Patch’s bedroom was no longer his.
His clothes and bedcovers and wallpaper. His dresser and posters, his skull and crossbones. The flintlock pistol Saint told him she had borrowed and returned.
His skin was not his. It itched him, the wounds he would not let heal because he worried they would leave no scars at all.
That afternoon his mother walked in on him getting out of the shower, and she saw a body she did not recognize, and he saw in her that mix of fear and sadness and a little repulsion. She wondered, like the cops and the reporters and the other kids would. In how many ways was he not the same as them?
Later when she slept he unfurled the map he’d found in the attic. It covered the country in enough detail, each state colored from the pinks of Arkansas through Louisiana, to the steel of Michigan to the boldest green of Montana and beyond. “You could be anywhere,” he said.
Outside he slipped by a single news van and walked down his street and wondered how the night could be so bright.
At the Palace 7 on Main Street he saw kids from school in line.
He saw the young couples and families dressing the window of Lacey’s Diner. He watched through a long lens that would stay with him, like he existed a hundred miles from anyone.
And then he saw her.
Standing with her group.
He was about to move, to flee the scene like the crime it was, when Misty Meyer looked up.
He moved toward her on instinct, his legs working against his mind.
She slipped her hand from Chuck’s, and then she broke into a run.
Misty hit him at full force in the middle of the road, wrapped her arms around him and buried her cries into his shoulder.
He did not feel the pain in his ribs, instead only the weight of her, so slight as she trembled in his arms.
Cars streaked by, leaning on their horns, but the two did not notice.
She held his face tight and stared into him like they weren’t strangers, like they had ever spoken a word to each other.
She wore a white dress and sandals and smelled so sweet he almost could not catch his breath.
Another car blazed past.
And then Chuck took her from the road, pulling her hand tight. She looked back, locked onto Patch like he was some kind of ghost only she could notice.
He watched as she sobbed, as Chuck led her to the movie theater, and then he turned and walked slowly through town but hugged the shadows and saw life move on as he knew it would, as he knew it had.
He did not notice Saint standing outside the Green’s Convenience Store. He did not hear her call because it was a whisper. He did not notice her follow at a distance until he was safely home, her bag on her shoulder, a slingshot inside.
He reached for the stack of newspapers piled high on the landing.
He worked without noticing headlines.
Local Boy Missing
He stuck pages to the window, one after the other until no hint of Monta Clare made it into his room. And then he closed the door and blocked the gaps with bedding, pulled the mattress from the old frame and set it on the floor.
He would not tell them he wanted to be back there.
They would not understand.
Only when the dark was total enough did he lie down.
And reach out his hand for her to take.