Page 121 of These Secret Years

“I thought we’d head back to the Front.”

“Why?” I ask even as the mention of the place we first kissed spikes my heart rate.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just the place I was thinking about going.”

I can’t argue that. I still dream about the train tracks and the tunnel. The glow of the fire light on all our fresh young faces. The way our legs touched and the cold brick against my back. Other things.

Like that first night, Knight has a flashlight, and I have the light from my phone. Navigating the dark woods on the vague path keeps us from having a meaningful conversation, but once we get to the train tracks, we both grin when we find another fire with the embers still glowing, a few beer bottles and cigarette butts lying around.

“How do we know no one else is here?” I ask.

“Yo, who’s out here?” Knight yells in the loud way he calls out to his teammates on a football field in a boisterous stadium. There’s silence. Just rustling wind in the trees, cold as hell. Both of us turn off our lights and head over to the dying fire. Knight picks up a few twigs and branches along the way, pitching them into the pit.

“This is a dumb place to be,” I say, still looking around for anyone out here. “So many people know about it.”

“Not really,” he says. “Just people from our old dorm.”

“Yeah, and their friends and friends of those friends.”

“Whatever.” He crouches beside the fire and places his twigs and branches at the base of it among the hot coals. “It’s almost four a.m. And I just want to talk.”

“Even us talking would look weird,” I tell him, though his words sting.

“People know we’re friends. Look, if I’m not worried, you definitely shouldn’t be.”

Now I do think he might be drunk. “How much have you had to drink tonight?”

“Just a few beers at the house. Literally only enough to try talking you into coming out here with me.”

“Oh, did that take some nerve?”

“No, but what I’m about to ask you does.”

Dread sinks low in my gut. My mouth goes dry, and I look down at him as he glances up at me. “It’s a friend question,” he says, like he can’t interpret the look I’m giving him.

Somehow I already know this isn’t going to be about him and me. This isn’t a sudden, awkward change of heart from him to ditch this bullshit friendship thing we’ve been playing at, but a deeper, more unspeakable concern. He’s worried about me. Not us, but me. And I can only assume it’s because of that phone call last summer—the last time we were apart for any length of time, where I was suicidal, and he wanted me to listen to Sia.

“I can’t talk about it,” I say after a moment’s hesitation.

He rises to his full height, but I don’t look up at him. I stare at the small fire fighting to live a few more precious minutes. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

“Let’s work on the won’t then.”

I shake my head. Shame so cellular it feels like it’s coded into my bone marrow makes me feel heavy and hot in the bitingly cold air. I drop the blanket and take a step back, finally turning away from him and walking into the tunnel where it’s so dark, I can barely make my feet out on the tracks. The walls of it do block the wind, though. Knight’s hands on my shoulders root me to the spot, stopping me from getting any further away. I should have run. I could have outrun him at least.

“Tell me where you’re going,” he says.

“I—no. It’s none of your business.”

“It’s dark. We’re all alone out here. No one can hear you. I can’t even see you. Tell me where you’re going.”

“Detroit,” I say past the giant lump forming in my throat, threatening to choke off my airway.

“What’s in Detroit?”

“The place I go when I don’t go home.”