I’m halfway up the stairs of City Hall when Ripley steps outside, a skateboard in his hand and a pencil tucked behind his ear. He’s looking at his phone, but he glances up when he reaches the steps, and I wave at him.

He stops, pulling his AirPods out.

“Hey, Ripley!”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything, and I falter for a second. I thought we’d been getting somewhere - the pool was fun, and he’s been contributing to the group chat, so...?

He descends a few steps and comes to a stop in front of me, stuffing his AirPods into his pocket. “Hey.”

“Headed home? You’re back to school on Monday, aren’t you? Suspension almost ov-?”

“Oh, um.” Ripley cuts me off, glancing over his shoulder. “Gabby doesn’t know. That I got suspended. Maybe keep that on the down low.”

A surprisingly long statement from Ripley, and even though it’s obviously borne of necessity, it feels like a tiny success.

“Mkay, I hate to tell you this, but Gabby probably already knows. She knows everything.”

“That’s - true.” A little smile flickers over Ripley’s face. He tugs his backpack higher up on his shoulder. “But still.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”

“Cool. Thank-”

“Hey, Ripley, wait!” someone calls.

Ripley twists to look at the City Hall doors, then freezes as someone comes darting through them.

It’s a girl who looks about his age, shiny black hair chopped at her shoulders. She dashes down the stairs as fast as she can in her high heels, heading straight for us.

Like Ripley, she has a City Hall badge identifying her as an intern. She’s in a woven grey pencil skirt and flowing white top. She looks rather sleek compared to Ripley and his disorganized green curls - or at least, she does until she suddenly wobbles on her heels and slips on the steps in her rush.

Ripley instantly drops his skateboard and catches her arm, steadying her out before she can fall. She grabs onto him, gasping. The skateboard crashes onto the stairs with a loud clatter, upturned wheels spinning.

“Oh no - oops! Shit!” She shoots him an abashed smile, gripping his shoulder as she bends to fit her shoe back onto her foot. “I’m sorry! These fucking heels!”

“It’s okay.” Ripley holds perfectly still until she lets him go.

She looks over at me, smiling, faintly embarrassed. “Oh - friend of yours, Ripley?”

“Definitely,” I answer, because Ripley is busy retrieving his skateboard. “I’m Jamie.”

“Nice to meet you! I’m Alix.” She turns back to Ripley, who is now clinging very tightly to the backpack strap on his shoulder. “Ripley - you left before I could even say anything!”

He blinks at her. “I-”

“Thank you so much for taking the heat for me back there.” She gestures at the City Hall doors. “That whole thing was totally my fault, I feel like a complete idiot.”

Ripley shrugs, and she waits for him to say something.

“Not an idiot,” he finally mumbles. “No problem.”

“No, seriously.” Alix tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, revealing a hidden pink streak dyed into the underside. Based on how quickly Ripley’s eyes flick to it, I suspect he already knew it was there. “That was so nice of you,” she continues, “And I know that we’ve barely even talked-”

“Jamie and I have to go,” Ripley blurts out. I glance at him, caught off guard, but recover quickly.

“Yeah, so sorry,” I throw in. “Busy schedule today.” It’s not exactly a lie, thankfully.

“Oh. Okay.” Alix's eyes are still on Ripley. She reaches out and gently takes the pencil from behind his ear, then offers it to him. “Probably shouldn’t skate with that there, right?” He accepts the pencil without a word. “I won’t hold you guys up, but - Ripley, will you come to one of the intern lunches I’ve been organizing? I noticed that you haven’t come to any so far.”

“Maybe,” he says. “Jamie, should we-?”

“Sure, yeah. Nice to meet you, Alix!”

“Okay - bye! You too!” she calls, as I follow Ripley down the steps.

We walk together for a block or two.

“Sorry,” he says, finally breaking the silence.

“For what?”

“You were going in.”

“Oh, it’s fine. What did you do for that girl?”

Ripley shrugs again. “She was gonna get in trouble for something dumb.”

“So - you got in trouble, instead?”

“Sort of.”

“Is that how you got yourself suspended from school, too?”

“Nope. Did that one on my own.” Ripley falls silent, then lets out a quick, soft laugh. “I don’t know why she keeps trying to wear those heels, when-” He cuts off, biting the inside of his cheek, and drops his skateboard to the ground. “Nevermind. See you later.”

Aiden told me he’d be done at 6:00, and it’s only 5:45 by the time I get back, so I decide to visit one of my other City Hall favorites.

“Hey!” I lean in through the open office door. “Sorry, are you slammed? Just stopped by to say hello.”

“Jamie.” Gabby slumps back in her seat and shoves her laptop away. “I’m having a hell of a day.”

“What? What happened?” I step into her office and close the door behind myself.

