The Distance Between Lost and Found (20 page)

“Okay,” Hallelujah says.

“Okay,” Rachel echoes.

Jonah climbs past Hallelujah. Even with her pulling her legs as close to her body as they'll go, he brushes them as he passes. He puts a hand on her knee for balance.

Then he's outside and walking away, humming to himself.

She can still feel his hand on her knee.

Rachel's the first one to speak. “So—he told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Come on, Hal. What's changed since yesterday?” Rachel sneaks one arm out of her jacket cocoon to give Hallelujah a soft punch in the shoulder. “I may not be at my best right now, but I'm not blind.” She pauses. “Or deaf.”

Hallelujah feels her face get hot. “Oh. What did you hear?”

“Bits and pieces. I was really out of it last night, after . . . whatever that was. After almost freezing to death.” Rachel shudders. “I have to say, it was totally obvious from the get-go that Jonah liked you.”

“It was?” Hallelujah is still surprised. She still doesn't quite believe it.

“Um, yeah. Or did you think he's out here for me?” Rachel says slowly, as if to a child, “You followed me. He followed you.”

“I didn't know. I don't know anything, apparently.” Hallelujah leans back against the cold rock wall, listening to the birds calling again outside, heralding the end of the storm. But in the distance, thunder rumbles. She can't tell whether it's on its way out or on its way in. And she's so tired. Some little part of her is really starting to believe they aren't going to make it home. “I guess I just never thought about us like that.”

“So how
did
you think about him?” Rachel asks.

Hallelujah shrugs. “We were friends. Good friends. He knew—knows—a lot about me. I guess I know a lot about him. Stuff he likes and doesn't like.”

Rachel looks skeptical. “And yet you never knew he liked
you
.”

“No! I mean—when Jonah and I were friends, I liked Luke. So maybe I missed some signs.”

“So you just . . . hung out? Platonically?”

“Yeah. I guess.” Hallelujah thinks about how to explain it. How to distill a friendship down to its most basic components. “We had choir together last year. We talked. For kind of the first time, even though we'd been in church and school together since fourth grade.”

“And, what, you found out you had
so much
in common?”

“Actually, no. But we started comparing music we liked, and a month into ninth grade, Jonah made me this mix of songs. Based on what we'd talked about. So then I made him a mix. And it grew from there. We'd go to each other's houses, watch movies, listen to music, that kind of thing. Hanging out.”

“So tell me about Jonah. Something only you know.”

“Um. He'd probably deny it, but he got really into the Harry Potter books. Like,
really
into them. I loaned him my box set last spring. He got so mad at me for not warning him how Book Six ends.”

Rachel laughs. “He didn't see the movies?”

“No. But I told him we couldn't watch them until he'd finished the books.”

“So what was Jonah like before high school? As a kid?”

“As a kid?” Hallelujah brings up the picture in her mind. “He was . . . sweet, I guess. Dorky. He'd wear these outfits his mom picked out—pleated khaki pants and polo shirts, with his hair slicked down with gel. And he would get really enthusiastic about things. Too enthusiastic. He went through this cowboy phase where he wore a cowboy hat and boots to school every day. Didn't care what anyone thought.” The mental image makes her smile.

“And he and Luke were best friends?”

“Starting in middle school, yeah. They played soccer together.”

“Huh.” Rachel pauses. “So when did Jonah get cute?”

“He was still pretty short in middle school. And skinny. But he did start dressing better.”

“No more pleated khakis?”

“No more pleated khakis. And then the summer before ninth grade, he had this growth spurt. And he started to, uh, fill out. So I guess ninth grade is when I noticed . . .” Hallelujah fades off. “This is embarrassing.”

“No, it's not. This is what girls talk about.” Rachel grins. “Besides. I wanted to see if you were paying as close attention to him as he was to you.”

“I didn't realize I was. We were just friends.”

“You can be friends and still objectively notice someone's cuteness. Anyway—you were in choir together. . . .”

