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She can’t be dead.
He won’t survive it…
We won’t survive it.
CHAPTER FORTY
“It’s called the left hand rule,” I tell him.
His steps slow, and over my shoulder, I watch as he spares the entrance into the maze one last lingering look.
I turn to face ahead, and run my left hand over the neatly trimmed, bristly green hedges towering over us. “It doesn’t work for every maze,” I go on, “but it should for this one.”
“Why’s that?” Mason says, and I sense him jogging to catch up.
“Because as far as I know, this is the only way in and out,” I explain. “So as long as we keep to the left side, following this wall with each turn, and just… sticking to it… it will lead us to where it ends. The center.”
“And if there are other exits?”
I glance over at him, lips thinned. “Then we get lost, and we do this the old fashioned way.”
Mason huffs shortly at that, and proceeds to dig his phone out of his pocket. “You remember that one time we got lost in that corn maze when we were kids?”
My throat tightens at the memory. “Yeah,” I say softly. “Waylon freaked out so bad, he bolted straight through the stalks, and ended up in the surrounding woods.”
We only know this because Izzy followed him, while Mason and I hung back, determined not to cheat.
Mason pulls up the flashlight app on his phone and beams it at the path ahead. “It took us forever.”
“Yeah, it did,” I whisper, and there’s a weird edge to my voice I hope he doesn’t notice.
When we’d finally made it out of the maze that day, we’d found Izzy and Waylon with our parents, and Mason’s mom. Izzy skipped up to me, and looped her arm through Mason’s, dragging him ahead, going on about the cider donuts they were waiting on getting until we got out.
“Hopefully we’re a little less spatially challenged now that we’re older,” I say, and it doesn’t escape me how…clinical my voice sounds.
Mason must hear it too, because any lingering humor or wistfulness from recalling that day so long ago, is instantly soaked up by the reminder of why we’re out here, doing this.
“Yeah, and we can’t very well storm through these if we get lost and panic,” Mason says, reaching over, and running my hand over the right wall of green hedges.
“No, we can’t. So stick to this side. And don’t panic.”
If we were the us from yesterday, he’d be laughing, no doubt teasing me for being so serious. It’s just a hedge maze after all. Harmless fun. This isn’t the Overlook Hotel. There’s no ax-wielding maniac chasing us as a blizzard threatens to bury us inside.
But the us now…
Well, neither of us is finding this too funny or exciting.
If anything, it feels like the walls are closing in, and I wonder if it feels the same for him.
Was she scared too?
At the thought, I instinctively hunch up like I could ward off the thoughts—the images playing out in my head, of all the worst case scenarios that could’ve happened. Mason seems to draw closer, and I wonder if he’s having similar thoughts.
The wall abruptly ends, and we make our first of what turn out to be many twisting, sharp left turns.
Around and around we go…until I lose count. Every few feet, one of us calls out to Izzy. Nothing but silence greets us in return.
“Where’s your phone?” Mason asks at one point.
