

“There, mystery solved.” Lucas claps, and he’s once again yelled at for not keeping his eyes on the road.

“No, asshole,” Wil bites. “We’re looking for something else. If this is such a joke to you, let us in and then wait out in the parking lot. No one wanted you here to begin with.”

He huffs. “No, I’m coming. I don’t entirely trust you to not ransack the library... and I’m here for Elwood.” His eyes lift to meet mine in the mirror, and I’m flung back to our first meeting, those pensive eyes landing on me for the first time.

“Did we both get dumped at the same time?” he’d asked, his back sliding against the cinder-block wall. He’d tried to smirk, but his expression wobbled. He blew at a wet clump of hair, his scalp sticky from a dumped milk carton. “What a day.”

I’d wanted to open my mouth and blurt out some rambling retort about Wil and me not being together, but my shattered heart made it too difficult to speak. My throat was lodged with the pieces of it.

He’d taken my tears as answer enough. “To think, it’s only lunchtime, huh?” His stomach had grumbled then, and the noise sent his head slamming back into the lockers. “Lesson learned: never date a girl who breaks up with you food fight–style.”

He was in luck. My stomach cramped so badly, I never thought I’d eat again. I rummaged for a brown paper bag from my backpack and gifted it to him.

Lucas had smiled weakly and looked at me—really looked—for the first time. “You’re Elwood, right?”

My attention drifts back to the world beyond the window. The wind has torn some posters free. They float in the air. Staring up from sewer grates, punctured through a tree branch, nestled way up high on someone’s roof.

Wil’s mom comes to mind instantly. In the early days when my father first printed them off, it was impossible to walk a step without being assaulted by her face. She littered the town with her black-and-white frown, not a scowl like Wil’ but something somber and distant.

“That woman was never happy, was she?” my mother asked at the dinner table after we’d put the first batch up. “Her mind was always on something else. Probably dreaming of her next grand escape.”

Those words carried with me as I stapled the next stack of flyers. I thought the wind had carried away all of my previous work, but I was wrong. It had been Wil. Every time she found her mother’s face, she crumpled the flyer into a ball. “Mom hated this picture.”

It felt like such a silly reason then, but I’m reminded of it now, seeing my face. Each photo of me is exactly the same. My hair is slicked back with gel, my smile is less of a smile and more like clenched teeth. Red ink stretches across my face, a single haunting word obscuring my features: Missing.

I always hated that photo.

Pine Point Public Library is tiny. A barren parking lot circles the perimeter, empty spaces one right after the other. At the front door, the glass is covered top to bottom with scribbled-in paper trees and rainbows. Something you’d find in a kindergarten class. Each one is colored outside of the lines. Another “Missing” poster of me is wedged between it all, held on with a heavy slab of gray tape.

I shiver, and it’s hard to tell whether it’s from the wave of heat or the absence of cold. The wintery world waits, caged behind the door. The storm howls for us. Around us, the room nuzzles in on itself. The shelves are crowded from wall to wall, and the books themselves look worn and tired.

“Well, we’re here.” Lucas shoves his hands in his pockets. “What now?”

“Now we grab the book we’ve been looking for,” Wil says, her hair flung wilder by the wind. “Lead the way, Elwood.”

She’s looking at me like I’m some sort of bloodhound. Her brows furrow the longer it takes for me to lower my nose to the floor and scout out a trail for us to follow.

Where was it that Dad always went? The specific memory is tricky to hunt. It burrows behind other imprints of this place, moments hell-bent on taking center stage in my mind. My father yanking a fantasy book from my hand and sliding it back onto the shelf, watching another kid check it out minutes later; eyeing the row of prehistoric computers along the wall and wondering what it might be like to log in without my father’s vigilant stare.

The day I almost, almost applied for college on the one farthest to the left. Beyond it all, the memory I’m looking for arrives at long last.

“Here,” I whisper, and I’m no longer toeing the edge but diving deep into the past. It leads me through the stacks and beyond the service counter, past carts and catalog cards and tacky posters adorning the walls. Beneath our feet, the carpet is a turf-grass green. “Dad always went in here.”

Unfortunately, the door reads Supply Closet in bold lettering. Those two words summon a massive blush.

“Isn’t this where they keep the janitor’s stuff? Did your dad have a side gig or something?” Lucas asks. “Well, Kev, what magical books do you keep in the custodial closet?”

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