CHAPTER 4 JAIME

The first thing I noticed about him was his hair, the color of butterscotch, a blond so gold it almost looked bronze in the fog-dimmed light of morning. The second thing was his eyes, pale blue-green that would have seemed cold on anyone else but looked strikingly clear and honest on him. The third was that he looked like he was about to faint, and I definitely couldn’t have that.

If I hadn’t felt like absolute death, the way his jaw dropped when I opened my eyes would’ve been genuinely hilarious. I knew I looked like shit, but first impressions were never really my strong suit. Neither were second impressions, actually. I think I was just more of an acquired taste. But I couldn’t risk scaring off the only hope I had of survival, so I shut my mouth and waited for him to calm down.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, letting out a shaky breath. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“Sorry, not dead yet,” I croaked, my voice sounding hoarse and foreign to my own ears.

I hadn’t spoken out loud for days. God, how depressing. I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t sure it’d feel like a razor blade in my throat. Instead, I made the equally stupid mistake of trying to sit up, concealing the wince that followed poorly enough that the boy’s face twisted in concern.

“Are you all right?” he asked, taking a nervous step toward me. His face went white as his eyes flicked down to my hands. “Oh, god. Is that blood?”

I looked down, turning my hands over to inspect the dark red streaks dried across my knuckles and under my fingernails. I guess it did look gruesome out of context, but to be honest, I had forgotten it was there.

“Don’t worry, it’s not fresh.”

He gawked at me, clearly not appreciating my sparkling wit even in the face of great adversity. Rude. “That is really not as reassuring as you think it is.”

I sighed. This, I thought, was the exact type of person I had not wanted to show up. This guy was clearly a wimp. He was dressed in a predictably granola way for what I assumed was a Vermont native, but his grey Henley was caked in mud, and his knee was skinned through a tear in his jeans. He was handsome enough it was annoying, but in a nonintimidating boy-next-door kind of way. He looked like he could be the star of Saint Juniper: The Musical. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Listen, I don’t have the energy to explain all this, but I’m stuck,” I said. With my head pounding the way it was, I could barely string a sentence together, let alone make sense of my situation to this guy. “Here, I can show you.”

I moved to push myself off the ground, but I hadn’t realized how lack of sleep, food, and water would make every tiny movement feel like I was rubbing sandpaper against my joints. By the time I stood up straight, my vision had almost blacked out, and the look on the boy’s face told me I wasn’t hiding it as well as I thought I was.

Before I could think to stop him, he rushed forward to help me. In the moment his hand should have connected with mine, his body ricocheted back like he had hit a brick wall. He fell hard onto the muddy ground, clutching the spot where his outstretched arm had connected with, well, nothing.

“What the hell was that?” he gasped, his eyes tracking my movement as I leaned heavily against the spot where the door should have been. Just like the first day I had been in the house, the shoulder of my t-shirt flattened like it was pushing up against glass.

“I have no idea,” I said, willing my voice not to shake as I blinked the stars from my eyes. “When I found this place, I just wanted to look inside for a second, but when I tried to leave, I was trapped. I tried everything, even breaking a window, which is how I wrecked my hands. I didn’t want to waste my drinking water by washing them, so there you have it.”

I figured, as he was knocked flat on his ass having the existential crisis of a lifetime, that the SparkNotes version would do. He didn’t need to know that the reason I was out there was because Saint Juniper had gotten under my skin. He didn’t need to know that whatever awe I’d felt when I first stumbled into the house had slipped away when I realized I was stuck, replaced by a terror so expansive I was afraid I would choke on it. He didn’t need to know that I had rammed up against the invisible barrier enough times for my shoulder to turn black and blue, or that I’d shouted until I didn’t have a voice or the energy to keep going. And he definitely didn’t need to know that once I’d tried everything, I was so busy freaking out that I hadn’t realized until a full day later I might starve to death if nobody found me.

To his credit, he didn’t seem to be losing his marbles as much as I thought he would. He was just gaping at me, at the greenhouse, at the whole scene, like staring would make it any less ludicrous.

“This is . . . it’s . . .”

“Impossible?” I offered.

“I mean, yeah,” he said, finally rising to his feet. I hadn’t noticed before since his face wasn’t at eye level, but he had a smattering of freckles across his nose. When his eyes focused on me again, his expression changed. “Wait, how long have you been here?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s been four days,” I replied, glancing away when he looked appropriately horrified. But then he pulled a sandwich and bottle of water out of his muddy backpack, and it felt like the closest thing to a miracle I had ever witnessed.

“If I pass this to you, will it go through the, uh, the thing?”

I shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.”

