Since You've Been Gone

I started the car and headed home, Beckett not speaking, still looking down. I knew he was mad at me and figured he would probably sulk the rest of the drive, so I was surprised when he spoke up as I turned onto our street.

“But I wasn’t,” Beckett said. I wasn’t sure what he meant, and it must have been clear, because he went on, “I wasn’t hurt. Nobody else was, either. And I got to see a really great view. So what’s that called?”

I just shook my head, knowing somehow that there was a flaw in his logic, but not exactly sure how to articulate what it was. “Just . . .”

“I know, I know, be more careful,” he said as I pulled in to the driveway. He contradicted this immediately, though, unbuckling his seat belt and jumping out before I’d even put the car in park. “I’m going to Annabel’s. See you later,” he yelled as he slammed the door and took off running behind our house. Annabel lived at the other end of the block, and she and Beckett had spent most of last summer finding shortcuts between the two houses that they guarded closely and refused to disclose.

I watched him go, then picked up my phone. I had pressed the button to call Sloane automatically, when I realized what I was doing. I hung up—but not before I’d heard the phone was still going directly to her voice mail, the one that I’d heard a thousand times, the one that she’d recorded with me next to her as we walked down the street. Toward the end, you could hear me laughing. I set the phone down on the passenger seat, out of easy reach. But it always felt like nothing had really happened until I’d talked to Sloane about it. I was used to recapping my experiences to her, and then going through them, moment by moment. And if she’d been here, or on the other end of the phone, I could have told her how bizarre it was that Frank Porter was working at IndoorXtreme, about Collins, and what I’d heard about their evening plans—

I suddenly understood something and glanced up at my bedroom window, picturing the list in my drawer. I got now what Sloane meant by number twelve. It wasn’t just a bizarre fruit-gathering mission. She wanted me to go to the Orchard.

I waited until ten before I left. By this point, Beckett was in bed and my parents had retreated to their study at the top of the house. All their patterns from a few years ago were coming back, and this was how they had worked then: they would write all day in the dining room, usually forgetting about dinner, and then head upstairs, where they would go over that day’s pages and plan out the next day.

When I was thirteen, the last time this had happened, it wasn’t like I’d had much of a social life, or anywhere at all to go at night, so I’d never explored the possibilities their writing afforded. But now, things were different. During the school year, I had a pretty strict midnight curfew that Sloane—who had no curfew whatsoever—had figured all kinds of techniques for getting around. Now that my parents were otherwise occupied, I had a feeling my curfew had become more theoretical than something that would be enforced. But just in case, I scrawled a note and left it up against the TV in the kitchen, so if they found me gone, they wouldn’t call the police.

As I’d gotten ready in my room—this basically just meant putting on jeans instead of shorts, grabbing a sweatshirt, and adding a swipe of lip gloss—I’d stared down at the list. While I still didn’t understand a few of the others, I really didn’t get this one. It didn’t seem like it was going to be a challenge, since it wasn’t like I’d never been to the Orchard before. We’d gone there one afternoon a week before I went upstate and Sloane disappeared. We’d had milkshakes—vanilla for me, coffee for her—and lain out on the picnic tables for hours in the sun, just talking. We’d been a number of times this past spring, usually at night, but occasionally during the day, when Sloane wanted a place where we could hang out in peace, working on our tans or just walking up and down the rows of trees, talking about anything that came to our minds.

I kept the Volvo’s lights off until I reached the street, even though the curtains in my parents’ study were drawn. And once I’d made it down the street without my cell lighting up with calls and texts asking me where I thought I was going, I figured that I was in the clear.

I turned my lights on and my music up, a Luke Bryan album I’d downloaded last month but not listened to until now, and headed in the direction of the Orchard. I was halfway through the album when I turned off the main road and on to the side street that would lead me there. Out here, the houses got farther and farther apart until there was nothing but empty land and, tucked away on an almost-hidden drive, the Orchard. I slowed as I got closer. The entrance was always, by design I was sure, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. I was contemplating turning around and backtracking when I saw the fading sign and the narrow gravel driveway. I put on my blinker, even though I hadn’t seen any other cars on the road, and turned in, pausing for a moment to look at the sign.

It was almost lost in the overgrown bushes on the side of the road, and so faded with weather and time that whole parts of it could barely be seen. Without meaning to, I glanced down at the underside of my wrist before looking away and driving on.

MARCH

Three months earlier

“It’s just up here,” Sloane said as she turned around in the car to face me, pointing. “See the driveway?”

“I can’t believe you’ve never been to the Orchard,” Sam said from the driver’s seat, and I heard the capital letter in his tone.

“No, remember?” Sloane asked, and I could hear a laugh tucked somewhere in the edges of her words. “Because I’d never been before we came here last month.”

“That doesn’t mean Emily couldn’t have gone on her own,” Sam said, shaking his head. Sloane turned her head back to look at me again and we exchanged the tiniest of smiles—probably not even perceptible to anyone but us. I didn’t want to contradict Sam, or argue with him, but of course I wouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t been here with Sloane, and we both knew it.

She raised her eyebrows at me with a bigger smile, and I understood her meaning perfectly—she was asking something like You’re having fun, right? Isn’t this great? Are you okay?

I smiled back at her, a real smile and not an I need a rescue smile. The last thing I wanted was to upset the evening that she’d worked so hard to arrange. Her smile widened, and she turned back to Sam, moving as close to him as her seatbelt would let her, reaching over and running her hand through his curly hair.