Page 17 of Never Landing

I swallowed the soft lump of fruit and screwed my lips up on the side. “How long until the pizza’s ready?”

Everett hummed, fiddling with the ingredients, sliding the bag of flour back a little. “The dough should sit for a little while before we bake it, so maybe an hour?”

“Then yes, please.”

The crackers were cheesy, salty perfection, and I ate them by the handful while Everett mixed the dough ingredients. Then, he asked if I wanted to knead it, which was fun and surprisingly hard and reminded me of that one time we’d made cookies with his grandma.

I’d forgotten that too. How much, over the years, had tumbled out of my head? Why hadn’t Everett?

I stared at him as he put the dough in a bowl and covered it. Then, he came over and got a couple crackers for himself.

He was watching me, smiling, but he almost looked wary. I didn’t think he was afraid of me, but he was afraid of something, and I realized that was just the same as I felt, like there was a snake coiling around and around in my belly.

“How long has it been?” I asked. Sure, he looked older now, but not so much that I couldn’t recognize him.

He bit his lips and they disappeared between his teeth for a few seconds. “Fifteen years?”

“Right,” I whispered, looking down into the cracker box. My stomach rumbled, but it wasn’t hunger this time. “And the—the guy in the picture, with that woman?”

“Eloise and Peter Hawking?” Everett offered. He wasn’t eating the crackers anymore either, and he reached out. My breath shook when he put his hand on my elbow, and it was nice, to have someone there and know they understood where I was coming from without me having to explain it all.

It’d been a long time since I’d had that with the other lost kids. They thought I was too serious every time I said we should pick up our things or find shelter out of the rain.

Whatever was in my head now, Everett had always understood better than anybody, so it didn’t matter when I had a hard time asking all the questions I wanted to.

“Yeah. Can you—do you know . . . ” I grimaced.

Everett’s expression softened, and I could only stand a glance at his face before looking down again. “Peter Hawking was born in eighteen fifty-seven.”

“Okay. And it’s . . . ”

“Twenty twenty-four.”

That...felt like a long time. Eighteen and twenty had a pretty big gap when you were talking about—was it a hundred years every time the first number went up by one? I wasn’t sure.

My head was swimming, and I didn’t know how to track the way time stretched out. I wasn’t sure I could count that high, or count down from the bigger number. Definitely not right then, when my heart was squeezing so hard in my chest that it ached.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know how long it’s been. Could you...Do you know?”

“A hundred and sixty-seven years, Peter.” His thumb brushed my inner elbow, and I took a long, slow, shaky breath. “Has it really been that long?”

Everett didn’t fully believe it either, but the days and months and years were beginning to untangle in my head.

I shrugged. I didn’treallyknow, but it must’ve been, because I knew the woman in that picture. I knew Eloise and I remembered when she left town.

Then, I remembered how they’d come back, just her and—and Peter. She hadn’t baked cakes anymore. She hadn’t looked at me or at anything, really.

And he’d been sad too, even when he had a family of his own. There was a hole there, something missing.

Was it missing in me too?

“I guess? There’ve been more days than I can even imagine counting, but—but I don’t know. It’s like I’ve been frozen the whole time.” I licked my lips. They were dry, and all the sudden it was all I could feel. I was terribly thirsty. “But then I met you, and time...moved. You grew up, went to school, didthings. Youlearned so much stuff, and I wanted—” I shrank down into my shoulders. Was this too much to admit to? Everett was my best friend and I should be able to tell him anything, but it was hard. The next time I tried to speak, my voice cracked. It was still so strange in my throat, the new, deeper sound of it. “I wanted to learn it with you. I wanted to try new stuff and grow up and live a life that had you in it. But then you were gone?—”

I looked up, and Everett’s eyes were shining with tears. My mouth parted, and Everett sniffed. “God, Peter, I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head fast. “Don’t be. Really. It was...good, I think. Wanting all that stuff. I just...got stuck again when you weren’t here. I don’t know how to do it alone, but I’m—I’m really glad you’re back now. Really, really glad.” That felt like such an understatement, but I didn’t know how to tell him that my world only turned when I could hold his hand. “Can”—I shuffled toward him a half step, lifting my arms a little—“Can I?”

He nodded, his arms open wide, and I fell into them and hugged him tighter than I’d ever hugged anybody. Maybe I was too big now and it felt wrong and right and confusing and exciting and terrifying all at once, but when I hugged Everett, I fit with him just like I always had. I could tip my head forward and bury my face against his shoulder, and it was perfect.

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