The sun had dropped well past its zenith by the time Matt and Rachel rolled into Vista. The late summer air was thick with the dust of the day, smelling of pine wood and the threatenings of a thunderstorm. It was hot, but not uncomfortably so, and humidity was quickly filling the air.

  “So, um…” Matt said as he parked in his driveway, cursing himself for not having planned this conversation earlier. He stared up at the front door of his little bungalow, dreading that his father might stumble out to see him with some girl in his car. If he was awake. If he was even here at all.

  “Um…” Rachel goaded. Two days ago, Matt would have found the comment hurtful, but twenty-three hours stuck in a car with Rachel had hardened his psyche to diamond.

  “Yeah. We’re here.” Matt opened the car door and stepped out onto the asphalt, leaning into a colossal stretch that nearly sent him tumbling down the driveway. “Wouldn’t have quit my job if I’d known I’d be back here so fast.”

  Rachel fiddled with her door for a moment, then pushed it open, muttering in a singsong language Matt didn’t understand. “With any luck, you may yet be vindicated.”

  “Huh?” Matt frowned, slightly embarrassed that he had no idea what vindicated meant.

  “Yeah, I couldn’t tell you,” Rachel admitted. “Spend enough time as a scholar and you get used to using big words to sound smart.”

  “Hm,” was all Matt could think to say in reply. He pulled his duffel bag out of the backseat, mentally noting that most of the clothes in it would go straight back into his dresser, then led Rachel to his front door.

  “Don’t expect much,” Matt warned her.

  “Who said I was expecting anything?” Rachel asked. She had brought nothing with her, so all she had was the little backpack and toiletries kit she had bought in Salt Lake City. She could easily pass as nothing more than a girl from across town.

  “I saw your house,” Matt countered. “Growing up like that, you must have an image of what a functional home looks like, and this is so not it.”

  Matt cringed as he opened the screen door, its squeaky hinges suddenly deafening as he reached towards the main door handle. The wooden door swung inwards, kicking up a cloud of dust as it went.

  “Feels like a mortuary,” Rachel commented.

  “Yeah, lay it on thick,” Matt grumbled.

  “I’ve seen dungeons more livable than this place,” Rachel continued, evidently happy to oblige. “Grimy ones. Moldy ones. You would hardly believe it.”

  “Keep the sarcasm in check. I might start to take you seriously.”

  “Fate worse than death,” Rachel sighed dramatically. Matt led her to his room, into which they both threw their little bags. The room, of course, was clean save for a small coating of dust on his black desk - Matt’s fault for thinking the color was a good idea, honestly. He secretly hoped Rachel wouldn’t mind.

  “Anyone else home?” Rachel whispered.

  Matt shrugged, though Rachel’s tone had put him on edge. “Probably. Let’s not find out.”

  As quickly as they had come, Matt led Rachel back out to the car, taking great care to ease the door shut quietly behind him. The screen door, of course, shrieked like a banshee as he shut it, but it did not elicit an audible response from indoors. Matt wrinkled his nose and sighed in response, then cantered to the car and dropped himself into the driver’s seat.

  “To the zoo?” he inferred.

  “No, to the ski hill,” Rachel corrected.

  Matt frowned. “Uhh… we don’t-”

  Rachel let out a sigh that could have swallowed the ocean. “To the zoo. Duh.”

  Matt reddened, but obediently pointed his car towards the zoo and took off. “You’re insufferable.”

  Rachel smiled genuinely. “Thanks. I learned from the best.”

  Matt smirked, letting the conversation drop at the obvious allusion to Jason. The envelope was still in his car - he had tucked it away in the spare tire compartment at Rachel’s suggestion. Even though he wanted, with all his heart, to believe what was written inside, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Rachel was hiding something.

  The Vista Point Zoo was packed. Matt led Rachel through the crowds towards the ever-popular hippo tank, where a gaggle of high schoolers were goofing off and pretending to throw themselves into the tank. Rachel reached out to steady him just as he surged forward to teach the bastards a lesson, but despite his efforts, she held him fast.

  “It’s bad luck to malign the dead,” Rachel said calmly, drawing him back to her side. “No need to hasten it.”

  “That’s Jason they’re laughing-”

  Rachel spoke again in her strange singsong language, and barely of his own volition, Matt cut himself off and locked eyes with Rachel.

  Rachel’s eyes widened.

  “Matt,” she said, the color draining from her face. She grabbed him by the forearm and dragged him towards the hippo tank, barging through the group of high schoolers and stopping with one hand gripping the handrail.

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  “What’s wrong with you?” a boy with red hair and freckles complained. “Weirdo.”

  Rachel muttered something under her breath, and the boy stood at attention. Then, he knelt. Then, he stood up, spun a three-sixty, and held up his right hand, which Rachel high-fived.

  “Careful who you call weirdo.” Rachel winked, then flicked her fingers to shoo the boy. She turned back to Matt, a gleeful smile plastered across her face. “Bring me to the Walkers.”

  Matt stared blankly, mouth agape. “You just hypnotized that kid.”

  Rachel scrunched her nose up. “Ew. No. Don’t ever say that again.”

  Matt turned and led Rachel back towards the car. “What do you want me to call it? Magic?”

  As they walked, a strange hush fell over the throngs around them. Shouts became whispers. Smiling eyes grew suspicious and began to dart across the crowd. Matt raised his gaze and glanced around him as more and more pairs of eyes locked onto his.

  “Do you have your phone?” Rachel hissed.

  Matt nodded in response, his pulse quickening.

  “Call the Walkers.” Rachel made eye contact with a few of the onlookers, trying and failing to look normal. “Tell them we’re at the zoo. Now.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Matt pulled his phone out of his pocket and punched in the Walkers’ home number. They were one of the few families he knew who had a landline, and that thing went off like a police siren whenever they got a call. Sure enough, they picked up after the third ring.

