Page 45 of Never Thought I'd End Up Here
Cyrus reading in the bus seat next to me, only a few days ago. He arrives at a line that makes him pause, reads it again as if to savor the words, save them for another day, and he turns around to point it out like he’s just come across a rare natural phenomenon.I know that no art can be perfect, he says,but have you ever read something that so perfectly captures everything you’re feeling—
Cyrus, sitting alone at dinner last night, the way I used to at school. He’s in one of those moods I’ve come to recognize, where he retreats somewhere deep into his own brain, lost in an endless spiral of thoughts he’ll never share with anyone else. He stiffens when I go to join him, then his eyes soften when he realizes it’s me—
A brilliant beam of light burns through the darkness, accompanied by footsteps. Real, solid, drawing closer.
I blink fast into the sudden glare, my heart pounding.
The light sways, catching the thin silver edges of the leaves overhead, and then the snake bare inches away from me.
“Don’t move,” Cyrus calls out softly, the concern creasing his brows illuminated by the flashlight in his hand. His eyes find mine. “It won’t attack. Just stay where you are.”
I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I stand as still as I physically can, tensing muscles that I never knew existed before. My breath is clogged in my throat, my lungs contracting uselessly as I try my best not to hyperventilate. The snake slides another inch toward me, so close I can feel its scales brush against my shoes, and just when I think this is really it, these will be my final seconds on earth, and at least I won’t be dying alone, not with Cyrus standing there, the snake slithers away, disappearing somewhere behind the bushes in the other direction.
“Leah?” Cyrus says, raising the flashlight. “Leah, are you—”
I don’t let him finish the sentence; I rush up to him and wrap my arms tight around his body, one step short of crashing straight into him. He stiffens in surprise, but I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t even think past the relief melting through me, the warmth of his jacket and his breathing against my skin.He’s found me. He promised he’d find me and he did.The fear that’s been building in my bones is cleared away so suddenly I’m lightheaded as I latch on to Cyrus, a sob escaping my lips. After half a heartbeat of silence, he draws me in, anchoring me to him, his hand rubbing slow, gentle circles over my back, and maybe it’s because I’d been half-certain I was about to die that I feel so wonderfully, vividly alive right now.
“It’s okay,” he tells me, his voice low in my ear. “You’re safe.”
And despite reason, despite our history, I believe it. If someone were to ask, I wouldn’t be able to name anywhere safer than the arms of my childhood nemesis, in a remote bamboo forest far away from everything I’ve known. I would cling on longer, for as long as he’d let me, but as my pulse settles down, some sense returns.
I quickly drop my arms. Step back, angle my face to the left so he can’t see my expression. I don’t realize how hard I’m shivering until he unzips his jacket and wraps it around my shaking shoulders, the soft fabric falling over my body like a ghost of his embrace. It smells like him: that familiar combination of sage and sandalwood, as sweet and clean as fresh streams in spring.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “How did you even manage to find me?”
A strange sense of déjà vu hits me the second the words leave my lips, and my mind skips back years into the past, to when we’d play hide-and-seek around campus. No matter how well I hid—curling up in the suffocating space of the art supply closet, silently inhaling the sharp smell of acrylic; ducking behind the rosebush in the gardens; plastering myself to the wall behind the auditorium curtains—he had always been the first to find me. It reached the point where I accused him of cheating.There’s no way you didn’t open your eyes early, I would protest when he opened the door, brushed aside the thorns, pushed away the curtains.How did you find me that quickly?
“I almost walked right past this area, but then I saw the rock that looks like a sloth,” Cyrus says, lowering the flashlight. “I admittedly had my doubts, but the resemblance is uncanny.”
“Right?”
“I mean, let’s not give your rock descriptionstoomuch credit,” he says. “You were also shedding glitter. It was like tracking down a fairy.”
I frown at him. “Shedding glitter?”
“Your top,” he explains, then shines the light on his own shirt. With great mortification, I notice the glitter shimmering over the fabric from where my body was pressed to his moments ago. “Who would’ve thought that your impractical fashion choices would save you from an eternity of wandering through the trees?”
I wince. “I’ll dust that off for you—”
“No need.” His features are serious, but his eyes gleam with private amusement. “I’ll just tell people that I ran into a fairy. Come on,” he adds, before I can say anything else. “We should really go back before Wang Laoshi combusts from stress. He’s probably getting ready to call the police—or hand in his resignation letter.”
He turns around in the direction he came from, the flashlight throwing the patch of trees up ahead of us into clarity, and for a brief second, he stretches his hand out, his fingers flexing. I stare, unable to tell if he means for me to take it. If this were anyone else, it would be obvious to me. I’ve never had trouble reading signals before; I would know in an instant, just from how a boy looked at me, how his gaze flitted to my lips, how he walked next to me, exactly what he was thinking. But with Cyrus, everything seems to be written in Morse code. I’m still trying to decipher his body language when he slides his hand back into his pocket, the gesture quick, casual, as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had, and I’m just imagining things now, the way I’d imagined footsteps. Out of desperation. Out of fierce, foolish hope.
***
“I’msoglad you’re not dead,” Daisy tells me over the roar of the blow-dryer. It’s the twentieth time she’s uttered some variation of this sentiment since I returned to our hotel room approximately half an hour ago, and she’s sounded fully earnest each time. When she’d flung open the door to greet me, she’d looked ready to burst into tears of relief. “We thought you’d been eaten by a bear.”
“I’m really glad I’m not dead either,” I say, running my fingers through the damp ends of my hair to make it dry faster. I still feel a little shaky, but only in the way where you’ve already woken from the bad dream and can be sure that you’re safe in your bed. The warm shower has helped wash away most of the dirt and leftover adrenaline. “Sorry to make you guys worry.”
“I think Cyrus was more worried than any of us,” Daisy says, drawing her knees to her chest on the couch. “He was the first person to notice you were gone.”
I turn the blow-dryer off, and in the sudden silence, I hear myself swallow. “He was?”
She nods. “Honestly, he looked like he was about to lose his mind if anything happened to you.”
I remember that moment when he found me, how his arms had tightened around my body. It’s so easy to sink into the memory—to relive every detail, from the sweetness of his scent to the hitch in his breath—that when my phone chimes from the counter, it feels like being hauled up from somewhere deep underwater. I set the blow-dryer down, then hastily pat my hands dry on a towel and open my phone to the newest message.
It’s Cyrus.
