WE WALK MOSTLY in silence for the next stretch. I find myself walking next to Mel, toward the back of the group. She’s sipping from Trina’s water bottle, tiny sips that barely seem enough to wet her lips.
“I wasn’t going to come,” Mel says after a while. Her eyes lift to mine, then cut away.
“It’s okay. It’s not like any of us knew this was real.” It isn’t okay. I have held this bitter anger between my teeth so long the enamel has been eaten away, and no matter how undeserved it is, I’ve forgotten how to let it go.
“You knew. Anthony knew.”
“It’s not that I knew it was real,” I say. “It’s that it didn’t matter if it was real. I had to be here either way.”
She screws the cap back on the water bottle. Half of it still sloshes back and forth. I have extra bottles in my bag. I don’t think anyone else brought anything to eat or drink, but I hope we won’t be on the road long enough to need it.
“I’m glad Sophia didn’t come,” Mel says.
“Who?”
“Oh. Yeah, she left before you showed. She was my date,” Mel says with an awkward sort-of laugh. “I told her we’d go make out in the woods.”
“I didn’t know you were seeing anyone.” I try to sound like it’s an intellectual point of curiosity—and I mostly succeed. I got a lot of practice at it, before we stopped talking.
“No reason you would.”
I bite my lip. Once upon a time, I was the first person Mel came out to. We were sitting in my room drinking lemonade that had gone watery, playing a game she’d invented on the spot. Trading a secret for an M&M. Little things. Thirteen-year-old things. The lip gloss I stole from Becca. The time Mel snuck out and then couldn’t think of anything to do and so just sat in front of her house until she got cold. When Becca and I stole Mom’s gin and got silly drunk off a few sips and decided it was a good idea to go belt out Christmas carols in the park at midnight. But the point of all of it was the last secret.
Who do you have a crush on?
I’d shrugged. Couldn’t say Anthony, because he was our friend and that was weird and embarrassing and I wasn’t sure it was a crush anyway. Mel probably assumed Anthony anyway, the way I always hung around him. I’d picked a name almost at random. I can’t even remember who it was, now. And then she said, Now you ask me.
So I asked, and she answered—Nicole from English class—and she waited, and it was awkward and stilted but I said the right things I guess and we went back to M&M’s and lemonade, and six months later she was stapling a pride flag to the back of her sweatshirt until a horrified Trina confiscated it and stitched it on properly.
My coming out, if you could even call it that, was more incremental. I never kept it a secret, but I never particularly volunteered it. There was no moment when I declared, Oh, by the way, I’m bisexual. Maybe it would have been easier if I had, so there was one clear moment when Mel could make it obvious she wasn’t interested, instead of the months of me vaguely hoping that now that I was a little more open with it, a little more certain of it, she’d finally notice me as more than a friend.
“So, wait. But you came with Miranda,” I say, remembering.
She snorts. “None of tonight can be counted among my finest hours. Sophia and I have been dating, sort of, but I met Miranda a couple days ago and . . . I sort of asked both of them to come? And forgot about it? I was pretty drunk.” She pauses. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be. You came.” I bump my knuckles against hers, smile. If friendship is what we have, I’m still glad to feel it creeping back in. “I’ve missed you,” I say. I’m surprised how much it’s true.
“Hey,” Kyle calls. He and Trina are in the lead now, but they’ve stopped. “Guys? There’s another gate up ahead. And I think there’s someone there.”
We hurry to catch up with the two of them. The trees have thinned, letting more of the moonlight spill over us. Our flashlight beams probe forward, catching against the tines of the wrought-iron gate ahead like a plastic bag catching on barbed wire; they seem stuck, pierced through. The gate is almost identical to the one we already passed through, except that it’s taller, wider. At the base of the gate, slumped against the bars, is a person.
He wears dark clothes. His head hangs forward. His hands lie limp in his lap. There is a stillness about him that is less an absence of movement and more a sense of having settled, like a stone sinking slowly into the muck of a river until it can press no deeper.
“Is he dead?” Trina asks.
“I can’t tell,” Anthony says.