“Yeah. I was so surprised to see him on the first day of school last year. He'd never told me he was interested in singing. And then his voice turned out to be really good.” She closes her eyes, hears him singing in her head. “We had so much fun in that class. Not just singing together. We did a lot of stuff as a group—pizza nights, movies, ice cream socials. Not to mention all the rehearsals. Mr. Boyden wanted us all to bond. He said it would help us perform better.” Her smile drops. “I was really looking forward to this year. It started off so great.”

And then Jonah's best friend made Hallelujah his personal punching bag and Jonah went along with it. And sure, now she knows why he pulled away, she knows that he was hurt too, but she's still not sure whether that excuses the betrayal.

Betrayed
. That's the only word for how she felt when she tried to talk to Jonah the Monday after it happened, in the choir room, and he'd pretended she wasn't even there. And the times after that when she saw him at school, said his name, and he turned away. Actually looked the other way, like he was looking for someone else, someone better.

Thunder again. Definitely getting closer.

“Hal?”

Hallelujah realizes her eyes are wet. “Sorry,” she says automatically. She blinks a few times, trying to will the tears to evaporate.

“It's okay.” Rachel inches over until they're huddling together. “Do you like him back? Now?”

The answer's just as automatic as the apology. Still, it comes out as a whisper: “Yeah.” She takes a deep breath, gives voice to some of the noise in her head. “But what if I'm just feeling this because we're out here and it's scary and he feels safe? Or what if I'm just relieved to have my friend back, but I don't
like him
like him? I don't even know why he'd choose me. Then or now.”

Rachel drops her head down onto Hallelujah's shoulder. She nuzzles into Hallelujah's neck, like a cat. “Hal, despite the giant prickly wall you've put up around yourself with the neon Off Limits sign flashing at the gate—”

Hallelujah lets out a small laugh at this picture of herself.

“—you're nice. Like I said when I told you about my parents, you listen. And you care. Which is more than I can say for about three-quarters of the high school population. And you're pretty. And while I've never heard you sing, obviously Jonah likes that about you. Speaking of which,” Rachel says, “why'd you stop? For real?”

The question makes Hallelujah's mouth go dry. Why did she stop singing? Why did she stop doing something that she loved so much?

She remembers the first time she sang a solo in church after everything happened. The first time Luke pulled his “Hallelujah” stunt. She saw him, a few pews from the back, fake-moaning her name, rubbing his hands over his chest, the other youth group members either looking on in horror or stifling laughter. Hallelujah barely made it through the rest of the hymn. Tears in her eyes. Throat so tight she could barely squeeze out the notes.

She remembers her voice failing her more and more often after that. At first, only when she sang alone. Then every time she sang, even in a group. And finally the holiday concert, the duet she was supposed to sing with Jonah, turned into a solo after he refused. Her voice a shadow of its former self.

“Singing made people look at me,” she tells Rachel. “It put me in the spotlight. And I didn't want to be in the spotlight anymore. I don't. I can't stand to have everyone looking at me. Laughing at me. That's why I quit.”

“Okay, so you don't want to perform. But you stopped singing
entirely
.”

“Yeah. Because it—it hurt. Too much.”

“Do you miss it?” Rachel sounds sad.

“Every day.” Even now, Hallelujah hears music in the air, in the whoosh of the wind through the leaves, in the calling of the birds, in the timpani sound of the thunder, in the soft patter of the drops that are starting, again, to fall. And sometimes in church on Sundays, she imagines her voice joining in, rising and falling and soaring with the voices around her. It would be like coming home.

Now, of course, coming home means something completely different. It means not starving and shivering, not being wet or scared. Not being terrified that the next choice they make will be the last one they ever make. At the same time, it means not going back the same person she was on Monday.

“Sing something for me?” Rachel murmurs.

Anxiety wraps its fingers around her heart, her lungs. “I . . . I can't.”

“Yes, you can,” Rachel says. But she doesn't push it. “I'm just going to . . .” She doesn't finish her sentence, dropping instead into a quiet, even breathing.

