Some Quiet Place

taunted me with its resoluteness.

Three more days have gone by. I can’t bring myself to go back to school. My thoughts are consumed by my real family and the few glimpses of my old life that I’ve been given. No, that I’ve fought for. Why? Why fight for something I tried so hard to forget? That was what I was doing, throughout all of this. Fighting. Looking for the truth. Seeking to find a place where I belonged. In this way, I’m so human. I’ve observed it many times, thought it on countless occasions: give a person what they want, and it turns out it’s not what they wanted after all.

As the hours pass, I lie in the bed I’ve slept in for thirteen years. It feels strange now. Like I’m burying myself in someone else’s sheets. They smell like me, Sarah picked them out for me, but the ghost of what should have been fills this room like a choking perfume. The mural looms closer and closer and Landon’s prone form swallows my attention whole, no matter how much I try to concentrate on something else.

Charles doesn’t hover. No matter how much he’s changed, he was never good at that kind of thing. He loses himself in the car he’s invested so much hope in, and continues his shifts at Fowler’s. I’ve seen him poring over bills, though, Worry pressing close. I really didn’t give Charles enough credit over the years—he’s just as extraordinary as Maggie.

Maggie.

I try not to think about her. The memory of her pallid face causes an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of my stomach. Every time my guard slips and she slides past, one word pounds at the inside of my skill: Should. I should have tried breaking the illusion sooner. I should have been able to lay my hands on her and heal her, as I had with Fear. I should have been more for her. If I hadn’t been so weak, so desperate to cling to logic and escape the past, her death could have been prevented.

It’s a mantra: Don’t think about her.

Finally, though, one thing drags me from that bed, from that room, from the pieces that are me and someone else. And that thing is Joshua Hayes. Charles must have told him I’m back, because he calls the house relentlessly. Whenever Charles tiptoes through the doorway—as if disturbing me will set off some sort of grenade—I pretend to be asleep. But Joshua is there, lodged in my head. Past all the questions and torment about Landon, our mother, what I am, why Fear hasn’t come to see me now that he’s better, Joshua is there. Waiting. I saw you. The words replay over and over with all the tenacity of a blaring radio. I pay my dues, and I owe him. He was nothing but kind to me. The only problem is that he wants. Wants Elizabeth, who’s fragmented and fading. Wants a future, which I can no longer imagine. Wants more, which I just can’t give. Because so much else stands in the way, and it isn’t just the illusion.

So, as I shower and dress for battle, the decision is easy: I’m going to lie. I feel nothing, for him or for anyone. Once he believes me, sees that I’m a monster, he’ll let me go. Quite easily, I imagine.

My face void of all expression, I head outside. My truck is parked by the barn. Charles must have had it towed back from wherever Nightmare abandoned it.

As it always does, the thought of the Element sends a jarring shiver down my spine. But Fear doesn’t come—I can’t help but notice. No, I won’t let myself wonder. I’m becoming an expert at avoidance, and there’s no reason to abandon the skill now.

I climb into the truck, find the keys on the dashboard, and go.

I haven’t been to the Hayes’ farm since Joshua’s mom died. Everything looks like it’s falling into disrepair. The roof on the house is sagging, and whatever color paint it had is long gone. The fence alongside me is missing sections and the driveway is full of potholes. And the crops … the beans aren’t right. I can tell, even when looking at the field from yards away. They should have been harvested by now. The plants are yellow, half-withered, low to the ground. Joshua wasn’t exaggerating when he voiced concern; this place is slipping away.

Even when the sound of my truck rumbles through the air, no one emerges from the house or the fields. Killing the engine, I get out and wander.

I’m not surprised to find Joshua in his barn. Like me, he seems to takes solace in the quiet there. He’s shoveling manure out of a stall and into a wheelbarrow, the muscles in his arms standing out as he works quickly, intent only on this. I watch from the doorway. I wait. It doesn’t take him long to notice me.

