Page 60 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

Before the semester started would have been back in, what? August?

Oh, I’m sorry—I thought you were her roommate?

i was supposed to be she never showed

i met her at orientation

the school matched us for off campus housing and we were supposed to room together, but she never showed up

just stopped calling me back and never paid her half of the stuff i got for the room

figured she decided not to leave her psycho boyfriend

I let the phone drop into my lap, fingers pressing to my bottom lip as my mind raced. I tried to fit it into the timeline I’d put together. Autumn had left for Byron in August. Johnny had made a large tuition payment before that, and everyone I’d talked to said the same thing—that Autumn was away at art school in San Francisco.

But what if she wasn’t?

Twenty

I stood on the top step of the back porch, staring into the dark.

Smoke was already whining at the back door when I got home. He wasn’t used to being confined or left behind, and he was restless from being stuck inside all day. As soon as I’d opened it, he bolted out into the dark, leaving only the sound of his paws on the frosty grass.

I wrapped the sweater tighter around me, watching my breath fog in the air before it disappeared. Behind me, the cabin was just beginning to warm with the fire, but the moon was full and bright, lighting the tree branches overhead in a shimmer that looked otherworldly. I felt smaller beneath them than I ever had before.

I’d always known that Johnny was a tangled knot, but I’d believed I was the only one who could unravel him. I thought I knew all his secrets, but in the years since I’d left, he’d painted me a picture of his life that wasn’t real, coloring in the details just enough so that I wouldn’t worry or ask questions. I’d played along, because if I didn’t, I’d have to admit to myself that Johnny wasn’t okay. And now, I had to reckon with it.

The fact that Autumn never showed up at Byron felt like confirmation that whatever happened that day at the gorge, it wasn’t assimple as Johnny being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were too many questions now. Too many things that didn’t make sense. I didn’t know how they all fit together, but I wasn’t going to stop until I found out.

I didn’t know enough about Autumn to guess why she’d bailed on her opportunity at Byron, but I knew what it was like to not want to be found. To need to forget everything that happened before. I also knew that sometimes, you questioned everything, even the things you thought you always wanted.

The day after Griffin Walker’s funeral, I packed a bag. I didn’t know if I could do it. Leave Johnny, Micah, Six Rivers. I didn’t know if I wanted to. But after what we did, everything I wanted to stay for was tainted with that decay. I didn’t like who we were anymore, and I thought that if I left, I could erase it. I could somehow recast who I was in a different life.

There were plenty of people who wouldn’t understand what had made Autumn throw away an opportunity like the one she had. It sounded like half the town had pulled together to ensure she could go to Byron, and then, what? She’d just taken off? There had to be a reason.

Then there was Ben. Maria’s mention of Autumn’s boyfriend didn’t exactly match with the quiet, nervous teenager I’d met. Olivia’s description offragilefelt somewhat accurate, but Maria had called him apsycho.Now, I wondered if the boyfriend Maria was talking about wasn’t Ben at all. Maybe she’d been talking about Johnny.

Micah was the other problem. He hadn’t been honest when I asked him if he and Johnny had been fighting, and I’d suspected that he wasn’t telling me everything. The voicemail I’d heard on Johnny’s phone proved that he was lying. I just didn’t know about what.

I scanned the forest for any sign of Smoke’s silver-gray fur, but there wasn’t a single light visible through the trees and the road was empty, making it feel as if I was floating in a pool of black. I whistled, attempting to call him back, but it was still silent. A cold, tingling feeling crept over my skin as my eyes tried to focus. I came down the back steps slowly.

“Smoke!”

The frozen ground crunched beneath my feet as I walked toward the forest. The silence grew into a muted sound that swelled and stretched before an earsplittingboomexploded in the trees, making me jump. The sound echoed out around me, ringing in my ears.

I gasped, turning in a circle, and searched the darkness in the direction of Rhett’s cabin, looking for any sign of light. It sounded like a gun.

I cupped my hands around my mouth, shouting, “Smoke!”

My heart was beating hard now, my breaths getting faster and shorter. My footsteps broke into a run and I caught myself on the trunk of a tree when I heard a rustling sound. I froze, turning my ear to the dark and listening. There was scratching. The rasp of breath.

When it didn’t stop, I took a step forward, trying to focus my eyes on anything the moonlight touched. But it only came through the canopy in thin, broken beams that touched the forest floor in tiny circles of white. I took my phone out and turned on the flashlight, pointing it in the direction of the trees. But it was too weak, casting a dim glow around me.

“Smoke!” I called out again, following the sound.

I flinched when his eyes flashed, reflecting in the darkness, and I almost stumbled backward, catching myself on a tree. He was moving, his head dipped low, and when I got closer, I realized where we were. The fire pit.

“Shit.”