Page 106 of The Bright Lands

As the town rushed the field, as the marching band started braying, Bethany made her way to the parking lot. She turned back to see that no one had noticed her leave. She kept moving.

She would fix this. She would fix everything. Bethany was a very smart, capable, perceptive girl and she was going to fixeverything.

She stuck to the dark tunnel that ran between the parking lot’s lights, nervous of the way the spangles of her uniform glinted, but she needn’t have been concerned. Every soul in town was on the field right now.

Bethany made it to the far side of the parking lot without incident, hurried down the line of players’ trucks. Mitchell’s Jeep, Tomas’s red Ram, Whiskey’s rusted Chevy. And there was Luke’s silver Ford, parked in the darkest space between two lights like it had been planning for this moment all along. Waiting for her.

The truck still had the camper shell over the hood that Bethany had seen at school earlier this week.

The tailgate was unlocked.

LUKE

He smiled for pictures, shook hands, was buffeted with gratitude and relief. When Paulette Whitley gripped him by the arm and whispered in his ear, “You did him proud,” Luke struggled not to cry.

He was saying something to a TV reporter with spooky smooth skin (how, Luke wondered, could he get himself cheeks as soft as that?) about how they’d all been training for this moment all their lives when Mitchell Malacek came up alongside him and shouted to the reporter’s camera, “You can’t stop the herd!” The reporter narrowed her eyes at Mitchell and thanked Luke and stepped away. Mitchell slapped Luke hard on the ass and murmured in his ear, “Get cleaned up. We leave in fifteen.”

Luke rinsed off and dressed as quick as he could, all while accepting thumps on the back and cheers and bobbing his head to the music someone had turned on the soundbar, just like he was supposed to do. Scrawny little Benny Garcia was having his own moment near the water fountains, pointing out bruises on his pale body to a crowd of onlookers with a glee that smoothed away his stutter.

The only boys who failed to look impressed were Whiskey Brazos and T-Bay Baskin. They spoke in low voices in a far corner.

Tomas Hernandez laid a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Give it five minutes and meet us up the highway,” the boy said, and slipped outside with Mitchell.

Luke laced up his shoes. He could all but taste his heart beating in his mouth.

Coach Parter had positioned himself near the door. His huge soft hands encompassed Luke’s own. “I’ll see you soon,” Parter said, cool and serious, holding Luke’s eye just a little too long.

Things were wild outside, the parking lot overflowing with people shattering bottles and setting off firecrackers, all of them exultant—batshit—at the end of a week that had worn the good folks of Bentley down to tendons and nerves.

Luke wove through well-wishers, past boisterous men who wished they’d had arms like that at his age, past Mrs. Malacek and Mrs. Mason asking him how a boy so strapping could be so single.

The crowd thinned out as he neared the edge of the lot, and soon he was alone but for someone standing by the tailgate of his truck. He approached the person cautiously, wondering with a jolt of excitement if this was part of whatever new code he was learning.

But it was only his father. Even when the man was smiling at Luke as he was now, regarding him with an expression that was novel to the both of them—it was a look of respect, Luke realized, the first he’d received from him in eighteen years—Luke couldn’t help but scowl.

“You did well tonight,” his father said, haltingly, when it was clear that Luke wasn’t going to start a conversation.

“I know.”

“You were tough out there, I mean. Strong.”

“I always have been.”

A beat. Clearly, the man was realizing the same thing that Luke was—this was the most he had spoken to his son since all that business in Rockdale over the summer. Mr. Evers smiled wider, and Luke saw on his fifty-year-old father’s face a teenager’s nervous desire to please someone they cared for, the fear that it would be rejected.

“You should go out tonight with the other boys, I think. Enjoy yourself. I’ll take the heat with your mother. You’ve earned it.”

Luke only shrugged to his dad, reached out to open his truck’s tailgate, tossed his bag inside. He didn’t care—he had a life of his own now, better obligations than his parents.

“Let her get mad—I already made plans.”

“That’s good, that’s good, that’s...you know, Luke, I always wanted to say—”

His father was interrupted by the sudden appearance of red-faced Mr. Tanner, the big man waving his arms, spraying spittle and demanding to know where Bethany was.

Luke left the two men where they stood. He’d wasted enough time—what if the others left without him?

He hurried up the side of his truck, never glancing into the camper shell, and swung up into the cab. He eased over the grass edge of the lot. He gunned the motor and took off up the darkened highway.