“I’ve got a problem employee in the Emergency Management department-”

“Oh, that’s not where you want a problem employee.”

“A huge stack of evaluations to get done-”

“That sounds boring, I’m sorry-”

“And Ripley fucking destroyed the coffee machine in the breakroom.”

I hesitate. “Um. What?”

“Yeah, can you believe that? He somehow managed to knock the entire thing off of the counter. It broke everywhere. That machine was the most expensive thing in this office! I had to give him a talking to, and that didn’t feel good. I can’t think what he was doing, he’s not normally clumsy.”

“Hmm.” Alix’s rather ungraceful descent down the stairs flashes through my mind. “So - no one saw him do it?”

“Just the other intern that was in there at the time, I think a girl from the Press & Media departm-” Gabby stops, staring up at me, her eyes narrowed. “...Why?”

“Oh - just - cause-”

“Jamie. Did I just give Ripley a stern lecture in front of another employee for no reason?”

“Um-” I realize that I’m fidgeting my fingers and stop immediately. “No?”

Gabby breathes out a deep sigh and leans back in her seat, tossing her pen down on the desk. “Mierda.”

“Oh, god, Gabby, don’t tell him that I-”

“That you cracked under literally no pressure whatsoever and spilled everything?” She shakes her head at me. “You would make a phenomenal secret agent, Jamie, you know that?”

“I just asked if anyone saw-!”

“It’s okay, I won’t say anything about it. Although now I feel bad.”

“Don’t feel bad. I don’t think that Ripley does.”

Gabby’s forehead crinkles in confusion for a moment.

“Okay… Well, I should get back to work. Are you here to pick up Aiden?”

“Yeah, is he in the archives, or-?”

“His office, I think.”

~~~~

I open Aiden’s office door and find myself faced with a rectangle of darkness.

“Oh, shit! Jamie! Get in here and close that!”

I dart inside and shut the door again, blinking rapidly. When my eyesight adjusts, I spot Aiden across the room, gently lit by the glow of the dim-lamp. He’s standing by his desk, which is covered with old newspapers.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! Did I just ruin some ancient document?”

Aiden laughs and hooks a finger at me. I join him at the desk, my face bright red.

“Hi.” He leans down and brushes a little kiss onto my lips. “No, you didn’t ruin anything, but you could knock, dummy.”

“I didn’t realize you were still working!”

“This isn’t for work, it’s for the hunt. I’ve been reading old obituaries. I thought they might have the name of the old cemetery, and then I could do a keyword search, but. So far no luck.” He turns away from the newspapers and faces me instead. “Anyways, I’m glad you’re here. I have a new theory about the cemetery, and I think we should talk about it before we go looking again.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Alright, so...” Aiden tries unsuccessfully to toss his chestnut hair out of his eyes; I reach up and move it for him. I know by now that he can't do it with his gloves on. “Do you remember what Ralph said, the first time we asked him about this? That he, Noah, Grant, and I went to the old cemetery once in high school? The night I-” He cringes. “Kicked over a headstone?”

“I do remember, yes.” The gleeful way Ralph had talked about it, even though it was clearly making Aiden miserable. Ugh.

“Right. So, here’s the thing. I was blacked out that night. I only vaguely remember being there at all. Noah doesn’t remember, either, which means that Ralph is the only one we’re relying on for information.”

I take a second to absorb that. “Hmm. When you put it that way...”

“Doesn’t sound so good.”

“No, definitely not.”

“Even if Ralph is telling the truth about what happened, he might not remember correctly. Sticking too close to his house is a mistake. Even if we really did find the old cemetery that night…” Aiden pauses, fidgeting with his gloves. “Ralph said that we were coked up, that we’d done a bunch of lines... We could have gone a lot farther into the woods than we realized. I know that sounds like a joke, but. Honestly.”

Talking about this is clearly making Aiden unhappy, and I’m struck with an urgent need to make him laugh.

“Okay. I hear you. You’re saying that we should do a bunch of coke before we set out tomorrow. Should I call my guy?”

Aiden’s startled huff feels like sweet victory.

“Dumbass! I’m saying that we need to broaden our search perimeter.”

“Alright, that works, too, I guess.”

Aiden suppresses a smile, loses the battle, and pulls off his gloves. He drops them onto the desk and gathers my face into his hands, pressing a soft kiss into the corner of my mouth.

“My point is,” he murmurs, stubble tickling my cheek, “That we need to strike out a little further into the woods. We have more ground to cover than we thought.”

“Okay…”

“Which means-”

“Wait a minute.” I push his hands from my face and take a step back, holding up a warning finger. “No. Aiden, no. Don’t you say it.”

“We... might need to camp.”

“No. No. No.”

“Okay, I know how you feel about camping-”

“I do not camp. I shower two times a day, Aiden-”

“Yes, okay-”

“And I do not have the kind of hair that looks cute when I have to skip a shower-”

“Disagree.”

“I will not sleep on the ground for no reason. I have my limits.”

“How are you such a nature boy, and yet-?”

“There’s a big difference between taking a nice walk in the woods and actually sleeping out there! I’ve successfully avoided doing this for twenty-six years, I’m not about to break that streak! I love that streak, and I intend to keep it going well into my eighties, at the very least! I absolutely refuse to get eaten by a fucking bear-”

“Eaten by a bear?”

“Or whatever else is out there!”

Aiden laughs and reaches for my hands. “Jamie.”

“Oh, my god. I can just see it on the news right now. Two idiots found in the woods, dead from bears. No one to blame but themselves. Wait a minute - we’re literally hunting for an ancient cemetery! How many horror movie mistakes can two people make in one day? Sleep in the woods? While searching for a cemetery? A haunted cemetery? With bears? Not my ass, no thank you!”

“I really don’t think we need to worry about bears, dude.”

“Oh, well in that case!”

“Jamie.” Aiden gives my fingers a gentle squeeze. “It’s not that bad, you might even like it. And I’ll be able to hear it if anything is coming for us.”

“But - but-” I bite back what I was going to say, nibbling my lip. “Have you been camping before?”

“I’ve... done a fair amount of sleeping outdoors.”

“That does not inspire confidence, man, at least pretend to sound like you-”

Aiden drops my fingers and takes my face again.

“Jamie.” He presses a kiss onto the tip of my nose, smoothing his thumbs over my cheeks. “Stop worrying. You’re safe with me. I promise.” The next kiss is for my mouth, and it knocks all remaining objections straight out of my head. Aiden pulls back, smiling, and ruffles my hair. “Okay?”

I chew my lip for another moment, then fix him with an accusatory stare.

“You just want to have forest sex with me, don’t you?”

He looks briefly taken aback, then bursts into laughter.

“You idiot. Couple of problems with that theory. First of all, you would totally be into that, and I could just ask you.”

“Maybe.”

“Second of all, we’ve never had any kind of sex.”

“Unfortunately.”

“And third of all, Kasey is coming with us, remember? I don’t think she’d love it if we kicked her out of the tent.”

“Her lucky ass doesn’t even need to shower,” I answer, scowling. “And she can’t get killed by bears.”

Aiden falls silent, waiting for my answer. I really don’t fucking want to do this, but - it’s for Will, and therefore for Kasey. I blow out the world’s longest sigh and press my hands against my eyes.

“For fuck’s sake. What do I have to pack?”

