For a moment, the blackness continued. Then it was replaced by a narrow path between two walls. Light came from exposed Edison bulbs that hung a dozen feet overhead, filling the silence with their soft hum. The path itself was dirt, and weeds grew thick at the base of the walls. The air was still, and when I breathed, I tasted a chill dustiness that reminded me of Sara’s basement. Down here—and I knew that it was down, deep, somewhere I hadn’t been before—someone had buried secrets.
Ahead of me, the path forked, and waiting at the fork was a slender coyote. Its tongue lolled out, and it turned impatiently in a circle, craning its head to keep me in its gaze. When I took a step towards it, the coyote leapt forward and disappeared down the branch to the right.
I trotted after the coyote, glimpsing its tail or a padded paw when the path turned. The path split again after another ten or fifteen yards, and then it split again, and then I came to a four-way intersection. Ahead, at the edge of my sight, a bushy tail disappeared around another corner, and I ran after it.
A maze. Ginny had brought me to a goddamn maze inside myself. We went on like that for a long time, until the Edison bulbs began to fade in and out—glowing intensely for a few seconds and then fading until only the bare glow of the heated element remained. I tried to memorize the path; there was something about its logic, something internal and consistent, that made sense to me. Of course it did; I had made this maze, in my own way.
Then the Edison bulbs began steadily brightening. Their light intensified, flooding the cramped space between the walls, banishing shadows. The heat of that light pressed against my shoulders and the back of my neck, and sweat popped out in fat drops across my forehead. Ahead, the walls ended, and a clearing opened. The Edison bulbs grew brighter. Brighter. I squinted, and between slitted eyelids I glimpsed the shadowy outline of the coyote turning impatiently in a circle again.
As I reached the clearing, a series of pops came behind me, like the sound from a string of firecrackers. The Edison bulbs exploded one by one with steady regularity, and I stumbled free of the maze as the last one shattered behind me. Instead of darkness, though, my eyes adjusted to the white glow of a door that stood in front of me. Its light was weak—so weak that all I could see of the coyote was its bushy tail sweeping past the doorknob and then vanishing. But the message was clear: what’s behind door number one?
All of the sudden, I didn’t want to know. Whatever I had buried down here, I had buried down here for a reason. I didn’t want to see what I’d hidden away from myself. I didn’t want to see the things that had been so painful that I’d had to lock them away.
But Mr. Big Empty was coming. And I would have to face him and Mrs. Troutt and Makayla and God only knew who else. I needed whatever advantage I could get, and if this would help me, as Ginny claimed, then I couldn’t turn away from it.
The knob slipped in my sweaty grip. This isn’t real, I told myself. You can’t sweat. Doorknobs can’t be slippery. But it did slip, and I knew it slipped because my heart was pounding, because whatever was behind this door, I could feel it drumming inside my skull.
I grabbed again, willing myself forward, forcing the door to open. White light rushed over me, and I was somewhere else.
A bedroom, I realized. Prim rows of comic books in clear polypropylene bags lined the bookshelf in front of me. In one hand, I held a new addition to the collection: this month’s Justice League in a paper bag.
This was Gage’s room. Today was Gage’s birthday. On the wall behind me, at least a dozen pictures hung: all of them showed the wiry boy with the mussed blond hair who had been my first boyfriend. Most of them showed me too. I didn’t need to turn around to know the pictures were there; I had been here dozens of times. Hundreds of times, maybe. This was a safe place. I smiled here. I laughed. I felt . . .
I was still looking at the bookshelf when Gage’s thin arms went around my waist and he kissed that spot behind my ear that made me growl. “Thank you,” he said, kissing me again, lower this time. “Thank you for the wonderful birthday.” Kiss. “Thank you for the wonderful night.” Kiss. “Thank you for the wonderful gift.” Kiss. He hesitated then, a trembling hesitation that jumped from his wiry frame to my body like an electric arc. “I love you.”
“I—” The memory of me started to speak, but I was already struggling towards the surface, shaking myself free of that labyrinth.
I came back to my body with a jerk, gasping for air and mopping my face with my t-shirt. Snot hung in a thick strand from my nose, and my eyes felt red and puffy. Cleaning my face as best I could, I tried to clear my throat.
“The first time is always very—”
“No.”
“Vie, it’s not an easy thing to face the past.”