He stares like I’m a mirage. Disbelief stands beside him—the sight of the Emotion confirms that Nightmare is dead, and I feel the faintest sense of relief. Disbelief nods in greeting; he’s a tall, skinny being with pinched lips and a skeptical light in his eyes.

“Elizabeth?” Joshua says in a whisper. When I just stand there, shifting from foot to foot, his expression breaks into a smile, his relief so evident it causes a twinge in my chest. So many Emotions. I think of how peaceful it is for those without the ability to see it all.

Then, as quickly as he was happy to see me, Joshua becomes furious. “Where the hell have you been?” he shouts, dropping his shovel. Two quick steps, and then he reaches out and shakes me. “Why haven’t you called me back? You were gone for, like, two days! Charles went out of his mind! And then when we found your truck abandoned on the side of the road, we thought you ran away or had even been kidnapped. The sheriff—”

“I’m sorry,” I say tonelessly. “I’m fine. I only came back to tell you goodbye.”

Joshua’s arms drop to his sides like I’m diseased. “What?” he says hoarsely.

I just shrug, as if I don’t care. Wrong move. Joshua clenches his jaw and grabs me again. “Oh hell no,” he snaps. “You’re not going to be this stupid. I won’t let you. You’re seventeen, and you have nowhere to go. If you won’t think of me, think of your brother. Charles cares about you—”

He’s not understanding me. This goodbye isn’t because I’m leaving; it’s because I’m already gone. I have to cut this bond, now. “I’m one of them,” I say, sharp now. Joshua jerks back. I don’t give him time to react. “I’m not human,” I say. “I’m not like you. You’re weak, and this would never work, not that I even want it to.”

Joshua flinches as if I’ve slapped him and his expression is hurt, still angry. I try not to cringe. His jaw works some more, and he just stares at me for what seems like hours.

Suddenly Joshua’s gaze narrows and he raises his brows in challenge. “Really?” he snaps back. “So you’re just a heartless bitch, right? That’s the story you’re sticking to? Okay then. Let me hold you while you remember everything we’ve been through, and then look me in the eye and tell me that again.”

I’m shaking my head before he’s even finished. “It doesn’t matter, Joshua. I told you—”

“Look, I don’t care about what you are, okay? I don’t care. It’s who you are that I fell in love with.” He stops, red spreading up his neck and face. He didn’t mean to say it, but it’s too late; the words are already out, floating in the air between us. He thinks he speaks the truth, but I know better.

“I’m no one, Joshua. You can’t love me any more than you can love a statue.”

“Bullshit.”

I shake my head again. “I’ve tried. For years, I tried to pretend. I’ve hunted for the truth. I’ve endured more than one person should in a lifetime. But it’s all hopeless. I am nothing; I feel nothing.” You’re still pretending, that voice in my head says, snide. An image of Fear assaults me, his crinkled eyes, the way that coat constantly flapped against his boots. The tender way he ran his fingers down my spine in the woods that night, so long ago …

“No. There’s always a solution,” Joshua says doggedly, filled with unshakable determination. “You should know that more than anyone. A month ago, I didn’t know that anything nonhuman, or from another world—any of it—existed. But it does. This incredible power, these creatures that aren’t bound by human rules or boundaries —”

“It’s not as grand as you seem to think.”

“—and no one knows about it. Just because we’re so shallow-minded that we can’t accept the idea there’s something more.”

It’s easy to guess where his thoughts are heading. “Even if you’d known about the other plane years before now, you couldn’t have saved your mother,” I say gently. “One of the few rules my kind has is not to interfere in the lives of mortals, other than to perform our purpose.”

“You interfered,” he counters.

He knows I’m rejecting him. He sees right through the lies. There’s nothing I can do to ease his pain. “I disobeyed,” I say, taking a step back. “I was … sad and stupid. I still am. I shouldn’t be here. But I pay my dues; you saved my life, so I thought you might want an explanation for—”

“An explanation isn’t what I want.”

“I can’t give you what you want.” I’m blunt now. Even if it means hurting him further, I have to get it all out