The Taking (19 page)

He winced, and I wondered if the pained expression meant he thought I was talking about his brother again. I reached across to where his fingers gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white. But I stopped myself because I felt self-conscious all of a sudden.

“Tyler, I’m not talking about Austin,” I explained, keeping my eyes trained on him. “When I came back, I thought . . . well, you know . . . I thought you were your brother. And I thought we would . . . be together still.” It was so much easier saying it out loud than I thought it would be. “But things are over between him and me, I get that now.” I took a breath and shrugged. “I know I don’t remember where I was all that time, but now that I’m back I
feel
so different. I’m not sure what it is about you. You were just a kid. . . .” My voice trailed away as I frowned, trying to find a way to explain. “It’s kind of like when Montag from
Fahrenheit 451
asks Clarisse why it feels like he’s known her for so many years, and she says, ‘Because I like you, and I don’t want anything from you. And because we know each other.’ It’s the same way with you.”

His fingers relaxed on the steering wheel. His green eyes—ones that had once reminded me of Austin’s but were now so obviously
not
like Austin’s that I couldn’t imagine having mistaken the two of them—glanced my way. I knew when I looked at him there was no going back. Whatever I’d felt for Austin really was in the past.

Somehow, in less than a week, Tyler had managed to make me believe I belonged here, in this weird, unfamiliar world I’d been dropped into. He was the only person I could count on.

He was my here and now.

His voice was decisive when he spoke. “I’m glad Austin acted like an ass. I’m not saying he’s a dick or anything, because he’s still my brother. But it was a dick move.” He leaned nearer, removing his hand from the wheel and slipping it behind my neck, drawing me so close I could smell the toothpaste on his breath. “You deserve better than that, Kyra.” And just when I thought he was going to do it, finally kiss me, his lips parted and he said, “And you might not want anything from me, but don’t for a single second think I don’t want something from you.”

He was wrong, though; I wanted everything from him. Probably more than I should.

When his mouth fell on my forehead, my eyes closed while I waited for the explosion of butterflies in my stomach to settle down, but it never happened. They kept thrashing, for as long as he stayed there, which was forever, his lips pressed against my skin, burning me, scorching me. When he finally drew back, I was convinced there would be a mark there, a brand in the shape of his mouth.

He grinned, and then winked at me, before starting his engine. “Are we done messing around here? Because I think it’s time for you to start telling me everything. Like who the hell’s been dredging up all this past crap, and why it’s so important that you remember what happened.”

I wanted to tell him no, that I’d way rather stay here and “mess around,” but he was right. It was time to confide in someone. In him.

I waited a few minutes, until my breathing had returned to normal, or as normal as it was going to be while the feel of his lips still blistered my forehead. But I knew he was waiting, even though he didn’t press me.

We took the highway. We’d drive the other way, the way my dad and I had gone—on Chuckanut Drive—on our way back. I wanted to retrace our steps to the T, and my dad had taken the long way home that night because of road construction on the southbound lanes of the interstate.

Tyler’s car slid evenly, smoothly over the pavement, and I leaned back in my seat, studying him surreptitiously. “Remember the day I came back, when you said I didn’t look any older?”

The corners of his mouth ticked up, but he kept his eyes on the road. “Yeah.”

Now that I’d started, I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going with this. I shifted and fidgeted with my seat belt, readjusting it over my chest. After a moment I tried again. “Didn’t you think it was weird that I’m supposed to be twenty-one, but I still look the same?”

This time he turned his head to look at me. “What do you mean ‘supposed to be’? If you’re worried that I think you’re too old for me or something, I’m not.” He directed his gaze back to the road, but he was scowling now. “It’s not a big deal, Kyra. Really.” His lazy smile made a fleeting appearance. “I kinda like the whole cougar thing you’ve got goin’ on.”

Oh my god, even when I was trying to be serious, he was ridiculous. “Uh, no. That’s not it at all. And I’m not.” I was tired of dancing around it, and tired of pretending to be something I wasn’t. This, all of it, would either be better or a thousand times worse if I just spit it out already. “I’m not twenty-one, Tyler. I’m still sixteen.”