~~~~

“Jamie.” A warm touch on my knee.

“Mmm?”

“We’re almost there.”

My clumsy, half-awake fingers fumble over the console, trying to locate my coffee. Aiden presses it into my hand, and I take a long sip, my knees still tucked to my chest.

I stretch out my neck, peering through the window. The blur of greenery rushing past is dark in the blue pre-dawn light, but the sky is definitely starting to brighten up. My breath mists on the glass, and I pull my flannel closer around myself.

“What time is it? Camping is the worst, already. Human beings aren’t supposed to be awake at this hour.”

“Ghosts either, apparently,” Aiden answers.

I glance at the rearview. Kasey is passed out in the backseat, her head lolling almost to her shoulder. Aiden is the only one who doesn’t look sleepy. He’s got the window rolled down, one hand on the wheel, the other wrapped around his coffee. The glasses on his face.

They look good on him.

“Did we forget anything?” I yawn, rubbing my eyes.

“I don’t think so. You put the map in my backpack, right?”

“Mhm. Even though we may as well throw that map into a creek right now.”

“For the last time, Jamie, we are not going to get Blair Witched.”

“Please tell me we’re not parking by Ralph’s house again?”

“No, there’s a trail that should get us back to where we started a little faster.”

“Mmm." I roll over in the seat. “Wake me up when we get there.”

“We’re there right now."

We pull into a tiny, empty parking lot, fringed by a thick border of trees. Aiden opens the back door to wake up Kasey, and I step out onto the pavement, shivering. Stretch my arms over my head, leaning back - and stop, staring. My arms drop back to my sides.

This early in the morning, the sky is a frosty pink color. Strawberry ice cream, softened here and there by a swirl of rippled clouds. I hear Aiden pop open the trunk, but I just stand there, looking up, taking in deep breaths of dawn air. The cold shock to my lungs has me suddenly wide awake.

A quiet owl call rises up from the trees. Aiden moves up behind me and rests his chin on my shoulder.

“Did you change your mind? I can do it by myself, if you really don’t want to, but-”

“No.” I finally tear my gaze from the canopy of blushing light overhead, twisting to put a kiss on his cheek. “I - I actually think I’m good. Let’s do it.”