I move the bow from grave to grave, focused on the empty space between the horsehair and the wood. Before, I was shouting names, flinging them toward the sky. Now I’m whispering, cold as fog.

Evelyn Stuttgart

Rosa Ramona Díaz

Matthew Blackall

Emma Hart

Danny and Rush: Now

Rush can’t believe the name was there the whole time, only a few yards away, waiting for her to find. She’s been afraid of it for so long — wanting to know who it belonged to, and not wanting to know, both forces dragging her down. She crouches to touch the writing on the headstone, carved so the actual letters are just hollow space.

Emma Hart

Danny touches Rush’s back but doesn’t say anything. She gives Rush a second to process, even as her own mind sprints from one strange truth to the next. Maybe when she found Rush over and over, she was dowsing. Maybe it had nothing to do with Danny’s oversize crush. Her impatient heart. Rush led Danny to hidden pieces of the story, pieces no one else had.

Together, they ended up here.

Stuck on that name. Breathing it in. Letting it out.

Emma Hart

The whole world narrows down to the size of that name on a headstone, and then it starts to ease open. Rush can hear the wind again, lacing through the trees. Danny watches darkness flirt with the edges of the sky.

“Do you think that’s why Imogen left?” Rush asks. “Because of . . . her?”

Danny can’t answer that. She doesn’t know Imogen’s heart. She only knows her own, and it’s starting to hurt. She helps Rush to her feet but tries not to look too deep into the shifting blue of her eyes. Danny holds out the bow, pressing it forward, trying to hand it back to Rush.

“Keep it,” Rush says, putting her hand over Danny’s and pushing the bow back toward her. “I think it’s supposed to be yours.”

Danny knows Rush wants her to have a dowsing rod, to find Imogen — but maybe Rush also wants Danny to have her own power. Danny touches the silk of the horsehair bow, sticky with rosin. She doesn’t fight back against the sudden tide of Rush’s generosity. She’ll take anything Rush will give her.

She’ll give anything Rush will take from her.

Rush’s hand is still on hers. Their bodies turn before their thoughts catch up. In a second, they are softly aligned, touching their mouths together, testing to see if either of them will stop this.

One touch. Two.

Neither girl backs off.