wait. Tonight’s finally over, and we both know it. I keep hoping Mallory will break the silence, but she sits next to me, equally content and quiet, and I decide to take it for as long as I can.
Tomorrow—or today, I guess—is finally here, and I’m only hours away from going. Where? For how long? I have no idea. Up until this point there was no need for planning. I had some money, and I could camp and eat on the cheap. Isn’t that how people start new lives? First they get up the gumption to leave, and then they do it. Let the chips fall where they may, that sort of thing.
I can get a job working at a gas station or in fast food. Make enough money to last until August or however long it takes for Dad to cool down. Christmas at the latest. There’s no way Mom would let me miss the holidays.
Mallory jumps off the gate so quickly I’m sure something’s bitten her. She pats at her pockets like her clothes are on fire.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” She looks at her hands and then goes back to searching her pockets. “No, no, no.”
“What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
“I’m so stupid.”
I hop off the gate and grab her by the shoulders. Her face worries me.
“I lost the ring. I took it off, and now it’s gone.”
“The ring,” I say.
I saw it just after Christmas, when she was checking out a book at the library. Her friends were standing around, cooing and carrying on. When she saw me looking, I could tell she was embarrassed, hiding her hand behind a book she was holding. It was small, the sort of thing you bought at a kiosk in the mall. A ruby maybe. But most likely red glass, cut and shaped to look better than it was. For the next few weeks I’d catch snippets of conversations, girls fawning over Will, maybe the only guy in high school with enough balls to buy a girl a ring.
She crumples over and then drops into a squat, panicking. “I only took it off because I was pissed at him, but it was in my pocket. I put it in my pocket when I came to your house.”
“Maybe it’s in the truck,” I say, going to the passenger side. I search the floorboards, the seats, even the glove compartment. Then, because she hasn’t moved, I search the driver’s side. When I still don’t find it, I pull out my phone—nine unread texts from Mom—and use it to check under the seats. Nothing.
“I need to find it,” she says, standing up suddenly. Her face is absent, like Jake’s. Void of possibility, of any hope to find resolution. For a second it scares me; how helpless I feel. It’s a ring in a field at midnight.
I turn around and walk slowly, searching for any gleam of light in the dirt.
“Maybe you lost it when you were hiding,” I say, beginning to feel the panic, too. If anything, Mallory is growing calmer by the second, but I’m not. “Where were you?”
“The tree line,” she says. And for a second I’m annoyed. I wouldn’t have ever found her because that’s always been out of bounds. I wish I could mention it, could see the indignation—maybe it would be guilt—flash across her face seconds before she gave me the definitive explanation as to why I’m wrong.
Instead, I point my cell phone to the ground as we walk, searching for a ring that is likely invisible. Part of me doesn’t want her to find it, which I realize is childish and petty. Then I imagine finding the ring, holding it up. Seeing the relief overtake her face, transforming her back into who she really is.
When we get to the tree line, she points at a large stump, once an even larger tree. “I was sitting there, waiting for you.”
We both drop to our knees, searching through the piles of dead grass, the leaves. We’re not halfway around the stump when she sits on top of it and says, “This is pointless. I probably lost it when we were at the park. Or the quarry. Or the hotel. For all I know, some guy at the campfire just gave it to his girlfriend.”
She hugs her knees, and I have no idea what to say. Part of me wants to be like, It’s just a stupid ring. But then I think about Jake and remember that sometimes even the littlest things