"Wait!" I shouted. "Please, just wait!"
He glanced back, and for one strange second, I saw myself at 18 again. Not in a mirror. Not in a photograph.
Living, breathing, and terrified.
He darted behind the gas station toward a narrow dirt road lined with weeds. I was not young anymore, and my lungs burned before we reached the trees. Still, I ran. I had lost Nina once because I had not known she was leaving. I could not let this boy vanish, too.
He slowed near a chain-link fence, grabbed it, and bent over, gasping. I stopped several feet away with my hands raised.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I said between breaths.
He gave a short, bitter laugh. "That's what people say before they do."
His words hit me harder than the run.
"Tell me your name."
He looked away.
"Please," I added. "I have been carrying questions for 17 years. You look like the answer to every single one."
