Page 103 of Our Last Resort

He holds up a hand.

“Not here.”

I frown.

“I can’t…here,” he says, gesturing at our surroundings.

“Then where?”

“Outside,” he says.

Of course.

Where there are no eavesdroppers, no witnesses.

In the desert, where no one can hear you scream.

I squeeze my eyes shut, then release them, trying to shake the Etch A Sketch of my brain back into a blank slate.

This is Gabriel. The person I’ve known the longest. In a way, the only person I know outside of myself.

I grew up next to him. He shared my most brutal years. If I was a feral puppy, released, starving and unschooled and primed for abuse, into the world, then he was my littermate.

“Let’s go,” I say.

I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes. I slip the hair clip into the side pocket of my running shorts. It’s the only thing that feels real right now.

Maybe I’m more prepared for this than I thought.

Maybe, in a corner of my mind, I’ve been bracing myself for a long time.

35Spring Lake, New Jersey

Eleven Years Ago

There was a firepit in the backyard.

“We should make s’mores,” Annie said on our fourth day.

She had just looked up from her magazine, a special edition ofPeoplededicated to true-crime stories that had “shocked America.”

“Never had those,” Gabriel said.

Annie tilted her head to the side, like,It figures.

“You?” she asked in my direction.

I shook my head no.

“Next time we go to the store,” Annie declared, “we’ll get supplies.”

She loved that stuff. Introducing us to new things, walking us through our many first times. First comic books, first black-and-white cookies, first ice rink. I think she got a genuine thrill from it.

It had been hard for me to wrap my head around Annie and her upbringing. After our movie club–and–pizza night, I thought she was sweet. I built her up in my mind as anice girl.

Shewasnice, but not like that. Annie was fierce and clearheaded. Her father ran a chain of copy shops. One day, shewould take over the family business. He’d once hired her on a part-time basis, so she could—well, spy on other employees for him.

“Kind of gross,” she’d said, wrinkling her pretty nose after she’d explained the situation to us.

---