The Summer It Came for Us Page 5

  “What’d y’all do today?” she asked, all smiles. “Enjoying summer?”

  “Uh . . . we went for a bike ride,” Zoe lied.

  “We went down to the river,” I added. “To swim.”

  “And skip rocks,” said Zoe.

  Meanwhile, Malcolm and Jace gave us shut the hell up expressions.

  “Well, I’m making tacos tonight, if you want to stay for dinner—”

  “They’re good, mom.” Jace ushered her out of the room. “Now can we please have some privacy?”

  “Oh-kay, sweetie,” she said wearily and headed for the stairs, and only when she was gone did I let out my breath.

  “Hey, I kind of want tacos,” Zoe said in a hurt voice.

  I leaned forward and whispered, “Did you see that? She was totally acting normal . . . she doesn’t even suspect anything.”

  “She has no reason to . . . except for you two idiots.” Malcolm stood up and paced across the room, rubbing his jaw. “Vincent’s mom is going to come home any minute. When she finds out he’s not home, she’s going to call us. We better have a damn good story when she does.”

  A nervous twinge gripped my stomach.

  Up until now, it hadn’t really sunk in that Vincent was missing. As in, missing missing.

  It was one thing for us not to know where he was. We were just his friends. But the idea that no one knew where he was—not even his mom—made it seem much more serious.

  Like something that would show up on the evening news.

  I raised my hand to my mouth, chewed my fingernails. “We need to find him,” I muttered.

  “The fucker’s probably hiding in his bedroom,” said Jace. “I say we go back there and check.”

  For a change, no one argued.

  It only seemed reasonable to start our search at his house.

  “Alright, let’s go.” Malcolm led the way out through the garage. “Hang on, we got to see about this car first.”

  Whipping out his cell phone, he stopped at the Subaru and pulled open the driver’s door.

  I knelt beside him. “Are you checking the vehicle identification thingies?”

  But as he glanced between his phone and a label inside the door, his eyebrows knotted in confusion. Without a word, he stood up, pocketed his phone, and continued up the driveway to his convertible

  I hurried to catch up. “Are they different? The same? What?”

  “Doesn’t mean anything, someone put on a fake label.”

  “So they’re the same?” Jace said.

  “That’s what you’d do,” Malcolm said. “You’d buy the same make and model, in the same exact color, then you’d manually set the odometer, put on identical plates, and put on a fake VIN sticker. That’s what you’d do, if you wanted to fool people . . . it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Either that, or there was something much more sinister going on with the Subaru Forrester parked in Jace’s garage.

  Malcolm cupped his face to Vincent’s garage window the moment we got to his house. “Her car’s not here . . . we’re good.”

  I glanced up and down the street, hyperaware that Vincent’s mom could drive up any minute. “Guys, why are we being so shady? Can’t we just ring the doorbell like normal people?”

  “Zoe, Jace, go around the other way. Look for open windows.” Malcolm started around one side of the house, while they went the other direction, leaving me standing there.

  “So . . . what? We’re going to break in?” I hurried after Malcolm despite myself, not wanting to be left alone in plain view of the street. “Are you crazy?”

  Knowing my luck, I would get busted for trespassing and Malcolm would be nowhere to be found.

  So fucking typical.

  “Something like that,” said Malcolm.

  “You know, we’re going to have to tell her eventually.”

  “And we will,” he said, ducking behind a pile of firewood, “once we know whether or not Vincent came home last night.”

  I ducked down behind him, catching a whiff of his smoky cologne that gave me butterflies. For some reason, it made me nostalgic for winter nights curled up in front of the fire, and I didn’t quite like it. “You know, if you were outside my house, I would be so creeped out.”

  He pressed a finger to his lips.

  “I don’t even know why I’m friends with you,” I said. “You’re, like, always mean to me.”

  He gave me an unamused look. “Remi, go wait in the street. If you see his mom’s car, whistle.”