“Fuck you. And fuck that—that show, that trick, whatever it was.”
“It was a memory.”
“It was a nasty fucking lie.” Still wiping my face, I refused to meet her gaze. “That’s how you’re going to help me, huh? By showing me that shit? That’s nothing. That day, that . . . that stuff he said, it didn’t mean anything.”
“It meant something to you.”
“I just fucking told you it was shit,” I yelled. “Now wake them up. We’re done.”
“If you—”
“I said we’re done.”
We traded looks for a moment, and then Ginny gave one of her calm smiles and shrugged. I knew, now, that those smiles were just a mask, and that only made me angrier. I buried my face in Austin’s back, struggling to control the storm of emotions. A moment later, Austin shifted, and surprise radiated through his body as he wrapped an arm protectively around my head.
“Jesus, Vie—” Austin broke off. His voice grew sharp as he addressed Ginny. “Do you see how upset you’ve made him? You heard, him right? You heard him: he won’t go back with his dad.”
I laughed, feeling the thick, snotty spit bubble in my throat. Austin and Sara had missed everything important; for them, not a second had passed, and they thought I was still worried about custody and foster care and my dad. They didn’t know what I’d learned about Ginny, about her cowardice, about her cruelty. I unstuck myself from Austin’s shirt and said, “I’ve got to go.”
“I don’t think we’re done, sweetheart,” Sara said, her eyes flashing from me to Ginny.
But Ginny shook her head. “I do have a few more things to talk about with you, Ms. Miller, but Vie is free to go. I’ve already said everything I need to say to him.”
I didn’t wait for Sara to respond. I surged out of my seat, sending Austin scrambling to gain his footing, and then I grabbed his arm and hauled him towards the door. Stumbling down the steps, I hurried away from the house and away from that horrible woman and away from—
—the truth—
—those lies she had shown me. I was shaking so badly that, when we got into the car, Austin had to lean across and buckle my seat belt. His hands wrapped around mine.
“Take breath,” he said, his voice firm. “Good. Now another. Slower. That’s really good.”
The breathing did help, and I tried to wriggle free of his grip, saying, “I’m all right.”
“You’re hyperventilating.” I opened my mouth to protest, and he added in that same firm tone, “Still.”
So, as Austin prompted me, I took a breath, and then another, and then another.
“You’re a mess,” he said. “Let’s go to my house.” He shifted the car into drive, and the Charger threw up gravel as we headed down the drive. The gravel dust filtered through the car, and its smell reminded me of that maze and the cold taste of stone. Part of me was furious, and part of me was so furious that I wanted to cry.
“Listen, you’re sixteen,” Austin said, turning into Vehpese. “In two years, you’ll be an adult. It doesn’t matter what anybody says at that point.”
“I don’t care about that,” I said. “If they send me back to him, I’ll just run away.”
“Then what happened?”
I told him. Not all of it, not what I had seen at the end. But I told him what I had learned about Ginny and about the maze. Austin, though, was smart, and when I had finished, he asked, “What did she show you? What was so upsetting?”
“Something from my past.”
Curiosity mixed with pain in his expression. “You don’t need to relive that crap. Why did she show you—”
I cut him off, my voice cold. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He was silent a moment and then, in a cautious tone, said, “I thought we agreed no more keeping secrets.”
“Haven’t I told you enough of my fucking shit? Why don’t you tell me one of your goddamn secrets for once?”
Austin flexed his hands on the wheel, his jaw tightening as stared out the windshield. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t do that. Don’t feel bad for me. And we’re not going to your house. We need to go to Emmett’s.”
Without answering, Austin turned west at the next intersection, and before long we were headed out of Vehpese and towards Emmett Bradley’s house. It was late afternoon, and already the sun had swelled on the horizon like a bloody sore. Everything looked dead and flat and angry, as though the light had trampled everything as it marched through the day. Austin turned on the stereo and played a country singer I didn’t recognize, but the anger still radiated off the set of his shoulders and the way he held his head. Neither of spoke until we got to the gate at the end of Emmett’s driveway.
A black Hyundai sedan crouched in the weeds opposite the gate, and even through the tinted glass I could see the camera sitting on the dash and the sallow-faced man peering at a newspaper. Another ten yards down the road sat a familiar van: one side panel scraped down to the metal, the taillight shattered, and bumper stickers covering the back doors, including the Mind the Gap logo covering the dent in the rear bumper. That van belonged to Mertrice Stroup-Ogle, and it looked like she and the man in the Hyundai had the same plan: get as many pictures of Emmett as possible.
