CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A crow squawked and Ari’s head jerked. She took in her surroundings. How had she gotten here? She’d left the station with Lynn’s mother and walked almost all the way home again before she’d decided that sitting quietly and waiting for news was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Hang tight, Ari,” Mrs. Lubnick had said on the corner, giving Ari another one of her bone-cracking hugs. “They’ll find her.” Ari couldn’t help but hear the note of desperation in her voice. Captain Rourke had sent cars out countywide and they were putting up flyers with Lynn’s picture. Ari tried not to think about Tallulah’s furry face staring back at her from telephone poles, and failed.

She’d stalled until she saw Mrs. Lubnick stride up her garden walkway and throw open the front door, and then she’d spun on her heel and headed back to town. She’d lost another small chunk of time; from early afternoon to late. Her feet hurt as if she’d been walking for miles, and she supposed she had, though mostly in loose circles and figure eights, threading through downtown and out again.

And now she found herself here. Dempsey’s Maze looked like a wall of thorns, something out of Sleeping Beauty after the world fell asleep and the wilderness crept back in. It was as if she were half-asleep herself, caught in a nightmare, Ari thought, fighting to suppress the panic that deadened her limbs and made her feel she was trudging through waist-high brambles. Her headache was back, the twinkling distracting lights too, as if her brain were misfiring on all cylinders.

She sank down on a bench and watched a curled brown leaf skitter along the path, caught up in an invisible breeze. Pushed and pulled, taunted and teased, helpless before a force greater than itself. Ari felt like that too. Are we all just victims?

Something stirred in her brain and Ari grabbed for it. Last night, just before she’d fallen asleep, in that weird halfway-between state, she’d been back at the cistern. The forest quiet and still, not a breath of air, and there had been someone else there too. She strained to remember something, anything—a feature, a voice, a recognizable item of clothing. It had been dark, the bottom of the hole shrouded, and she’d felt a cold updraft. But she had not been afraid then.

She sat up straight, her heart leaping in her throat like a trapped bird. She had not been scared. Surely that meant she’d known the person she was with, had trusted whoever it was. You don’t go out in the woods with someone you don’t know; you don’t freely stand at the edge of a pit deep enough to kill you if you fall. There was no way it could have been Sourmash. A friend? Absolutely not, but perhaps someone who didn’t pose an obvious danger.

Excitement flooded her veins, obliterating the terrible anxious feelings that seemed to encase her, mind and body, in ice. This memory rang true. It was fact. A memory she could share with her parents. Something she could tell the police that they would have to take seriously.

Or would they? She gnawed on a shred of skin near her thumbnail. Would they question her until she no longer knew what was the truth? Holy shit, you could argue yourself out of breathing, Lynn would say. Make up your mind!

Her friend’s voice was so clear, so loud, so familiarly exasperated that Ari looked around, expecting to see her. This more than anywhere else in town was Lynn’s place.

She knew the trick to navigating the winding paths. Ari always got helplessly lost.

It was almost as if Lynn could see the maze from above, track the most direct route to the exit. On the few instances when they separated—not by Ari’s choice, but because Lynn sped off without her, casting taunts over her shoulder—Ari usually ended up facing a towering dense wall. One of the many dead ends. Like now.

She wondered what had possessed her, coming in here without her guide. The paths seemed as convoluted and twisted as the pathways of her brain, clogged, a gnarl of questions so tangled she could not straighten them out. She thought of the story her father had often told, of why her parents had named her Ariadne. Her namesake was a clever Greek princess who helped a hero find his way out of a perilous maze by using a ball of thread. “She was a little more proactive than most of them,” her mother had said wryly. Maybe if she just found the end of the thread, she could pull on it and everything would unravel and become linear again. Her feet rustled through a carpet of leaves, and the shushing sound seemed as if it were emanating from inside her head. Whisper, whisper, whisper. Perhaps, she thought, she’d find Lynn here, walking, thinking, figuring out the next step in her life.

Somewhere out of sight, she could hear the sounds of feet thudding, yelling, a ball game being played out on the adjacent field. She pressed against the thick interwoven branches. They pushed in and then sprang back. There was no way to force her way through. The scent of mold and dry leaves crept into her nostrils and scratched at her eyes. Her brain crackled, the ever-present lights flickering at the edges of her vision. She felt a wave of weakness, remembered she had eaten nothing since she had picked at her mac and cheese. The blood thundered in her ears, like the ocean advancing, retreating. There—she could almost see Lynn, in a bright-red sweatshirt, running ahead, a flash of color at the next bend, her laughter drifting back.

Catch me, catch me if you can.

Or no, it was Stroud.

Ari started to run. She ran until she was out of breath and sobbing. She ran so blinded by tears that she almost missed the gap in the hedge that marked the exit and the boy who stood there, beanie cap pulled down over his hair, craggy shoulders hunched.

“Stroud!” she yelled.

The relief was almost as big as if Lynn had appeared. Stroud would be able to tell her what had happened up at the cabin. Fill in the empty spaces.

“Jesus, Sullivan. Does anyone else even figure in your pathetic world?” Jesse snapped, whipping his hat off and smacking it against his leg as if it were dusty. His hands were encrusted with dirt, and more stiffened the knees of his jeans.

It took a moment for Ari to clue in. How had she mistaken him for Stroud?

“What?” she said, feeling even more disorientated. What the hell was he talking about?

“You walk around oblivious. Like a victim. It’s so sad.” Why was he taunting her? Did he know that she was the girl in the well? Of course he did; it was exactly the kind of juicy morsel he would uncover and gloat over. What kind of asshole delighted in someone else’s misery?

Ari felt rage bubble up. It was a relief. “What the fuck is your problem, Jesse? Do you think I don’t know how things really are?”

He blinked at her.

She was just getting started. “It’s not all gothic and romantic, you moron. The world is a truly dark place. People are fucked.” Her breath caught on a sob. “I don’t have time for your small-minded bullshit.”

“Fine. Get the hell out of here then.”

For a breathless second she stared at him. “Fuck you, Jesse Caldwell!”