The Leaving Part 21

Kristen said, "I'm meeting with a hypnotist again in the morning. Maybe I'll remember."

"Did you remember anything today?" Lucas asked, and for a second, it seemed like Kristen and Scarlett shared a secret look, and then Kristen seemed to break it off.

She said, "They're not telling me what I said yet. They want to preserve the integrity of what I recall when I'm under for at least a few sessions."

Lucas looked at Scarlett, who was staring at the ground.

Were they hiding something from him?

"I won't hold my breath," he said.

"It's worked for people before," Kristen snapped. "There were a bunch of kids who were kidnapped on a school bus in California years ago. They managed to escape, and the bus driver remembered a license plate under hypnosis and they caught the kidnappers, so . . ."

"I have to go." Sarah started to walk away.

"But you just got here!" Lucas protested.

She turned. "I snuck out. I don't want to get caught. I shouldn't have come."

"Don't you want to find who did this?" Lucas ignited again, but this time low heat. He said, "We all need to work together," but wasn't honestly convinced Sarah would be any help at all.

"I don't know what I want." Sarah starting walking in circles like the night before, and now talking in circles, too. "I want to go back. I want to move on. I want to know why it was us and not some other kids, and I don't want to know anything at all!"

So many questions.

So many ways in.

Why us?

Why then?

Why now?

Why here and not any other town?

"At least give me your phone number," Scarlett said, "in case anything urgent comes up." She and Sarah exchanged information via text and Sarah walked out of the playground. They watched her go until they couldn't anymore, then listened until distance silenced the slip-slap of her sandals.

"Let's all exchange numbers," Lucas said. "So we can be in better touch."

And as they did that, headlights fell on them.

A local news van pulling up right at the gate to the playground.

"How did they find us?" Lucas said as he finished typing the word-"Scar"-into his phone.

"That's my cue to go home." Kristen stopped her swing and stood. "We don't know anything more than we did yesterday anyway."

Lucas actually wanted her to leave. She put him on edge in a way he couldn't explain.

If he were alone with Scarlett, he thought he might tell her about the gun-the tattoo.

"Maybe Sarah and Adam have the right idea," he said. A news crew of two were now standing by a curly slide.

A woman called out, "We just want to talk."

What else would they want? "What do you mean?" Scarlett asked Lucas.

Lucas had the urge to take a photo of her, framed as she was by the chains of the swing, her face lit softly from the van's headlights. "I've been avoiding them," he said. "But why? We don't have anything to hide."

Nothing that anyone needed to know about, anyway.

"I just mean maybe they can help," he said.

"How?" Scarlett asked.

"Follow my lead." He walked toward the slide, stopped, and said, "Whenever you're ready." The cameraman hoisted his machine.

The reporter held out a microphone.

Lights burned on.

Lucas could almost see into the camera-lens after lens in there reflecting and capturing.

"Why are you all meeting in secret?" the reporter asked.

"I wouldn't say it's a secret." Lucas stood up straighter, pushed his hair out of his eyes. "We're in a public place. We arranged to meet when we were dropped off here because we had no idea what was going on. We wanted to check in on each other. To make sure we were all okay."

"Who remembers the carousel that Avery G.o.dard is talking about? Why aren't Sarah and Adam here? Has there been a falling-out?"

"I'm the one who remembers the carousel," Lucas said. The light was near blinding.

"And I remember riding a horse in a meadow," Kristen said.

When the microphone was presented to Scarlett, she said, "I remember riding in a hot air balloon."

"So maybe," Lucas said, "the person who owns the horse or the hot air balloon or runs the carousel will remember us?"

"What about Adam and Sarah?" the reporter pressed. "Do they have memories, too?"

Lucas said, "They've shown that they're quite capable of speaking for themselves. Anyway, there hasn't been a falling-out. We've all just had a lot to deal with, obviously. That's all we remember. We really hope they're able to find out what happened to Max."

Would Avery see this report? He hoped so.

Hoped that maybe she'd believe him now.

He turned to look at Scarlett and Kristen, then back to the camera and said, "That's all we have to say right now. Thanks for your time."

The reporter smiled with large white teeth-"Awesome"-took out her phone, and started to walk away. "I've got the new lead on The Leaving," she said. "We're heading in." Then the cameraman opened the van's back door, put the camera in, and closed it. They both got in-their door slams loud like gunshots. Lucas realized he didn't even know what station they represented, but it was already too late; they were gone.

"And now we wait," Lucas said.

"I can drive you home if you want," Scarlett said to both of them. In her car, stopped at a light beside an RV camping site, Lucas thought about getting out. Grabbing her hand and just abandoning the car right there. They'd hop in an RV and just drive and drive until they found a place where no one knew them.

But then . . .

Max.

Avery.

Wherever he went, this need to know what had happened would dog him. It had its teeth sunk into his flesh now and would need to be dealt with . . . extracted . . . properly.

The light changed and Lucas said, "It's up here on the right."

Opus 6 appeared like a jack-o'-lantern, sections of it glowing golden with solar-powered lights. It seemed to have eyes, and a mouth out of which a winding tongue of lava pulsed weakly down toward where the car pulled up.

"What on earth-" Kristen said.

"This is Opus 6?" Scarlett asked.

Of course.

They hadn't ever been there.

Scarlett got out of the car at the base of the driveway and left it running, her door open. She took large, confident strides up the main path, casting her own shadows on the glow, and in a minute she was standing at the top plateau-where the final stone was supposed to go. She spun around, taking a full rotation, making Lucas think of sacrificial virgins on altars and ceremonial dances. She said, "This is amazing," like a prayer. "I saw it mentioned in some old clippings I looked through . . . but wasn't really sure what it was."

Kristen wasn't even interested enough to get out of the car. She'd lit a cigarette that glowed the same color as the solar lights.

She was far enough away not to hear.

The wind blew Scarlett's hair into her face and she pushed it away.

Lucas said, "Do you have the feeling that you and I were . . . together?"

He had no better way to phrase it.

Then, for a long moment, he stared at her, waiting.

CAROUSEL FIRE.

CLICK HISS.

She said, "I think so, yes."

AVERY.

There would be no break in spring break-no sleeping in, no time-wasting.

She had set an alarm and was waiting for her dad when he came down into the kitchen. She'd heard him on the stairs and had abandoned the maze on the back of the cereal box to pour coffee for him. Black, two sugars.

"You're up early," he said when he entered the room, a tie draped around his neck.

"We need to offer a reward for information leading to Max being found." She delivered his mug to him. "A big one."

"I'm not really sure-"

"Dad." She perched on a stool by the center island. "It looks bad, you not really doing anything. There is someone out there who did this and who maybe has Max, and right now they think they are going to get away with it. But someone out there knows something-they have to-and money talks. I mean, if the note's real, and he's really out there? We have to act. Now."

Her dad took a long sip of coffee, then put the mug down and adjusted his watch. "How much are we talking?"

"I don't know," she said. "Ten grand? Twenty? Twenty-five?"

"That's a lot, Avery."

"You can't put a price tag on Max, can you?"

"That's not fair." Another sip and a minute of silence. "And the note probably isn't real. You get that, right?"

She nodded. "Still."

"I'll think about it." He put the mug down but didn't let go of it.

She said, "While you're thinking, time is being wasted."

"If I do this, you need to not go on the news again."

"Deal." This was almost too easy.

"It is weird, though, isn't it?" he said.

"What's weird?"

"The carousel, the hot air balloon, horseback riding." He let go of his coffee to sort through a stack of mail.