Endless

The Return

“So let’s break it down,” Kevin said, dropping onto a blanket in the sand next to a roaring, comfortingly warm and dry bonfire. The rain had stopped at three o’clock. Just suddenly stopped after days and days of relentless soaking. It was still drab, gray, and cold with a solid layer of fog overhead, but it was dry, so we’d decided to meet up at the cove for a dinner of sandwiches and chips—which was great, since I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten—and to figure out our next move. Kevin popped open a can of beer and took a swig, licking the suds from his lips. The skin on his knuckles was dry and cracked, tiny white flakes clinging to his skinny fingers. “Pete is the bad guy. He killed Nadia, and he may have killed Cori.”

“Yep,” I said, tossing a piece of driftwood into the popping, crackling fire.

“And he has an accomplice, but we have no clue who it is, and he can’t tell us who it is, because he’s unconscious,” Kevin continued.

“Yep.”

“Well, this totally sucks.”

Kevin chugged the rest of the beer, crushed the can, and reached for another one. I poured coffee from Krista’s plaid thermos into a Styrofoam cup, then shuffled through the cool, damp sand and sat on a towel between Krista and Bea.

“I still can’t believe we thought it was Tristan,” Lauren said, shivering under the gray wool blanket she had arranged over her legs.

“None of us can believe we thought it was Tristan.” Kevin tugged his black baseball cap lower over his brown eyes. “But let’s not go there right now. I want to talk about Pete. That fucking little backstabber, Pete.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Bea said as she reached into a crumpled brown paper bag for a sandwich. “Nadia was one of his best friends and he just kills her? Why?”

“He said if he waited long enough he’d get what he wanted,” I told them, probably for the dozenth time. “So what does he want?”

“Pete? Aside from a lifetime supply of beef jerky and a record deal, I have no clue. He’s a pretty simple guy,” Fisher said.

“God, I wish he’d wake up,” I muttered, checking my walkie-talkie. It’s red “on” light gleamed brightly as if laughing at me. I dropped the hem of my jacket over it, annoyed. Bea tore her sandwich in half and handed one side to me.

“I say when he does wake up, we break each of his fingers one by one until he talks,” Kevin said, hunching his shoulders toward his ears as he took another loud slurp of beer. “That’ll do the trick.”

“You wouldn’t actually do that, would you?” Liam asked, alarm lighting his handsome face.

“No!” the rest of us answered in unison. To punctuate the message, Fisher flung a scrap of bark at Kevin’s head. It bounced harmlessly off the bill of his cap.

“That is not the way we do things,” Krista snapped, brushing some ash off the sleeve of her white sweatshirt.

“How do you know?” Kevin asked, sitting up straight and pushing the cap up on his forehead to better glare at us. “How do any of us know? It’s not like anything’s normal around here. Who’s to say how we do or don’t do things?”

Bea took a deep breath and sighed. For the first time in days, her red curls were loose around her shoulders, and they danced and shook in the cold ocean breeze. “He does have a point. It is a whole new and not-very-pleasant Juniper Landing.”

“But we’re not torturing anyone,” Joaquin said firmly. “End of discussion.”

Suddenly our walkie-talkies buzzed in unison, and there was an awful, piercing peel of feedback, so loud I wouldn’t have been surprised if our ears had started to bleed. I grabbed at my radio as Krista ducked her head into her hands dramatically.

“Apologies,” Chief Grantz’s voice blared through the radios. “My apologies for that. Let all ushers be advised that the mayor has decided the usherings will begin tonight at sundown.”

There was no movement other than the endless wild dance of the flames and the meek waves of low tide, lapping at the shoreline behind me. I stared at Joaquin. His jaw clenched as he tossed another twig, then another, then another into the fire.

“The souls on the watch list will be the first to be ushered, as previously stipulated. Please bring your first charge to the bridge once it’s dark. Over.”

Lauren hugged her knees up under her chin. “Well. So there you go.”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot wait to get rid of Tess,” Bea said, munching on her sandwich. “I’d usher her ass right now if they’d let me.”

“Yeah, I won’t mind getting rid of Lancet, either,” Joaquin said.

“And if I hear Piper ask for Wi-Fi one more time…”

Everyone laughed, but it was a short laugh. I stared at the flames, thinking of Ray Wagner’s ridiculous taunts, his blackened tongue, his rotting teeth. We were lucky he hadn’t tried anything yet. Booting him off the island would be a relief.

