Think, Emma! I balled my hands into fists and spun around, ready to scream.
I squeezed my eyes shut and held the sound in my throat. I couldn’t scream. What would I say?
Someone I couldn’t see pulled my hair? I had a bad feeling? Every person at this party already thought I was crazy.
I couldn’t go back to Brookhaven. I couldn’t.
I opened my eyes, determined to find the party. Someone laughed in the distance, so I started forward. I was so close to the water I could smell it. I’d just follow the stream back. Yellow eyes glinted at me from the trees. Nighttime creatures hummed and slithered and chirped from places that only belonged to the murky palette of midnight. I’d almost convinced myself that no one had been there when something iridescent moved through the trees. It flickered like a flame for only a second before being snuffed out by the dark.
I took a step back, ready to bolt, but stopped. Something moved through the underbrush, along the trail. Footsteps. Something bigger than an animal. Footsteps with so much purpose they could only be human.
Oh, thank God. “Hey!” I called out, rushing toward the sound. “I’m kind of lost. Can you show me how to get back to the party?”
The footsteps stopped, but no one answered. The cold returned, crackling along my skin like frost, and I shivered. Something was about to happen. Oh my God it was already happening…
I took a second step back. A third. I didn’t let myself blink. My heel felt the earth crumble beneath my shoe, and I stopped to glance over my shoulder. It was pitch black, a seemingly endless crevice. I could hear water trickling, rushing, splashing through the maze of riverbanks below. How far down was it? I didn’t want to find out.
A wave of cool breath whispered across my face. My skin prickled. My eyes widened, staring at… nothing. No one. Yet that breath-Something hard knocked me off-balance and I fell backward, off the edge. My hands flew out in front of me, grabbing for something, anything, and one closed around an exposed root three feet from the ledge. My back slammed into the mud wall behind me, and I swung like a pendulum above the water below while I tried to find something else to grab onto.
Rain sprinkled from the sky and spattered my face. So much for that storm moving west. The root I had a hold of was secured in the mud wall, but the rain was making it slick and my fingers were already starting to slip. One, two, three fingers came loose. My hand started to cramp. No, no, no, no, no! Please no! Not yet. Please not yet. Darkness started to swallow my vision. A fresh batch of panic tightened my chest.
“Emma!” A male voice that sounded familiar permeated the haze. “Hold on. I’ll get something to pull you up.”
Hold on. Right. Just… One of my hands slipped free of the root I was holding and my heart slammed into my ribs so hard I lost my breath. I yelped and reached out, grabbing onto more half-exposed roots in the dirt wall to catch myself. Numb from shock, I pressed the side of my face into the mud wall. “I’m going to fall!”
“No, you’re not,” the male voice answered. “I won’t let that happen. Here.”
He swung a big branch over the side and I looked up at the shadow of a boy holding on to the other side. “Grab it.”
I nodded and adjusted my hold to the branch. “Please don’t break,” I whispered.
“You’re going to have to help me out a little.”
He pulled on the branch, and at the same time, I jammed my feet into the mud wall to climb up.
Once I was up over the edge, I spilled onto my hands and knees. My fingertips tingled. My brain felt numb from fear. I dug my nails into the soil and gasped for air.
“It’s okay. Shh.” Someone settled beside me and my insides buzzed with awareness. “She’ll never hurt you again, I swear it. I don’t care what I have to do,” he whispered as if he were mainly talking to himself.
I wiped my face on my sleeve and looked up. It was the boy from the quad. He sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his head in his hands. Wait a minute—she? He’d said she. I scrambled onto my knees, eyes darting, suspecting every shadow.
“Is she gone?” I choked out. “Where is she?”
His green eyes connected with mine and ignited with an emotion I couldn’t comprehend. He nodded and sat up, leaning a few inches closer to me. He held out his palm the way you would to a frightened animal. I wondered if that’s what I looked like just then, eyes wide, flinching from his touch. I knew that’s how I felt. Like a deer that someone had just grazed with a bullet.
“She’s gone,” he said.
I wrapped my arms around my knees, rocking until my tailbone went numb and I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me anymore. I should be doing something right now. I should call the cops or something. I thought about the last time I’d called for help. Paranoid schizophrenic. That’s what they’d called me.
“Was she real?” I asked. “Someone was there, right?”
The boy leaned back, a wary look spreading out over his face as he scratched the back of his head.
“Yeah.”
I rubbed my scraped palms. I didn’t understand. It had never happened like this before. All of the other times they had been accidents. Like the sign at school, or the woman whose steering wheel locked and she almost hit me on my bike. This was purposeful. This was someone trying to hurt me.
Mystery guy held up my camera like an offering, then sat it in front of my feet.
“I think your strap broke when I was pulling you up,” he said. “Sorry.”
I stared at the cleanly sliced strap, at his long tan fingers tapping against his knee.
“How did you know I was here?” I finally asked. “Are you stalking me or something?”
He laughed. It was a nervous, broken harmony of sound that did funny things to my insides. He picked up a twig and scratched something into the dirt between his thighs. “Just good timing, I guess.”
I wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure what was inside me. The only thing I could feel was that prickling cold crawling under my skin. I scratched my arms until they felt raw, wanting it out.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I looked up and for maybe the first time really saw the boy sitting across from me. He had a sad look on his face. Not the kind that showed how he was feeling at that second, but the kind that’s branded there after seeing things that can never be unseen. His light-brown hair was cropped close around his scalp, the longer pieces on top stained gold from the sun. His jaw was strong, classic looking. He looked like he belonged somewhere else, a place where it was normal for boys to look like James Dean and rescue damsels in distress.
He looked like he belonged at this bonfire about as much as I did.
I nodded and closed my eyes, trying to puzzle out the weird fluttery sensation that invaded my stomach when I looked at him. “Thank you,” I said. “I…I didn’t say thank you before.”
He looked at me for half a second, then back down to the dirt. His lips tipped up into a lopsided smile that looked incredibly underused. “Anytime, Emma.”
“How do you know my name?” I hadn’t told him at school. He hadn’t given me the chance.
“It’s…it’s complicated.”
“Can’t be that complicated. It’s actually a pretty simple question.” I stood up, hoping my shaky legs would support me. My heart started a slow and steady pound. Someone had pushed me. And this guy was the only person around. It was too convenient. I didn’t believe in convenient. I peered into the darkness, hearing only crickets. How far had I wandered from the party?