Tension settles into my muscles, solidified by the cold, making my stride swift, rigid, as I walk on. Next stop, Lorimer Street.

The little brown house is quiet. Car’s in the drive, meaning he’s definitely not inside. I watch for a couple minutes, anyway, in case he might come out the door at a run, but nothing moves. Picture his mom in there, sitting at the kitchen table. Silence, dust, a cup of weak instant coffee by her hand as she waits for something to change, looking out the window at the woods.

I walk on, taking a guess at how to get over to the old cemetery from here. Cross through the graves to the woods, pushing through dry brambles, taking gullies faster than necessary, making myself breathless.

When I reach the boulder, I stop where I stand. Kincaid’s shelter is gone. He’s taken away the tarp and fencing. Not a hint remains that anyone ever slept here, except for the faint, S-shaped bare patch on the ground where I know his body once lay.

After that, I run. To the ledge, clambering down so fast that I don’t know how I manage it without falling. Find the path, checking for Kincaid’s bag in the weeds—not today—then head down the trail with something like fear fueling me.

Why would he move his shelter, other than to throw me off? Maybe Trace warned him that I was freaking out, that there was a chance I might tell somebody? “Kincaid!” My shout echoes across the flats, and I want to pull it back—too much like Ivy all over again.

The Mumbler mural grows as I close in on it, swelling, stretching across the rock. I make myself stare at it as I pass. You don’t scare me. No face. No eyes. I don’t believe. Hands a snarling nest of snakes. You never were—can’t be. But I’m so small beneath it, lost in the shadow of the cliffside.

I keep thinking I’ll follow a curve, and Kincaid will be there, ahead of me, getting his breathing room way out here where few of our friends dare to go. My backpack feels heavy over my shoulder, full of homework and reading I’m behind on, but I can’t turn back, not until I make it all the way there, to the bridge.

Once I reach the railroad tracks, I can see he isn’t out there on the platform, waiting for me to figure out that this is the only place he’d come. Our place. But there’s no one. Just our jack-o’-lanterns, facing east.

I walk all the way to the far end of the platform, where my steam runs out. Squeeze my eyes shut against stupid tears, frustration, the creeping knowledge that I’ve messed everything up, crushed our fragile beginning like a dried aspen leaf.