WE EXPLODED INTO THE NIGHT, clearing the porch steps three at a time, and went running back the way we came. The crowd of students and monsters faded behind us.
We skidded to a stop in front of the beige truck with all the tools in it.
“Holy shit,” Faisal said.
There was a pickaxe sticking out of its hood. Faisal pulled his phone out of his pocket and took a picture of the truck’s new hood ornament.
“I realized whose truck it was when he started talking to us,” Michael said. He pulled the wizard robe off and tossed it in the bed of the truck, followed by the beard. “We should get out of here.”
Every part of Michael’s plan felt like something Charlie would have put together. From the bluff clause to the disguise to sinking a garden tool into some asshole’s engine block.
Seeing Charlie back was like seeing a mountain of black thunderheads on the horizon after a drought: it would be a solution until it was a problem.
“You came back. As a wizard,” Matty said.
He shrugged. “I love you.”
She smiled. “I know.”
They were holding hands. Behind us, hidden by the town’s skyline, behind the buildings mottled with bright windows, a pair of lights climbed up and into the night. The lights grew like someone had punctured the night’s pressure and was letting the dark drain away; they grew until they were over us and the small plane droned past, pushing its sound and light toward the wilderness we were headed for.
“That was the most gangster shit I have ever seen,” Faisal said. “Mike! It was the most gangster shit I have ever seen! You missed it because you were off organizing your own gangster shit, but Matty was the most gangster of all gangsters.”
Matty nodded and said “Nice,” and then high-fived herself.
When we reached the Dairy Mart, Faisal asked for the time and asked if we needed to get any cabin supplies.
“I spent the last of my money paying off that wizard,” Mike said.
I turned my phone on to check the time and the home screen showed a small backlog of texts: the first text message I’d missed, two hours previous, read:
Hi moses its lump! Reminder that thing that went missing?? I have a plan. Cant talk about it here. Msg me back!!
“Thank God,” Faisal said to Michael. “I thought it was some kind of twist ending where you’d been the wizard the whole time. Plus I don’t think that clerk wants to see us anymore.”
The next message, sent fifteen minutes after the first, read:
[page 1/2]Hi moses! My phone has automatic correct on it so I didn’t mean to say reminder when I meant remember. Okay. That is all. You might be asleep which
[page 2/2]is okay because it is getting late but I made a up a code so we can talk about the plan. Just like the underground railroad!!
“No, he was super okay with it. Probably because he was really drunk. And probably broke.”
The next message, forty-five minutes after the last, said:
Hi moses! My phone is about to die but I am going to look for the thing. Don’t tell Mr. Test and don’t be mad!
112 518 447 9826 55 3119 421
“Moses, you got the time?” Faisal asked me.
The final message, sent thirty minutes after that, was a voicemail. I hit play and shoved the phone against my head.
The message was just crunching and static.
“Oh, shit,” I said, staring at my phone.
They didn’t hear me because Faisal had started reenacting hitting Dalton Emmory in the penis by crouching down and punching his open palm before shaking his head and saying, “No no no. That wasn’t it, that wasn’t it.” I heard him punch his palm again and say, “There! That was the noise! That was the noise when my fist touched his penis!”
“Guys.”
The swimming, floating feeling in the pit of my stomach was nothing new. It was the same feeling I’d had when Harper saw us steal his Jesus, the same as any of the innumerable times Charlie and I found ourselves getting deeper into trouble than we’d meant to.
They looked at me, still laughing a little.
“Something’s up.”
They went serious and I clicked through the menus on my phone until it asked if I wanted to call the number that had texted me. I hit “call.”
A mom-sounding adult’s voice immediately answered. Sobriety wild-fired through my body, bouncing off the blurry, drunken sludge writhing around in my head.
“Hi, this is Allison’s cell phone that her parents are generously allowing her to use while she is away at camp. Leave a message and I’m sure she will get back to you in a timely fashion whenever she is done with her important and stately business or decides to charge her phone.”
Just beyond the familiar feeling of Oh Shit, though, just past the final semblance of order, floating around my periphery was a quiet, heavy darkness that insisted we no longer had any control. And that was a feeling I’d only felt twice, both times marked with a gunshot.
“Moses?” Matty asked.
“Lump is out looking for the deer.”
The sky settled on snow.