Song of the Fireflies

“So, we’re going to a party tonight,” he added. “A great underground band is playing. Liam’s brother is the bass player. You up for it?”

Another party. I had a feeling we’d be doing a lot of that from here on out.

“Yeah, definitely,” I said and Bray agreed.

Miami ended up being more a drop-off place. After watching Liam’s brother’s band play we spent only one night there, most of us laid out on beanbags and furniture in a tiny two-bedroom apartment. The next day, Tate drove Caleb to some guy’s house, and the rest of us sat outside in the Jeep while Caleb went inside and did business with the drugs he brought back with him from Norfolk.

I liked our new friends, but something about Caleb kept me on edge. Part of it was the drug dealing, but there was something else, too. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I got really bad vibes from him. He never talked much. Mostly he gave his attention to Johanna or Grace, or both at the same time, and at times he spoke to Tate. But he wasn’t the kind of guy to warm up so easily to someone new. Maybe never. But he left us alone, and that was good enough for me.

It seemed that my and Bray’s problems—the small ones, anyway—had been solved now that we were with Tate. Jen and Grace both shared clothes with Bray. And Tate, realizing that I was just as needy in the clean clothing department, offered me some of his extra stuff. We had a ride and always a place to go, whether we were crashing at some random beach house with friends of Tate’s, or in a hotel room somewhere on Tate’s dime, or just on the beach in places Tate knew we wouldn’t get caught. Bray and I were finally able to breathe since Jana’s death. Life became more relaxed. Our safe zone had started to cocoon us. And we had only been with them for a little over a week.

Things were going smoothly—so smoothly, in fact, that the changes I started seeing in Bray didn’t concern me as much as they would have if I had been in a more alert frame of mind.

It took one night in a waterfront beach house to know that I didn’t know my girlfriend, the love of my life, as much as I thought I did.

And it broke my f**king heart.

Chapter Fifteen

Elias

The beach house was one of the most immaculate I had seen, overlooking the ocean. It had a massive boat dock just steps away from the backyard, which itself looked like something you’d see in a landscaping magazine. Every room in the house was like walk-in luxury, with expensive ceramic tile floors and intricate paintings and designer furniture that I was afraid to touch and leave fingerprints on. I thought that a place like this, so rich and clean, couldn’t possibly belong to any of Tate’s friends. The last few houses we had visited looked more like my apartment did back in Georgia: a bachelor pad.

Turned out, this was Jen’s parents’ house, and they were in the Bahamas on vacation. So, naturally, we turned it into a party spot.

The music bumped through the speakers in the living room ceiling. Bray and I were sitting together, kicked back on the couch with a mixed drink in our hands while Tate and Jen and a few others danced to “Pony” by Ginuwine in the center of the room. There were people sitting on every piece of furniture, and as I got up and went into the kitchen to trade my mixed drink for a beer, I saw that even the countertops were occupied.

Caleb was one of the occupants. He sat near the sink with a half pint of Jack Daniels between his legs. Johanna was on his left, leaning her head against his shoulder. She had a dazed look in her eyes, but with her that wasn’t unusual—she always appeared dazed even when she was sober.

“I have a question for you,” Caleb said.

I was surprised by his voice. He had never made much of an effort to have a conversation with me before. Now that he had, I was leery of it.

I shut the fridge and leaned against the counter beside it, twisting the top off my beer.

“Yeah, what’s that?” I asked before taking a swig.

Caleb moved the whiskey from between his legs to one side. He took his time. “Why didn’t you call the cops when your car was stolen?”

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

“I heard you talking about it with your girlfriend the other night.”

So Caleb was the quiet, observant type. I didn’t give him enough credit. Up until this point I didn’t take him for the type to give any kind of shit about what other people had to say.

“It wouldn’t have done any good,” I answered, and I knew my excuse was lacking but I couldn’t tell him the truth. I really just needed to avoid this conversation altogether.

Caleb smiled slimly. I didn’t think I’d ever actually seen that guy smile before. He was onto me.

“The only reasons someone wouldn’t call the cops if their ride got stolen would be either you stole the car first, you’re in some kind of trouble and can’t call the cops, or you’re lying about it.” He smirked subtly.

I wanted to punch him, but I couldn’t punch him for being intelligent.

“Hey man, no judgments here.” He put up his hands briefly. “I can’t talk. I’m not exactly Kirk Fucking Cameron. Whatever you two did, it’s none of my business. I just don’t want you getting us mixed up in your shit, all right? I’ve got enough of my own to last me the rest of my life.”

It takes a criminal to recognize the actions of a criminal, I thought.

I couldn’t really agree to his request in good conscience. As long as we were with them there was a chance they’d get mixed up with what we did. But to be fair, Caleb was right: he couldn’t talk. From what I knew about him, he was an ass**le and a drug dealer. And from where I was standing, drug dealer trumped accidental death by a long shot.

“Nothing to worry about,” I said and pushed away from the counter.

“For your sake,” he said, “I hope you’re right.”

I left the kitchen without any further conversation.

Caleb would always be the mood killer for me as long as we were around them.

But Caleb did something more than kill the mood, he got me to thinking. Were the police looking for Bray and me yet? Had they found Jana’s body? Suddenly, I had to know. I left the kitchen and weaved my way through people standing in the hallway until I found Jen. I asked her if there was a computer in the house I could use, and she directed me to her father’s office.

I closed myself inside the office. Alone. Just me and the Internet. I sat down at the desk in the leather office chair with wheels and cupped my hand over the cordless mouse, bringing the flat-screen monitor to life in front of me. The light from the screen illuminated the dark room. I opened a web page and started to type in our names and “Georgia” and a few other random keywords, until I realized it wasn’t such a good idea to do it that way on someone else’s computer. I backspaced and typed in one of Georgia’s news station names instead.