There,
I thought, and even if I wanted to—which I totally and completely did—
I couldn’t take it back now
.

Tyler sounded far more reasonable when he responded than I had when I’d blurted out my admission. “What are you talking about, Kyra? You’re the same age as Austin.”

My throat felt scratchy, and I tried to clear it. “I don’t think so,” I admitted. “At first I didn’t believe it either. It was the dentist who saw it first, when I went in to get my tooth fixed. He looked at my X-rays and compared them to the ones I’d had done right before I disappeared—five years ago. He told my parents they were the same. Exactly the same.”

“Kyr—”

But I kept going before he could stop me. I was either going to do this or completely chicken out. Either way I was in too deep, and I’d come out looking like a lunatic. I planned to at least have my say before Tyler walked away and never looked back. “But it wasn’t just that. There were other things too. Things no one else would have noticed but me. Things like the bruise I’d gotten on my leg . . .” I leaned over and pulled the hem of my jeans up, showing him the fading purple splotch on my shin. “I got this when Cat and I were messing around the night before our big game. We broke my dad’s favorite coffee mug and never told him.” Just mentioning my dad and the world’s best dad mug I’d gotten him for Father’s Day when I was eleven made me sick to my stomach.

I wondered what kinds of mugs I’d get him now.
WORLD’S BEST ALIEN HUNTER. MY DAD’S CRAZIER THAN YOUR DAD.
If only I could have the World’s Best Dad back again.

Tyler looked my way, his eyes alternating between the bruise and the road and me. “You could’ve gotten that anywhere,” he told me, his voice so much softer and less teasing than it had been just a minute ago.

I shook my head, but I’d lost some of my conviction. “But I didn’t. And this.” I tugged up the sleeves of my T-shirt. “It’s the tan I had before I left. From my uniform. How could it still be there, in that exact same place?”

When he didn’t say anything, I fell silent. It filled the air, and I let my sleeve fall back in place. In that moment I wanted to slink down and just disappear again. I stared out the side window instead.

After a few seconds Tyler’s fingers closed over mine and squeezed. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Kyra. I’m just saying, give me a minute or two to process it, okay?”

While Burlington Edison’s fields—or rather “Agnew Field”—had looked almost exactly the same as they had the last time I’d stood on them, Cedar Lake’s fields, where we’d played that championship game, were completely rundown. The distinction between the outfield and infield was blurred as dirt and grass bled into each other, and the chalk lines were indistinct and drawn lazily. The dirt was clumpy, and the grass was weedy.

It was like looking at the softball diamond version of my dad.

But none of that mattered, standing there in the last place where everything had been normal. Where I’d been Kyra Agnew, superstar pitcher, only child, teammate, and unquestionably sixteen.

“Anything?” Tyler asked, coming to join me in the dugout where coach had given us her pregame pep talk and her postgame victory speech.

I shook my head. I tried my best to find something, anything that might trigger some small, seemingly insignificant memory, but there was nothing. Nothing new anyway.

Just Cat wrapping her arms around me and screaming victory shouts until my eardrums felt like they’d rupture. And later, near the parking lot, Austin wrapping
his
arms around me and whispering softer words. Promises that would never be fulfilled.

“Let’s go,” I insisted, taking his hand and dragging him away from there. “Maybe the drive back’ll shake something loose.”

The place where we stopped was way less daunting than I’d made it out to be in my head. I’d built it up to be this desolate stretch of highway straight out of a horror movie, complete with tumbleweeds and its own menacing soundtrack.

In real life it was just an ordinary two-lane road surrounded on both sides by farmland. Not a single sound effect for miles.

I wasn’t sure this was the exact right spot, but it was as close as I could recall. Tyler backed me up when he said he thought he remembered Austin and Cat dragging him here with them to drop off flowers and balloons, back when there’d still been one of those roadside shrines in my honor.

Since five years had gone by, it was hard to confirm, though, since all we could find were bits of dried-up dandelions scattered throughout the gravel shoulder.

“Is it weird?” Tyler asked when I clutched my sides and stared out at the fields that went on for miles.

