Page 58 of All Her Ghosts

Barely a hiccup between numbers—she hesitates. Her eyes flick to my face and away.

“You know, you look kind of like that girl on the news.”

I swallow hard. Still hopped up on stolen energy, the noise in here is damn near unbearable, every overlapping conversation shredding my nerves. A helicopter passes low overhead, and it takes an iron-shod effort to tip my head, eyebrows arched, curl my lip in just the slightest breath of a laugh.

People see what they want to. My cover isn’t blown yet.

“I know, right?” I manage. “Wish I had a sweet scar like that, though.”

I draw a line across my throat with the edge of my phone, sticking my tongue out with a little death gargle. The hostess’s eyes snap to my screen. Ever so slightly, not enough to be obvious, I tip the screen her way. Just enough so she can read the name on the top of the text log:Mom.

See, I’m fine. I’m just some random emo kid whose mother knows she’s here. Nothing to worry about. I flash a quick smile, stare her dead in the eyes.

“Wonder how she got it.”

The hostess hesitates. She glances at the TV screen, but they’ve moved on to other topics.

“I think it was makeup.”

“Was it?” I shrug. When she reaches out to hand me my change, I wave her off. “Oh no, that’s your tip. You keep that. I just want the receipt. I have this app on my phone—scan enough receipts and it’ll give you a gift card.”

Like I said, it’s not a complicated plan. It’s not even agoodplan. But Amber Alerts meankidnappingsand no one expects a kidnapped girl to text her mom, to admire a throat wound, to collect receipts for a stupidapp. Look—I’m not afraid. I’m making perfect eye contact, even as my whole soul rebels at the way she scours my face, hunting for weakness, for some clue I’m the person she thinks I am.

Internally, I scream. My party trick thrashes and threatens. But in the world of the living, I smile like my mother, vague and disinterested. I’m so ordinary, weaponizing normality too bland to remember. Her attention wavers. Already, I can see her forgetting what I look like, how I differ from the girl on TV—was she smiling or dour? Was it a scar or a slash of lipstick?

In any case, it probably wasn’t me. I’m alone, after all. Kidnapped girls don’t run around cheerful and unattended.

I push my advantage. “Hey, you know what, I have a code I can give you. If you sign up, we both get a dollar.”

The hostess smiles. She hands me my receipt.

“I’m good, but thank you,” she says.

I wish her a nice day. I wave. And then, in five seconds flat, I fuckingevaporate. I power walk out of that little diner as fast as I can without looking like I’m running, plunge between the rows of vendors. Eyes stab into me from every angle, scraping across my spine. Radios blare. I feel too big for my body, massive and clumsy. My cheeks burn. Is everyone staring at me?

I dodge between two beat-up old cars selling blankets and wooden furniture, dogged by thetick tick tickof personal heaters plugged into the pillars that mark each seller’s stall. Someone laughs. Someone tries to sell me sunglasses. Another helicopter swoops overhead, dipping so close I feel its engine vibrating in my clenched teeth.

I force myself to breathe. Anonymous in the rows upon rows ofpeople—old teacups and tools and battered children’s toys—I slow to a crawl. No one knows me. And out here, no one is probably watching the news. Not closely enough to pick out one unattended teenager in a whole throng.

I buy those sunglasses, after all. Big, like a 1960s movie star, with white rims and heavy shade. They hide half my face but in an ordinary way, stealing a page from Cain’s book. I’m not a girl on the run, just one hiding from the blazing October sun.

I force myself to wander, to browse a stall selling crystals, another with homemade dog toys. A current of spiced meat eddies on the wind and I follow it. I stalk the food trucks until I find the one that smells the best, purchase a blessedly hot gyro wrapped in tinfoil that warms my frozen hands enough I can almost feel them again. Cain’s hungry, after all. And he drove all this way for me.

I work so hard at seeming normal that I pop out on the other side of strange, trapped in a woolen bubble of serenity. The radios still blare a dozen different songs, the stupid helicopter won’t stop circling, but the noise feels far away. Breathing takes effort. Practically floating, party trick hazing my boots in intermittent blue, I cut off toward the parking lot: section C, spot 82.

Empty.

Fear cuts through my uneasy stillness. Juggling the gyro, I grapple my phone awake, fumble for my pictures. Before I can bring up proof, a hand grabs me. I swing, ready to fight, but Bas shoves me down by the shoulders, trapping my arms at my sides. Hunkered between two cars, he presses a hand to my mouth, shoves up my hood.

“What’s going on?” I whisper the second he pulls his palm away. “Where’s Cain? I brought him food, I—”

Eyes hot, Bas shoves a finger against my lips. He pulls his phone from his pocket, shows me a text from an unsaved number.

RUN

The ocean thunders in my chest. My body throbs. The lingering taste of strawberry pancakes rots on my tongue. I follow Bas’s haunted stare through the jeep window behind us. Half a football field away, two black SUVs flank the nearest exit in the chain-link fence that surrounds the perimeter of the flea market. Their occupants, decked out in black and TAC vests, stop every car that enters, shining flashlights in their windows despite the blistering sun.

In lot A, two fields away, another SUV trundles slowly up and down the rows of parked cars. The helicopter circles again, parallel now with the train tracks, a white emblem emblazoned on its side. I can’t make it out at this distance, but I don’t have to. I’ve seen it too many times before—outside my school, outside my suburb, stationed outside the flea market gates and stalking the aisles.