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My silver ring glints on the floor, and I grab the metal band and shove it on as I stagger to my feet and spin. But Owen’s no longer there. The signs of him—the toppled shelves, the blood—are there, but I’m alone. A door in the distance closes, and I storm through it into the brightly lit trophy hall…but there’s no sign of him. No sign at all. I hurry through the outer door and into the afternoon light. Again, nothing. Only the distant laughter of students setting up Fall Fest. The green is dotted with a huddle of sophomore girls. A freshman boy. A pair of teachers.
But Owen is gone.
I spend ten minutes in the girls’ locker room, washing the coach’s blood off my skin.
I didn’t track any of it out of the storage room, but there are traces on me—my arm, my hand, my throat—from Owen’s grip, and I scrub everywhere he touched. When I’m done, I wash my face with cold water over and over and over, as if that will help.
I can’t bring myself to go back.
There are no prints, nothing to tie me to the room—the crime scene, I realize with a shiver—and the longer it’s there, the greater chance of somebody finding it. I can’t have them finding me with it.
Mom sends a text that says she’s waiting in the lot, and I force my legs to carry me away from the scene and through campus, past students who have no idea that Metz is nothing more than a drying red slick on a concrete floor. Or that it’s my fault.
Sako is leaning up against a tree nearby, and her eyes follow me as I pass. She’s not just watching anymore. She’s waiting. Like a hunting dog, kept back until the gun goes off. I know how much she wants to hear the bang. A new wave of nausea hits me as I realize that if Owen is real, she’ll get her chance. Agatha will run out of Crew. What am I supposed to tell her when she does? That I know who made the void doors? That the History I sent into the abyss clawed his way back into the Outer using the key I helped him assemble? The only reason she pardoned me before was because Owen was gone.
He was supposed to stay gone.
He is gone.
He wasn’t real.
But the blood—the blood is real, isn’t it? I saw it.
Just like I saw Owen.
“Is everything okay?” Mom asks as I slump into the passenger seat.
“Long day,” I murmur, thankful for once that we’re not really on speaking terms. Numbness has crept through my chest and settled there, solidifying. I know distantly that it’s a bad thing—Da would have something to say about it, I’m sure—but right now I welcome any small bit of steadiness, even if it’s u
I close my eyes as Mom drives. And then to fill the quiet, she starts to sing to herself, and my blood goes cold. I recognize the tune. There are hundreds of thousands of other songs she could sing, but she doesn’t choose any of them. She chooses Owen’s. He only ever hummed the melody. She adds the words.
“…my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
My skin starts to crawl.
“…you make me happy…when skies are gray…”
“Why are you singing that song?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from shaking. She trails off.
“I heard you humming it,” she says.
“When?”
“A few days ago. It’s pretty. Used to be popular, a long time ago. My mother used to sing it when she cooked. Where did you hear it?”
My throat goes dry as I look out the window. “I don’t remember.”
I follow the humming through the halls.
It is just loud enough to hold on to. I wind through the Narrows, and the melody leads me all the way back to my numbered doors and to Owen. He’s leaning back against the door with the I chalked into its front, and he’s humming to himself. His eyes are closed, but when I step toward him, they drift open, crisp and blue, and consider me.
“Mackenzie.”
I cross my arms. “I was begi
He arches a brow, almost playfully. “What else would I be?”
“A phantom?” I say. “An imaginary friend?”
“Well then,” he says, his mouth curling up, “am I all that you imagined?”
The moment we are home—safe within the walls of the apartment—I sit down at the kitchen table, pull my phone from my pocket, and text Wesley.
No sleepover tonight.
A moment later he texts back.
Is everything okay?
No, I want to say. I think Owen might be back and I can’t tell the Archive because it’s my fault—he’s my fault—and I need your help. But you can’t be here because I can’t stand the thought of him coming for me and finding you. If he’s even real.
Do I want him to be real? Which is worse, Owen in my head, or flesh and blood and free? He felt real. But real people don’t just disappear.
He’s not real, whispers another voice in my head. You’ve just lost it.
Cracked little head, echoes Sako.
Broken, whispers Owen.
Weak, adds Agatha.
Finally I text Wesley back.
I’m just tired.
Can’t keep ru
Or hiding.
Have to face my bad dreams sooner or later.
The grim truth is, I’m not afraid to fall asleep, because my nightmare is already coming true. I sit at the table waiting for his reply. Finally it comes.
I’ll miss your noise.
The numbness in my chest begins to thaw, and I turn the phone off before I can break down and write back. It takes everything I have to sit through di
There are three names on the list in my pocket. Part of me thinks they are the least of my problems, but the other part clings to this last vestige of duty, or at least control. I consider the climb to the apartment above, and then the drop.
“Mackenzie?” I turn to find my mother in the doorway. She’s looking directly at me. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I answer automatically.
She continues to look me in the eyes. Her mouth opens and closes like a fish, and I can tell she’s still trying to form the words: I’m sorry. But when she finally speaks up, all she says is, “Better shut the window. It’s supposed to rain.”
My attention drifts back to the drop—what was I thinking? I barely made it up that wall last night with Wesley helping me—and I pull the window closed, and say good night. Mom surprises me by pulling the door shut behind her. It’s a small step, but it’s something.
As soon as she’s gone, I collapse onto the bed. Beyond the walls of my room, I can hear my parents talking in low voices as they shuffle through the apartment, and past them, the far-off sounds of the Coronado shutting down, the tenants retreating, the traffic on the street ebbing to a trickle and then to nothing. I realize how quiet it is in this room, without sleep and without Wesley. Some people might find it peaceful. Maybe I would, too, if my head weren’t so cluttered.
Still, the quiet is heavy, and eventually it drags me down toward sleep.
And then, just as my eyes are starting to unfocus, the radio on my desk turns on by itself.
My head snaps up as a pop song fills the room. A glitch, I tell myself. I get to my feet to turn the radio off when the tuner flicks forward to a rock station, all metal and grind. And then a country song. I stand there in the middle of the room, holding my breath as the radio turns through half a dozen stations—no more than a few lines of each piping through—before landing on an oldies cha