“I have never been more excited to visit a post office,” Rowan sighed, drumming his fingers on the bus window. “In fact, I have never been less excited to visit a post office.”

“Because you’ve never visited a post office.”

“Exactly. Say, when did Casey get this smart?”

Casey laughed, leaning over the back of Rowan’s seat and swatting at him. “Bastard.”

“Look, my parents were married—“

“They’re awful people, Rowan.”

Rowan sighed again, tipping his head back to stare up at the peeling adverts all over the bus ceiling. He didn’t say a word to us for the next three stops, and then breathed out an ‘I know’.

We didn’t push it.

Waiting on confirmation that the people we most suspected of being the missing Cross children were, well, the missing Cross children… it had been difficult. Dealing with Rowan’s intermittent silences and outbursts and depressive funks was technically Casey’s strong suit, despite the fact that he was remarkably shit at it all.

I was worse at it, of course. Rowan and I… we were a bad mix. Which made it all the more incredible that so many people thought we were together.

But I was good at being a sort of bodyguard for him, in a way. Even if he blew up at me about not needing a ‘bodyguard’ and then got his ass kicked by a Year Ten within fifteen minutes…

You know.

Perfectly healthy mindset for a barely-teenaged boy, the idea of not needing when you most certainly do need it.

It had been a million times worse when Rowan had been missing, though. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like for his parents, trying their damned best to keep it all under wraps while Piper Meadowes and whatever-his-real-name-is Casey investigated… I hope they were terrified.

The bus stopped, and Rowan let out a small groan. “I don’t want to know.”

“I think you do.”

“I’d rather not…”

But we dragged him off anyway.