“What should we—” she begins; I’m already stepping past her. Someone is here, other than us. There are people on this road. It’s the first hint I’ve had that this might not be a wild-goose chase. That we might be able to find someone—find Becca. “Hello?” I call. “Hey. Are you okay?”
He doesn’t move. I’m not even sure it’s a man. The flashlights flatten his face into a pale oval, featureless, leaving no shadows to shape it.
We creep closer, moving as a single organism, amorphous. We find each other’s hands; who links with whom doesn’t seem to matter right now. I might be holding Mel’s hand or Anthony’s or Trina’s; later I won’t remember, and neither will anyone else.
Once we’re within fifteen feet or so, it’s obvious that he’s a man—a boy, really, our age, with blond hair that flops across his forehead and a long face, a soft face of few angles that will probably look young in fifteen years. He stares straight ahead. He’s breathing, short, sharp breaths like an animal in pain. He looks normal. Like us, not like this place.
“Hey,” I say. I drop the hand I’m holding and I crouch. Still well away, but down on his level now, tipping my head to try to catch his eye. “Are you hurt?”
He doesn’t answer. I try again. Anthony talks to him. Trina does. I stand. Look at the others, helpless. And then I swallow, and step closer. The group sorts itself swiftly, like we’re being unzipped: those who come forward, and those who stay back. With me: Anthony, Trina, Jeremy. Standing back: Vanessa, Mel, Kyle, Miranda.
I approach until I’m standing right next to him. He keeps up that shallow breathing, that in-out, in-out. It’s a wet sound; I can hear the spit in his mouth. “Hey,” I say. I reach out. “Hey.” My fingertips brush his shoulder, the cloth of his black sweatshirt.
He moves so quickly I can’t track the movement, his hand seizing mine, tightening until my bones scrape together. I yelp and lunge back, but he holds me firm, stock-still again, staring, panting between his teeth. Anthony yells and grabs his wrist, trying to pry his hand off mine, but it’s pointless. Jeremy’s there, too, grabbing the boy by the collar, shaking him, fist raised—and then just as suddenly as he grabbed me, he’s letting go.
I fall back against Anthony, who keeps me upright as I cradle my aching hand. Jeremy backs up fast, arms spread out slightly like he’s making himself a wall between me and Anthony and the boy.
The boy blinks. Turns his head at last and seems to see us for the first time. His fingers flex where they still hover above his shoulder. It’s like the beat of a moth’s wings.
“Don’t you dare—” Jeremy begins, balling up his hand in a warning fist. But there was never any fight in the boy, not really, and he only stares placidly at us.
“Who are you?” he asks.
We glance at each other, like we’re deciding who should speak, but we know the answer before we ask the question. “My name is Sara,” I say. “These are my friends.”
“Sara,” he says. “Becca’s Sara?”
Behind me, someone hisses. I barely hear over the wind-rush sound in my ears. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I’m Becca’s sister. I’m Sara. You know her? You’ve seen her?”
“Becca,” he says, like he’s trying to remember. His eyes close. “Yes. I met Becca. She came by here. Or someone met Becca, and I think I’m still someone. But am I the same someone? Or are they me? Or are we someone else?”
“What’s your name?” I ask. I kneel. Out of arm’s reach, again. I’m not making that mistake twice.
He sighs. “I think I was Bryan or Isaac. I wasn’t Grace and I wasn’t Zoe, so I was either Bryan or Isaac. Bryan met the bramble man, so I must be Isaac. Yes. Yes, I think that’s right. I’m Isaac.” He looks up, like finding his name has meant finding himself, filling his skin again where it was hollow a moment ago.
“Isaac,” I say. “We’re looking for Becca. For my sister. Where is she?”
He frowns. “She’s—I’m sorry. It’s hard to think. To remember. She wasn’t with us. The us who came to the road together. We got to the fourth gate. Or was it the fifth? No, it was the fourth. We went through the Liar’s Gate and the town and the marsh and we got to the mansion, and Grace—she wanted to keep going, but I needed to go back because—I was looking for Zoe. Zoe wasn’t with us anymore, and I needed to find her, and Grace said we had to go to the lighthouse, but I couldn’t go without Zoe.”