Austin braked, texted Emmett, and a moment later the gate swung open. Emmett’s house was a monstrosity, especially for Vehpese. One side was entirely glass, and the afternoon light streaked across it in red and orange. Massive beams, interspersed with more glass, made up the body of the house, giving it the appearance of a log cabin from some sort of opulent future. The apartment I had shared with Dad would have fit easily inside the garage; Sara’s house probably could have squeezed into the living room.
We parked, and when we reached the door, it swung open. Emmett closed it behind us and offered an apologetic grin. “Kind of sick of the cameras.”
Austin nodded. “Lots of changes in the last few days.”
“Jesus Christ,” Emmett said, his grin widening until his eyes crinkled. “You have no idea. It’s amazing, right? It’s fucking amazing.” He launched forward, faster than I could have expected, wrapping Austin in a hug. Then, sidestepping with a mad, dancing speed, he wrapped his arms around me and spun me around. “You guys, you’re awesome. If it hadn’t been for you—man, I can’t even imagine what would have happened.”
“What did happen?” I asked, disentangling myself from his arms.
“Come upstairs. You want a beer?”
I started to shake my head, but Austin spoke first. “Hell yes.”
“Got some in my room. Come on.”
Emmett, face flushed with excitement, took the stairs two at a time. Austin followed, his face still set like a thundercloud, and I trailed behind. As always, the house seemed empty. I’d seen Emmett’s mom once, when I’d stopped by unannounced, but I’d never seen his dad. As always, I was struck by the essential loneliness of Emmett’s life: the house, it seemed, had been designed for echoes since they seemed to be the only ones that got any use out of it.
Emmett’s room faced west, and that wall glass. Outside, the Wyoming wind had picked up, rippling the stands of brown buffalo grass and sage, shooting tumbleweeds across bare patches of dirt like God was playing a game of pinball and had really let one fly. Emmett’s bed took up one corner of the room, with sheets and blankets in a tangle, and another portion of the room held a desk, and a third had a sofa and a massive TV—the size of Mr. Warbrath’s, I thought—and all the latest video games. A doorway led off to the bathroom and walk-in closet.
It was strange that I hadn’t been here in weeks. I’d spent some very dark moments alone with Emmett in this room, and he had helped me through them. He had saved my life, if I were being honest. Now, though, it felt like I was walking into a stranger’s room. No, that wasn’t quite right; not a stranger’s room, but a room where a stranger had been recently. Little things were different: the guitar had been moved across the room, the lamp had been transferred to the other side of the desk, and the controllers for the Xbox and PS4 had been neatly wrapped and set in a basket. It could have been a maid, I told myself. Emmett’s mom definitely hired a maid. But I knew it hadn’t been. It had been Makayla. She had been here, in this room, and in my already foul mood, I felt myself growing furious.
Emmett, opening a small refrigerator near the Xbox, said, “What do you guys—”
I crossed the room, looped an arm around him, and slid my foot behind his. When I leaned forward, Emmett toppled to the ground. I followed, sliding on top of him to pin his arms.
“What the fuck—” Emmett shouted.
I grabbed his jaw and forced his mouth shut with one hand.
“Are you insane?” Austin asked, grabbing my shoulder. Emmett was screaming behind my improvised gag. “Get off him.”
“He’s fine.” I shook away Austin’s touch. “Help me hold him so we can check.”
“Check what?”
Emmett gave another muffled cry for help.
“You know what,” I said. “It was your goddamn idea.”
Austin stared at me, comprehension slowly rising in his eyes, and nodded. He helped me restrain Emmett and said, “Now what?”
Forcing Emmett to look in my direction, I said, “Shut up.”
He quieted, although anger still boiled under the surface.
“We think you might be possessed by Mr. Big Empty. If you aren’t, then be quiet for a few minutes so we can check. Blink your eyes twice if you understand me.”
His stare could have burned a hole clean through me, but he blinked. Twice.
“I’m going to take my hand away. If you start screaming again, I’ll know something’s up.”
