Chapter 16: Chapter 16

The hallways are alive with fresh fervor.

Mia walks past the slew of “Find Keila” posters, eyeing a cluster of girls wearing matching T-shirts in honor of Keila, acting as if she’s dead.

It is strange. Though she can see mouths moving, she cannot hear their words or the buzz of distant chatter.

There is something that taints the air and has changed the atmosphere of Braidwood entirely. It is something unseen and yet it is everywhere.

Mia flinches back when a dark, brawny figure impedes her path.

“~Jeez~, Akin,” she mutters, her fright fading.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

Not knowing what to do with his hands, he shoves them into the pockets of his varsity jacket.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I can see that,” she says, a distinct note of disdain in her voice. “You gonna stay put this time or you gonna run away?”

His face deadpans, looking away with fleeting frustration. “Can you blame me?”

Mia restrains her response because she cannot blame him. If the roles were reversed her actions would likely be the same.

What happened to Erin scarred her soul and now that Keila too is gone, it only ensures its fracturing. All four of them are bound by unseen forces and are tortured by a single fear: what if they too are next?

“Look,” Akin says, demanding confidence. “Can we start again? I was thinking, since you haven’t come by the restaurant in such a long time, that—”

“Yo, Ballo!”

Mia looks past him, and Akin throws a glance over his shoulder at Brett. He whistles two short bursts and calls him over the way one summons his dog. Ethan chides him for this with swift retribution, elbowing him hard in the ribs.

Thompson laughs and tips his head at him. “Let’s go, Ballo, coach called for a meeting.”

Mia hands them an exaggerated look. “Coach called, ~Ballo~.”

Hurt flashes in his eyes, face veiled by a doleful look. “Mia,” he whispers.

“Ballo?”

Akin whips around. “I got ears, don’t I? And you have eyes, so you can see I’m having a conversation. Hold up, I’ll be—” his head snaps back to find no one there.

Mia speeds up her pace, shouldering past people clumsily as she makes her way to the counselor’s office.

Around the corner, she flattens her back against the wall for a second. She takes a moment to regain her composure before she resumes her journey.

She barges into the office and closes the door behind her with an explosive sigh.

“Bad day?”

Mia flips around with a dead look on her face.

“I got you your favorites.”

Her eyes drop to the desk.

The counselor’s files and stationery are neatly placed aside to make space for the takeaways. A Frappuccino and an iced latte from Starbucks with two cappuccino muffins from Carl’s Café. The best in town, say the locals.

The gesture revives Mia, and she moves to settle down on the chair opposite the desk, removing her bag and dumping it by her feet with another laborious sigh.

“I would ask you how your third week’s been, but I think it is apparent enough.”

Mia’s only reply to that is the quirk of her brows. “Thank you for this.”

She goes for the muffin immediately, taking it out of the brown paper bag. Mia makes a note of her companion’s expression before plucking pieces of the muffin with her fingers and dropping them in her mouth with a satisfied moan.

Doctor Jo observes her contentedly. The elongated window behind her heralds in sunlight, highlighting the iron streaks in her black hair, impossibly straight, just reaching her collarbones in length.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mia asks, mid-chew.

“I’m just wondering if you’re going to have the courage to raise the topic yourself? Or must I truly instigate the conversation?”

Mia breaks off a bigger piece from the jumbo muffin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, doc.”

“It’s about what the town won’t stop talking about.”

Mia hangs her head in a moment of defeat. “Anything but that. Can’t I escape just for one second without being bombarded about that or about Erin?”

“How do you think Keila feels?” Doctor Jo prods, anticipating a reaction. “Don’t you think she wishes to escape wherever she’s being holed up?”

Appetite obliterated, Mia shoves the muffin—its top layer missing—inside of its branded bag.

“Okay.” She drops the bag back on the desk. “How do you know Keila is being held against her will? Maybe she met a guy online and decided to run away with him?”

