Platinum was coasting high after the revelation of her upcoming absence.
Brendan was drowning in it.
This was a peculiar observation for Ana to make while they three sat in a drive-thru line minutes after escaping the auditorium, but nonetheless true.
Brendan was driving. As ever he gripped the wheel tightly and stared only at the road. Brendan Nesbitt had lost a cousin in a traffic accident. Ana knew this because she and Brendan shared all secrets now.
Ana blinked. Scrape. Well, almost all.
“I will order you both milk shakes,” Platinum avowed from the passenger seat, “but only if you promise to dip your French fries in them like civilized human beings.”
Ana took her up on the offer. Brendan didn’t.
Platinum reached across him to fetch their milk shakes and salty goods. Brendan’s hands remained wheelbound. He absolutely did not look at his best friend.
He’s acting like Hank, Ana thought.
“Bren, you’re acting like Ana,” Platinum told him as they pulled out of the lot and onto the road. “I get it, I’m amazing. But it’s not the end of the damn world.”
Brendan’s lips got thinner.
Ana was used to more noise than this, at least the murmur of headphones. “What’s the plan today?”
Today Platinum had given Ana the lead in the musical and a reason to talk to her brother again and a reason not to dwell in a room full of dead cats. Today Brendan’s kinetic energy had reverted to potential. Today there were three of them.
In a week there wouldn’t be. They’d be severed.
“Well, what do you guys think? It’s Halloween.”
“I don’t care,” Brendan said quietly.
Platinum dipped a fry in her milk shake and shoved it toward Brendan’s face.
Finally he bit it, sucked it into his mouth.
“Um.” Ana strained against her seat belt. “Trick-or-treating?”
“It’s Halloween, but we aren’t five, Ana.” Some of her lipstick had smeared on her teeth. “Let’s do some real scary shit.”
Last year, Ana and Marissa had made the mistake of getting dolled up for a party. Platinum wasn’t interested in that stuff. Her lipstick glowed, she didn’t seem bothered about mermaiding, she didn’t get wasted at boys’ houses, probably, and end up wrecked at age thirteen, holding a best friend’s long, long hair out of her face, calling 911.
Probably this wasn’t Platinum’s definition of scary.
“So … see a horror movie?”
Brendan had been horrified enough for one day. “Don’t you think you should have told me, Arlene? Aren’t we supposed to be best friends?”
Platinum looked at him. “Yeah. We are. So let’s do something scary tonight.”
Brendan Nesbitt wasn’t happy with this answer. Brendan, hyperventilating because the girl who used to beat up boys for him was leaving this hemisphere.
Ana wasn’t sure how normal people should react to canyons opening—when your world is full of them and devoid of foundations, who can say when another hole matters?
“It’s not like she’ll be gone forever,” Ana said.
Platinum spun around to look at Ana, squeezed her knee. “Exactly, Ana. Brendan, drive where I say to, got it?”
Brendan didn’t argue. He seemed anything but weightless.
Ana knew only two ways out of Eustace. Platinum set them down a third alternative. After the grocery store, she told Brendan to veer right. Soon they were taking winding back roads into the desert. From there, they bumped along strips of dirt that could hardly be called trails.
The sun eased down like a sinking ship.
At last the car stopped. Ana looked out the window. They had reached a vacuum.
“Welcome to Perecheney,” Platinum announced.
Brendan broke his telling silence. “Pair of what now?”
Platinum clambered out of the passenger seat and stood on the edge of a wide expanse of crusted nothingness. Platinum spread her feet apart like a conquering hero, staring down the sole saguaro cactus in sight.
“This is definitely it.” Platinum scanned the horizon. She darted out of the high beams’ reach.
Ana followed, tripping over uneven ground. The wind rose a bit, pricking her face with sand. Ana hardly thought about blinking it away.
“Check out these tracks.” They were rusted with disuse and half-buried in sand, but Platinum was right. These had once been train tracks.
Ana realized that the ground wasn’t simply uneven. Clay walls jutted from the earth around them. They stood on the derelict foundations of a building.
“Pair of what is this place?” Brendan trudged up beside them, lighting the way with his phone.
“Perecheney. It’s a ghost town.” Platinum’s eyes gleamed. “Let’s find the graveyard.”
This proved easy. Just beyond the tracks they came upon a garden of crooked desert tombstones, all dating back a hundred years.
This middle of nowhere had once been a somewhere.
“Why did they all die the same year?”
“That’s the thing, Ana. This used to be a bustling station town. But word on Wikipedia? Cholera during a drought. Swept through everyone in no time. Trains were warned not to stop here ’cause there was no telling how infectious it was. Half the townsfolk got out of Dodge. But here are the other half.”
The tombstones belonged to people both older than Dad and younger than Milo.
