I ride with Taryn, but text Kyle while we’re on the way. He’s already left school with TK and Levi, and when we turn the corner at the Stokes’ street, I see Kyle’s truck parked several houses away. News trucks line the road, and a few orange barricades block the street from traffic. Taryn begins to ask me where she should park, but I’m already out of the car before she can finish.

My father is pacing on the other side of the street, and I jog over to him, my eyes scanning through the growing crowd for Kyle.

“What’s going on?” I ask. My dad holds up a finger, and I realize he has his phone to his other ear.

“Right, thank you. Just for today,” he says, hanging up and gawking at me with an open mouth, unsure of what to say.

“I got a sub, for the rest of the day, I just…the school understands,” my father says.

“Have you seen him?” My eyes blink slowly, like shutters on a camera, taking snapshots of every breath, every sound—every lie.

“Not yet,” my dad says. “I’m not even sure he’ll come home tonight. Bruce and Maggie must be with him. We had the TV on in the weight room, and it was on the news. We all just left. I haven’t seen the boys yet to ask them any questions.”

“I’ll find Kyle,” I say, sucking in a deep breath, turning quickly and rushing closer to the chaos.

I feel like a fraud, my muscles all working in unison to act with surprise and shock. I check my expression in the reflection at a squad car’s window as I walk by, just to make sure I look the right amount of worried and elated. I’m neither.

I’m…confused.

Yesterday, he was never coming home.

Today, he’s magically found.

I spot Kyle standing in the carport, typing frantically on his phone, and I call his name. He looks up and waves his phone at me.

“I was just texting you,” he shouts.

I lift a line of caution tape and bend to slip underneath, but a police officer holds up a hand and crosses the street in my direction.

“Miss, I’m sorry, but this is a private residence, and you can’t…”

“She’s family,” Levi says, jogging over to me and lifting the tape higher so I can pass.

“Thank you,” I say, hoping I’m still making the face I was when I checked a second ago.

“We haven’t seen him yet. His parents went to the precinct a while ago,” Kyle says, turning to walk backward as we get closer to TK and Levi. I slow when he does, and he drops his voice to a whisper. “Apparently, Wes was staying at some church shelter in L.A. when he woke up yesterday and remembered who he was.”

“Fuck, seriously?” I know my expression won’t pass now, so I turn my head enough to hide behind Kyle.

“Joss, what the hell? Are we supposed to just go along with this?” Kyle asks. I shrug, but really, it’s not like Kyle hasn’t lied before. What’s one more secret to keep?

“Joss, hey,” Levi says, palming his phone and opening his arms to hug me. I practice looking surprised while my face is against his chest, and when I step away from his hold, I feel pretty confident I can bluff my way through the next five minutes at least.

“What have you heard?” I ask.

“I guess Mom and Dad went to get him from the county hospital. They said something about being worried about head trauma, maybe some nerve damage that affected his short-term memory. I guess when he was little, before they adopted him, he was in a pretty bad accident,” Levi says.

I flit my eyes to Kyle’s, and my breath stops. It doesn’t take much for me to relive that day, and I see it happen in my head a thousand times before Levi actually says it.

“I guess some dude ran his car into a house, or something crazy like that, almost hit his own kid,” he says, and only then do I realize that Taryn has walked up to stand beside me. If I stop this now, it’s nothing more than some piece of gossip Levi heard. Taryn won’t ask questions; she knows I don’t like to talk about it. I feel her fingers tickle against mine, and I know she’s prepared to change the subject for me, but it’s too late. Levi is able to sneak in one more sentence—the only words that can undo so very much.

“Wes pushed the kid out of the way, I guess, but not before the car clipped him on the side of the head,” Levi says. My eyes are locked on Kyle’s, but I feel Taryn’s thoughts next to me. I hear her breath fall away, the tiniest gasp escaping her lips. She’s put the puzzle together.

“How awful,” Taryn says, and my eyes fall shut with relief. Her fingers reach to mine again, and I squeeze them this time.

“You have any idea when they might get here?” Kyle asks, and I turn, opening my eyes to look directly into Taryn’s. I’m instantly a child, and she’s my friend who tells everyone what to do. I need her to tell me what to do. I need Wes, but at the same time I’m so angry at him for staying away, for shutting me out, for changing his mind without preparing me.

“Mom said she would send a text when they were on their way. I hope those cameras stay away,” TK says.

I turn to look over my shoulder, at the line of media trucks, reporters with phones out sitting on sidewalks, snapping pictures as they type their stories on tiny keypads. I’m sure this story is already trending on Twitter.

