Shadowlands (Shadowlands 1)

His eyes were bright. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes,” I said, pitching my voice low like his. “I really want to know.”

“No,” he said with a frustrated shake of his head. “No. You need to think about it for a second, Rory. Look at me. Look at me and tell me. Do you really want to know?”

I looked at him, stared into his eyes, and thought about it. Did I really want to know what had happened to Olive? Did I really want to know what was going on with my sister? Did I really want to know why the guy who’d been playing in the park every morning seemed to have vanished? Did I really want answers to my million-and-one other questions, like why was he spying on me? Why did Joaquin and Krista seemed obsessed with me? And was I going crazy thinking Steven Nell was leaving me random, taunting gifts?

I stared into his beautiful, Caribbean-blue eyes, and suddenly something opened up inside me. It started small, like a pinprick of doubt deep within my chest. But rapidly it grew. It grew into a great, wide, yawning, black hole of emptiness that froze my blood inside my veins. The world around me seemed to quiet and dim, all the colors muted, all the smells going sour. My heart pounded so hard I felt like I was going to black out. I had a sudden sensation that the sidewalk was tipping backward beneath me. It was as if the ground was opening up, threatening to swallow me whole. Stifling a cry, I grabbed for Tristan’s hand to keep from sliding off into the abyss.

The second his fingers closed around mine, the world snapped back into focus. Sound, smell, sight, everything came rushing back. The birds tweeted in a nearby dogwood tree, someone somewhere was mowing their lawn, the scent of frying bacon wafted through the air through an open kitchen window. I could breathe again.

Tristan inched closer to me, almost as if he was pulling me in for a kiss, but stopped inches from my mouth. He looked sad. He looked sorry.

“Listen to me,” he said softly. “Olive has some issues.”

I blinked. “What kind of issues?”

“Issues with…addiction,” he said.

“What?” I backed up a step. Still, he kept his grip on my shoulders. “What kind of addiction?”

Tristan swallowed hard. He looked down at the sidewalk for a second, then back into my eyes. Something was different now. He seemed less sure of himself.

“She’s okay now—she got herself clean—but I know she really wanted to make amends with her mom,” he said. “That’s what she’s gone to do. She’s fine. In fact, she’s better than fine. She’s…moving forward.”

The rhythmic, buzzing sound of the mower grew closer, humming inside my ears. Suddenly, I remembered what Olive had told me that day on our run. That she’d gotten herself better. She must have meant that she’d kicked her addiction. And then the other night at the party, when I’d been so offended that she thought Darcy was doing drugs…I had offended her. I’d offended her with my shock and disgust, because she herself had been

an addict. She’d said her friend had blacked out thanks to heroin. That must have been why she always wore long sleeves, why she made sure to cover up her arms. She was covering up track marks.

“I’m so stupid.” I breathed, closing my eyes as a wave of shame overtook me. When I opened them again, Tristan was still there, still holding on to me, still studying my face. “She told you this?” I asked, feeling almost jealous. Olive had clearly felt closer to Tristan than she’d ever felt to me.

“It’s something we talked about,” he replied.

“But why didn’t she tell me she was leaving?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Why wouldn’t she at least say good-bye?”

“I’m sure she had her reasons, but the point is, everything’s going to be okay,” he said firmly. “People come and go around here all the time. That’s just the way it is in vacation towns. I’ve gotten used to it, and you will, too.”

“You sound just like the cops,” I said with a scoff. I turned, releasing myself from his grip, and sat down on the top step. Tristan sat next to me, our thighs touching.

“You went to the cops?” he asked, surprised.

“Well, what else do you do when your friend goes missing?” I asked.

Tristan looked across the street, off toward the ocean, with a small, amused smile. “That must’ve been interesting,” he said under his breath.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” he replied. “It’s like we were saying the other day. Nothing bad ever happens around here. They probably didn’t know what to do with you, right?”

I let out a quiet laugh. “Pretty much.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Tristan said confidently, placing a comforting hand on my back.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied, turning to look at me. As I gazed into his steady eyes, the awful tightness around my heart began to ease.

Who was I to think that after three days of friendship I merited an explanation or even a good-bye? Olive wasn’t from my world, and she clearly had problems I couldn’t even begin to understand. It was perfectly reasonable to assume she was the type of person to just bail, and if she’d gone home to patch things up with her mother, good for her.