Where’s Sarah?

I called her cell phone, but she didn’t pick up. I called the clinic, but Brian told me Sarah had already left.

I was supposed to close up shop an hour ago, but I can’t lock up now. What if she shows up?

I thought we’d be having dinner by now. Instead, I’ve been waiting here, playing on my phone while my nerves frazzle me. The good restaurants are closing soon.

But it doesn’t matter. I’m having this talk with her as soon as I see her, and I don’t care if we can do it in a nice place.  

I’ve been waiting since this afternoon to have this talk with her. It’s been torture. I don’t think I can stand waiting until tomorrow night to have the talk over a nice dinner.

I turn off the lights. Maybe Sarah changed her mind about the piercing and went home to my place.

It still doesn’t explain why her phone’s off, though. If she’s home, it’s unlikely that she’d let her battery run out.

But I can’t wait here any longer.

If she’s not home, I’ll comb through all the streets in Ashbourne to find her.

Adrenaline pumps into my bloodstream, sending my heart racing.

I’m pretty sure she’s okay—she hasn’t been involved in an accident or something—because otherwise, I would’ve heard some news from the sheriff. At this point, the whole nosey town knows she’s been living with me, after all.

Still, I can’t help but feel uneasy.

Something’s off. And I don’t know what it is.

* * *

This is the last place I can think of.

If she’s not here, I’m going to call the cops and file a missing person report.

My heart hammers as my car turns onto the dirt road. My headlights cast two distinct rays of artificial light into the thick, syrupy darkness. Insects sing their ancient songs, giving the air an eerie feel.

I squint at the edge of the cliff. A black figure sits there.

That honey-brown hair. Those delicate shoulders. Could it be her?

She must’ve heard the hum of my engine because she turns around and stares straight at me. She squints.

I turn off my headlights and park my car beside her brother’s piece-of-junk sedan.

Of course she’d be here.

This explains why her phone’s been off. She must need some time alone, probably to think about Peter.

I don’t know what’s brought on this act of self-reflection, but this is a good thing, right?

As I step out of the car, my eyes gradually grows accustomed to the darkness.

Sarah scoots backward and pulls her feet up.

“Where are you going?” I ask as I approach her. My shoes crush the little rocks on the ground, making them crash against one another.

“What are you doing here?” she asks me back. She doesn’t sound upset. In fact, the lack of emotions in her voice worries me.

“I was looking for you everywhere. You said you were going to meet me back at the tattoo parlor, remember?”

I only have the moonlight to see by. The town of Ashbourne is miles away, and its lights are just little yellow and white dots in the distance.

Sarah gets up to her feet and pats the dirt off her clothes. “Oh. Right. I forgot,” she says flatly. As I get closer, I can make out her facial expression, but I still don’t see any clues as to how she’s feeling.

“Are you okay?” I put one hand on Sarah’s shoulder.

“Yeah. I wasn’t about to jump off, if that’s what you were worried about.” She stares at the town in the distance, her eyes serene but blank—so different from how they are usually.

Sarah’s baby blues are normally so expressive, her emotions are completely bared for me to see. But now, they give me no clues.

“I know,” I say. “Peter used to come here, too, when he wanted to mope around.”

“Did he come here a lot toward the end?” she asks, a glint of intelligent curiosity flashing in her eyes.

I nod.

Peter was a pretty disturbed individual when his illness was at its worst. The diagnosis killed the Peter I used to know, long before the actual illness did.

But Sarah doesn’t need to know that. It’s better for her to remember Peter the way he’d been before the cancer.

She takes a long breath, holds on to it with sadness, then lets it go.

The sight breaks my heart. I’ve been hating the fact that my best friend is now gone, but I’ve never wanted to bring him back from the dead more than I do now.

If a suspicious-looking, wart-covered witch were to give me a spell book and instructions to dig up Peter’s grave, I’d go right now, no questions asked, just for a chance to put a smile on Sarah’s face.