The boy straightened and tossed the sandwich to me first. It somehow managed to pass through just fine.

“This is all I have on me right now, but I can bring more tomorrow,” he said. I already started digging in to the food in my hands, but at the same time, the idea of a complete stranger taking care of me kind of made me want to crawl into a hole and die. “It was really lucky that I heard you when I did. Thank god you called for help.”

I swallowed a bite of food and stared back, not sure I’d heard him right. “I didn’t call for help.”

“I heard screaming and ran here from the road. You’re really telling me that wasn’t you?”

If it was anyone asking other than this overgrown Boy Scout, I would have thought they were pulling my leg. The truth was, the last few days in the house had been a blur, and most of that time I’d felt like I was losing my mind. There were a couple of moments I had woken up at night thinking someone was talking to me, but I thought I was just hearing things because of the starvation. Maybe the voice wasn’t just in my head after all.

I think he interpreted my long pause as something other than immense confusion, because he narrowed his eyes again. “Are you messing with me?”

“Dude, does any of this seem like a joke?”

“Well, it’s my first time hearing voices. I need a minute to process.”

“Join the fuckin’ club,” I grumbled, unscrewing the cap of the water bottle and taking a long swig. I instantly felt the pressure inside my head start to ease up.

“I just don’t get it. I know people who have bragged about finding and breaking into this place, but I’ve never heard about anything like this happening.”

“I get that you’re at the denial stage right now, but I’m gonna need you to skip ahead to acceptance so we can be on the same page.”

“But don’t you think there has to be a logical explanation for this?” he said. It irked me that he was acting like he had a better handle on the situation than me, like I hadn’t spent the better part of a week agonizing over it on my own.

“Do you have high blood pressure?” I asked in a tone so snide I knew it could annoy a saint. “You should get that checked out.”

“I don’t know how you’re can be joking right now,” he snapped. “Isn’t someone back in town wondering where you are?”

My stomach lurched, an acrid, familiar wave of anxiety washing over me. He had no idea what a loaded question that was, or what a terrible time I had chosen to go missing. He had no idea how wrong he was for assuming anyone cared, and there was no way I was letting him go down that rabbit hole.

“You know where I am.”

“Yeah, but I mean someone like your parents,” he replied. “It’s been four days. Don’t you think they want to know you’re safe?”

“I already said no, okay?” I said evenly, taking a step back from the entrance of the greenhouse. “Just drop it.”

“Why are you being so stubborn? They’re probably worried sick about you.”

His words struck some dissonant chord that left me emotionally stranded halfway between sorrow and anger. That was, after all, the exact reason I had come to Saint Juniper in the first place. To live with a family friend I hadn’t even known existed until two months prior—someone who might finally worry about me more than I constantly had to worry about myself. But I’m sure I burned that bridge when I wandered off and got stuck. If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that she wouldn’t lose sleep wondering where I was or what I was doing. No one ever did.

“You know what,” I said, gathering the water bottle and what was left of the sandwich in my hands. “You ask too many questions. From now on, you’re limited to one a day.”

Before he had the chance to sputter a reply, I’d already turned on my heel and slipped out of sight. Ducking under the vines hanging from the roof of the greenhouse, I made my way into the game room at the back of the house.

I didn’t realize how fast my heart was beating until I pressed my back against one of the flaking black walls and finally had a second to breathe. An ancient pool table with feet carved into massive lion’s paws squatted on an unbelievably ugly rug, and on the far wall, mounted animal heads looked back with glassy eyes and unsympathetic stares.

“You can’t just walk away in the middle of a conversation,” the boy called from the clearing. I let out a huff of hollow laughter in reply, and a raven from some nearby branch cackled back.

As the moody silence of the house settled around me, I started to wonder if the boy had actually left. But then, just when I was sure he was gone for good, I heard him speak up again.

“I’m coming back tomorrow morning with food,” he said, sounding exasperated but resolute. “You better be ready to talk then.”

I let myself slide down the wall and come to a crouch on the floor, not sure if I was relieved or more terrified than before. I could hear the boy wrestle with the underbrush at the edge of the clearing, and as his footsteps faded into the ambient noises of the forest, I forced myself to imagine him heading back to what must’ve been a perfect home in a perfect neighborhood and never coming back. I had to, because otherwise I’d be screwed. I didn’t want to think there was a chance things might turn out okay, but a tiny, annoying flutter in my chest told me I was already hoping this boy hadn’t given up on me, that maybe I didn’t have to figure everything out on my own. So just as quickly as it came, the fear of nobody ever knowing I was trapped was replaced with the fear that somebody knew but might not think I was worth saving. And I didn’t even know his name.