~You know that’s far from what happened. ~Guilt stabs her gut in reprisal. ~You should be disgusted with yourself for even saying that.~

“At the last staff meeting, Natalie, the cross-country coach, said last year the team made it to regionals. And she informed Keila that she was going to nationals.

“And also mentioned how excited Keila was, and she couldn’t wait to resume training.”

She takes up the Frappuccino with both hands cupped around it. “Does that sound like a girl swayed by the fickle whims of a passing infatuation?”

Mia drops against the seat, losing spare breaths. “I wouldn’t know. Not anymore.” Her eyes zero in on the counselor with a contemplative look.

“What about you, Doctor Jo? Are you still friends with the people you grew up with? And if so, are they still the same people you knew?”

A question to bolster the notion that with time, everyone changes; for better or for worse.

Doctor Jo considers her with innate, curious calculation.

“At my age, that would be over twenty years ago. You and Keila hadn’t spoken since Erin’s vanishing, so…seven years. It’s quite some time, but not that long.”

“It’s a large quantity in a small space, doc.”

Mia throws her head back to wash her face with her hands.

“Everyone thinks they know what happened—what’s best—the nuances of our relationship.” She looks up sharply. “You don’t, the cops don’t—especially that ~detective~.”

Anger rams her composure to the ground. Mia jolts to the edge of her seat. “Detective Russo has been on my ass since I found out Keila was missing. He…he’s not like the others. No, he’s much more ruthless.”

Worry joins Doctor Jo’s brows together. “How so?”

Mia’s hand plows through her hair. Looking away, she says, “I had a seizure. The second.

“The first one was after my initial interrogation. The shock of it sent me into a state…I don’t really remember much from that time. But I remember that.”

“A seizure?” Alarm rang in the doctor’s tone. “And what triggered the incident? What was he pressing you on?”

“Erin.”

“I figured,” Doctor Jo says with a fast eye squint. “What ~about~ Erin, Mia?”

Mia’s cheeks bloat from the pressure that’s been refused its release, air seeping through her lips. “He said a lot of things. Cruel things like we left her—I abandoned her.”

~You did so much worse than that~. Her face whisks to the side as if struck by the thought.

Proceeding with the utmost casual caution, the counselor asks, “Can you remember what you did instead?”

~Live the lie until the lie becomes your life.~

This is the motto to which Mia and the rest adhere to—and are bound to.

“The reason we were out there so late is that we were looking for Erin.” ~Liar~. “We decided to play in the woods and at some point, she had vanished under our watch. We lost her.” ~An even bigger lie~.

“We searched for hours, until midnight, according to one of the officers. I didn’t abandon her…I lost her.”

Doctor Jo nods, with an all-serious look upon her face, clearly something profound pending.

“Wow.”

Mia’s brow reaches for her hairline.

“Wow? That’s it? No existential, theoretical hypothesis about your psychological perspective on that or whatever?”

Josephine gives a dignified shrug. “I’m astonished. This is the most you’ve ever talked about that time—expressed so many emotions toward it. You tend to bottle up how you feel.”

Mia scoffs at that. “Apparently you’re not the only one that thinks that,” she mutters.

Doctor Jo smiles softly, interest piqued. “And who is this other observant one?”

“You.” Mia takes the iced latte and makes a mock toast to her. “Which shows how messed up I am because my only friend is a psychiatrist.”

Doctor Jo laughs politely, small and short. “I think you may be surprised that there are more people than you think that genuinely care about you, other than me.

“You just have to reach for them, or perhaps letthem reach you.”

Mia lifts her latte to her lips only to lower it to her lap, slowly. “What if some friendships are better left forgotten?”

“What if they’re best remembered? Tell me, if you could restore this friendship that you speak of, how would that make you feel?”

Mia rolls her head in dour deliberation. “Feel? I’m not good with feelings.”

“I think friends”—the counselor makes direct eye contact, and adds—“the ~right~ friends, can change your life for the better. More people tend to lessen the load, you don’t have to carry whatever holds you alone.

“If you let them, a good friend, even if it’s just one, can be the difference between lonesome misery or wholesome companionship.”

