deserve that. If you aren’t comfortable, we’ll figure something else out, but if that’s what you wanna do, then we’ll do it.”
“Tomorrow,” he said with a nod. “Let’s do it.”
My smile grew. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”
Instead of the arrangement from the first time, we decided to leave Nikita and Jaxon behind for the second attempt. Everyone slept in after the pool party, and then I had to take Gus home, but not long after lunch, we met up to try the blindfold method again. We opted to take two different cars, so Kyle and Brayden rode in his car, while I rode with Avery in hers. We started at Postings Proper High School, and did the same thing we did the first time.
Avery wrapped Brayden up in a blindfold and put a hair tie around his wrists, then we led him over to Kyle’s truck the same way we did the first time, and put him in the back seat. We had a feeling Brayden would feel less pressured and more comfortable if it was just Kyle in the truck, so we left the two of them and climbed back in Avery’s car to follow behind.
After a few minutes, Kyle pulled away from the curb and Avery kept a close tail on them. Brayden must have felt something solid the first time we did the experiment, because around the same place that Brayden wanted to turn at the first time, was where Kyle turned right. Avery followed and every now and again, Kyle would turn, and eventually, we ended up on the highway that was taking us to North Postings.
“This is good, right?” Avery said. “Nikita and Jaxon found Brayden wandering around North Postings.”
“Yeah?” I said. “If that’s the case, then we could be on the right track for sure.”
At one point, Kyle got off the highway, and the turns got more erratic and uncertain. A few times, Kyle put on a blinker to turn, before turning it off and continuing straight. “What’s going on?” Avery asked.
Finally, Kyle’s car pulled over and stopped. We could see him looking over the backseat, talking to Brayden. About five minutes passed, and I was just about to climb out and walk over to the truck, when Kyle climbed out and walked back to Avery’s car.
Avery rolled down her window and Kyle leaned in. “Hey.”
“Is he panicking again?” I asked. “We can stop.”
“No, he’s fine. He’s going great, but we think he may have screwed up on the exit, he said he felt like it might have been too soon. I asked if he wanted to start over, but he said he thinks if we go back to the Posings Proper exit and get back on the highway, that he can get it right the second time. I’m gonna take Millworth back to the Postings Proper exit, and then get back on the highway and try again,” Kyle explained.
“Okay,” Avery said. “We’re behind you.”
“Cool.” He tapped the side of Avery’s car and then pulled back from the window and walked back to his truck.
“Hopefully, the third time’s the charm,” Avery said.
“Hopefully,” I agreed.
Exactly as Kyle had said, he took Millworth, a street that ran all the way from South Postings, through Postings Proper, and into North Postings, back to the highway exit we’d started on. He hesitated for a moment, likely allowing Brayden to reset and focus, and then eventually he got back on the highway. We drove down the highway following Kyle, but that second run, he got in the left lane. We passed the exit we got off on, along with a couple more, and we were fast approaching the final exit for North Postings—a left exit—but then Kyle got off.
We followed and the car slowed significantly, and then it started to turn left and right at certain intervals and then finally, Kyle’s car pulled over and stopped. Avery and I watched as Kyle got out of the front seat of the truck and opened Brayden’s door.
“They’re getting out,” Avery said.
I opened my door to get out and Avery followed suit, just as Kyle was pulling Brayden out.
“We would walk straight for a while,” Brayden said. “And we’d cross the street. I know because sometimes we’d stop at the light, then we’d immediately turn right.”
“Okay. Let’s go,” Kyle said. He looked over his shoulder at Avery and I, and we both nodded and followed behind him.
We moved exactly as Brayden had expressed, and he was more confident, likely because he was on