Chapter Text
Late September – Mid-October 2008
The cold came on a Tuesday.
Riley noticed it first in the morning, when the bus windows fogged from the inside for the first time all year. Not the usual autumn chill that burned off by noon. This was the kind of cold that sat in your bones.
Riley was nine years old, small for his grade, with wavy black hair a backpack held together with duct tape. The backpack was Phoenix's old one. Most things were.
The bus let them off at the corner of Maple and Third, three blocks from the apartment complex. Riley walked alone. The sidewalk was empty except for a stray orange tabby with a bitten ear—Garbage, everyone called him. He sat on a storm drain and watched Riley pass. Garbage never begged. He just observed, like he was waiting for something.
Riley had been waiting for something too. They just didn't know what yet.
The apartment smelled like cigarette smoke and burned popcorn. Phoenix was sprawled on the couch, one arm thrown over his eyes, a gaming magazine open on his chest. He was sixteen, all sharp angles and bad decisions. His hair was the same shade of brown as Riley's, but where Riley's was neat from sheer necessity, Phoenix's looked like he'd lost a fight with a lawnmower.
"Hey, kid," he said without moving.
"Hey."
"Fridge is busted. Don't drink the milk."
Riley dropped his backpack by the door and opened the refrigerator anyway. The milk carton was warm. The orange juice was worse. He settled for a granola bar from the cabinet, eating it over the sink so crumbs wouldn't get on the floor and attract the ants that had moved in last spring and never left.
Phoenix finally sat up. He was wearing the same black hoodie he'd worn for three days straight.
"I'm going out tonight," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Where?"
"None of your business."
Riley didn't push. he learned not to. Phoenix had a temper that lived just beneath his skin, and while he'd never hit Riley, he'd thrown things. A remote control. A shoe. Just about anything in reach.
"I'll be back late," Phoenix added, softer. "Lock the door."
He left at nine-thirty. Riley watched from the bedroom window as Phoenix crossed the parking lot, shoulders hunched against the cold, and disappeared into the trees behind the complex. The forest looked like a dark smear of pines and oaks that the town had never bothered to clear. People said kids partied in there. People said other things too, but Riley doesn't like to listen to other people for too long.
For twenty minutes, Riley sat on the floor and tried to do homework. The apartment was too quiet. The walls made their usual sounds; the groan of pipes, the scratch of mice, and underneath it all, that other sound. The chewing sound. Like something with too many teeth was working its way through the drywall.
Riley stood up. Grabbed their jacket. Left through the front door without locking it.
The forest was darker than Riley expected. The moon was a thumbnail paring, and the trees blocked what little light there was. Riley walked carefully, one hand out to catch branches, feet crunching on dead leaves that sounded like little bones.
They found Phoenix by following the glow of a lighter.
There was a clearing near the creek, a place where someone had dragged old pallets into a circle around a fire pit. Phoenix was there with two other guys. One was Trey, tall and pockmarked, with a tongue ring he kept clicking against his teeth. The other was a boy Riley didn't recognise, younger than Phoenix, with nervous eyes and patchy facial hair.
They were passing a joint back and forth. Phoenix took long drags and said little. Trey did most of the talking, something about money, something about a "job" that didn't sound like a real job.
Riley hid behind a fallen log and watched.
This was the first night. The beginning of a terrible habit. Because here, in the cold, watching Phoenix exist in a world Riley wasn't allowed into. It was certainly better than being alone. The chewing sound didn't follow Riley into the woods. The silence in the apartment was worse than any ghost.
So Riley kept coming back.
October 5th
Phoenix met the girl behind the high school.
Riley followed at a distance, staying in the shadows of the dumpsters and the chain-link fence. The girl had brown, curly hair that bounced when she walked, and she wore a plaid school uniform even though it was past seven. She was pretty in a tired way, like she'd been pretty for so long it had stopped meaning anything.
Her name was Ada. Riley learned this because Phoenix said it once, testing it out like a word in a foreign language.
"Ada," he said to himself, drawing her attention. "That' sounds nice"
She smiled
"That's my name,"
she said, and laughed. It was a nice laugh. Riley thought it deserved better than Phoenix.
Phonix came back and they kissed by the bleachers. Riley looked away. Not because he thought it was gross, but because something about the way Ada looked at Phoenix afterward made Riley's chest hurt. She looked at him like he was a door that might close at any moment. Like she was trying to memorize his face in case he disappeared.
Phoenix lit a cigarette. Didn't offer her one. Didn't say much.
"I'll call you," he said.
"Okay." Ada hugged her arms to her chest. She wasn't wearing a coat. "You always say that. But you never do..."
Phoenix shrugged and walked away. Riley waited until Marisol was gone before following.
October 12th
Riley saw Ada again, this time near the railroad tracks. It was past midnight. Phoenix had been gone for three hours, and Riley had gotten good at tracking him, as no one else could have possibly known the route he took.
But tonight, Phoenix wasn't there. Just Marisol, standing on the tracks, crying.