Mia scoffs bitterly at the sentiment. “Why do people think solitude equates to misery?”

“Because as human beings, we were made to interact with one another. It is an intimate interchange significant to our nature. We will always crave human attention, approval, and even touch.

“And it can be detrimental to one’s mental health if deprived of that connection. As people, despite our primitive conflicts and differences, we need one another.”

“I need no one,” Mia says more harshly than she intended. She reins in her emotions. “I’ve thrived on my own these past years and have been at peace more than ever.”

“Silence does not equate to peace,” Doctor Jo retorts, walnut-brown eyes swirling with speculation. “And in these last years, I’ve observed you waft in and out of this school like a tortured ghoul.

“I don’t have to be a psychiatrist to see that you fight a battle within. And I wonder, is it yourself you war against or someone else?”

Mia folds her lips inwards as if in fear the words will gush from her mouth.

“I think that you’re still there. You haven’t left those woods. Not really. It stole a part of you which now lies where Erin is, alive or dead.”

Mia tries to blink back the burn, but her tears render her resistance futile.

“You belonged to a tight-knit group,” Doctor Jo continues. “The other mothers reiterated this. Not all families are blood.

“Do you think, whether or not she is still alive, that Erin would be glad to see that you’ve all separated? Split apart by a crisis, even though it should’ve strengthened your bond.

“What do you think Erin would say or do if she had witnessed your divergence?”

Mia trembles from anger, her eyes glossy. “I wouldn’t know because she’s not here, is she?”

Doctor Jo makes a disagreeable sound. “I think you knew her well enough to guess.”

Even though the bell to signal the end of the first break is yet to ring, Mia snaps to her feet and collects her things with aggressive haste.

“Thanks for the talk, doc.” She snatches the muffin bag “I feel so much better. Same time next week?”

“Mia,” Doctor Jo says, her voice rich with reproach.

Mia shoulders her bag and bolts out of the office.

***

The day skims by, everything and anyone, a constant blur.

Mia’s mind replays the doctor’s words over and over again like a song stuck on repeat. She has never thought deeply about somehow reconciling with her old friends.

It isn’t like other petty or trivial reasons for why other friends break up—a best friend who slept with someone’s boyfriend, a toxic friend, growing apart from each other.

All and any other reasons are dwarfed by the magnitude of their shared plight—their shared horror.

But everything has changed for her since she gathered the courage to speak to Akin and he dared to reach for her. Twice.

It shows her that despite everything, he still cares, though he has every reason not to. And a piece of her longs for that companionship.

Akin and the others all understood each other with the same ease as having a cheat sheet during an exam or doing an open-book test. Sometimes they understood each other more than they understood themselves.

Besides, Akin deserves an apology, which Mia knows he is owed.

The bell shrieks, signaling second break.

“Your assignment is due next Tuesday,” Mrs. Jefferson announces for the third time. “Any essay that does not meet the word count will be penalized. There will be no leeway, as none will be granted in your final exam.”

Mia packs up her things and slithers out of the classroom with the rest of the pupils.

~Akin always sits by the soccer field or by the fountain at break~. Mia rolls the dice and tries the fountain since it’s the closest.

She makes her way to the heart of the campus. The building’s uninterrupted facades alternate between glass and metal and are punctuated by greenery.

The high school center comprises two blocks, one housing classrooms, offices, and a recreational living room, and the other a lecture hall.

Connected by a covered walkway, these buildings wrap around two sides of a large courtyard to form a colonnade.

Shortly, Mia comes to the sprawling interior, strolling under the trellis that borders the yard.

She spots Akin instantly. He’s seated on the limestone ledge of a double-tiered grandiose fountain.

He sits beside Alister King himself, also known as the prince of Braidwood, and in every sense a golden boy.

Star captain of the soccer team, honor distinctions in all of his subjects, and volunteers at outreach programs on the weekends. A real-life super boy.

Almost half the team accompanies Alister and Akin, all of them seated on the array of benches at their feet, shaped like a semi-circle.

