Page 40

Time passes differently in this neck of the woods.

Slow, sluggish. And what’s most frightening is how my sense of timing was all off—that is, if Emily was right about hearing Kiara’s scream only a whole hour ago.

It wasn’t like this yesterday. I felt every minute of walking.

Every ache. Every stone underfoot. Every bump in the trail I almost tripped over.

And when twilight fell upon us, I didn’t question its arrival.

I woke the next morning feeling like shit, but at least I knew it was morning. I could see the sun.

Tayla and I haven’t seen the sun since we split from the rest of the Fellowship.

Is time preserved in this area? Is that why the tree we hid under is still strong despite the obvious rot and neglect?

Is that even possible? Then again, why am I questioning what’s possible when so much that should be impossible has already happened?

My head hurts just thinking about it, and I don’t have any of my oils with me.

Kiara’s massage feels like a lifetime ago.

“Did your dad ever lose track of time in the forest?” asks Tayla. It’s the first sentence she’s spoken since we parted ways with Brian and Emily.

I consider. “He spent a lot of time in here, studying the ecosystem and stuff, and he was late sometimes, but it was an hour or two, tops. And he usually had Shane with him, so even if my mom was worried, it was regular worried and not worried worried.”

“That’s Austin’s dad, right?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Do you think he went looking for the wishing well?”

Truthfully, I can’t say. My memories of Shane are even muddier than memories of my dad.

Shane was a man who found joy in the simplest of things, whose suntanned skin held so many laugh lines it looked like cracked earth.

He had endless patience for children’s poorly performed magic tricks, taught me how to make my first campfire s’mores, and threw my dad a surprise birthday party every year that we all saw coming a mile away. He was a good man.

But then he cheated on Austin’s mom with a woman from one of his tours, and even though Austin and I were too young to really understand, we knew he never quite found his way back to his marriage.

And now I think I know what Dad realized the night he left.

Why Shane did this foolish, foolish thing .

“This one time when we were nine, our dads took us camping,” I say.

“And Austin and I put on this magic show. It wasn’t very good because we weren’t allowed to adopt one of those fluffy white bunnies Mrs. Honeywell breeds, and we were both sulky about our act being ruined.

But our dads couldn’t tell us ghost stories anymore, either, because Austin had nightmares for so long our moms forbid it. ”

Tayla snorts. “My brothers showed me R-rated horror movies when I was younger than that.”

I ignore her. “So magic it was. I was the magician and Austin my long-suffering assistant. We were…what’s a word that’s even worse than ‘horrible’?”

“Abysmal,” she says without missing a beat.

“Thank you. Well, anyway, at the end of our act, Shane gave us a standing ovation, and he said one day, he and my dad would show us real magic. My dad got real quiet then and hustled us off to bed.”

The memory is sharper, stronger, more vivid and lifelike than it has ever been before.

It allows me a moment to observe the scene as if it’s playing out in front of me.

I’m picking up details with the clarity of a seventeen-year-old rather than a child.

Tayla seems to grasp something momentous is happening because she stays blessedly quiet while I let the past wash over me, sepia soft.

“They must have been out there talking by the fire for hours because when I woke up for water, I could still hear them. I didn’t think much of it then, but now I wonder if it was the wishing well that, I don’t know, divided them?

That’s not the right word. They were like brothers.

Nothing would ever truly divide them. But Dad believed in leaving the wishing well alone, and Shane didn’t.

I think Shane wanted to use its power to undo the mistake he’d made cheating on his wife.

Because that was the only way he could see to make it right. ”

“He could have just worked through whatever it was,” says Tayla. There’s such certainty and disdain in her voice. “My dad, Kiara…these are actual life-or-death problems. Shane was a cop-out. You can’t just pretend your mistakes never happened.”

I press my tongue against one of my canine teeth. “It’s not always that simple.”

She makes a dismissive sound. “Have you thought about what you’ll do if you find Shane’s remains?”

Remains is a nice way of saying body . And no, I haven’t because frankly, the fear of finding the remains of my dad are about all I have energy to agonize about. Maybe that’s also what Tayla, in her own way, is trying to get at. That I should be prepared for that eventuality.

“Why don’t you ask me the right question, Tayla?”

“Meaning?”

