Page 23 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. There was something in Ben’s manner that felt skittish. Edgy, even. Like his skin was crawling.

Again, I looked to the corner of the hallway, where I’d seen him coming from when I opened the door. It occurred to me suddenly that he might have been in Johnny’s room.

“I gotta go,” Ben said, suddenly. “But my mom told me to remind you that you can call if you need anything.”

I nodded, a little stiffly. “All right. Thanks.”

He didn’t bother forcing another smile before he let go of Smoke and turned toward the door. Just before he opened it, he glanced down the hall, toward Johnny’s bedroom. For a moment I could have sworn the expression on his face shifted, revealing a flash of something unreadable in his eyes. But when he stepped out onto the porch, giving me a final wave, the apathetic teenage boy was back.

I crossed the kitchen and peered into the basket he’d left. A crisp floral tea towel was nestled around a jar of honey, a few golden-topped muffins, and a small bag of coffee beans. I lifted the jar, turning ittoward the light coming through the window. A perfect comb of honey was suspended inside.

The urge to glance at the hallway again made me turn my head, and I set down the jar, walking toward it. Johnny’s door was still closed as I passed it, but I stopped in front of the desk, eyeing the stacks of papers and notebooks. I had tidied what I could, making piles to go through by level of urgency. And everything appeared to be in place, but something still didn’t feel right.

I turned to the open bathroom door next, relaxing a little when I spotted the gleam of water drops on the edge of the sink. Maybe he’d used the bathroom. Or maybe he’d just been looking for me, ducking his head into the other rooms since the front door had been left open.

I let myself sink down into the desk chair, eyes dropping to the camera bag on the floor. It was still zipped closed, but it wasn’t perfectly squared with the legs of the desk. Had it been before? I wasn’t sure.

I reached down and unzipped it, taking a quick look at the bag’s contents. Everything was in order, right where Johnny left it.

A pitiful laugh escaped me as I put my face into my hands and rubbed at my temples. On top of everything else, I was getting paranoid.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I let myself draw in another breath before I pulled it out. This time, Micah’s name was on the screen.

Address is 8 Overlook. 6pm okay? You’ll have to drive the 4Runner. That car won’t make it up the ridge.

I exhaled, emotion welling in my throat.

I wanted to pretend that there was a universe where I wasn’t so relieved he replied that I could cry. And he probably knew it. He’d probably been waiting for me to text, knowing it was just a matter of time before I crossed the line I’d drawn.

That was one of the reasons I’d dreaded seeing him. Because whenI did, he knew exactly how to get his fingers beneath my scales and peel them back. But if he did that this time, I didn’t know what he would find.

My thumbs hovered over the screen. When I texted Micah, I’d imagined making plans to meet him at the diner or even The Penny. I hadn’t expected him to invite me over, and the idea of going to his house made me feel jittery.

I hesitated before I typed a reply and hit send.

Sounds good.

I waited to see if the trio of bubbles would appear, indicating that he was sending another message, but there was nothing. I imagined him standing there, staring at his phone exactly the way I was now, debating whether to say anything else. Whether another message would make me change my mind. But Micah wasn’t just good at wearing me down. He also knew exactly how to not scare me away.

Eight

I stared at myself in the little bathroom mirror, reaching up to give my cheeks a gentle pinch. The cold had all but drained the warmth from my skin, but there was also something about the light in Six Rivers that seemed to suck the color out of things.

I loosely ran my fingers through the length of my hair, giving my reflection one more glance. I hated that I was nervous. That I’d even felt the need to look in the mirror in the first place.

I’d stopped by the diner that afternoon to look up the directions to the address Micah sent and jotted them down before I left, not willing to risk losing the GPS mid-drive. It was less than four miles from town, but on these twisting, steep roads it was more than a fifteen-minute drive. I’d stared at that little red pin on the screen, thinking about the fact that I was about to drive to Micah’s house. The place helived.I couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that this spot on the map, righthere,was where he’d been all this time.

For so long, it seemed impossible to imagine that he, Johnny, or I could exist anywhere without one another. Like removing one of us from a specific time and space made the others vanish, somehow. Butin the years since I last saw Micah, he had, in fact, gone on living. We both had.

I stood in Johnny’s driveway with his keys clutched in my hand for several minutes, staring at the 4Runner.

The old truck had a story, just like we did. It had belonged to the foreman at the logging outfit before Dad bought it, and when he left for Oregon, he gave Johnny a ten-minute driving lesson before he handed him the keys. Only a year later, I’d be sitting in the cab surrounded by shattered glass, blood pooling on the carpet and the flash of police lights reflecting on the wet street.

Within the decades of memories I had of this place, the 4Runner felt like a time capsule that concealed the life I’d lived in Six Rivers. Like it had been sitting here waiting to be opened at this moment. Byme.

I went over it again in my mind. The cabin, the darkroom, the diner—there was a pattern taking shape. It seemed like every time I fit myself into the spaces Johnny had been, I was plugging into an outlet. Like I was suddenly reanimated into a scene of his life. That made this feel like an experiment.

When I finally got up the nerve to open the door, it popped with a familiar sound that loosed a shaking breath from my lips. Smoke jumped in and I reached up for the handle, lifting myself onto the step below the driver’s side door. I lowered myself in, and the soft, ripped beige seat gave beneath my weight. When I looked up, my line of sight just barely made it over the steering wheel.