  “Matt,” Shannon said. “I was hoping I’d get a call from you.”

  “Been a while,” Matt said as Rachel began to lead him back towards the main building of the zoo. “Are you or Kent busy right now?”

  “I’m about to start prepping dinner,” Shannon explained. “Why, what’s going on?”

  “You might want to come down to the zoo.” Matt cringed, knowing what the zoo represented to the Walkers - especially since they had received Jason’s letter. “There’s somebody here to talk to you.”

  Shannon scoffed. “You know better than to-”

  “Which is why I need you to take me seriously,” Matt growled. Panic began to inch its way outwards from his chest as a human wall began to form around him and Rachel. “Please.”

  Shannon sighed. “You owe me big time for this.”

  “Give me toothpaste to hand out on Halloween,” Matt said, forcing a laugh.

  “Done deal. Be there in ten.”

  Matt hung up the phone just as Rachel took hold of his shoulder and squeezed urgently. She pointed at the crowd, from which a boy was slowly extricating himself.

  Matt’s blood ran cold.

  “Tim,” he greeted, more coldly than he had hoped. “What are you doing here?”

  Matt and Tim had grown apart over the years since Jason’s allegedly-not-death, but they were still on good enough terms to share a mutual respect. Tim had kept playing baseball and had been tipped to receive a baseball scholarship to Colorado State, while Matt’s family had run out of money to keep him in sports. Matt had, by consequence, slowly started to drift away from Tim’s social sphere.

  Tim pointed at Rachel. “I’d ask the same of her.”

  Rachel held a hand up and waited for the hushed conversations around her diminished before speaking up. More than ever before, she radiated confidence, enough that Matt almost broke away from her just to join the crowd in gaping at her in awe.

  “I suppose I’m due for a chilly welcome,” Rachel started, the strength in her voice far outmatching its volume.

  “Of all the places you could have gone,” Tim accused, “you chose to rub it in our faces. You really thought you could get away with coming here? To what we could only imagine as the scene of the crime?”

  Rachel took a deep breath. Matt imagined that it must have been eating her alive not to blurt out the truth - but the truth was more dangerous than any lie. He briefly thought of the possibility of Rachel pulling out her hypno-magic skills again, but quickly ran into a similar conundrum.

  “I came to speak with his parents,” Rachel explained. “It is they who may reserve judgment. Not you.”

  “Not me? We were best friends, back before he disappeared the first time.” Tim took a threatening step forward, but faltered.

  Rachel nodded. “Then by all means, join the conversation.”

  “You sure?” Matt whispered. Rachel made an indistinct nod, just enough to let him know she had understood.

  “You all paid for the zoo,” Rachel said, raising her voice to address the crowd. “I hear the hippo’s pretty popular these days.”

  The crowd did not disperse. Rachel led Matt and Tim back towards the hippo tank, flashing meaningful looks at both of them. The crowd followed, leaving plenty of space around Rachel. Evidently, she had had the same effect on them as she had on Matt.

  “It only works close to the tank?” Matt whispered, quietly enough that Tim couldn’t hear.

  Rachel sighed. “Blow my cover with more interesting questions next time.”

  Matt looked down at his shoes. “I can’t believe I survived that road trip with you.”

  “I’d rather have ridden a horse,” Rachel said, no sarcasm betraying itself in her voice. “I’ve never sat so still for so long in my life.”

  “Fair enough. At least the music was good.”

  Rachel cocked her head and smirked. Perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence that Rachel had truly visited another world was that they both liked Celtic folk music. Whenever Rachel had even heard a hint of a synthesizer in one of Matt’s songs, she had skipped it.

  They finally reached the edge of the hippo tank. Rachel turned to face the crowd of onlookers, which had grown to include a sizable host of zoo workers. Matt faced the crowd as well - no number of accusing faces could be as frightening as Rachel when she wanted to be.

  “You gonna jump in there too?” an unseen teenager shouted.

  Rachel’s face remained passive. “Oh, look, the Walkers are here. I’d say it’s time for you folks to head on home.”

  Before anyone could object, Rachel let a smile work its way across her face as she began to mutter under her breath. Her eyes roamed the throng, periodically locking onto the gazes of onlookers. Once the first person turned to leave, a whole host of zoo-goers followed, and eventually most of the crowd dispersed towards the exit. A few people stubbornly remained, but Rachel had them strolling away within seconds. As a final touch, she turned to Tim and dropped her pitch as low as her voice would go.

  Tim blinked and shook his head as if to clear a troubling thought. “Where’d they all go?”

  “Zoo’s closing,” Rachel explained. “We can meet the Walkers here, though.”

  Tim raised his eyebrows. “Big talk. You drove their son to kill himself.”

  Rachel let out a humorless scoff. “Guess that lines up with what Matt thought.”

  Tim evidently did not know what to say to this. He stood dumb for a moment before Shannon Walker strode into view, first looking to Matt with relief before her eyes found Rachel.

  “Figured it’d only be a matter of time before you showed up,” Shannon growled.

  Rachel looked up at Shannon, fathomless depth in her eyes. “I understand how you must feel.”

  Shannon did not reply immediately. Matt instinctively scooted away from Rachel as the temperature between them seemed to soar. Shannon stood nearly half a foot taller than Rachel, but their wits could not have been more evenly matched.

  Before anyone could speak, Rachel’s phone vibrated loudly in her pocket. She pulled it out, and Matt caught a glimpse of a photo of someone who could only be her mother.

  Rachel looked up at Shannon, then down at her phone.

  And she hung up.