Second Chances in New Port Stephen - Chapter 22

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Second Chances in New Port Stephen - Chapter 22

He turned and watched Nick avoid a muddy patch of ground. “Do they still make Sun Chips?”
“I think so. Why?” Nick squinted at him in the dark. “Oh. Our old lunch snack, right?”
“Right.” If he wasn’t careful, he’d fall into a pit of remembering and never come out. Eli led the
way across the empty courtyards and down the echoing paths. The walkways were supposed to
be covered to protect the students from rainstorms, but Eli saw that over half of the metal
shades were now stripped away, leaving the concrete walkways exposed to the elements. To
distract himself from how freaky all the debris looked in the dark, he started playing tour guide.
“This was the band room, here on the left. Down there was where the chorus practiced, right?
And over there—we had ninth-grade science down that way. What was that teacher’s name?
She called me a natural skeptic. I still don’t know what the fuck she meant by that.”
“Mrs. Farraduke,” Nick said.
“Yes. Farraduke. The cafeteria… oh, they must have torn it down. Or was that basketball court
always there?” Eli swung his light over the tattered hoops, the scuffed backboards. “Ours used
to be back by the gym, didn’t it?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell in the dark.”
Eli could only remember the worst parts of P.E. class: being forced to dress out, the locker room
full of chattering teenage girls, the way he’d have already sweated through his clothes before
class even started. Those girls saw every weakness in the armor. Like when sharks smelled blood
miles away. Candice Skanner had called him Stinky up until junior year. Mild as far as bullying at
PSP went, but still.
“Do you remember Candice Skanner?”
“That girl who was mean to you?” Nick scoffed. “We hated her. I put molasses on her
windshield in junior year after she teased you in front of the seniors, remember?”
Eli stopped in the middle of the walkway, his flashlight drooping. “Oh my god, you did. It was
lovebug season.” The little black winged bugs swarmed in the spring. They mated by sticking
their rear ends together until they died, still connected, in droves that choked the town’s pools
and gutters. Eli remembered thinking even as a child that it was kind of fucked up to call that
love.

-- 108 of 228 --

“Yep. Her car was plastered with dead bugs by the end of the day.” He could hear the grin in
Nick’s voice, even in the dark.
“That was so—” Hot. It was hot. “Effective. Wonder whatever happened to her.”
“Last I’d heard, she’d joined some cult out in Ocala. It’s, like, Christian but they also worship
birds or something? The servers at the Manatee talk.”
Good, Eli thought. Candice’s life went nowhere, and she was still stuck in Florida, doing Floridian
bullshit. Then he felt terrible for thinking that, because Nick was still here. And so was he, at
least for the foreseeable future. Great selfown, in addition to being petty.
He kept going through the ruins of the old school until he fumbled his way to the front of the
library. The metal double doors stood ajar, one of the release bars hanging by one last screw.
There was a thick scent of decay in the air, like wet leaves.
“Okay, so we’re really doing this,” Nick muttered from right behind him. “I swear to god, if I see
a ghost, I am leaving you.”
“Not this time, you won’t.” Eli’s mouth worked faster than his brain. That sounded so—forward.
And bitter. He coughed in his fist to cover the awkwardness. “Because I’ll be right behind you.
Now let’s go.”
He pushed one half of the double doors all the way open and aimed his flashlight into the room.
The library had not been spared from the storm—part of the roof had caved in, and a royal palm
had speared right through one of the windows. Its dead fronds waved like unfurled fans in the
night breeze. Eli stepped inside, his light roving over the library shelves. They were still stuffed
with books, waterlogged and swollen with bits of dirt and oak leaves stuck to them.
“They didn’t save the books,” he whispered. “They left them all here.”
“Where would they have put them?” Nick was right at his elbow, his voice lower than ever. “You
evacuate people in a hurricane, Eli. Things can be replaced.”
A thought occurred to Eli. “Were you and your family okay? This was a really bad storm.”
“Laurie got through it all right. Dad needed a new roof. A tree fell in my backyard, but it didn’t
hit anything.”
Eli nodded, trying to remember. “I think my folks said they lost power. I got a text from them
saying they were fine after the storm passed. I didn’t even try to call them. I was working on the
sweeps-week episode.” He shook his head. “Christ, I’m an asshole.”
Nick’s hand found his arm in the dark. He gave Eli’s elbow a weird pat. “It’s hard to know how
much to worry when we’re all adults.”

-- 109 of 228 --

“Yeah,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure he agreed.