  “What?” I said, alarmed. “No, I’m coming with you.”

  “Then zip it.”

  “See. Mean.” But I shut up.

  Behind us, the late-afternoon sun slanted through the dusty woods. Though past six, we still had hours of daylight left, hours of hundred-degree heat before the cool relief of evening.

  All the windows we passed were shut and locked, blackout blinds drawn.

  You didn’t keep windows open in this kind of heat. You opened them at night, drawing in as much cold air as possible with fans, then closed them all in the morning and coasted through the day on AC.

  That was my parents’ routine, at least.

  But every once in a while, someone might forget to close a bathroom window.

  “There.” I pointed to a small bathroom window, open a crack behind the screen.

  “Get the others.” Malcolm stepped up to the window and clicked open a knife.

  “Malcolm, don’t—”

  But he’d already sliced open the screen.

  Just great. Now I was an accomplice to breaking and entering.

  “Are you serious?” I said in disbelief. “This is our best friend’s house.”

  He caught my gaze over his shoulder, his eyes all brooding and intense. “Remi, if you were missing, would you give a damn if we cut open one of your screens?”

  “Actually, I would hope you would call the police.”

  “Except we can’t do that.”

  Without another word, he grabbed a nearby patio chair, stepped onto it, and climbed through the window into the bathroom, leaving me no choice but to follow.

  “Malcolm,” I whined, wincing as I kicked off the chair and dragged my bruised ribs over the window frame, “what if she drives up right now?”

  “That’d be shitty timing,” he said, poking through the bathroom on the other side

  “Oh, that’s all you have to say? Real comforting—” Halfway through the window, though, I stopped and stared down at a bathtub five feet below me. “Uh . . . how do I get down without cracking my head open?”

  He huffed out a sigh and came back, muttering, “Seriously, Remi?”

  “Do I, like, somersault in—?”

  He grabbed me around the waist.

  At his touch, panic entered my voice. “Wh—what are you doing?”

  “Your job for you.” Muscles flexing, he lifted me clear off the frame and pulled me inside, like I was no more than a ragdoll.

  I landed flush with his body, staring breathlessly up into his cold, cold gray eyes, which up close, I saw, had flecks of silver and blue in them.

  He let go and backed away, holding his palms up. “There. Done.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, hurriedly smoothing down my tank top. “Next time, please ask me before you manhandle me.”

  Only manhandle was the last word I’d use to describe how his hands had felt on my body.

  I stepped out behind him into a hallway lined with picture frames, wondering which was more responsible for my racing pulse—the fact that I was breaking into a house . . . or him.

  “You doing okay?” he said.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  I’m not fine.

  “I mean about Vincent.”

  “Oh.” Now that we were alone, and I didn’t have the others to distract me, that slightly nauseous feeling rose in my throat again. “Let’s just find him, okay?”

  Malcolm turned and looked me in the eye. “Remi, he’s not your res
ponsibility.”

  “Yes, he is, Malcolm. He’s all of our responsibilities. He’s younger than us, he’s a grade lower, and he’s not as tough as you guys, so if anything happens to him, it’s our fault.”

  “Sure, it’s everyone’s fault. My fault for taking Ridgeview Drive, Jace’s fault for driving too fast, your fault for wanting to go . . . but know the difference, Remi.” He jabbed a finger at my chest. “Know the difference between that and it being your fault.”

  I felt my eyes narrow at him. “Are you making this about my brother? Because don’t make this about my brother.”

  He held my gaze for another long second, which had me fidgeting, before he said, “Then you don’t either,” and faced forward.

  His comment left me bristling.

  So . . . I kind of lied earlier about how we all became friends.

  Eight months ago, Vincent had not, in fact, been my best friend. He’d been my younger brother Trevor’s best friend, both of whom I and all my shallow former friends used to pick on and tease and bully constantly.

  Until my brother swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, fell asleep with a note clutched in his palm, and never woke up.