“Not a chance,” I say, remembering a scene so very similar nine years ago. I was the one they were trying to take pictures of, and Wes—he shielded me.

“Maybe if we pull the truck out and park it there,” Levi says, pointing to the small space in front of a squad car at the end of his driveway.

“They could pull all the way up to the door that way,” Kyle says. “I’ll move my truck, too. Maybe we can block off some of their view.”

Both boys pull keys from their pockets and jog over to their trucks while TK moves to the center of his family’s lawn, cupping the screen of his phone to be able to see it under the bright noon sun.

“You’ve never kept something from me,” Taryn says quietly. My heart begins to pound, even though I knew this was coming. I knew I’d have to tell her one day.

“I know,” I say, drawing in a full breath through my nose and holding my lungs full for several long seconds. I shut my eyes again briefly as I exhale, then I turn to my friend and look her in the eyes. She’s hurt, and I can tell, but her eyes also reflect my own. She’s just as confused as I am.

“Taryn…” I begin, only to be cut off by TK’s rush toward us. He pounds his palm against the hood of the boys’ truck as Levi backs out, then holds a thumb up, his cheeks puffed from the elated smile spilling across his face.

“That them?” Levi says, hopping out of the truck and rushing over to us.

“Yeah, got it. We’re here, and the driveway is clear. Come in from the north, and maybe we can keep the news cameras out of our business,” TK says, ending the call a second later.

His eyes bounce from Taryn’s to mine, and eventually to his brother.

“They’ll be here in two minutes,” he says, his chest rising and falling at a rapid pace. Everyone’s is—even Taryn’s. Every heart in this small circle is beating fast, and everyone’s skin is tingling, their muscles flexing with adrenaline and their spines soaked with the kind of magic a child feels when they think they’ve heard Santa Claus outside.

Everyone feels it. Everyone…but me.

My stomach sinks, and my mind races from thought to thought, wondering how I’ll react when I see him, whether or not I should pretend or run. I spin mentally from how to handle Taryn—what to say and how to apologize for leaving her out of my secret—but ultimately, everything brings me back to this…to right now.

My friend has let go of my hand, moving to TK and linking her arm through his, and I can’t help but feel hurt that she’s abandoned me so quickly. I suppose I deserve it.

I turn to the scene behind me, reporters still quiet, unaware of the story that’s about to pull into this driveway and splash across their channels at five o’clock or paint their front pages in the morning. My dad is leaning on the front bumper of his car, his arms folded over his chest, one hand’s fingers tapping nervously on the forearm of the other.

Everyone wants this to happen right now, this way—everyone, but me.

I don’t know what I expected…that I’d find Wes, our eyes would meet, and hand-in-hand we’d walk home together, no questions, no spectacle about his return. Right now, this way—it’s the only way this could happen.

“They’re here,” TK says, reading a message on his phone.

Everyone moves toward the house, and I follow a few steps behind. My eyes go to my dad first. He pushes away from his car, standing and moving his hands to his pockets, his eyes roaming along the roadway, waiting to see the Stokes’s car. I follow the line of his gaze and hold my breath, my focus fixed on the corner. A few reporters have caught wind, and they’ve moved away from their trucks, pushing against caution tape and breaking it in other places.

The car turns the corner, and my mouth becomes sour.

“Stay back!” an officer shouts, holding his palms out toward what has grown to a group of seven reporters. The group doubles in a breath, and in another, there are twenty people pushing against the arbitrary line the police drew in the middle of the Stokes’s yard. Feet are trampling flowers, and camera posts dig into the ground while shutters begin clicking. The words of a handful of reporters begin to run together, each beginning nearly the same.

“The boy was thought dead.”

“A missing Bakersfield teen is coming home.”

“For the parents, a miracle has happened.”

It’s all just the soundtrack that floods my ears as Bruce drives slowly toward his home, wanting nothing more than to make his family whole again and hold onto his boy forever. A boy he told me himself is special.

A boy I know is special.

“They call him a hero…”

It’s those words that stand out, the ones from a blonde woman standing in front of a camera closest to me, words that remind me of similar ones I’d recently heard from Shawn.

“You would need a hero.”

My mind recalls what Shawn said, and I repeat it now to myself, my lips muttering silently as the tires dip at the driveway’s edge, the car squeaking as axles bend. Wes is wearing a hat pulled low over his brow and one of his father’s coats with the collar flipped up high.

When Bruce kills the engine, the media begins to rush forward, and that line the police thought they drew is instantly erased. I’m shoved by a camera-wielding shoulder, and Wes’s brothers are both shouting, holding their arms out, trying to protect Wes from being seen. It’s all so impossible. Those pictures of me in my driveway, the wreckage my father made, will live on forever on websites and in clips people cut out from papers, excited that their little town was famous from some tragedy.

