Bonez Dubb's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Bonez edged around the sinkhole, boots scraping loose dirt. The barn loomed behind him, but the pull was inside it now. He could feel it. Whatever Amber wanted him to see was waiting in that leaning red shell. He doubled back, ducked under the warning sign, and pushed the barn door open. Dust spun in the slant of light. He stepped inside. On a crate in the middle of the floor sat a drawing pinned under a rock. Half a dragon, half blank space, and a note in her hand: finish it with the book you left at my place. His chest cracked open. He knew the book. An old leather journal, his sketches, his scribbled lines, abandoned years ago. She had kept it. She needed it here. He had come with empty hands. The drawing would stay unfinished tonight. Bonez folded the page into his pocket and walked back to his car. He had somewhere else to drive now. Outside, he stopped short. A wide ring of mushrooms and wildflowers circled the lot, bright reds and blues he had walked right past. She had made this place hers while she waited. He stepped through the ring, climbed in the car, and turned the key. The journal was hours away, buried in a life he had stopped visiting. He drove anyway. The unfinished dragon rode in his pocket like a held breath. The road stretched flat and gray. He knew where the journal was. A tall white house with a wraparound porch, the place he kept but never lived in. His old keys still hung from the mirror. He gripped the wheel and pressed the gas. The barn shrank in the rearview. For the first time in six months, he was driving toward something instead of away. The dragon waited. So did the door he had not opened in years.