Page 29

Friday, July 15, 1994

2:48 p.m.

Ethan continues to pull on Billy, just as Ashley continues to pull on him. He feels stretched by the twin strains. On the verge of snapping.

Come on!Ethan tries to yell to Billy, but no words come out. He’s too startled, too scared, too distracted by the sounds of people running, some away from the mausoleum, one toward it. Meanwhile, Ashley keeps tugging, the force of it pulling Ethan’s hand from Billy’s.

Their grip breaks.

Billy thrusts his hand toward Ethan’s, their fingers inches apart. The gap widens as Ashley starts to drag Ethan away from the gate.

“Wait!” Ethan yelps, not sure if she can hear him. “Wait!”

He wrenches free of Ashley’s grip as she keeps running, unaware that Billy can’t join them, that he’s trapped, that he’s about to be caught.

“Get out of there,” yells the man in the suit, now only a hundred yards away. Everything about him is big. He’s tall and formidably built.

Turning back to the mausoleum, Ethan sees Billy still flailing between the bars. He then checks for the others, confirming that they’re fleeing or—in Ragesh’s case—already gone. Russ and Ashley are far down the path, springing for the woods like spooked deer.

Ethan goes the opposite direction, edging back toward the gate, wanting to help Billy. Needing to.

The man in the suit’s closer now. So close Ethan can see the anger on his face as he snarls, “I told you yesterday to stay away.”

Ethan freezes when he hears it, stunned.

Billy has been here before.

Without him.

The betrayal he felt earlier roars back, this time tenfold. He wonders why Billy hadn’t told him he’d visited this place before. He wonders what else Billy hasn’t told him. He wonders if, right now, he and Billy are even friends.

The events of the day landslide through Ethan’s thoughts. Billy’s need to explore. The others joining in one by one. Him by the road as Billy stood with Ragesh and Russ, literally siding with them. Finally, this moment, in which he realizes Billy had led them to the falls and the Hawthorne Institute even though he’d been warned the day before that no one should be here.

Now they’re in trouble.

Well, Billy is.

Ethan will be, too, if he doesn’t run.

He takes a halting backward step as the full weight of that hits him. He could get in trouble. For something he didn’t even want to do. For something that, in all honesty, is Billy’s fault.

He didn’t want to come here.

He didn’t want to cross the road or sneak through the wall or see the falls.

And he definitely didn’t want to step inside that mausoleum.

All of that was Billy.

Ethan takes two more backward steps, widening the distance between him and Billy as the suited man reaches the mausoleum. Clocking Billy’s predicament, he says, “Jesus Christ. What have you been up to?”

Ethan sees nothing else after that, for he starts to pivot, turning his back to the mausoleum and staring at the expanse of path ahead and the retreating forms of Ashley and Russ. Then, without giving it any more thought, Ethan runs to join them. As he hurtles forward along the path, he hears Billy begging him to stop.

“Ethan, don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me!”