Everyone will see Wes—the teenaged hero who has finally come home. This will follow him for weeks, maybe months, until something sexier, more tragic comes along. And even then, it will be revisited. His first Christmas home, his graduation, wherever he goes to college—every move he makes is news now.

I’m engulfed in a sea of reporters—lights and flashes—when Bruce exits his car and holds open the back door, trying to block everyone’s view of his son. I stand on my toes and see the top of Wes’s head followed by the deep brown of the jacket he’s wearing. He moves, protected by his family, and by Kyle and Taryn, toward his home.

He shouldn’t risk being viewed, but I know why he does. He slows, and his family does the same as he moves his hand from shading his eyes and scans the thick crowd now filling his family’s property. Eyes so blue blink from the flashes, and his lips part, almost as if he wants to say something. I know what it is—he wants to call for me. I shift in the crowd, and I rest my hand on the shoulder of a cameraman in front of me. Ignoring his grumbles, I lift myself higher until his eyes find me in the madness, and I’m suddenly hit with a wave of fear.

His mouth shuts, but he takes a few seconds to look me in the eyes. Hundreds of pictures are taken, and photographers shuffle and move to get the best shot of a face so perfect that it will never leave my memory.

Wes is home. I should feel something. I should be happy and relieved. But he said he would never do this, and his uncle told me why.

What happens at the end of the story, Wes?

I blink and look down, and when I glance up again, Wes and his family and my friends have all gone inside. The cameras stop, falling away from shoulders as men and women retreat back to their vans and cars. They won’t leave, not for hours. They’ll sit out here and wait for a blind to open, for someone to come out that door and give a statement. They’ll pounce on Taryn and Kyle when they leave, and they’ll start knocking on doors to ask neighbors for their opinions, as if any of them could possibly speak on Wes’s behalf.

My feet begin to retreat before I fully decide, so I listen to my instincts and play the part of a curious on-looker until I reach my dad. He nods at me, but I only glance and tilt my neck toward his car, urging him to get inside.

He waits while I buckle up, and when I’m done, I twist to look at him.

“I’d like to go back to school,” I say, my eyes flitting to the steering wheel then back up to my father’s face. His brow draws in, and he holds my stare for a few seconds before nodding once and pulling his mouth in on one side.

“All right,” he says, turning over the engine and buckling his seatbelt before shifting into drive. He doesn’t move right away, and I sigh in anticipation of his question.

“You can miss a day of training, you know. And school, for that matter,” he says.

“I’ll come back later,” I say, sitting tall in my seat and glaring at the empty street ahead. I want to leave everything behind me…just for a little while.

“I figured you’d want to be here. I mean—” he starts to speak, but I break in.

“I figured you were done sneaking out to drink at night and crying over old photos of Mom,” I spit out. My words are cruel, and I regret them almost the instant they come out, but I can’t be here. Not right now. And I can’t ignore the fact that my dad was gone, and he has a history of disappointing me.

We sit with the motor humming for several seconds, and I blink as I look straight ahead, fighting my father’s silent pleas to look him in the eyes. If I do, it will break me.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you, Joss, or why you feel like you have to pretend that what just happened doesn’t mean something to you, but I’ll respect your wishes to leave now. But don’t open old wounds only to cover up new ones, not when I’ve been working so hard,” he says, and I can’t help myself. I twist, my fist holding onto the seatbelt that crosses my chest as I stare into my dad’s stubborn eyes.

“Where’d you go last night, Dad?” I ask, knowing I won’t get an answer. My father’s mouth remains a still, flat line. His jaw flexes, and I catch the movement in his cheek, which makes me breathe out a laugh. I fall back into my seat the right way and let go of my belt. “That’s what I figured. I’ll quit hiding things when you do.”

My dad sighs heavily, but eventually he eases his foot off the brake and gives his attention over to the road. He drives me to the front office, parking at the curb to walk me inside and sign me in. I left my things in Taryn’s car, so I’ll need to borrow a camera for photography, but I already missed my weight-training class and most of government.

“I’ll pick you up and take you to Rebecca in an hour,” he says, his words spoken over his shoulder as he walks through the glass door, getting in his car, and driving away.

If it weren’t photography, I’d walk out of the office and turn the wrong way, heading to one of the empty lots across the street, hidden by overgrown bushes and trees. I wouldn’t smoke because that shit was really hard to quit, but I’d hide. I’d sit there in silence without anyone’s questions but my own.

But I don’t want to miss photography. I love it too much. And fuck Wes Stokes if he thinks he can take that away from me, too.