“Thanks,” Kendall mumbles as usual. As she slams the truck door shut, she catches Jacian’s eye and sees the fear in it. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and then he glances away as Marlena says goodbye through the window in the midst of her babbling. Kendall stands there for a minute, puzzled, and then turns toward the house. It’s not until she’s outside harvesting potatoes that it dawns on her why he had such a scared look in his eyes.
He’s from a big city. A place where people steal cars if you don’t make it too difficult for them not to. He really thinks she and her family are going to press charges against him for trespassing.
Kendall stops what she’s doing for a moment, and she nearly laughs out loud for the first time in weeks.
Poor Jacian. He’s probably been worried sick about it all day.
She thinks about what he said. How he thought maybe she was hurting, and tears start leaking from her eyes. She didn’t know the guy actually had a heart underneath all that anger. But the only person she can talk to who would fix her pain is Nico.
On their way back to the house from the fields, Kendall tells her mother what happened the night before.
“You should have woken me up,” Mrs. Fletcher says with a frown.
“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” Kendall says, and today, during daylight, and knowing the truth, it really doesn’t feel like a big deal. “And you guys are working so hard, I didn’t want to wake you up. So, do you want to press charges against Jacian?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. What would people think of us? What a terrible thing to do to that poor boy. After all he’s done for you, driving you around.”
Kendall shrugs. But it’s comforting to know her mother thinks he’s not a bad guy.
When Sheriff Greenwood calls, he tells the same story as Jacian told, in lesser detail. “Your parents want to press charges for trespassing? If so, I need to talk to them,” he says. “I can’t see you all doing it, but it’s your right.”
“No, I talked with my mother. We don’t want to do that.”
“Good. I’ll let him know. He’ll be happy to hear it. I’ll tell him to stay out of people’s driveways at night.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
They hang up.
Mrs. Fletcher smiles at Kendall from the kitchen, where she warms up leftover beef stew in the microwave. “So, Kendall.”
Kendall sighs. “Yes?”
“Have you been thinking about other colleges?”
She flops her head in her hands. “I’m too tired and starving to have this conversation. Can we talk about it some other time?”
Mrs. Fletcher stirs the stew. “I’m a little worried about you.”
“I’m fine. I’m just. . trying to work through it.”
Mrs. Fletcher gives Kendall a long look. “Okay. Life will be back to normal in a couple weeks, when harvest is done. Then we’ll talk about the future.”
Kendall doesn’t respond. Back to normal? Without Nico, life will never be normal again.
With time, We grow strong. We savor the strength. Taste the nearness of life.
The time will come. Soon. We strain to reach Our invisible grasp beyond the grainy surface, holding in fifty years’ worth of screams.
She stares at Nico’s desk all morning, butterflies in her stomach. Afraid to sit there. Compelled to try.
She tries to laugh off her fear. It was just a ridiculous coincidence. If she says it out loud, it’s laughable.
Nobody would believe that a desk has anything to do with the disappearances. It’s absurd.
Still, the thought whirrs through her brain. She should sit there to prove it isn’t the desk.
Next to her, Jacian is pointedly not looking at her, though this morning on the way in to school he managed a gruff “Thank you” for not pressing charges. But Kendall takes no notice of him. She rests her head on her desk as usual, knowing Ms. Hinkler won’t call on her. The teacher hasn’t asked Kendall a direct question since Nico disappeared.
When everyone leaves to eat lunch outside on this cool fall day, Kendall stays inside. Slowly she stands, heart pounding. She steps over to Nico’s desk and then she slides into it. She closes her eyes and holds her breath. And then she moves her arms around the desktop to embrace it. Nico, she thinks, are you here?
She rests her head on the desk and lets out her breath, then tries to relax and think about him. Think about all their good times. Lets the memories flood her brain.
It’s harmless. She is still in the room, sitting in Nico’s desk. Still here, not disappeared. After a while
Kendall sits up and runs her fingers over the desktop. She reads each line of graffiti as she often does, but it feels different from this angle. She gets lost in the words as they swirl around in her mind, and she tries to make them sound right, like a poem would sound. A jumble of words, written over the course of fifty years by dozens of authors.
She lands on the plea. Probably some bored student watching the clock tick away slowly, waiting for something awesome that won’t come until the end of the day.
Please.
Save me.
She traces the letters and wonders again why she hadn’t seen them before.
And then she hears a whisper. Please. Save me. Like wind in leaves, so faint that Kendall is sure she made a mistake.
Her body tingles, and she feels the back of her neck prickle. She jerks her hand away and looks around the room. “Who’s there?”
Her heart pumps at top speed. Tentatively she reaches toward the words again and slides her forefinger across them. Her whole body floods with adrenaline, like being high on some crazy drug, and she closes her eyes. In her ear the delicious whisper comes again, more urgent this time. Please, save me!
Kendall is drawn in. The euphoric feeling is almost overwhelming, like running too far too fast, but she craves more. She leans over the words, her finger tracing the letters, and in her ears the whisper, over and over.
When she pulls her fingers away, the buzz of the high slowly ebbs. She sits for a moment as the whispers grow too soft to hear, and then she opens her eyes and realizes why the whispers were so beautiful.
The voice was Nico’s.
Immediately Kendall’s OCD kicks in. Fear grips her and she can’t seem to get out of the desk fast enough. She nearly tips it over in her haste to get away, knocking the books from her own desk just as the lunching students return.
“What the heck was that?” she mutters under her breath, scrambling to pick up her books. Her brain is screaming at her to get away. Get away from the wonderful evil.
She knows that whatever it was, it wasn’t real. It can’t be real. It must be some weird grief thing, where you hear the voice of someone who has passed and really think it’s him. But it was just so strong. She catches her breath as Jacian comes in and sits down. Kendall slides back into her desk, heart still racing, trying to make sense of what just happened. Knowing it was all just emotion, grief. Feelings taking over, teasing her. Reminding her of how good it felt to be with Nico.
“It was never that good,” she mutters. Her temples pound.
“What?” Jacian says.
Kendall startles and turns to look at him. His brown eyes are flecked with yellow, and his eyebrows knit together, concerned. “Nothing,” she says. “Just. . mumbling.”
Jacian keeps looking at her. “Just mumbling,” he says.
“That’s what I said.”
He shrugs and pulls his notebook out of his backpack. “Look,” he says, “whenever you’re done with those potatoes, I could really use a soccer partner. If you’re not still mad. I mean, you can just come home with us
