“You ready?” he said.

That was a clear hint he wanted to change the subject.

“If you are.”

“I am. Maybe.”

“You can hold Fritz if it would help.”

He laughed a little. “Sure.”

She gently scooped Fritz out of her hoodie pocket and passed him to Rafe. She watched for a second, making sure he wouldn’t drop him or anything, but Fritz sniffed his hands and nibbled his beard.

“You hate the beard too, buddy?” Rafe asked him.

“He chews everything,” she said. “But yes, he does hate the beard. He told me so.”

Rafe lightly rubbed Fritz’s head and ears. Emilie was starting to warm up to Rafe, though he still made her nervous enough that she regretted volunteering for this mission. Too late now.

She clipped a bath towel around his shoulders and ran her comb through his straw-colored hair.

“I’ll just take off a few inches. Nothing drastic, okay?”

“The shorter it is, the happier Mom will be.”

“Is she super strict or something?”

“Nah. She’d be okay if she thought I was growing my hair long because I wanted it long. She thinks the hair and the beard are a cry for help.”

“No comment.”

Rafe lifted Fritz, so they made eye contact. Or as much eye contact as you could make with a sniffing, shuffling, wriggling fancy rat. “Your mother’s a little rude.”

“Don’t listen to him, baby. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You can put him in the tub to run around. He needs the exercise.”

“Sure,” Rafe said and gently sat Fritz in the empty bathtub, where he proceeded to run tiny rat laps.

“Ready?”

“Go for it.” He sounded like a man facing a firing squad. The hair meant something to him. Freedom? Safety? A disguise?

“Let me guess—nobody recognizes you with the long hair and the beard?”

He gave a soft, bitter little laugh. “There’s nothing worse than being famous in a small town. For years, I couldn’t go in the hardware store without ten old guys giving me the evil eye, whispering behind my back about the hoax me and Jeremy pulled on the whole state. I just wanted to be a nobody again.”

“Wait, a hoax? Are you kidding?”

“A lot of people don’t want to believe two kids could survive in the woods that long. Doesn’t help that I can’t remember how we did it, and Jeremy skipped town three days after they found us.”

She ran her comb through his hair again, snipping more length away.

“It must have been hard going through that without Jeremy. I mean, facing all those dirty looks alone.”

“It wasn’t fun,” he said. She imagined that was a massive understatement.

“Jeremy says he had a good reason for staying away. Maybe he did?”

“Maybe. It would just be nice if he’d tell me what that reason was.”

“Yeah, he is kind of annoyingly cryptic.”

“Never used to be like that. He’d tell me everything.”

“What was he like back then?”

“You would not have guessed ‘savior of missing girls’ would be his career path.”

“You mean the guy who made jack-off jokes to his English teacher?”

“All day, every day. Never a dull moment with him. He called our vice principal ‘Il Duce’ to his face. He stole that from Gilmore Girls.”

“Jeremy watched Gilmore Girls?”

“We both watched Gilmore Girls. I liked Rory. He liked Lorelai.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me about him?” She took off another two inches. The hair fell in golden clumps onto the dark wood floor.

“People still talk about us like we’re a team. The news called us ‘The West Virginia Lost Boys.’ Plural. I guess I thought we were a team too. Guess not.”

Emilie was starting to think the only thing sadder than a lost boy was a lost man.

“The West Virginia Lost Boys sounds like a killer bluegrass band.” Emilie went back to work, combing and snipping, combing and snipping. “If you want to know what I think, and I admit you probably don’t…I don’t think you ever hated Jeremy. You, you know…you missed him.”

“Don’t tell him that.”

“Don’t tell me what?”

Jeremy appeared in the doorway. Emilie saw Rafe eye him from under the curtain of his wet hair.

“That we know you’re eavesdropping,” Rafe said.

In what was clearly faux outrage, Jeremy said, “I was just coming to ask if you wanted me to put your gear in my car? You know, on the very slim off-chance you go with us tomorrow.”

“He’s sarcastic,” Emilie whispered.

Rafe whispered back. “You noticed?”

“You want me to pack your gear up or not? I’d like to get going before it’s midnight.”