  His suicide wasn’t my fault.

  I mean, they told me it wasn’t my fault, that he had issues, chemical imbalances.

  But try to believe that when the last thing you said to him was how stupid his haircut looked.

  I was his older sister. I was supposed to protect him. I didn’t.

  It wasn’t grief that made me cut ties with all my old friends, it was shame.

  I remember seeing Vincent at lunch some time later, eating all by himself.

  I went up to him, and I ate with him that day.

  He reminded me so much of Trevor.

  The dance part was true, but I didn’t know Zoe at the time. Or Jace, or Malcolm.

  But they were different. When the whole school tiptoed around me like I was the next suicide waiting to happen, they didn’t. They were real, and that was exactly what I needed to get through my grief.

  At first, I’d brought Vincent into the group out of guilt, as a way of atoning for my brother’s death.

  But now I loved him. We all loved him. He was like the soul of the group. The hilarious, awkward soul.

  He was what made us good.

  Ahead of me, Malcolm stopped and sniffed the air, pulling me back to the present.

  “Something feels different about this place,” he said.

  “Different . . . how?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know. Like someone’s been here who’s not supposed to.” He took another step, and the wooden floor creaked under his boot.

  I had just processed his statement, and the hairs tingled on my forearms.

  “Vincent,” Malcolm called toward the living room. “Vincent, you home?”

  A vent hissed AC above us, but no one answered.

  “Vincent, if you’re pulling a prank on us, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

  “Malcolm,” I hissed.

  “He knows I’m kidding.”

  Jace’s voice drifted in through the open window, making me jump. “Yo, Malcolm? Remi? Where are you guys? I hear you talking.”

  “Stay outside,” Malcolm warned. “We’re checking out his room.”

  Malcolm paused at Vincent’s bedroom door, and I came up next to him, dreading what we might find inside.

  Blood all over the floor? Proof he had come home last night? Proof he hadn’t?

  I didn’t know which would be worse.

  “Moment of truth.” Malcolm twisted the knob and pushed the door in with a rickety screech.

  When the room came into view, it took a moment to react.

  Then my jaw fell open.

  Malcolm gave a low whistle. “That ain’t right.”

  “Where’s . . . where’s his room?” I stuttered.

  Where Vincent’s room should have been, where I remembered it being, there was only a boring office. His bed, his furniture, his Star Wars posters, his computer and his big leather chair and his mini-fridge had been replaced with a simple desk and a bookshelf.

  All evidence that he’d ever lived here had been erased.

  Along with the soul of the place.

  “Check the other doors,” said Malcolm. “Maybe his mom rearranged the place.”

  Together, we checked the other doors along the hallway, finding the master bedroom, a bathroom, a closet, and a guestroom—rooms I remembered from when I’d been here last.

  But no sign of Vincent’s room.

  His bedroom was gone.

  Just . . . gone.

  “That’s what’s different.” Malcolm tapped the picture frames lining the hall on our way out. “They took down all the photos of him, too.”

  “It was all cleared out. His clothes, furniture, everything.” Malcolm drove aimlessly along back roads while I could only stare at the passing trees, their crowns tinted gold from the sunset, too stunned to speak.

  Not only was Vincent missing, but someone had systematically gone through his house and removed everything that was his.

  But who would do that? Why would they do that?

  Maybe for the same reason they would plant a duplicate car in Jace’s garage, to throw us off the scent.

  The scent of what, though?

  Whatever this was, it was big.

  “You sure you guys checked the right room?” Jace said.

  Malcolm peered sideways at him. “You think I’m an idiot?”

  “I know you’re an idiot.”

  “We checked all the rooms, Jace,” I said. “None of them were his.”

  Jace frowned. “None of them? So what was in his room, then?”

  “Just a bookcase and a desk, like an office,” I said. “But none of it was his stuff.”

