Sweat rims the neck and under the arms of Jalen’s black T-shirt. He walks toward me slowly, and despite my mood and my doubts, I cannot take my eyes off him. He moves like a lion, all muscle and bone and grace. But the question remains—why is he here?
“Jacob saw you run from the information center. I came after you. What’s wrong?”
“You were following me the whole way? Why didn’t you let me know you were there?”
He closes the distance between us, and suddenly I’m standing in the shade of his body and have to tilt my head to see his face. If he wants to kill me, there’s no way I can match him physically. And yet even as I’m thinking this, I’m not scared.
He simply shrugs as if there is no need to explain.
I fold my arms. “It’s creepy,” I tell him. “I turn around and you’re there. That time in Chamber One with Jeremy…you just showed up. When I was going to Jeremy’s house, you just happened to be there with the truck. Why is it that every time I’m upset, you know to be there?”
“Just lucky,” he says, stone-faced.
His joking voice is the same as his serious voice, but I get it. I shake my head. “Seriously, Jalen, how do you always know?”
His eyes meet mine, and I see, even if he won’t say it, even if he doesn’t want it to be true, there’s something between us.
“Here.” He lifts the strap of his canteen over his head and hands the battered metal container to me. “Drink.”
“Thanks.” I take the canteen from his hands and drink so greedily that I choke a little and small drops trickle down my chin.
I push the canteen back at him, and when he takes it, our fingers touch. It’s just a brush, but just like before, it’s electric, magnetic. But I have to pretend that I don’t feel anything because I know that’s what Jalen wants. I just don’t know why.
He screws the cap on with more force than necessary. I feel his sudden tension, even if I don’t understand it.
He pulls the canteen and strap over his head, and they nestle against his side, drawing a perfect line of where I would like to be. It makes me angry that I can’t control thoughts like these, that when I look at him, I start thinking about how I want him to touch me, kiss me, want me. He makes it easy to forget that Emily is missing and that finding her is all that’s important.
I dig the toe of my hiking boot into the hard, pebble-crusted earth and try to crush the thoughts I don’t want to have. “Dr. Shum is reinstating Jeremy Brown.”
He doesn’t speak, but his frown deepens.
“Effective immediately,” I continue. “Dr. Shum is satisfied with the police report. Jeremy’s not a suspect, and there’s enough ambiguity with what happened with me to reinstate him into the research program.”
I hold Jalen’s gaze even as the heat of memories burns my face. I don’t want to think about Jeremy’s thin fingers clawing at me, and even worse is the thought of Jalen picturing me like that, too.
“That’s a mistake. He’s an asshole.”
“Totally.”
“He’s not coming near you,” Jalen states.
I shrug, although inside I’m thrilled at the totally serious tone of his voice. He wants to protect me. He cares. “Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe I can make him slip up.”
“I don’t want you around him.”
“I don’t want to be around him, either, but I really don’t have a choice. How else will I find out anything?”
Jalen’s mouth tightens. “What if I told you I think you’re going in the wrong direction?”
“What do you mean?”
He shifts, as if to ease the pressure of the words he doesn’t want to say. “Jeremy told us he saw Emily at the park after hours. That she might have been meeting someone.”
“He also said Emily was a slut. He’s a liar.” I have to force myself not to get angry all over again.
“He’s a liar,” Jalen agrees, “but even liars know the best stories mix truth with fiction. What if he actually saw her? What if she was secretly meeting someone?”
“That’s crazy. I’d know.” But my thoughts immediately jump to my father and the possibility that he and Emily were having an affair. Oh God, does Jalen think this, too?
Where, I wonder, does the line between loyalty to my family and loyalty to Emily lie? And on what side do I want to stand?
Behind me, the crickets begin a loud, shrieking chorus that rattles through the heat like demented laughter. I want to cover my ears from their terrible noise, my terrible thoughts.
“Maybe you know more than you think.”
It’s the worst thing he could say to me other than come right out and accuse my father. “If she were seeing someone, she would have told me.” I say it a little defiantly. “We should go.”
He doesn’t argue, only follows me as we pick our way through a line of dirt that only barely resembles a path. Over us, the sun beats down so hot on my head it feels like my hair will burst into flames.
We follow the irrigation ditches leading from the well. Although these have been searched, I can’t help looking into the murky water and picturing Emily’s long blonde hair tangled in the reeds growing out of the banks.
I think about all those summers when Emily and I were kids. We were close in a way that I’ve never been with any of my other friends. Or probably ever will be again. I can’t stop trying to find out what happened to her, even if it means that I might not like the answers.
I sigh. As much as I want to dismiss Jalen’s observations, I can’t. “So you think Jeremy was telling the truth about seeing her after hours at the park?”
“Yes.”
“But she didn’t tell me anything.”
Jalen lets a moment of silence pass. “Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she promised someone she wouldn’t.”
We pass a towering saguaro, and I try to see a face in its prickly green barrel, a game Emily and I used to play. We never did, but it was good because, if we saw a face, it meant a person would die. “Then how are we going to find out who it was?”
Jalen stops walking and looks into my eyes. Suddenly he seems very old. “You knew her,” he says, “who she was and who she liked. To find her, we need to start thinking like her.”
“Until this summer, we hadn’t spoken in years.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he insists. “People don’t change. What was she like growing up?”
Bold. Adventurous. Beautiful. I shake my head. The adjectives don’t do her justice. “It was a long time ago. I don’t know where to begin.”
“I think you know exactly where to start.”
We pass another cactus, but I’m too afraid to look for a face. I’m afraid I’ll see Emily’s. I take a deep breath, and then without looking at him, I start at the beginning.