“The gates. You mean the seven gates, the ones we’re supposed to get through?”
“Yes. No,” he says. He shakes his head. “Seven gates. Seven gates before the city, but the city is drowned. The Liar’s Gate is first. If you’re here, you went through it. You’re here. You’re Becca’s Sara. Or are you Sara’s Becca? Which you are you?”
“I’m Sara,” I say. “We came through a gate. We came through the darkness.”
“Did you?” he asks. He looks between us, peering into our faces. “Are you sure you’re you? Sometimes you’re someone else instead. I think I’m Isaac, but I might be Bryan, but Bryan met the bramble man. Or maybe I met the bramble man, and Bryan is here, and I’m somewhere else.” He laughs. He sobs. He covers his eyes with his hands.
I look at the others, dread and pity curdling together in my gut. This is worse than the dark. This is worse than the crow. “Seven gates,” I say. “You said there are seven gates. What are they? Please, Isaac. We need your help to find my sister.”
He nods. “The Liar’s Gate. The town. The mist in the marsh. The manor. We didn’t know the rest except the lighthouse. The lighthouse is sixth. Or maybe fifth. Go through the gates. Don’t break the rules. Bad things happen when you break the rules. I came back for Zoe, but I couldn’t find her. I waited. I waited and she never came, but Becca, she came. With a boy. She told me things. Stories. She told me she had a sister. She tried to help me remember, but there’s nowhere for memory to live anymore.”
“How long have you been here, Isaac?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. Maybe he can’t answer. “You should come with us,” I say. “You can help us find Becca.”
He shakes his head, a whine in the back of his throat. “No. No, I have to stay. If I’m Isaac, I have to stay. I’m waiting for Zoe.”
“You can’t stay. Come on,” I say, holding out my hand to him.
“Sara,” Anthony says, shaking his head. He points his flashlight at Isaac’s back, where it presses against the iron bars, which don’t rise straight into the air but curve and branch. Branch into him. Through him. Puncturing his sides bloodlessly. Punching through his spine, his shoulder blades. One sharp end curling up just below his clavicle like a picture hook, almost invisible against his dark sweatshirt.
“I’m waiting for Zoe,” he says. He smiles at me. “You’re Sara.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m Sara.”
“Good. She said you’d come. She said she left you a map.”
His head droops. His eyes close. His breath settles back into that rhythm, in-out, in-out, like a wounded thing.
“A map?” I say. “What do you mean, Becca left me a map?” But he doesn’t answer.
The notebook.
“We should go,” Anthony says. I nod. We need to look at the notebook but I don’t want to do it here, standing right next to Isaac. Poor Isaac, with the gate growing through him and his own name slippery in his grasp.
“Who wants to open it?” Jeremy asks. No one volunteers. “Let’s see if Toyota does the trick.” He pulls a car key from his pocket and steps up to the gate, giving Isaac as wide a berth as he can. The key slots in perfectly. He pushes the creaking gate open wide. No darkness this time. Just the road. We start to trail through. I wait as the others pass. I want to be last. I want to stay with Isaac as long as possible.
Trina gives him a pinched, sorrowful look as she approaches the gate.
His head whips up. His eyes open. They’re empty. Not white, not black, just voids, an absence the mind refuses to read.
“They’ll smell the blood on you,” he says, and then his head drops, eyes closing, and it’s like he never spoke at all.
Trina stares at him. She’s trembling. Then she lets out something like a sigh, but harder, and she walks through the gate.
I stay with him another moment, waiting for him to open his eyes, to speak. I watch him breathe. In-out. In-out. He’s alive, he’s real. He’s part of this place. Until now we have been separate from the road; it has been a dream unfolding around us. On some level it felt like we were real, that it wasn’t, and the gap between real and unreal was a protection of sorts.
But now I see that gap can vanish. Is vanishing.
“Sara,” Anthony says. They’re all on the other side now.
I step through, and the gate shuts behind me, leaving Isaac behind.