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ABBY: You don’t?

MEL: I don’t know. I haven’t been around her like Becca has. If she knows something about your sister, why wouldn’t she just tell you?

ABBY: That’s another question we’re trying to answer.

MEL: Got a theory?

ABBY: Yeah.

MEL: But you’re not going to tell me.

ABBY: Not until we know for sure. I think that we have everything we need from you.

MEL: Does that mean I can go?

ABBY: Not yet. We’d rather keep everyone until everything is settled.

MEL: That sounds ominous.

ABBY: Yeah. I guess it is pretty ominous, isn’t it?

MEL: Has anyone ever told you that you need to work on your people skills?

ABBY: Probably.

23

DOWNSTAIRS, BECCA ANDAnthony stand in quiet communion. Becca’s head is tilted in until it almost touches Anthony’s, her mouth moving in a murmur, but when we enter she straightens up and clears her throat. “We need to get across the water,” she says.

“Sara said the same thing,” Mel replies. “I still don’t see how that makes sense.”

“I know because Lucy told me,” Becca says. She fiddles with her sleeves, picking at the seams. “I had dreams of her before I got on the road, mostly. But now I can hear her. She tries to help, because she needs help. She’s trapped, here on the road. And she says that we need to get across the water.”

My mouth is dry, and my heart thuds in my chest.Find me.My finger taps that odd rhythm against my thigh, and I think of dark-feathered wings. There’s an inexplicable ache in my chest, and the persistent feeling I’m forgetting something.

“But how? The road definitely doesn’t include the water,” Anthony says.

Kyle is looking upward, as if he can stare through the ceiling tothe room above. But there’s nothing up there except the books—and the light.

“I have an idea,” Kyle and I say at the same time.

“The light?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“What about the light?” Anthony asks.

I lift one shoulder. “This lighthouse is the obvious destination so far. And a lighthouse has basically one purpose. To keep the light going at night. So maybe that’s the key, somehow.”

“One way to check,” Kyle says. He’s already heading for the stairs, and this time I’m the one following. He trots up without any concern for the steep drop beside him. I take things a little more cautiously. Kyle might be skinny, but he shares Trina’s athleticism and dexterity. I, on the other hand, do not.

The others troop after. By the time we reach the top, Mel is panting a little; she has the same allergy to sports as I do, and her most physical hobby is composing sarcastic hashtags, but she doesn’t complain. The ladder takes us a little longer to negotiate, but then we’re all crammed at the top level.

Kyle walks around to the back of the bulb of glass. The lantern at the center of it is clean, polished. Like everything else on this level, it looks perfectly preserved for its purpose. Even the five fingerprints I left on the glass walls are gone. I wonder what would happen if we died up here. Would anything be left? Or would it clear us away, as if we’d never existed?

I shiver and join Kyle. He’s picked up a box of matches. Old-fashioned and thick, with bulbous ends, but still more modern than the lamp itself.

“So we turn on the gas, right?” Kyle says. I reach out and carefully twist the knob on the side of the brass lamp. The air in the glass flute above it shimmers, and there’s a faint hissing sound. Kyle strikes a match. It flares to life with a startlingly long flame, and Kyle almost drops it. He clears his throat. “Then I guess we touch this... here...”