Fear’s words come back to me: For the first time in your life, you act without thinking. It seems Joshua Hayes brings out a lot of firsts in me. But the thought of Fear brings on a whole new train of thought, and I begin to wonder if I’ll see him again. After that conversation in the hallway—
Joshua holds his hand out. Clamping down on my roiling thoughts, I take it. His palm is rough and scarred from working on the farm all his life … just like mine. He’s warm and I’m hot. Our skins collapse against each other, and I imagine I can hear a sizzling in the air.
He senses my distraction and won’t let it go any further. “Hey.” He tugs on my hand, leading me away from the house. “Stop thinking for once. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
He’s leading me toward the road. We leave my house behind, and the fabric of my shoes rubs against my bare ankles—I forgot to put on socks. Joshua parked his car farther down the road. He probably didn’t want the engine to wake up Tim and Sarah. He stops by the car, nodding to himself, and turns to survey the cluster of trees by the road. His hold on my hand tightens, and he starts to walk toward the woods. I resist.
“Joshua, what—”
“Just be patient,” he sighs, tugging at me some more, and I allow him to lead me into the trees. But then I pull myself free from his grip. He lets me, acting as if it doesn’t affect him. Darkness and shadows press in all around. I should tell Joshua about the possible dangers of this place—I think of the shadow in my dreams, Rebecca’s obvious terror. But he’s walking again, leaving me behind without waiting to see if I’ll follow.
He knows I will. I hurry to catch up.
A delicate web above catches my eye, glistening between some leaves. A tiny black spider zips this way and that, its long legs weaving, weaving, always weaving.
“ … and while I was walking to your house tonight, I found them,” Joshua is telling me. “It would’ve been hard to miss; there was a bright glow.” We duck under a low branch.
Glow? What does he mean? Rethinking this, I stop right there, shifting from foot to foot. Joshua notices right away and turns to face me. We’re standing on a slanted ground, so for once I’m eye level with him. I notice the green flecks in his brown eyes. “We shouldn’t be out here,” I tell him.
Joshua laughs quietly and turns to start walking again. “What, are there werewolves?”
When I don’t bother to answer he turns to look at me again, eyebrows raised. “Are there werewolves?”
My eye catches the faint gleam of a trap on the path, and I grab Joshua’s elbow to swerve him around it. “What—” His head whips around and I point to the trap wordlessly. Joshua frowns down it. “Thanks,” he mutters. “That’s twice you’ve saved me now, you know.” I hear the unspoken question in the statement but don’t address it.
His elbow is warm in my grip, and I let go before he notices I’m still touching him. We walk for a few minutes more, and then he’s lifting his hand to point, turning his shaggy head toward me. There’s a faint light ahead, shining through the brush. Joshua is beaming with delight and a tiny bit of awe. He dares to take my hand a second time and pulls me forward against my better judgment.
A tiny clearing bursts open in front of us. It’s alive and soundless, illuminated by hundreds of fireflies. This is impossible, of course; the coming winter should have killed them, or at least made them go into hibernation. Either something is going wrong with the Elements or this is some strange happenstance. And I don’t believe in happenstance.
They dart every which way, stunning, bright. Flashing, fading, becoming, disappearing. Dizzying and riveting all at once. “It’s beautiful,” is all I say.
Beside me, Joshua just continues to stare at them. “I wanted to show you,” he whispers, as if speaking too loud will frighten them all away. Movement out of the corner of my eye catches my attention, and I don’t respond to him. A small creature vanishes from an upturned bucket and appears on my shoulder. Joshua doesn’t see her, which gives away the fact that she’s not part of this world. I recognize her scent, a slight tang of pinecones—I’ve encountered this one before. Her countenance is not familiar, though. Her hair is long and black, dragging at her feet. Her chin and ears are delicately pointed, and her wide eyes are such a dark brown they’re almost black.
“Who are you?” I ask her, my voice just barely above a whisper. I don’t want Joshua to hear. I shift away from him to be safe. He doesn’t seem to notice. He walks deeper into the clearing, looking lost in thought.
“Moss,” the creature answers. “It’s my specialty.”
As soon as she speaks in her high, piping voice, I know where I’ve met her before. “Moss,” I repeat. She giggles. I smile to appeal to her. “You were at Sophia’s birthday party that night.”
Her hands suddenly flutter; she’s uncomfortable. I re-member her words in my ear: He’s here, he’s here! Disappear, before he gets you, gets you!
“You were warning me about something,” I add. I reach up and untangle the ends of her hair for her.
Her little hands flutter again, this time with pleasure. She nods hesitantly, her Cupid’s mouth pink and pursed. “I shouldn’t talk about it. It’s not safe.”
A firefly flits past my nose and Moss straightens, as if she wants to chase after it. “Please tell me?” I say, and her dark gaze goes back to my face. She flinches. Joshua is still enraptured by the lights, and he hasn’t even noticed my quiet conversation. He’s admiring the intricate dance.
The Element on my shoulder smiles at me, putting her hand on my cheek. She seems to like the texture of my skin. An instant later she squeaks and jerks her hand back, abruptly terrified, and she jumps off me, disappearing into the thick of the lights. The fireflies grow more frenzied, bright blurs of movement. I frown, sensing a disturbance. It isn’t until I feel a cool breath on my cheek and feel him pressed against my shoulder that I identify the reason for their anxiety. Oh. I should have known.
I keep my eyes on Joshua. A boy that I’ve known all my life, a boy that has always watched over me from afar. He’s smiling at me, motioning to join him. He doesn’t see Fear, of course. I don’t move.
“You almost look as if you feel something for him,” Fear whispers, folding his arms around my waist from behind. His chest is hard against my back, his skin like marble. He rests his chin on the top of my head. “But I know that can’t be right. After all, you don’t care about anything, right?”
His hands are on me. The touch makes the wall of nothingness shudder, makes me think of those kisses and that brief minute in the hallway when I’d yearned to do it again. Despite this, I allow his touch. Maybe he’ll tell me about the party. “That’s correct.”
He chuckles bitterly. “I never realized how stubborn you are. You hid it better when you were small.” When I don’t answer, Fear shifts so that Joshua is blocked from my view. I finally look up at him. “Well, at least I know that if you can’t feel anything for me, you can’t feel anything for him, either,” he says in a low voice, his eyes burning into mine. After a moment he turns away to watch the fireflies too, his brow furrowed. He tries to hide his feelings from me, but I sense the turmoil inside him, a swirling mass of dark and light that constantly war with each other. In the midst of all of it is me.
Did … did part of me want him back, during that brief moment in the school hallway when the wall crumbled?
No. That couldn’t be. “You’ve been avoiding me,” I say in an effort to direct my thoughts in a more practical direction. “At the party—”