“Rusty, stop.” I barely got it out. The anger in his voice had made my own shaky.
He glanced at me, then back to the fire pit. “They put him in the ground yesterday, and now here we are.” He laughed bitterly. “What are we doing here again, Honor? Going to a concert? The day after his funeral?”
“Shut up, Rusty.” I stood and wiped my eyes, and now there was no controlling my voice. Tears spilled over, down my cheeks, and I spat my words at him. “Shut the hell up!”
Wyatt pushed his chair back slowly and stood between us, looking from me to Rusty. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He put his hands out and turned to me, confusion and worry all over his face. “That really true?” he asked, tentative, like he didn’t really want to know. “About your brother?”
I bit my bottom lip and looked down at the ground, not wanting to answer. Because no matter how many times I’d said it to people in the last two weeks, people I knew, I hadn’t really believed it. Even yesterday, at the funeral, I’d felt almost like an actor in a movie or something. But standing here, with Rusty throwing it in my face in front of a stranger sent a pain through me that was impossible to ignore. This was beyond forgivable.
A long moment passed without any of us speaking. A log popped, sending a tiny explosion of embers into the air. I leveled my eyes at Rusty and hoped he could feel how much I hated him right then. “It’s true. My brother’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Wyatt said softly. He reached for my hand, but I moved it away.
Rusty snorted. “Well, now. Looks like I ruined the mood.” He straightened up and looked over at Wyatt. “I’m sorry, man. She’s all yours.” Then he held out my own car keys to me. “Here you go, H. I’m guessin’ I’ll be sleeping under the stars tonight.”
I smacked them out of his hand, into the dirt. “Screw you, Rusty.”
He nodded like he deserved it, turned his back, and walked into the darkness, toward the road.
Wyatt waited until we couldn’t see him anymore, then he picked up my keys, handed them to me gingerly. “Uh . . . you wanna stay a little while longer?”
I shook my head, on the verge of tears again.
“How ’bout I walk you back over to your car, then?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay.”
We didn’t say anything as we ducked through the bushes, and when we stood next to the car I could tell he was searching, maybe for the right thing to say. But there wasn’t any right thing.
I shifted the keys in my hands. “Thanks for walking me.”
His face was warm but serious. “Of course.” He paused. “I know it’s not my business, but don’t let him make you feel bad. Everyone deals with stuff their own way, you know? I mean, that was a real shithead way to act, but you can tell he’s broken up about it too.” He smiled gently. “Anyway, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you being here.”
Wyatt, who I’d met hours earlier, peeing in my campsite, had somehow said the exact right thing. The kind of thing Finn would have said right before he would have convinced me to do something fun to get my mind off it. “Thank you.” I sniffed. “I’m sorry about Rusty, he—”
Wyatt waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. Come diving with us tomorrow. It’ll feel good to see the sunrise. Like a fresh start.” He gestured at the car. “I’ll knock on the window.”
I curled my fingers under the handle and took a deep breath. “All right.” I meant to tell him thank you, but instead I dropped my hand, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his cheek.
He smiled, then took a step back. “Good night, Honor.” Then he tipped his head, a small good night gesture that left me smiling myself.
Inside the car, I crawled in the backseat, spread my sleeping bag over it, and lay down so I could still see the stars out the window. I thought of Rusty somewhere out in the dark, and I wanted to hate him for what he’d said. But part of me wondered if he was right—if it was wrong of me to be here on this trip, if going to the concert was just a way of running away. What in the world would I tell Kyra Kelley about my brother, anyway? And why would she care?
I didn’t have the energy or the heart to answer any of it. Every bit of me felt weighted down and tired. In the end, I settled for locking the doors, ensuring Rusty would have a lonely, uncomfortable night. Where, I didn’t really care. Then I lay back and found Cygnus in the sky, watched his stars blink friendship and loss, honor and sacrifice, until all of it drifted off over the vastness of the desert.
7
A muted, repetitive thunk pulled at me from the other side of sleep. When I didn’t move, it persisted. I made an honest effort to lift my eyelids, but it felt like I had only just closed them, and my mind fumbled for every possible reason to keep them that way: still dark, summertime, no school, nowhere I needed to be, no one who should be waking me up. . . .
I rolled over, expecting to snuggle down into my covers, but consciousness came down on me hard when my face found the cool vinyl of the backseat. I was in the car. Finn’s car. At a campground in New Mexico, where Rusty had been awful and had walked off into the night and a boy I’d just met tried to make it better. But it wasn’t better. Finn was still gone and I was still alone, and the heaviness of those things made me want to seal my eyes closed with the ridiculous hope that if I went back to sleep, none of it would be true.