Mia approaches, unable to understand her disquiet, her pulse drumming beneath her skin. Ethan sits on the outer edge, straddling the bench with the captain of the cheer squad between his legs.

“Yo,” Brett knocks Akin’s knee with a casual hand, “it’s your girl again.”

He grabs Mia’s gaze. “I see that someone doesn’t take rejection too well,” he says with a condescending snicker.

Akin sees her approaching and his smile flickers out like a dying flame.

Ignoring Brett, Mia says, “Akin…can we talk?”

Brett barks out a derisive laugh. “The second-hand embarrassment you giving me is actually painful. He clearly doesn’t want to talk to you, so take your desperation someplace else.”

Akin’s Air Jordans meet with his back with a mild but punishing smack. Brett’s back arches and he gives a pained grin.

“Forgive his mutt-like behavior,” Alister says, flaunting his pearly whites. “He’s untrained.”

Akin hops off the ledge and leaves without notice, motioning for Mia to follow. She swivels around and sidles beside his tall flank, meandering toward the colonnade where there’s a little less foot traffic.

“I’m sorry,” Mia blurts, not wanting to delay. “I was being an asshole.”

A frown strikes his forehead, shaking his head dismissively. “I ghosted you.”

“I was still being an asshole.”

They trade somber looks before breaking into twin smiles, small but irrepressible.

Mia draws in a deep breath like a great weight has been lifted from her chest.

“I think we both could’ve handled it differently…” she trails off an apology before rerouting herself. “But it’s my fault, I should’ve never ambushed you about…Keila. It was wrong.”

“It was dangerous,” he says sternly. Then his gaze wavers. “But it wasn’t wrong.”

He reaches out to stop Mia in her tracks.

“You were right. I think he…he’s back. And I’m scared it might not end with Keila. He’s coming for us…~I felt it~.” A vacant look enters his eyes.

The fall of sunlight pouring between the wide gaps of the trellises gleams across his pearlescent dark skin.

His eyes flutter, chasing away dark emotions. “We can’t talk about it without breaking our oath. We swore on Erin’s name that we wouldn’t—”

“I know,” she says in a fierce whisper. “What else can we do? Wait until one of us vanishes, too? You know he lured her out there and he can easily do the same to us.”

A nameless dread seizes his breath. Remembering how he randomly appeared in the middle of the road, almost crossing the street to the woods.

Though he has no recollection of walking there, he recalls the feelings after—the fear. ~I could’ve been next~.

Loyal to his vow, he says, “We cannot break the two laws.”

Thwarted on the matter, she gives in and quits the debate altogether.

“Is that why you wanted to talk?” he says with a hybrid of hope and aggravation in his voice.

Mia’s hand is drawn to her pendant like a magnetic pull, and she takes a sense of courage from it.

“I was going to ask…what were you going to ask me?” she says, courage driven by an audacious hope. “It sounded like you were going to ask me something.”

He gives an exaggerated nod, suddenly nervous himself.

“Yeah.”

He scratches the back of his head, satiating a non-existent itch.

“My mom’s restaurant…I was thinking, since you haven’t been there in such a long time, maybe you’d like to have dinner there or something, and see the upgrades for yourself?”

Mia’s heart wakes, vibrating with the thrill of a pleasant surprise. Akin nearly smiles at the sight of her dark eyes sparkling with mirth, serving his hope well.

“Yeah.” She looks down at her feet bashfully, tucking a sheet of hair behind her earlobe. “I’d…really like that.”

Akin spares another dramatic nod, smiling excessively.

“And I like that you like that.” His eyes spark. “You free Friday? I have training after school, but can we meet that evening?”

“Yeah.” She whips out her phone, extends it to him, then lifts a shoulder. “For directions.”

Akin smiles and takes it, inputting his number, then takes out his phone so she can do the same.

“Alrighty then.”

They return each other’s phones.

Akin points behind him. “I should…head back.”

“Yeah,” she says for the third time consecutively. “Yeah, you go. And I guess I’ll see you this Friday.”