Free Golden by Jessi Kirby Page A

loops the rest of it around his elbow. “What were you guys doing out here, anyway?”
    â€œNothing,” I say, right at the same time Kat practically shoves me forward.
    â€œParker can tell you all about it on the way home. You don’t mind giving her a ride, do you?”
    â€œSure. No problem.” Trevor looks from Kat to me. “You ready?”
    Kat smiles sweetly at me, and I’m left powerless against her.
    â€œUm . . . let me just go get my bag.” And a little courage, and maybe a spritz of perfume and a mint or something. I’m sure I smell awesome after my mud bath.
    When I get in, the inside of Trevor’s car does smell awesome. And it’s immaculate—not an empty gum wrapper or stray penny anywhere, which makes me all the more conscious of my muddy clothes sitting in the front seat. And of how close we are. And of how awkwardly quiet it is all of a sudden as we work our way back to the main highway. It’s easy to quip back and forth in the hall with Kat around, but alone together in his car is a different story. I am quipless. But he is too, it seems.
    I clear my throat. “Thanks. That was really nice of you to drive all the way out there for us. We would’ve been stuck out there forever otherwise.”
    â€œNo problem.” He glances over at me. “So . . . do I get to know what you guys were doing out there?”
    â€œI was looking for something.”
    â€œOh. That’s specific.”
    â€œIt was stupid. You don’t wanna know what it was.”
    â€œNo, now I don’t at all,” he says.
    We drive in silence for thirty seconds that feels like it’s stretched out into thirty minutes. “Okay,” I say, unable to handle the quiet any longer. “You know Shane Cruz and Julianna Farnetti?”
    â€œYou mean them?” He points, and I look up in time to see the billboard coming up on the shoulder. I hadn’t thought of it for a long time before yesterday. I don’t think most people do anymore. That’s just how it goes with the things you see every day. Eventually they start to fade into the background. But now that her journal is in my backpack, and the snow has melted, their pictures are visible again beneath the foggy plexiglass. I see them in a whole new light.
    â€œYes, them,” I say. I keep my eyes on Julianna as we get closer, can’t take them off of her, actually. In my memory she’s older, and much more grown up than me. But in her senior picture on the billboard, she looks young, like she could be anyone in my class. And she could’ve. I’m the same age as she was when she died. The same age as she was when she wrote on those pages of the journal that’s sitting in my backpack on the floor of Trevor’s car right now. I keep my eyes on her even as we pass by, sad for her all of a sudden because I think again of that first line on that first page. The place where I’m at in life, that feels like the beginning ofeverything, was the end for her. For a moment it makes me sadder than it should.
    â€œWhat about them?” Trevor asks, pulling me back.
    â€œOh—I, um, I heard somewhere that their initials are carved into one of the trees out there, and I wanted to go find them. I don’t know why. It’s stupid.”
    Trevor shrugs. “It’s not that stupid. They’re kind of like cult figures around here. Town history. I get it.”
    â€œI’ve never thought of them as cult figures, but I guess it’s true, in a way. I think because everyone remembers when they disappeared.” We pass the billboard and I watch the road. “My dad was on the search party that went out for them the day after they crashed, and I have this vivid memory of him coming home after. He was standing in the kitchen, telling my mom the whole thing about how they found the Jeep upside down at the bottom of the ravine near the river and how