  “Wait, so all of his stuff was gone?” Jace asked, his tone now skeptical. “Like, all of it?”

  “What have we been saying, dumbshit?” Malcolm said.

  “What about that painting he did in the living room?”

  “It was gone,” I said. “It’s a big photo of Mount Shasta, now. His photos were gone, too.”

  “You check the photo albums?”

  “We had five minutes in there, Jace, not five fucking hours.”

  I piped in from the backseat, “I think whoever took him, they’re not just trying to make him disappear, they’re trying to make it look like he never existed.”

  “Yep,” said Malcolm.

  Jace chewed on his lip. “Yeah, but come on, what about his mom? It’s not like they’re going to trick her into thinking she never had a son.”

  “It was six thirty when we left.” Malcolm tapped his dashboard clock. “She still wasn’t home. She could be missing, too.”

  “Jesus,” Jace muttered. “Guys, can anyone think of any reason why someone would want to make Vincent disappear?”

  His question was met with silence.

  Because no one had any reason to harm Vincent.

  He was good and pure and innocent, the last person on earth to have enemies.

  “What about his accident?” Zoe said softly.

  His accident.

  I fidgeted in my seat, the underside of my thighs sticking to the hot leather. Could Vincent’s accident be the motive?

  What she’d said earlier was starting to sound more plausible.

  “That was ten years ago,” said Jace.

  “Yeah, but you asked for a reason,” I said. “That could be a reason.”

  “A reason to do what?”

  “To make him disappear. I don’t know. They made him sign a nondisclosure agreement, remember? Maybe he was threatening to go public or something.”

  Zoe nodded along. “To break his silence.”

  Jace let out a weary sigh. “Do you guys realize how crazy you sound? The dude just ran away . . . took all his stuff with him. I bet twenty bucks that’s what happened.”

  “He’s hiking down the highway with his bed stra
pped to his back,” Malcolm sneered. “I’m real sure.”

  “It’s more likely than your theories.”

  “Listen, numchuck, other than us,” Malcolm said, “the last person to see Vincent alive was Sean. We start there. Ask around if anyone’s seen him.”

  “Hear that, guys?” Jace said. “We got a regular Sherlock Holmes in the car.”

  “Should I call him again?” Zoe pulled out her phone. “Maybe his phone’s back online.”

  While Malcolm and Jace bickered, I murmured aside to her, “Yeah, call him.”

  She pressed her phone to her cheek, and I crossed my fingers.

  And waited.

  Vincent had never told us the full story of his accident.

  From what little he did tell us, his mom—at the time an employee at the Shasta-Trinity Supercollider—had brought him with her to work on the very same day there was a radiation leak.

  Long story short, he wandered into some top-secret sector he shouldn’t have, and they found him later, passed out in a pool of vomit.

  He was hospitalized for a week.

  They settled out of court, and his mom quit working there and had struggled to keep waitressing jobs ever since.

  “Guys, guys, it’s ringing!” Zoe squealed.

  My heart leapt into my throat.

  His phone was ringing!

  He would answer. Of course he would answer. He would tell us it was all a big misunderstanding—that he’d gone to stay with his grandma, that they were redecorating his house, that his cell phone service had been temporarily canceled due to late charges, but now it was all sorted out—

  Zoe lowered the phone. “It . . . it just stopped. It didn’t even go to voicemail or anything.”

  “Call him again,” I urged, still holding out hope.

  She did.

  This time, even with the wind whistling in my ears, I heard the three shrill beeps and the voice say, “We’re sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected . . .”

  What had been a flare of hope now shriveled into a painful knot in my chest.

  Zoe let the phone slip from her cheek, shaking her head.

  “He must be moving in and out of reception,” said Jace.

  “That’s not how a cell phone works,” said Malcolm, scowling. “It would have gone to voicemail.”

  “But the fact that it rang, damnit—” Jace punched the dashboard, “—if only there was a way to track his cell phone.”