Page 92 of Limbo

He straightens up and glances over his shoulder. “You alone?”

Before I can answer, he heads for the kitchen. I give myself a breath and follow.

The screen door bangs open, and he leers out across the yard at Jordan. “Who’s that?”

“A friend,” I say from behind him.

“The same friend you ride?”

I ignore the comment, determined not to let him ruin my night. “I have to go.”

When he continues to stare, I push past him and out the door.

“I want to meet him,” Graham says.

I pause halfway down the steps, grip on the book tightening. “We’re late.”

“It only takes a minute to introduce me to your boyfriend. Tell him to get in here,” he demands.

“Not tonight.”

“I’m not asking.”

I force myself down the steps, never wanting to bring Jordan anywhere near him.

“Callista,” he shouts.

I flinch, worried he’ll come after me, but the door slams. It echoes off the neighbors’ houses and reminds me of all the times they’ve called Kevin over the years because of similar outbursts of slamming and yelling.

Jordan has a protective look in his eye when I get in the Jeep, and he drives off right away. “We good?”

“Mission was a success.” I throw Cate’s book in the backseat while checking Graham stayed in the house.

“And areyougood?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I say. The answer’s automatic, but for once, I mean it. We sit at a stop sign much longer than necessary, and when I look over, he’s studying me. “Jordan, I’m okay. I promise.”

The worry fades from his face, and he brings my hand to his lips to kiss my fingers. “Then tell me where the hell I’m going.”

I smile and tell him to turn right, not thinking about anything but him.

We park in a gravel lot across the street from the abandoned elementary school at the other end of town. The exterior of the building looks ominous, towering three stories high with dead trees out front and more windows boarded up than not. Every few years, growing up, someone would get the bright idea to fix the place up, but it never went beyond the planning stages or someone mowing the weeds.

Jordan shuts his door with another look of dread, similar to the one from the first time he drove through Waymore.

I smile, trying not to laugh, and pull the sleeves of his hoodie I’m wearing down over my hands. “Are you up-to-date on your tetanus shot?”

“Ha,” he says, unimpressed with my joke. “If this turns into one of Connor’s horror movies, then we’re both dead, considering what you let me do to you in the backseat.”

He has a point.

“Sutterville and Waymore consolidated schools a few years ago. The school we went to before sits a mile that way off the highway.” I wave a hand the other way. “This place hasn’t been used for anything but parties since the nineties.”

We use the flashlights on our phones to follow the worn path that takes us around to the back. The playground equipment hasn’t been used in years. The wooden merry-go-round and seesaw are both weatherworn and no longer working, and the swings have chains hanging down with no seats. Attached to the top floor is an old metal fire escape slide. In an unusual twist, it is functional and used rather frequently by partygoers.

While Jordan cranes his neck, looking up at the side of the bricks, I grab the piece of wood hiding the busted-down door. As easy as it would be to fix, no one seems invested enough to do so. People care up to the point it puts them out. When helping requires them to go out of their way, it’s easier to pretend you never noticed the problem to begin with. The same can be said about most things in life, not just dilapidated buildings in a dying town.

I tug on the board and wrinkle my nose at the smell of rotting wood. Jordan steps beside me, reaching over to move it for me. Once it shifts enough to reveal the opening, we slip through, and he slides it back into place behind us. As ominous as the outside is, the inside reminds you of one of the reality shows where people stay in a haunted insane asylum. Old desks, chairs, and other classroom supplies lie everywhere in the large, open room on the first floor. All of it covered in decades’ worth of dust and cobwebs.

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