90 MILES TO YOU

THE ART OF ABSENCE

Chapter Four: The Art of Absence

At five-forty on Wednesday, Maya was still sitting alone at the long oak table in the library.

She had arrived at ten to four, because she was never late. She had laid out two copies of her proposal outline, two pens, and a spare notebook, which she had bought that morning with her own money, out of spite. The clock above the librarian's desk ticked its way past four, then half past, then five.

Ethan did not come.

The librarian began switching off the far lights. Maya packed the second notebook back into her bag and told herself she was not disappointed, because disappointment required expectation, and she had none.

Library, four o'clock, he had said. Don't tell Priya. He had said her name like it cost him something.

She walked home through the early dark, past the bakery with its lights already off, and every step felt like proof of something she had known all along. Boys like Ethan made promises the way other people breathed.

Thursday, his seat was empty.

"Mr. Cole?" Mr. Alvarez said at roll call. He waited, looked up, and made a small mark on his sheet. "Noted."

"He does this," Priya whispered. "Last term he missed nine days. Nine. And nobody said anything."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Nobody ever asks."

Maya wrote down the word Why? in her margin, then crossed it out so hard the paper tore.

She spent the lesson drafting the proposal alone. Mr. Alvarez wanted a novel, a theme, and three reasons why the two were bound together. Ethan had contributed none of them. So Maya chose the novel she had loved since she was twelve, a quiet book about a family that kept its worst grief unspoken. It matched Voices That Stay so neatly that she almost distrusted it.

That evening, at the kitchen table, her mother set down a bowl of pasta and watched her work.

"Your partner is helping?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Is he a good boy?"

Maya thought of the muddy water, the cold laughter, the girl crying behind the gymnasium, and the way he'd held his watch as if it were a rope.

"He's complicated," she said.

"Complicated is allowed." Claire smiled, tired and soft. "Just be careful that you are not the one doing all the carrying."

Maya looked down at her plate. She was already carrying everything.

Friday morning, the proposals were due at the start of class.

She was at her desk twenty minutes early. Ethan's chair was empty, and she was relieved and furious in equal measure, until he walked in thirty seconds after the bell with his jacket half off and his hair damp, as though he had run all the way.

"Mr. Cole," Mr. Alvarez said. "How generous of you."

"Traffic."

"On foot?"

Ethan didn't answer. He dropped into the seat beside her, and the smell of cold air and diesel followed him, strange and out of place. His knuckles were raw. When he reached for his pen, she saw a thin red line across his palm, as though he had gripped something too tightly for too long.

"You didn't come," she said, very low.

"I know."

"I waited an hour and a half."

"I know."

"That's all you're going to say?"

He turned his head. Up close, the shadows under his eyes were worse than before, and the cheap silver watch looked even looser on his wrist. For one moment she thought he would explain.

Then his phone buzzed, and the moment closed.

"I'm sorry," he said, quieter than she had ever heard him. "It won't happen again."

It was the first honest thing he had told her. Maya didn't believe it for a second.

When Mr. Alvarez came to collect their proposal, he scanned the single page, the two names at the top, and the neat handwriting that was entirely hers.

"Miss Hale. This is well argued." He glanced at Ethan. "Mr. Cole, what was your contribution?"

The silence stretched.

"He's been reading the book," Maya said. The lie came out smooth and calm. "We're dividing the analysis. He's taking the second half."

Ethan's head turned slowly. His eyes met hers, and she saw something in them that she had not expected: not gratitude, but a kind of stunned, wary recognition, like a man who has been handed a coat he doesn't know how to wear.

"Is that so, Mr. Cole?"

"Yes, sir." He cleared his throat. "That's so."

Mr. Alvarez studied them both for a moment longer than was comfortable, then nodded and moved on.

"Why did you do that?" Ethan muttered.

"Because I'm not failing for you."

"That's not a reason."

"It's the only one I have."

He disappeared again after lunch.

By Friday evening the school had decided he was at a party. By Saturday morning, Priya's group chat had produced three separate versions of where, with whom, and what he'd said to her. Maya read none of them to the end. She noticed only that no one had actually seen him.

She did not sleep on Friday night.

At half past five on Saturday morning, with the sky the color of dishwater, she gave up and went downstairs. Her mother had a double shift and was already gone, and the kitchen smelled faintly of onions and soap. Maya pulled on a coat over her pajamas and walked to the bakery, because the baker opened at six and she had a craving for something warm and ordinary.

The town was nearly empty. The church steeple leaned against the pale sky. A single street lamp buzzed and flickered at the corner, and beyond it, under the bus shelter by the old square, an engine idled.

A long bus, mud-spattered and tired, with its destination board lit in faded orange. Maya read the name above the windshield and stopped walking.

It was the name of the city she had left. Ninety miles away.

The doors folded open with a hiss. A handful of passengers climbed down, an old woman with a shopping bag, a man in a work vest, and then, last, a boy with his head bowed.

He wore the same shirt he'd had on Friday. No jacket this time. His hair was flattened on one side as though he had slept against a window. He stepped onto the pavement and stood still for a moment, swaying very slightly, like someone who had not slept in a day and a half.

Maya's breath stopped.

Ethan Cole did not look like a boy who had spent the night at a party. He looked like a boy coming home from something that had taken everything out of him.

She stepped back into the shadow of the bakery's awning, her heart hammering. Don't be seen, she told herself. Don't be a person who watches. But she could not make her feet leave.

He rubbed his face with both hands. He took out his phone, and she saw his thumb hover, then lock the screen without answering. Then he slid back the cuff of his sleeve and lifted the cheap silver watch to his ear, listening to it the way someone might listen for a heartbeat.

Whatever he heard made his shoulders drop.

There was no sleek car. No friends. No girl hanging on his arm. There was only a boy alone at dawn in a town where everyone nodded to everyone, and not one person nodded to him.

He began to walk, slowly, in the direction of the hill, and for the first time, Maya understood that the Ethan Cole she had been told about was not the one she had just seen.

She stayed in the shadow until the street lamp clicked off, and the baker unlocked the door behind her.

She forgot to buy anything.

That night, she opened her notebook and wrote his name at the top of a fresh page. Under it, in careful neat letters, she wrote a single sentence.

Where does he go?