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When 17-year-old Arbor Hayes' best friend turns up alive after a mysterious six-month disappearance, she must piece together the fragments of her story to make sense of what happened. But as clues e...
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"There you are! I thought you went off the grid." Mey hurries through the school parking lot, her fingers curling around the hem of her short skirt to keep it from riding up her thighs. Kobe follows after her, a book bag slug over each shoulder.
I shut my car door and wait for them to catch up.
"Did you get my texts yesterday? I've been dying to talk to you," she says, slightly out of breath. When Mey meets my eyes, I look away.
"Sorry. Yesterday was kind of ... busy." Busy waiting for Emma to contact me like she said, only it never happened.
"Well? Did you see her?" Her face is flushed. I'm not sure if it's with excitement or because of her jaunt through the parking lot, but there's a rosy glow to her pale cheeks that's not usually there.
"If you want to call it that." A burst of warm autumn air rushes past. I unzip my jacket, and push the hair from my face. "She stopped by Saturday night but didn't stay for very long."
Kobe slides Mey's backpack around her shoulders, and she gives him a wide smile. Their subtle display of affection leaves an odd ache in my chest. I shift my weight, not wanting to stare, but there's nothing else to focus on. The gesture's not exactly intimate, but it feels like a special moment all the same, and I'm some random weirdo spying on them from behind a tree.
"Did she say what happened?" Kobe asks when he finally turns my way. "Smith said she still hasn't called him."
"She hasn't called me either." Mey scoops her dark hair from behind and lets it fall over her chest. "Last year, I saw a Dateline episode about a lady who escaped from her kidnappers and ended up with some kind of post-traumatic stress amnesia. For all we know, Emma doesn't even remember us."
I don't know why this irritates me, but it does. "She remembers you." Or she remembers Smith anyway. So, that disqualifies Mey's theory on trauma-induced amnesia. "The only thing she said was that she didn't want to talk about it. It's all she's been doing since she came back."
"That makes sense. If I were her, I'd probably want to forget, too. Did she seem okay?" Kobe asks as we start toward the school, stopping every few feet to let a car maneuver past.
All I've been doing since Saturday night is analyze everything Emma said. Over and over as if I'm watching a YouTube video on repeat. I wish I were. That way I could pick apart each facial expression, every inflection of speech. Try to read between the lines of every single thing that was said.
But I can't. The moment's come and gone. Now all I can do is wait for the next and hope it's more telling than the last.
"For the most part, I guess. But she looks a lot different. She lost, like, forty pounds."
Mey gasps. "Are you serious? That's like a third of a person!"
I shrug. "And as far as her personality goes, she seemed almost—normal. It was weird."