When I took my hand away, Emmett said in a furious, but low, voice, “Mother fucker, something is definitely up. You’ve got to be shitting me, coming in here—”
I held up my hand. “Go on, if you want.”
Emmett made a strangled noise of maddened frustration in his throat, but he stopped talking.
“This is a nightmare,” Austin said, shaking his head as he looked from me to Emmett. “You know this is a nightmare, right?”
“When Mr. Big Empty possesses someone, he has to break them inside and out. If someone did that to Emmett, we’ll be able to see the signs of it. See if he’s been hurt. I’m going to see—” I paused, unsure of how to continue. “I’m going to see what I can find.”
As I opened my inner sight, a deepening of texture rippled across my field of vision. Austin groaned and yanked up Emmett’s shirt, exposing his tanned skin and lean muscle. There was something disturbingly hot about watching my boyfriend run his hand over Emmett’s flat stomach. I made myself look away before I lost focus.
Since I was touching Emmett, it was easy to form the connection I needed. The world dissolved around me, and I found myself floating in emptiness. This was, in some way, a manifestation of Emmett’s mind. I could search through his memories and feelings or, if I wanted to, I could send him a message.
Are you there?
For a moment, only silence came back to me. Then, in a tone of wonder mixed with fury, You’re insane. You’re inside my head, but you’re insane.
The last time I had made a connection like this with Emmett, I had lost control of my emotions. He had sensed—no, more than that, he had known—the fullness of what I felt for him. The realization that I loved him had sent Emmett running out into the streets of Denver without his shoes on. That was about as clear a rejection as I could think of, and I didn’t want to repeat the experience. Still, I felt a vulnerability with Emmett. There was a way that I was open to him, a way he instinctively understood me, that made it hard to hide my feelings from him. I struggled, right then, to keep myself locked away from him.
Even after that short exchange, I knew that Emmett was not possessed by Mr. Big Empty. When Mr. Big Empty had used Lena’s body as a vessel, his spirit had spilled out of her. There had been an excess of his power, and it had been easy to tell, through my inner sight, that he was inhabiting her. I wasn’t going to tell Emmett that, though.
Tell me something so I know you’re you.
Again, that disturbing silence came back, without even an echo of my thoughts. And then, instead of words, a memory took shape around me. It was from Emmett’s point of view. He was sitting on his bed in nothing but a pair of boxers, with moonlight flooding through the wall of windows and painting his bare chest in silver. I was asleep in bed, and a bandage covered my chest. I remembered this night; I had been sick with an infection, and I had dreamed about Mr. Big Empty and, in the dream, I had clawed my own chest, opening deep scratches. Emmett had woken me and helped clean me up.
But I didn’t remember this part, obviously, because I had been asleep. And as I watched myself sleeping through Emmett’s eyes, the rest of the memory flooded in. Emotions rushed across the connection: a stinging self-loathing, fear, need, desire, and something else, something flashing and golden like sunlight when you see it from the bottom of a swimming pool. Emmett—the Emmett of the memory—leaned down, and his lips touched mine. Those lips moved across my cheek in a trail of butterfly kisses, so soft and light I’d never felt them, never even known what had happened. And through the connection with Emmett, I felt the struggle he was facing: to wake me, to tell me—
—sunlight seen from the bottom of the pool, dancing and bright like you could catch it in your fingers—
—how he felt, and then to fuck until we were both braindead; or, to play it cool, play it safe, find somebody easy, no drama, no passion.
I knew, in hindsight, the decision he had made. He had chosen to play it safe. He had told me, in a slightly more polite way, that he would fuck me but not date me.
The last portion of the memory was of Emmett curling up alongside me, his lips pressing one last time against my shoulder before I rolled into him, one arm pulling him against me even as I slept. And then the memory dissolved into those underwater shimmers of light, the way happiness must feel to a drowning man.
Breaking the connection, I reared back from Emmett. The fury was gone from his face, and in its place was something else: regret, maybe, or sorrow, or loss. But in an instant, that was gone too, and annoyance creased his features. Without my weight to hold him down, he gave Austin a shove and pulled his shirt down.
“First time you cop a feel is free,” he said with a sneer. “Next time, you gotta pay.”
“He sounds like Emmett,” Austin said sourly.
“He is.”
“Of course I am.” Emmett dragged himself into a sitting position. “Now get us a beer before I flip out of my freaking mind.”