So what if zombies always end up eating the brain of anyone who tries to help them? I’d risk that for Sarah. Besides, if it’s my destiny to have my brain eaten by a zombie, I’d rather it be Peter than any other living corpse out there.

I take another step and put my arm around Sarah, but she shrugs me off.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

When she lifts up her gaze, her eyes are filled to the brim with water. The glassy surface reflects the lights in the distance. “Everything.”

Without saying anything, she starts to walk away toward her brother’s car, her feet dragging over the loose soil and rocks on the ground.

“Sarah, you haven’t had dinner, have you?” I ask as I trail behind her. “Why don’t you go on home, and I’ll grab something on the way? We’ll meet at home, okay”

I pause.

She still doesn’t say anything. Only our footsteps and rustling leaves fill the night air.

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” I ask. “Let me drive you home. I’ll find some way to bring your car back tomorrow. Or we can take your car back home, and I’ll come back tomorrow to get mine.”

Sarah stays quiet, which only makes me more anxious. Has she been drinking? Is she sober? Is she going to endanger herself if she drives?

“Sarah.” I catch up to her and deliberately stand in her way. “Let me drive you home.”

“Leave me alone, Luca,” Sarah says as she steps off to the side and keeps walking.

“Sarah, what’s going on? Let me help.”

“You can stop pretending like you care, okay?” Sarah says distractedly as she continues on her way.

I know I’m not the warmest person out there, but what makes her think I’ve been faking anything?

“Sarah, what’s going on?”

She doesn’t say a word, but her wry, bitter laughter squeezes my heart with an invisible pain.

“Sarah, please. Can you stop walking and please talk to me?” I take her wrist, but she shakes me off. I grab her again, and she pulls back even harder.

“What part of ‘leave me alone’ don’t you understand?” Sarah yells out, her high-pitched voice piercing through the darkness, interrupting the sounds of nature.

“I don’t understand anything at this point, Sarah. You were fine just a few hours ago. I understand you’re grieving and your emotions may be unpredictable, so—”

Sarah interrupts me with that strange, bitter laughter again. The sound cuts through my hearing like shards of glass. “Luca, I told you, you can stop pretending, okay? I know.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, my heart beating as loudly as Peter’s African drum.

“Just go, okay?”

“No, I’m not going anywhere.”

“You being here only makes me feel worse,” she says with venom.

“Look, I know you’re grieving and things don’t make sense right now, but—”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with grieving. This is about you,” Sarah says, spitting out her words with unmistakeable fury. “About you lying to me. Treating me like an idiot. Going behind my back.”

Taken aback by her harsh words, I fall silent.

“I’m not going home with you. I can drive just fine. And it’s none of your business whether I’ve had dinner or not,” Sarah says as she opens her car door. “I hope that answers all your questions.”

As Sarah takes a seat in the car, her hair floats in the wind, spreading her scent of wild flowers. This reminds me too much of the time she drove away from me after Peter’s funeral.

She’s determined to leave, and there’s nothing I can do to stop her. If I were to stand in her way, she’d raze me down. That car is shit, but it could still kill me.

Why is she so upset? And why does she act like I should know what I’ve done wrong?

Fuck.

Sarah and I aren’t even in an official relationship yet, and I’m already talking like one of those pussy-whipped suckers who are always wondering what they’ve done to incur the wrath of their women.

At first, my optimistic guess was that she was afraid to get the piercing after all and changed her mind. But that doesn’t seem likely now.

No, there’s something else going on.

Did she find out about . . .  

No. There’s no way. I’ve been careful. There’s no way for Sarah to find out . . . unless . . . unless she looked through my shit at work.

That doesn’t seem like something Sarah would do, though.

As she drives away and leaves me alone with the trees and the nocturnal creatures of the woods, I make a vow to myself.

I swear I’ll find out what’s wrong, and then I’ll fix it. I’ll do anything.