“Of course, people say the place was cursed by a witch, and she’s still out here. You can hear her in the wind, et cetera. The usual spooky junk. How’s that for Halloween?”
“I guess.” To Ana, all this seemed more sad than scary.
“You guess. And I guess if you’ve seen real scary shit, this is nothing.” Platinum skipped over the ruins of another long-lost building. A schoolhouse? A church? A home?
“Arlene. Let’s go.” The light shook. Brendan was shivering. “There’s nothing here.”
Platinum squatted next to the remnants of a bonfire. Empty beer cans were crumpled and browned within it. Butts of cigarettes formed another circumference around the pit.
Platinum pulled a lighter from her bra. “There’s still some wood left to burn.”
“… is this a joint?” Brendan kicked the object in question.
“Don’t touch it. Might have cholera,” she joked.
Ana couldn’t decide if she loved or loathed this nothing place.
“I heard people come out here to get fucked-up sometimes, but let’s pretend this is more interesting.” Platinum smiled. “Me? I’m pretending this is evidence of witchcraft. Maybe Tim Miller was sacrificed here.”
“I saw him in school today.”
“Don’t kill my high, Ana. That might have been his clone. Pretty sure his parents rolled his idiot highness off an assembly line. Now get comfortable.”
“Sometimes I just don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“What can I say? I’m into science fiction. Are you, Ana?”
Ana didn’t like the question. “Not anymore.”
“Guess you wouldn’t be, if science fiction happened to you. Don’t tell me it was termites.”
Ana stiffened. “What are we doing here?”
“Like I said. It’s Halloween.” At last the wood caught. Platinum settled back onto her haunches. “This is a haunted place. Next week I’m gone, but tonight I think we should tell some real scary stories.”
Brendan caved; you could see it in his posture, in the sad slump of his shoulders. “You aren’t budging until we do this, are you?”
“No way. You could just leave me here.”
Brendan shook his head. “No. See, I would never do that to you.”
Platinum’s smile flickered. Maybe it was only the firelight.
“Ana. Let’s tell a few ghost stories and get out of here.”
“Nope. Ghost stories aren’t good enough.” Platinum worked her hands into the dirt. Ana caught a whiff of sweet pea lotion. “I want confessions. Your scariest secrets, friends.”
“I dislike this. I really dislike all of this.”
“That’s because you’re kind of a coward, Brendan. But hey!” She held up a finger. “If you admit to that, we’ll count it as your first secret.”
“That’s not a secret. That’s something everyone knows.”
“Yeah. Some secrets are like that. So, Ana. We’ll take turns. You’re up.”
Ana lifted her eyes. “What do you want to know?”
“Leave her alone,” Brendan warned.
“Well, obviously the whole world wants to know what the hell happened to you last summer. But I’m not gonna ask that. You pick your secrets, we pick ours. Rules are: we have to be specific, but no one is allowed to ask questions. Like if Brendan says, I don’t know, that he really likes tentacle porn—”
“THANKS FOR THAT.”
“—we aren’t allowed to ask him what the hell that is or why. We’re just spitting it into the sky. You know what? I’ll go first. I like tentacle porn. Next!”
Brendan cleared his throat. “I know I can’t sing very well.”
“Kind of lame, but we all know you’re just building up momentum.”
They looked at Ana.
Ana thought of the vacuums inside her. The holes she’d torn in herself. The fire was warm, but it had nothing on the desert cold, the chill of this town that wasn’t.
“Last Christmas I was hospitalized for cutting.”
Neither of them gasped. Neither of them did what Vasquezes had done. Hank rushing to Mom, taking the choice from her. Her mother rushing her to the hospital, taking the choice from her.
Ana wondered what the heat in her eyes was.
Platinum whistled. “See, Brendan? That’s how you leave an impact. My turn. The only person I’ve ever made out with happens to be my gay best friend, because we were both curious. That cat was killed. It was gross.”
Brendan elbowed her. “My turn. I’m that gay best friend. But here’s the fascinating truth! I’m not actually gay. I’m pansexual, and interested in people who are interesting, genitals regardless.”
He looked at Ana. She looked right back, aching from nowhere, everywhere.
“Get the fuck out of town? You mean I should schedule future make outs with my gay best friend?” Platinum pushed her lips close to Brendan’s. He leaned away.
“I’m afraid not. Because your pan best friend is just as afraid of flying as he is of driving, and would never schedule make outs with someone who lives in Italy.”
Platinum’s kiss landed on his cheek. “Ana. You get to tell two secrets, since Bren-Pan stole your turn.”
Ana steered the ship to safer waters. “I don’t know if I love my family anymore.”
“Damn. Is every one of yours going to be like this?”
“Maybe.”
Platinum beamed. “I’m glad we’re doing this, guys.”
Weirdly, Ana was too.