Page 24 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

Within seconds, I could hear it—the sound of the engine roaring to life before I even had the keys in the ignition. The sticking sound of the gear shift and the echo of music—what sounded like an indie folk jam. The click of a seatbelt.

The smell of exhaust drifted through the air, and I closed my eyes, trying to chase down the vision. Carefully, I tried to let it unfold, sinking into the seat until the sound of the guitar came more sharply into focus. Soon, I wasn’t in my own world anymore. I was in Johnny’s.

I didn’t know how, but it was working. It was even clearer this time, more distinct than the slivers of moments that had found me in the cabin and the darkroom. Almost as if Johnnywantedme to see this.

Where are we going?

My eyes popped open, the sound of a voice making me jump, and the keys slipped from my fingers. But the voice wasn’t Johnny’s. It wasn’t a man’s at all.

I sat up straight, eyes shooting to the passenger seat, but only Smoke was there. Slowly, the remnants of the moment were bleeding away. So quickly that I couldn’t grab hold of them. Within seconds, the emptiness of the space around me returned and it was just me sitting in the cold truck. Alone.

I swallowed hard, fist clenching tighter around the keys before I finally started the engine and turned on the heat. I had to consider the possibility that I was the one creating these visions, these moments. If I was, there were a number of explanations, grief being the most plausible. But I’d lived my whole life with a supernatural connection to my brother and there was a part of me that believed, or wanted to believe, that all of this was him. And if I was right, I didn’t know what that meant. Was I was simply crossing into currents of his energy or—I hesitated before I let myself think it—was he trying to tell me something?

I stared at the windshield, carefully letting the thought settle in my mind. The question had been like a slowly building fire inside of me. Johnny wasn’tgone.Of that, I was sure. But whether he was capable of communicating with me from the other side of whatever this was, I had no idea.

The truck took a while to warm up, but a few minutes later, I was putting the gear in reverse. My hands gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel, and before I let my foot off the brake, my eyes turned to the scar that wrapped around my forearm, down to my wrist. My own memory was hovering in the cab now. I’d been sitting in this same spot, my hands on the wheel, watching the shining red dripfrom my elbow. That was the first time I’d started to understand just how far I would go to protect Johnny. Just how fast I’d take the fall.

I leaned forward, reaching down to lift the floor cover beneath my feet. The bloodstain was still there.

Overlook Road climbed the ridge with sparse views of the twisting canyon below, and the farther from town I got, the more treacherous it became. I’d learned to drive on roads just like this one, which made the famed steep city hills of San Francisco easy to handle when many refused to drive them. You didn’t realize just how much this forest was trying to kill you until you got out. The skyscrapers and bridges I saw out my dorm window at Byron had felt safe compared to this wild, unruly place.

Smoke hung his head out of the passenger side window as I took the truck up the bumpy dirt track until the road came to a crude fork, and my headlights landed on a small wooden stake marked with the number eight. It had been driven into the ground on the left-hand side, and I turned, flicking on the brights. The cabin looked to be the only one on this vein of the road, and its lights were like amber orbs in the growing darkness. Thick mats of moss clung to the roof, where a few fallen twigs were scattered across the shingles. The trees were more spread out than the ones that encircled town, and the blaze of the sunset in the distance cast orange beams between the trunks as the sun descended toward the ridge.

I parked beside Micah’s truck, and Smoke was climbing over me before I’d even made it out myself. He jumped down, bounding up toward the front door, and it opened, flooding the small porch with light.

Micah stood inside, wearing a green half-zip sweater and jeans. When Smoke reached him, he jumped up, paws landing on his chest, and Micah gave him a rough scratch behind both ears before he pushed him back down. The smile on his face made the clock rewind ten years. Twelve. Fifteen. Until the man standing in that rectangle of light was the first boy who loved me. The first and only one I ever loved back.

Smoke disappeared inside the house, and Micah leaned into the doorframe, waiting. “It’s too late, James. No going back now,” he said, cracking another smile.

It wasn’t until then that I realized I wasn’t moving, one hand still on the car door like I might duck back inside. I rolled my eyes, trying to bury my own smile as I grabbed my bag and closed the door. I was a few minutes late, and he’d probably spent them convincing himself I wasn’t going to show. Another few seconds, and he might have been right.

His eyes moved over me as I made my way up to the porch. “Hey,” he said, the low timbre of his voice nearly lost beneath the sound of the wind in the trees.

“Hey,” I echoed.

He stepped back, gesturing for me to come inside, and as soon as I did, I could feel my heart coming up into my throat one agonizing centimeter at a time.

His place was…perfect. Beautiful in a rugged way that I couldn’t quite find a word for. A plush, deep-set sofa faced the stone fireplace, where a fire was crackling, and most of the furniture looked old. Antique. Mission-style wooden chairs were pushed up to the dining table, where an open-shelved farmhouse hutch reached almost to the ceiling. But the little things that colored in the corners of the room were full of character. A blanket thrown on the worn leather armchair. The southwestern woven rug. The clay pot on the kitchen counter. There was a record player turning on the cabinet in the living room, playing something acoustic and slow.

He closed the door behind me. “You find it okay?”

“Yeah.” My voice sounded strange.

I picked up one of the blush-colored stones that were arranged along one side of the fireplace mantle, turning it over in my hand.

“Petrified wood.” He answered my unspoken question, hands sliding into his pockets. “I run across it on the beach or along the rivers sometimes.”

I glanced down at the striped wool socks that covered his feet. Thiswas the same Micah I’d known for most of the first half of my life. The same one who spent the better part of our junior and senior years crashing at our place. But something about the sight of those socks felt more intimate and vulnerable than all the mornings he walked around our house in his boxer shorts.

The look on his face made me think that he was struggling with that feeling, too. Like he was both relaxed and uncomfortable at the same time. That was us, I thought. Snapping into place so easily and then struggling to just be still there.

I set the stone back down.

“Can I get you something? A drink?”

“Sure,” I answered, letting the bag slide down my shoulder.

Micah went to the cabinet against the wall, pulling two glasses down before he filled them. The smell of whiskey slowly distilled in the air as I took a seat at the table.