A loud bang vibrated down the hallway. I could imagine it being Tate’s fist against the wall inside the room.

“I hope he doesn’t tear my place up,” Adam said from the couch. He was a tall, skinny guy with sandy-brown hair and stylish black-rimmed glasses that made him look like a stereotypical intellect sipping a latte.

“We’re leaving in the morning,” I heard Tate say with a demanding edge in his voice. “I’m going to pay this guy off and then I’m done. I’m fucking done, little brother. Eight thousand dollars is about all I have left in savings.”

“Nobody asked you to bail me out.”

“If I don’t, who will, Caleb? Dad? You’ve already milked him dry of his savings. Kyle? Shit, bro, if he finds out I’m helping you he’s going to kick my ass. Everly? Baby sister is siding with Kyle, bro. I’m all you’ve got left.”

Then he said, “Why don’t you just call Mom? Talk to her and see how she’s doing? You haven’t called her in a year. You know she’ll let you move back in. You can get away from all that bullshit. Get a decent job and start putting your life back together. Maybe Cera will take you—”

“Don’t even go there,” Caleb snapped. “Just don’t—”

A long, dark silence lingered.

“I think it’s time you sent Johanna and Grace home,” Tate said. “It’s not a good idea to take them to Corpus Christi.”

“Yeah, and what about your new freeloader friends out there?”

“I don’t know yet,” Tate said. “But you need to worry about you and this shit you’ve gotten us into. Send the girls home.”

“I’ll take them to the bus station tonight,” Caleb said.

Grace and Bray locked eyes from across the room upon hearing that. They both looked dejected. But I could tell right away that Bray was forcibly trying to hide the fact that she was utterly heartbroken. I hated to see it. I hated to know that the one person Bray was closest to besides me was about to walk out of her life and that there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Thirty minutes later after the arguing and Tate scouring the house and outside in the yard for his keys, Bray and Grace were saying their good-byes.

“Here’s my number,” Grace said as she slipped a torn-off piece of a magazine page into Bray’s hand. “Call me when you get back to Indiana. Maybe we can visit sometime.” They fell into a tight embrace.

“As soon as I get another cell phone, I’ll call you with my number,” Bray said.

I could tell that Bray was on the verge of tears. They hadn’t known each other long, but they’d bonded, and Bray always had a hard time bonding with people. Besides me, Lissa had been her closest friend growing up, and it turned out that Lissa wasn’t as close to Bray as she thought she was. As I stood there watching the two of them say good-bye, I thought to myself how I wished it could’ve been different, that they could’ve met under better circumstances. Because I knew that once Grace walked out that door, they’d never see each other again.

Chapter Twenty-One Elias

Caleb drove Grace and Johanna to the bus station.

Adam came strolling out of the shower wearing a pair of black running shorts and a towel draped around the back of his neck.

“Since Caleb will be chickless tonight, he can have the couch,” Adam said, drying the back of his hair. Then he pointed at Bray and me. “You’re welcome to crash in the office. The couch bed in there is really comfortable.” He stopped just before he made his way down the hall. “Though if I were you I’d change the sheets.”

This was good news. I didn’t think I could sleep another night crammed onto the couch in the den with Bray like we had the past few nights at Adam’s.

Adam disappeared inside his bedroom like he did at the same time every night. Tate was outside on the back porch again. All of us thought it best to just stay out of his way while he was seething over this thing with Caleb. Except for Jen, of course, who was outside trying to talk to him and calm him down. Even she knew better than to act her usual abusive self around him while he was like this.

Secretly, I envied the two of them, the chaotic yet strong relationship they had.

I wanted to be alone with Bray for a while. I got up and took her hand. “Want to go for a walk?”

She smiled up at me. It was such an innocent and sweet smile that I felt even guiltier for the resentment I was feeling.

“Lead the way,” she said and placed her hand into mine.

We left the house and walked down the street for a long time, then we cut through a parking lot toward a baseball field. There were two light poles near the chain-link fence at the end of the field that cast a dull gray glow over the dirt and white painted lines. We slipped through an unlocked gate near a dugout and walked out past the pitcher’s mound and sat down on the grass.

“I hate it that Grace had to go,” I told her.

She laid down beside me on the grass and looked up toward the sky. Thick clouds completely covered the stars. I sat upright next to her with my legs angled upward. I picked at a few blades of grass and rolled them in my fingertips.

“Yeah,” Bray said with a trace of sadness in her voice. “But I still have you.”

I smiled down at her. Tiny pieces of torn grass fell from my fingers and were carried off by the wind.

“Tate’s really pissed about whatever Caleb did,” I said.

“Yeah. He really is.”

Silence fell between us again. I reached down and pulled a couple more blades of grass from beside my shoe.

“Elias?”

“Yeah?”

“What did you really bring me out here for?”

I had been trying to figure out how to tell her and also trying to figure out if this was what I needed to do.

Her hand touched my arm. I looked down at her and smiled faintly.

“Elias?” she asked again, being very patient.

“I’m going to be your witness,” I said.

She rose up from the ground, a blank look in her eyes.

“What the hell do you mean?” She knew exactly what I meant.

“I can say that I was there when it happened.” Already she was beginning to shake her head no. “No one can prove otherwise. I’ll tell the police, a jury, whoever I need to, that I was there and I saw what happened and that it was an accident.”

“No,” she said with complete resolution in her eyes. “I won’t let you do that.”

“You don’t have to let me,” I said. “I’m going to be your witness.”

She stood up and crossed her arms with her back to me.

“Bray?”

She snapped around. “No! I said no!” Her arms fell at her sides and her face was wild with anger and concern. “What if they ask you to take a lie detector test? Or, they get us in separate rooms—because they will—and one of us slips up and tells them something different?” Her voice began to rise. “Jesus, Elias! One tiny detail, one seemingly insignificant detail and they have us. They’ll have you. They’re trained to spot things like that! They’re trained to trip us up!”

I stood up in front of her. “We have some time while we’re still with Tate to get the story straight. Make it simple and straightforward. Don’t include a bunch of small details. Just give them the basic picture and stick to it.”

“No. No fucking way.”

She turned her back to me again.

“We have to do something,” I said. “We can’t run for the rest of our lives, Bray. They’ll catch us sooner than later. The longer we run, the worse we make it for ourselves.”

She wouldn’t respond or look at me. I watched her from behind as her head fell over forward between her rigid shoulders, her arms crossed again tightly over her stomach.