But once he’d been ushered, he’d be in the Shadowlands. With Darcy, and my dad, and Aaron. What was it like for them there? Would they have to deal with him, or did they even know where they were, and who else was in there with them? Were they in constant terror, or was it a vast loneliness?

I shivered violently, and my fingers curled into fists at my sides. I had to save them. How was I going to save them?

“Let’s just hope none of them go to the Light,” Krista said with a shudder. “That would not be good.”

I looked at Joaquin. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he tore the tiny twigs from a branch. Krista’s words hung in the air between us.

“Is this a party or a funeral?”

“Tristan?”

I scrambled to my feet, spraying sand into the fire and over Bea’s legs. Tristan walked toward us slowly, his shoulders a bit curled, his chin hanging lower than usual with a square white bandage taped to the back of his head. His blond hair was stringy and two shades darker after going unwashed for days. But he was alive. He was awake. And he was here. After a catatonic second of shock, Krista raced forward and threw herself into his arms.

“You’re okay!” she cried.

Tristan hugged her back, first with one arm, then the other. I heard him laugh, and it brought tears to my eyes.

“Apparently I’m gonna live,” he said. Krista still had her arms around him, but his eyes met mine over her shoulder. An intense shock of joy shot through my chest and lifted me onto my toes. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

They were the words we had all been waiting to hear from the person we’d needed to hear say them, and the mood on the beach exploded. Fisher produced an old-school boom box from the depths of his tent and turned on some base-thumping dance music. Krista whipped out a box of doughnuts from her canvas bag, and Kevin spent the next ten minutes trying to convince us that Boston creams paired perfectly with a lukewarm Bud.

But I had no idea what to do with myself. Everyone else had mobbed Tristan, laughing and hugging and cheering, while I stood awkwardly in the sand, waiting. The only thing I knew for absolute certain was that I would not approach Tristan. He would come to me. Or he wouldn’t. Either way, I wasn’t about to make the first move.

Before long, the crowd around Tristan started to break up, and Joaquin was introducing Liam to Tristan. Then, the two of them were alone.

Tristan and Joaquin. Best friends. Brothers. Their conversation shifted from intense to laughing and back again. The sight of the two of them together made me sweat under my dark blue hoodie. Would Joaquin tell him about the kiss? And did it even matter when everything else was so very wrong?

“You gonna be okay there, Killer?” Bea asked me under her breath, handing me a chocolate doughnut.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

She tilted her head dubiously, like she wasn’t quite sure I knew the meaning of the word. “Whatever you say.” Then she stutter-stepped over to Krista and Lauren, who were dancing together down by the water, trying to drag Liam into the center of their gyrating circle.

“Hey.”

When he spoke, so close behind me, it was as if I hadn’t heard the sound of his voice in a year. I turned around slowly, and I was looking into Tristan’s deep blue eyes.

“I heard about Darcy,” he said, his face creased with concern. “I’m so sorry, Rory. Are you all right?”

I trained my eyes on the sand, on the toes of his sneakers. There was a bit of seaweed stuck to the rubber upper, twitching in the breeze.

“No,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’m really not.”

He reached for me, and I took an instinctive step back. I didn’t dare look around. I didn’t want to know who might be watching.

“I’m so sorry, Tristan.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For Nadia and Cori,” I said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you. I’m just so sorry.”

“Hey.” I felt him moving to touch me again, and I flinched. Tristan’s hands fell to his sides.

“But I just can’t…I can’t sit here and pretend that everything’s going to be okay,” I said, fumbling for the words to express how I was feeling. “How if we just start ushering people, everything will go back to normal. Because it won’t. It can’t. Not for me and not for the people trapped in the Shadowlands. We can’t forget about them, Tristan. We can’t pretend like it never happened.”

“We won’t,” he said. “I promise you. We won’t forget about them. We’ll get your dad and Darcy back.”

I glanced around at Fisher and Kevin laughing by the stereo. At Bea, Krista, Lauren, and Liam dancing near the waves. A seagull cawed and dove toward the water. It was the first live bird I’d seen in days. My jaw clenched.

“It feels like we already have,” I said.

A tear slipped down my cheek and I quickly, angrily, swiped it away.

“Rory—”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m glad you’re better, I just…Right now I need to be alone. I need some time to think.”

And then I did something I never would have thought possible as recently as an hour ago. I turned my back on Tristan and walked away.