The storm settles in on top of them. Hallelujah's stomach growls. She reaches for her backpack. Opens it. Confirms that they are officially out of food.

She needs something to distract her from her hunger. And from all of the feelings that are threatening to drown her faster than the rain. She finds her water bottle. Unscrews its top. Holds it out into the rain. Even in the hard downpour, it takes so long to feel the bottle grow heavy and full. Hallelujah's arm trembles. But she waits until she feels the splash of overflow on her hand before she pulls her arm back in. Jonah's water bottle sits on the ground across from her. He didn't take it with him.
Why didn't he take it? When is he coming back?

She hopes he's okay. She hopes he didn't get turned around when the second storm rolled in. She hopes he'll come walking up the hill any second now. She hopes, even as her mind starts spinning worst-case scenarios.

To calm herself, she fills Jonah's water bottle and puts it into her backpack. She opens Rachel's bag. Finds her water bottle. Fills it. The effort of holding her arm out horizontal a third time is almost too much, and she's glad not to have to move much after that. As she puts Rachel's water bottle back, she feels something else in the bag. A can. Dented, but intact.

Hallelujah pulls out the Diet Coke and stares at it. She'd almost forgotten about it. She holds it reverently, cradling it in her palms. It's caffeine—maybe a vital jolt of energy—but it's more than that. It's home. It's grocery stores and refrigerators. It's other people.

She wants to open it up right then, drink the entire thing in one gulp. Feel the carbonation tickle her teeth and bounce around inside her. Have the world's most satisfying belch. But something tells her not to drink. It's not time yet. They might need this.
You'll know when
, she tells herself.
Wait for the right time
.

And so she tucks the can gently back into Rachel's backpack, trying to ignore the part of her that's laughing at the ridiculousness of thinking their salvation might depend on a Diet Coke. Because you never know. You never know.
At the very least, it'll be a good last drink
, she thinks, and then hates that she thought it.

She stares out into the rain for a few minutes. She looks for the color blue. She knows she should be looking for orange—for rescue—but right now, all she wants to see is Jonah's blue jacket.

It's time for him to come back. She needs him to come back.

Not in a romantic way. Not even because he's the only one of them left who's not superweak or injured. She needs him to come back because with Rachel asleep, the silence is too loud. Surrounded by trees and trees and trees being battered by sheets of rain, she feels so small. She feels alone. She doesn't want to be alone. Not anymore.

“Where are you?” she asks aloud. It's reassuring to hear her voice over the storm. “Come back,” she says. “Come back.”

She tells herself that she's talking to Jonah, that her voice will be carried to him on this crazy wind and that he'll beeline back to these rocks. But she's also talking to God. Because she's alone and lost and tired, and now would be a great time to feel like there's someone watching over her, like everything's going to be okay. But she doesn't. It's like there's nothing there.

H
ALLELUJAH WAKES WITH A START
. S
HE DOESN'T REMEMBER
dozing off. She's hugging Rachel like a human teddy bear. Her left arm, caught between Rachel and the rock, is asleep. But she doesn't want to let go. The space between Hallelujah's body and Rachel's body is warm, and everything else feels cold.

Jonah is not back.

She wonders how long she's been asleep. The rain has almost stopped; it's just a drizzle. The sun has moved. As Hallelujah scans the woods, craning her neck to avoid letting go of Rachel, a single ray of light pierces through the clouds, traveling down through the trees, between the branches, between the leaves, to land on the forest floor not too far away. It creates a little square that looks like summer.

Another ray cuts through the clouds and the trees. And then another. A leaf drifts toward her on the breeze, passing from sunlight to shadow, sunlight to shadow.

At Hallelujah's feet, the bird she pulled in out of the rain is stirring. Testing its wings. It lets out a few chirps.

She shakes Rachel gently, needing another human being to see what she's seeing. The beauty after the storm.

Rachel's awake in an instant. “What? What is it?”

But the light changes again. The beams vanish, all at once. And the moment Rachel speaks, the bird flies away into the trees. “Never mind,” Hallelujah says.