Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
The world tilts on its axis. Finn’s words flutter around my head like those chirping birds in cartoons.
Alive. Alive. Alive.
The longer I take to respond, the more Finn moves. He jams his hands into his pockets, rocks back on his heels, pulls his hands out. Rocks again.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “You told me you were dead.”
He presses his lips together. “I never said that. And until a few days ago, I really thought I was.”
The night we met, I didn’t ask him the question; I assumed the answer.
“What do you mean you think?” I ask.
“When I woke up after…after whatever happened, Vincent and Ingrid told me I’d died.
And that’s what I told Aisha and Sloane when they showed up.
But this thing with Ingrid…I can’t get the thought out of my head.
Us fading away after a few years doesn’t make sense.
Ingrid being different, following different rules, doesn’t make sense.
Not unless we’re different. Unless we’re somehow still alive and fading isn’t fading but actually dying. ”
I’d thought we were done with the lies. With the secrets. When he told me about Ingrid, about the way they all fade, I thought that was it. No more skeletons lurking in the closet, waiting to rip our throats out.
And here it is, the biggest skeleton, the one that isn’t a skeleton at all.
I’m so angry, I think it’ll burn right through me, leaving a pile of ash on the hardwood floor.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t even know myself, ” he says.
“The last few days, I’ve tried to remember and prod Aisha and Sloane for what they remember, but I don’t have any proof.
I have this gut feeling. And I can’t plant some hopeful seed in Sloane’s or Aisha’s heads if it’s going to wilt. Not until I’m sure.”
“But if there’s even a chance—”
“I don’t have any proof, Jo. I knew if I said something, you’d plunge into the woods and try to find us, but there might be nothing to find. You might get yourself killed, or whatever we are, too.”
“You don’t know that I’d do that,” I say, aware it’s a lie the moment I do.
“I do,” Finn says. “Because I know you, Jo, even if you don’t want to admit it.”
“You’re going to explain. And you’re going to do it right now,” I say, voice practically a snarl. But under the anger, there is another creature. Hope, small and thin, but there.
Finn’s shoulders sink. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. He makes his way over to the window, peering through the crack in the blinds. He doesn’t say anything for so long I think he’s not going to.
“I don’t know much,” he says. “No one ever found our bodies. And we’ve spent years searching.
We’ve scoured your house, the woods, even your neighbor’s house across the street.
But there’s nothing.” He takes a shaky breath.
“When you found Ingrid’s bracelet, I wondered if she’d dropped it on purpose.
Like a breadcrumb. And if that breadcrumb would lead right across the creek to the power plant. ”
“The old power plant?”
He nods. “We can’t go farther than the creek, but Sloane used to screw around out there when she was…” When she wasn’t like this. “She says there’s a giant fence around it. An updated fence. So I figure maybe that’s where we are.”
“But you don’t know?”
He shrugs, helpless. “That’s the truth. I don’t know. I don’t even know if we’re still alive, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. We’re stuck for a few years, and then…”
“You fade,” I say.
His nose scrunches.
“Except, it’s not fading. It’s—”
“Dying.”
“Yes,” he says, the word an exhale. “It makes more sense. When one of us starts to…give out, another kid disappears. If we really are alive, that pattern makes some sense.” He catches my eyes and abruptly looks away.
Jasper.
But that means…
“You’re dying,” I say.
This time, when Finn closes his eyes, he doesn’t open them. He says, “Yeah,” in a hushed breath.
A car pulls into the driveway—Paige. The engine shuts off, and car doors slam as footsteps clamber up the porch. The front door bangs open.
Right behind the Prius are two police cars, their sirens blaring.
“Please, Jo. I know I should have told you, but I didn’t think there was anything to tell. If I thought for even a second—”
I don’t stop to hear the rest of his apologies. I’m already out my bedroom door, running down the stairs to what’s left of my family. My brother is gone, Finn is dying, Aisha and Sloane are trapped, and I am here, utterly unable to do a thing about it.