“No weirder than me telling you I’m still sixteen.”

“Yeah, about that . . .” He reached for my hip and drew me around to face him. Gravel crunched beneath my feet. “If
you
believe it,
I
believe it.”

My heart thudded riotously as I faced him that way, with his hand still settled easily, securely, and maybe a little possessively, on my hip. “Simple as that, huh?”

His dimple made a surprise appearance. “Simple as that,” he repeated, and I believed him.

“There’s more, you know?”

He leaned his head back and groaned to the sky, which was turning gloomy and gray, dense clouds amassing. “You are seriously testing the boundaries of my confidence in you, you know? There are limits to what I can accept.” Yet even though his words made a mockery of my revelations, his fingers laced through my belt loops, ensuring that I was snared. When his chin dropped down again, he inhaled deeply, as if he was gathering his wits and preparing himself for whatever bombshell I had to drop next. “Fine.” He let out a breath. “Go ahead. Do your worst.”

I rolled my eyes. “Stop being so dramatic.” But I giggled when I said it, ruining the whole chastising effect I was going for. “This guy came to my house yesterday,” I said earnestly. “He said he was from the National Security Agency, and he was asking me questions about the night I disappeared.”

I had Tyler’s full attention now. He was no longer joking or tugging at my belt loops. He stared down at me with eyes that looked like they’d never been anything
but
serious. “The NSA? What kinds of questions?”

I shook my head. “That’s the crazy thing. He asked about my dad, which makes sense, I guess. . . .” My words slowed down there, because that was where the whole thing got sticky for me, more so than the part where I told him I hadn’t aged. I grimaced as I broached the subject of my dad. “I guess you know what my dad thinks happened to me.” I had an overwhelming urge to check my phone, to confirm the time, but it was so inappropriate that I stuffed my hands into my pockets instead.

“Yeah. I know. Everyone sorta knows he went off the deep end with the outer space stuff.” He didn’t say it like I would have. Like it was a big, fat joke.

I swallowed, grimacing. “And that guy, Agent Truman, asked me some weird questions that made me nervous. I thought about how you said people thought my dad might have been involved in my disappearance, and at first I wondered if he maybe thought that, too, because he wanted to know what all I remembered—which is almost nothing.” I wrinkled my nose when I said the next part. “But then he asked me about fireflies.”

“
Fireflies?
Why? What about them?”

“I have no idea, but my dad asked me the same thing. They both wanted to know if I remembered seeing fireflies. . . .” I nodded toward the darkening horizon. “The night I was here.”

“So did you?”

I closed my eyes and inhaled the tang of the rain-swollen air. I felt one tiny drop on my cheek and then another on my nose. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I know what they look like, really.” I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Do you?”

He frowned, concentrating. “I mean, sort of, I guess. Do we even have them around here?”

I shrugged as more raindrops fell on me.

“So what
do
you remember?”

“We were coming back from my game, and I got out of the car because my dad and I were fighting over college, and about Austin, and I was going to walk to prove a point. I tripped because I couldn’t see where I was going, and my dad was yelling for me. But before I could answer him, something really weird happened.”

“Fireflies?”

I smirked. “No. There was this intense flash of light. It was so bright that I couldn’t see anything else.” I shut my eyes, and for a moment I was transported back there again; and I could hear my dad’s screams, and I was blinded by the light that was everywhere all at once. And I felt tingly. All over.

Tyler’s touch brought me back to the present as he wiped my cheek. I felt tingly again, but in an entirely different way. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I told him, letting him wipe away yet another tear that was mingled with the rain, and then another, as the tiny raindrops became a full-on deluge around us. Neither of us moved, or flinched even, as we were drenched, drowned by the sudden downpour. I blinked the rain away so I could keep looking at his perfect, beautiful face. “If I hadn’t vanished that night, then I wouldn’t have come back, and I wouldn’t have had the chance to know you now. Not like this.”

And like that his lips found me. They didn’t find my forehead this time but captured my lips, and I couldn’t breathe when they did. They were demanding and sweet all at the same time.