Silas
It’s getting toodark to be in the creek. The water’s cold. The rocks are slippery. It’s not deep—maybe two feet in the middle—but it’s easy enough to drown if you find yourself face-down in it, and I don’t know what the current would do then. I know water’s always surprising. I know it takes less than you’d think, sometimes. I know how well easy, bucolic beauty can hide horror.
I slip on a rock and nearly fall in myself, wading a little further. I’m still in the gym shorts and an old tie-dye t-shirt that says Denim Jocker’s Good Time Jug Band on the front—probably got it for free somewhere—but at least I put on hiking boots before I left my house hours ago. The one useful thing I did today.
There’s a noise from somewhere, a crunch that’s directionless with the sound of the water rushing around me. It’s soothing, like I’m in a box of noise and nothing else can get in, even though I know I’m wrong about that and something else can always get in. I turn and face upstream: the flat, placid dark of the creek. The hulking dark of the forest around it. The endless, deep dark of the sky above, faint stars like pinpricks.
Somewhere to my left is the path back to the cabin. I know I can find it if I want to, but that desire seems hard to reach right now. I should have done something. I should have called him more, checked in, made sure he had someone to talk to. I should have driven across the state and punched his father in the face.
Then there’s a light bobbing through the trees, and all the dark gets darker.
“Silas,” Levi calls. “Come back.”
I stand there, unmoving, water up to my shins.
“What if I don’t?”
“Silas.”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“I know.”
Levi waits. I don’t know how long he waits, but he stands there on the bank, the light like a beacon. There’s something ancient, solid, immovable about him, as if Levi could still be standing there tomorrow, next week, next year. Even though I know he can be swayed.
Finally, he puts the lantern down and steps into the creek. Wades until he’s standing in front of me, his face half-lit and half-shadow from the light on the bank.
Then he puts his arms around me and then my head’s on his shoulder and I nearly cry, I’m so grateful. The water is cold but Levi is warm, and he just holds me. Silently. Like always.
“We should go back,” I say, after a while, and stand up straight again. Levi just nods and holds out one hand, and I don’t even think before I take it and let him help me back to shore.
We’re nearly back to the cabins when he says, “I think June went to go get Kat.”
I slam to a stop so hard I almost fall over.
“Fuck,” I say, and reach for the phone that’s not in my pocket. I left it in my cabin because there’s no signal up here. “Fuck. What time is it? I’m meeting Kat at that goddamn lawyer thing—”
“Silas. It’s almost nine,” Levi says.
Of course it is. It’s dark out, of course it’s late and oh, God, I left Kat to the wolves just like I said I wouldn’t. I fucked this up, too.
“Thanks for thinking of it,” I tell Levi.
“You asked me to,” he says, and sounds faintly amused.
“I did?”
“Mhm. When you called me on the way here you went through a whole list of people who could help and at the end you said and Kat right before your signal cut out. June figured out where she was.”
I don’t remember that at all. I don’t remember saying much of anything to anyone, even though I know I did; all I can remember is the descending fog of worry and panic, two things that make the holes in my brain worse.
A while later I’m sitting with Wyatt, leaning against Javi’s cabin. Someone’s made a fire in the fire pit, and across it I can see my own cabin: basic, one room, two bunk beds, a small porch with two plastic chairs. Sooner or later I’ll make better chairs, but it hasn’t happened yet. Next to it is Gideon’s cabin, then Javier’s, then Wyatt’s. The corners of a square.
“I shouldn’t have let him go,” Wyatt says, miserable. His head’s on my shoulder and I’ve got one arm around him. His hair smells like smoke.
“You know it wasn’t up to you,” I tell him, even though I have the exact same thought.
“I should’ve gone with him,” Wyatt said. “I should’ve at least offered, I knew his brother was gonna be there but his parents can be so bad for him—”