“What bones?” asked Willow. She was already there, in that place of regret she knew so well. It sat in the pit of her stomach. In the rearview mirror, she saw Cole staring at her, though he’d barely acknowledged her since she slipped out to meet him. She hadn’t asked him why he didn’t show up the other day. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Out by the Chapel,” Jolie said. She had the ghost-story face. A gleeful, wide-eyed menace lit her gaze. “Where you saw that freak Michael Holt digging? They found bones.”
Willow felt the tingle of curiosity. “Just like he told my mom.”
“No,” said Jolie. “The bones belonged to his mother. Everyone thought she’d run off ages ago. Turns out she was murdered.”
Cole brought the car to a stop by the side of the road, and Willow saw that they were back at the awful graveyard. Oh, no. What’s wrong with me? Why do I do things like this?
“What are we doing here?” Willow asked.
“Don’t you want to see where he was digging?”
“No,” she said.
“He’s still back here,” said Jolie. “He ran off when they found the bones. They think he went down into the mines, that he might be living down there.”
“Yeah, like the mole people,” said Cole. “Did you ever hear about that? People live in the abandoned subway tunnels beneath New York City.”
“That’s an urban legend,” said Willow, even though she knew it wasn’t. Her voice came out more sharply than she’d intended. She didn’t like it when people who’d never lived there pretended to know things about New York City. He was still staring at her in the mirror, but she forced herself to look at Jolie.
“You don’t want to go?” said Jolie. She seemed incredulous.
“Last time we were out here, you thought I was lying,” Willow said. “You didn’t believe me.”
“Well, I believe you now.”
Cole turned to look at Willow; his face was pale in the dim light. He had dark shiners of fatigue under his eyes. If she didn’t hate him, she’d have asked him if he was okay. But she did hate him, a little. The rain was drumming on the roof of the car. Out the window she could barely see the tombstones. Why would anyone want to go tramping through the dark woods in the pouring rain when a crazy murderous freak could be lurking out there? She asked Jolie as much, and Cole issued a laugh.
“That’s what I said,” said Cole.
Jolie started to get sullen. “That’s the problem with this place. Everyone is so fucking dull, dull, dull. Where is your sense of adventure?”
Willow found that she didn’t really care what Jolie thought of her anymore. The whole enterprise was asinine. It was stupid, and beyond that, she had been so awful to her mother and now she was out here in the middle of a huge storm with these two. She’d run off on her mother again, let her down again. She didn’t have her cell phone. When her mother discovered she was gone-and it wouldn’t be long-she was going to be terrified.
“Those kids are lost,” her mother had told her. “No one’s looking after them. You might think that’s cool. But you’re wrong. It’s sad.” In this moment Willow finally understood what her mother meant. But it was probably too late. Her mother was never going to forgive her for this night. She looked at Cole in the rearview mirror.
“Can you take me home?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said. He turned on the ignition.
“What?” said Jolie. Her voice went shrill, her eyes narrowing to two small points of anger. “You guys are such pussies.”
And in the next second, Jolie pulled on her hood and stepped out into the rain. Willow saw the bouncing of her flashlight beam in the night as she stalked off.
“She’s crazy,” said Willow. She rolled down the window. “Jolie!” she yelled. “This is nuts! Come back!”
“Fuck you guys!” Jolie’s voice sounded small and childlike in the rain, barely a whisper on the air. Willow brought the window back up when the beam disappeared into the trees. Cole was looking out after Jolie, too.
“Let’s go get her,” said Willow, yanking up her hood.
“Hold on,” he said. “She’s going to be back in like one minute. Trust me.”
She didn’t say anything, watching the night, willing Jolie to come back. Otherwise Willow knew they were going to have to go out after her. They wouldn’t leave her out there. And Jolie knew it, too.
“I’m sorry,” Cole said after a moment.
“For what?” Now he was looking at her over the seat. Willow tried not to stare at him. Those eyes thick with lashes, that nice soft mouth.
“For not coming to your house the other day,” he said. “I wanted to, but…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He just blew out a long breath, looked down at his nails.
“But what?”
For a second she thought she was dreaming. Sitting here alone with him, the rain beating down outside-it felt like something she could make up.
“I lied to you,” he said. “About my mom.”
Willow knew that. She remembered that she thought he was lying.
“She’s not in Iraq?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t know where she is. My dad said she’s living with some guy and doesn’t want me around for a while. She wants me to finish school here, stay with my dad’s family.”
“I’m sorry.” She was sorry. She knew what it had felt like when Richard went off to live with that stripper, even though he and her mom were divorced. She knew what it had felt like when her mom was having a good time with Mr. Ivy. It felt like a betrayal. It hurt, made you unsure of your place in your family, in the world. She reached a hand over the seat, and Cole took it. She felt the heat move into her body.
“But now my stepmom and my half brother and half sister? They left, too. I guess Paula ran off on my dad. He said she hurt him, took the kids.” He leaned away from her, against the driver’s-side door.
“But?”
“But she’s so nice, such a good mom,” he said. “I just can’t see her hurting anyone.”
She couldn’t quite see his face, obscured as he was now by the seat. She climbed over the center console and came to sit beside him in the place Jolie had occupied.
“You think he lied?”
He shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t know. And if he lied about that, did he lie about my mom, too?”
“Can’t you call her?”
“Her phone got disconnected. She got fired from her job. She hasn’t answered any of my e-mails.”
Willow found herself thinking of her own mother, how she really had to get home. But then she saw that he was crying. A single tear trailed down his face. He wiped it quickly away. She reached out for him, and he moved easily into her embrace.
“It’s okay,” she said, even though she had no reason to believe that was true. Everything about him felt good-his arms around her, his face on her neck, his hair against her fingers. “Where’s your dad now?”
He pulled away from her suddenly, turned around to peer out into the darkness. “Did you hear that?”
Willow’s heart started pounding as she listened past the beating rain. Then she heard it, too, faint and far away, the sound of someone screaming. Maybe. They both exited the car at the same time, into the buckets of falling rain. Willow came to stand beside Cole. They looked in the direction of the woods but didn’t hear anything more. There was only darkness and rain, as far as Willow could see. Maybe it was their imagination. Maybe they hadn’t heard anything at all. But Willow knew she wouldn’t leave her friend out there alone.
“Let’s go get her,” said Willow.
“Okay.”
The thin beam of Cole’s flashlight was the only light they had.
Michael heard yelling. A woman’s angry voice ringing out over the rain, and he moved toward it. He’d been wandering in a kind of fog for so long, he didn’t know how long-dwelling in the mines, dozing there. There were some PowerBars and a few bottles of water in the knapsack he had with him, and he’d lived on those. He was happy where it was dark and quiet, where there were no eyes looking and no mouths talking. The darkness didn’t judge him or want anything from him. It didn’t care what he did or didn’t do; it didn’t care what he had done.