Page 36 of Evil All Along

Bobby hadn’t seemed any different either. I mean, sure, he hadn’t said anything. But I’d told him he didn’t have to. I knew it was hard for him, being expressive like that. I knew it didn’t come naturally to him. I knew he was doing it for me, because he knew how much it meant to me. So, really—if you looked at it that way—I was being considerate. I was cutting him some slack. After all, we’d only been together a few months now. We were still figuring things out.

And honestly, wasn’t it a little bit his fault? I mean, Bobbywasattentive. He had to have noticed that it made me uncomfortable when he said stuff like that. Stuff that obviously wasn’t true. Things he didn’t need to say. He had to have noticed, but he kept doing it anyway. That he liked marking my skin.My skin’s already got plenty of marks, thanks—they’re called a million moles. That I’m beautiful. Yeah, I own a mirror, guy, I know what I look like. Why couldn’t he just—why couldn’t he just not do that? Any of that? Without me having to tell him and make everything weird.

Rolling onto my stomach, I pulled my pillow over my head and decided I had never, post-coitus, had such a strong urge to bite someone. In this case, myself. For being such a colossal idiot.

(For the record, I’d never hadanyurge to bite someone post-coitus. I’m not a raccoon.)

I was still lying there, stewing in the dark and calling myself a lot of names they won’t let you use on the Disney channel, when I heard the footsteps.

They were soft. In fact, if my room hadn’t backed up against the servants’ staircase, I probably wouldn’t have heard them. If I’d been asleep, I definitely wouldn’t have heard them. And in an old house like this one, that was a real feat—especially since it seemed like every other floorboard was determined to squeak, groan, make a weird clicking noise, or otherwise protest being walked on.

And since snooping is better than lying in the dark and semi-hating yourself for opening your big mouth, I slipped out of bed, pulled on clothes, and padded out of the room.

I caught Keme in the kitchen. He was dressed in his usual getup—a pair of board shorts that were frayed where the hem had worn out, a Santa Cruz hoodie, worn and cracking slides. He had at least pulled on a pair of socks. He was in the process of unlocking the side door. When he saw me, he froze. His eyes were so shadowed they looked bruised. Red, too, as though he’d been crying. But his mouth was set in an uncompromising line. And the set of his body was fight-or-flight.

“Hey,” I said.

Nothing.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

Keme stared at me for another second. Then he seemed to dismiss me. He slid the deadbolt back.

“What’s going on?” I said.

He opened the door.

“Hey, where are you going?” I didn’t like the sound of my own voice—shrill, rising. I sounded like a nagging TV mom.

Keme didn’t even glance back. He stepped outside and started to pull the door shut.

My earlier anger at—well, I almost said at Bobby, but it was really at myself, and I was mature enough (barely) to admit it—crashed over me. “Hey!” I snapped. “I’m talking to—Keme!”

The last was more of a shout than I would have liked, but only because he was getting away.

(Which makes it sound like he was a prisoner, which was definitely not the case. On the other hand, he actuallywasgetting away.)

So, I went after him. I stepped into a pair of Bobby’s New Balances that he’d left near the door, and I sprinted out into the night.

It was dark, and the shock of the cold ripped a first, startled breath from me. The ocean sounded louder than ever, and the wind competed with it, rising louder and louder until it sounded like a train whistle. Clouds blotted out the moon and the stars, and I could only barely make out a shape moving across Hemlock House’s lawn toward the inky lines of the woods.

Charging after him, I shouted. “Keme!” I couldn’t tell if my voice would carry over the noise. “Keme, get back here!” But that dark shape kept moving toward the trees. The tang of the ocean flooded my lungs with each breath. The grass was wet and cold where it brushed my ankles. Ahead of me, the little dark spotthat was Keme was getting smaller and smaller, so I started to run.

By the time I reached the tree line, I was breathing hard enough that it was kind of embarrassing. Worse, I’d lost Keme. I didn’t have my phone. I didn’t have a flashlight. I didn’t have anything. I took a few strides left, peering into the trees. Then I turned and went right. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for—some sign of where he’d gone, whatever that might be. I wasn’t the Hardy Boys. I couldn’t track him by his footprints or a bent branch or a broken stalk of grass. (Did the Hardy Boys ever track anybody? Was I thinking of someone else?)

Then I saw the trail. It cut into the woods like a tunnel into a cave. The darkness here, on the lawn, was oppressive; the darkness under the trees was absolute. Above me, the wind tore at the branches of pine and fir and spruce, filling the air with a vast rustling sound that almost drowned out the crash of the waves against the cliffs. I risked a glance back and saw a silhouette moving in front of the house. My first thought was: Oh God. I decided if I had to see Bobby in that particular moment (on top of every other psycho behavior I’d exhibited that night, I waswearing his shoes), I’d throw myself into the ocean.

I plunged into the forest.

Within the first few paces, I knew I’d made a mistake. Darkness closed around me like a fist. The sound of the wind whipping through the branches became total, obliterating everything else. The air was resinous, sweet, but it was also freezing, and so damp that it was almost particulate. I thought I could feel it against the back of my neck like a million tiny, invisible raindrops that never actually fell.

A crash of thunder seemed perfectly (ill) timed for me to realize that this wasn’t just a lot of wind and clouds. This was a storm. And while we didn’t get a ton of them on the coast, the ones we did get tended to be whoppers.

“KEME!” I called in my best Millie impersonation.

The wind sliced the air. Even over the rustle of the branches, it sounded like a scream.

I trotted forward, trying to stick to the path, hands held up to fend off any possible low-hanging branches. My heartbeat had moved up to somewhere inside my throat, and the sound of branches cracking and leaves and needles whispering against each other made it seem like at any moment, something was going to erupt out of the brush around me. It was so dark I couldn’t even see my hands.

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