Remembering Jules has unstuck one of his lessons:

When you find something that makes you question, that makes you change perspective, that’s when you know you’ve found a sign of wonder.

“We’re walking on eggshells,” I say. “By Emily and Brian’s reckoning, it’s barely afternoon.

Don’t you question that? Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been walking for a full day?

Something is going on, and instead of facing it, we’re acting like it’s normal.

This should be freaking you the fuck out because it sure is me. ”

“We have enough to freak out about,” Tayla mutters. “So no, I’m not questioning it. We probably thought that time was passing a lot quicker than it actually did. It happens. Like the last five minutes before the bell rings and school lets out? Those five minutes feel like forever.”

That’s her final word on the matter. Frankly, I’m starting to get really resentful of the silence.

Why is Tayla so afraid to admit the truth?

First she sidestepped me questioning her about the roots and what she saw; now she’s deluding herself that we’re just imagining how long this day has been.

It’s not lost on me that there have been times I’ve run from the truth, too, but seeing that trait in someone else hits different.

I just hope her inability to reckon with reality doesn’t come back to haunt us.

Every couple of minutes, we shout Kiara’s name but never get a response. It’s starting to feel a little hopeless, but after all her posturing, I’ll be damned if I admit that before Tayla does.

We walk through the trees in the kind of hush that would make a graveyard seem raucous. So when she finally does speak, it’s nearly swallowed in the silence. “How are you doing?”

I startle, only catching the end, the way her words lilt up.

“They must be pinching,” she says matter-of-factly, nodding to my boots. “New ones always do.”

I shrug. “I’ve gotten used to it.” I haven’t. But the hiking socks help wick and cushion my feet.

Without looking at me, she says, “If you’ve got blisters on the back of your heel, there are Band-Aids in the med kit Radhika gave us.”

“You’re scarier when you’re being nice.”

“Wasn’t being nice. Can’t have you slowing me down.”

I sigh.

She cranes forward to check the other side of a fallen tree trunk before crossing over. “That sigh was pretty loaded, Nova.” She surprises me by holding out her hand.

Eyeing her suspiciously, I take it and let her help me over. “Why do you say everything like it’s a fight you’re trying to win?”

She blinks. “Because I want to win?”

“That sounds…exhausting.”

“I have seven siblings.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“My parents have always encouraged us to be our best selves.”

I take a moment to parse that. “You mean they raised you to compete with each other?”

She nods.

It sounds a little fucked up, if I’m being honest. But I suppose that at least they have each other. Solidarity. I imagine seven redheads all refusing to play petty games. “Guess you’re pretty close to your siblings, then?” I ask.

She seems genuinely confused when she says, “Why would you think that?”

Riiiiight. We lapse back into silence for who knows how long until we come to a little clearing. It looks like someone’s already set up there with a ragged tent that might have once been bright red at a crooked angle, zip abandoned halfway, letting in the elements.

The air on my arms prickles. Something feels off here and not just the kind of off that comes from the tension between me and Tayla. Unease slinks down my spine like a drip of cold water.

I don’t want to take a single step closer, but I don’t want her to think I’m a chicken, so I trail behind her as she examines the remains of the fire and watch as she rakes a stick through the charred black ash. “Didn’t Brian and Emily say they camped out in this general vicinity?” she asks.

She phrases it like an idle question, but I know it’s not. I shake my head. “This campsite is old.”

“Hmm.” Tayla pokes at a rusted pot until it tips onto its side and makes a sound of agreement. “What do you think Emily was so afraid of?”

I scoff. “Look at where we are. Take your pick.”

“True.” She sighs and throws the stick aside.

“We should have asked them why they were here.”

“Obvious, isn’t it? The wishing well. You saw his raggedy sweatshirt, right?

He’s probably hoping to get into Vanderbilt, make his daddy proud.

And I bet Emily came to make a wish that she and Brian stay together forever.

” Tayla makes a face. “Do you know what it’s like being that revoltingly into someone? ”

Uh, pot, meet kettle? I stare at her a beat too long. “Nooooo.”

She’s already stopped paying attention to me. She’s at the tent opening now. Tugging at the zip, she scowls when it doesn’t give way.

“Tayla, forget it. Let’s go. This place gives me the creeps.”