Riley almost turned back. Almost. But Marisol saw them first.
"You're his kid, right?" she said. Her voice was hoarse. "The little brother. I don't know. He never says."
"I'm Riley."
"Riley. Okay." Ada wiped her face with her sleeve. "He left. He always leaves. I don't know why I keep letting him."
Riley didn't know what to say. He was only nine. They didn't understand why anyone would kiss someone who made them cry.
"He's not mean," Ada said, like she was trying to convince herself. "He's just... empty. Like someone hollowed him out and forgot to put anything back."
That night, Riley walked Ada to the bus stop. She gave them a strawberry bonbon from her pocket. Riley saved it.
October 18th
Riley followed Phoenix and Trey into the forest, deeper than before. They carried spray paint in a duffel bag—neon colours that glowed under the moon. The destination was a concrete drainage pipe near the old quarry, big enough to stand in, covered in years of graffiti.
Phoenix worked silently. He painted shapes that weren't shapes—angles that hurt to look at, a symbol that looked like a spiral eating itself. Trey added a pentagram and some curse words. Then Phoenix stopped.
He pulled out a stencil. Placed it against the concrete. Sprayed.
When he pulled the stencil away, the word remained: JUNE.
"Who's June?" Trey asked.
"No one," Phoenix said. "Someone. I don't know."
"You don't know her name but you're tagging it?"
Phoenix didn't answer. He sprayed a date underneath: 10/31.
Riley shivered. The cold was worse here, deep in the trees. It wasn't October cold. It was January cold. Wrong cold.
On the walk back, Riley saw something that made them stop breathing.
A figure stood at the edge of the clearing. A girl, about seventeen, wearing a dress the colour of lapis lazuli. It contrasted sharply with her skin, which was too pale, and her hair, which was thin and colourless, like spider silk.
She stood under a power line. She lacked a shadow.
Riley opened his mouth. No sound came out.
Then Phoenix walked past Riley, oblivious, and the girl was gone.
"Did you see that?" Riley whispered.
"See what?" Phoenix didn't look back.
"Come on, kid. It's freezing."
Riley followed. But he looked over his shoulder the whole way home.
October 22nd
The girl appeared again. And again.
Riley saw her in the reflection of the bus window. Saw her standing on the roof of the 7-Eleven. Saw her sitting on the swing set at the abandoned elementary school, swaying gently even though there was no wind.
Her dress never wrinkled. Her hair never moved. And every time Riley blinked, she was closer.
"The town is full of ghosts," Riley told Phoenix one morning. They were eating cereal out of the box—the milk had gone bad days ago and neither of them had bought more.
"Something's wrong. They can't leave."
Phoenix snorted. "Ghosts aren't real."
"Then what's wrong with the weather? Why is it so cold?"
"It's October. It gets cold in October."
"It's never snowed here. Not once. But it's going to. I can feel it."
Phoenix put down the cereal box and looked at Riley for a long moment. His expression was strange—not angry, not dismissive. Almost sad.
"Kid," he said quietly, "you gotta stop following me at night."
Riley's stomach dropped. "I don't—"
"I know you do. I've known for weeks."
Phoenix ran a hand through his hair.
"It's not safe. The stuff I'm doing, the people I'm with... it's not for kids. Okay? You need to stay home."
"Home is worse."
"Tough."
Riley wanted to scream. Wanted to tell Phoenix about the girl in the blue dress, But Phoenix had already stood up. He was pulling on his black hoodie. It was only four in the afternoon.
"I'll be back late," he said. "Lock the door."
The door clicked shut.
Riley sat on the floor and put their head between their knees. The apartment was silent except for the chewing.
That night, they followed Phoenix anyway.
October 27th
Ada ran.
Riley watched from behind a Dumpster as Phoenix and Ada stood near the railroad tracks. Marisol was crying again. Phoenix had his hands in his pockets, face unreadable.
"I can't do this anymore," Ada said. "You don't even like me. You just use me and leave and I'm so tired, Phoenix. I'm so tired."
"I never said I liked you."
It wasn't cruel the way he said it. It was worse. It was honest.
Ada flinched like he'd slapped her. Then she turned and ran, her brown curls bouncing, her plaid skirt whipping in the wind. She didn't look back.
Phoenix watched her go. After a long time, he kicked a rock into the darkness and said, quietly, "Shit."
He didn't follow her. He just stood there, alone in the cold, and Riley realised with a sickening clarity that Phoenix was lonely too. He was just better at hiding it.
On the walk home, the girl in the blue dress was waiting under the power line. She was closer now, close enough that Riley could see the intricate beading on her bodice, the way her thin, pale hair floated as if underwater.
She smiled.
It was not a nice smile.
"You're going to lose him," she said. Her voice was like static on a radio. "But everyone loses each other, we don't live forever."
Riley ran.
They didn't stop running until they were inside the apartment, under the covers, with their hands over their ears to block out the chewing sound that was getting louder every night.
Outside, the first flurries of snow began to fall.
It had never snowed here before.
Not once