“The least you could do is ask me how my trip was,” he says coldly, twirling the bat still in his hand.
He’s not real. He can’t be real. This is only happening because I thought of it. This is a hallucination…isn’t it? It has to be, because the alternative is worse.
Owen stops spinning the bat and leans on it. “Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to tear open a void from the other side?”
“Then how did you get out?”
“Perseverance,” he says. “The problem with these things…” He nods at the rip in the air and makes a small, exasperated sound. “Is they don’t stay open very long. As soon as someone gets dragged in, they snap shut. I couldn’t seem to get out first. I couldn’t go around them. Finally, I decided I had to go through them.” His eyes flick toward the blood. I think of Coach Metz’s body, floating in the void, torn in two by Owen’s knife, and my stomach twists. I curl my fingers around the metal shelf behind me.
“Messy business,” he says, running his blood-streaked fingers through his silver hair. “But here I am, and the question is—”
Owen doesn’t get a chance to finish. I pull the shelf as hard as I can, twisting out of the way just before it comes crashing down on top of him. But even in his current shape, he’s too fast. He darts out of the way, and the metal rings out against the concrete. A second later, the lights go out, plunging the storage room into darkness.
“Feistier than ever.” His voice wanders toward me. “And yet…”
I take a step back and his arm snakes around my throat from behind. “Different.” He pulls me sharply back and up, and I gasp for breath as my shoes lift off the floor.
“I should kill you,” he whispers. “I could.” I writhe and kick, but his hold doesn’t loosen. “You’re running out of air.” My chest burns, and my vision starts to blur. “It’s not such a bad way to go, you know. But the question is, is this how Mackenzie Bishop wants to die?”
I can’t get enough air to make the word, but I mouth it, I think it, with every fiber of my being.
No.
Just like that, Owen’s grip vanishes. I stagger forward and land on my hands and knees on the concrete, gasping, inches away from the streak of Metz’s blood.
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 unnatural.
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 beginning to wonder if you were real.”
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’smy 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.