You Were Never Here

by Kathleen Peacock

  He doesn’t so much hand out programs as thrust them forward. The movement is almost as awkward and jerky as the sparse pleasantries he strings together for each person who greets him.

  Noah believes I might be able to control my weird little skill set—and that it might get less painful—with practice. I’m not convinced, but if I’m serious about using what I can do to help find out what happened to Riley and Rachel, there are probably worse places to start than with the photographer who freelances for the police.

  As the line inches forward, I reposition myself so that I’m standing to Aunt Jet’s left. As she greets the younger man, I turn to Harding.

  If he recognizes me from the riverbank, he doesn’t show it. He thrusts a program toward me. I try to remember what I did when I touched Noah, but there’s no time. Harding’s hand brushes mine, and I have just a fraction of a second to register the image on the front of the folded sheet of paper—Jesus cradling a toddler as a lamb kneels at his sandal-shod feet—and then . . .

  Ropelike flames shoot up my arms and wrap around my wrists.

  They pull me down.

  Down into heat so strong that my skin peels from my bones as my nostrils fill with the scent of burning flesh. All around me, I can hear people screaming. How can I hear people screaming when I’m burning, burning, burning—

  The church comes rushing back. The program falls to the ground, and Jesus smiles up at me from the floor. I pull in a deep breath. My chest still feels like it’s on fire.

  When I look up, it’s to find Harding staring at me, his bushy brows pulling toward each other like two caterpillars about to duke it out.

  “Mary Catherine?” Aunt Jet turns to me, concern flashing across her face.

  “I forgot something in the car,” I lie, the words coming out high and uneven. “You go in. I’ll be right back.”

  Turning away before she can examine me too closely or ask any questions, I squeeze through the crowd, desperately trying to avoid coming into contact with anyone else.

  It’s not until I’m outside and halfway across the parking lot that I stop thinking I can smell the scent of burning bodies.

  A low granite wall separates the church grounds from a neighboring park. I find a spot under an oak tree and perch on the stone. The faint strains of an organ drift on the air, and the pain in my head pulsates and builds between the notes. It’s my own fault: I should have thought about what desires and fears a church might bring to the surface. All images require some interpretation, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that what Harding fears isn’t ordinary fire—something plenty of people are terrified of—but fire in the biblical sense.

  I wish Noah were here. Not because I need to tell him what I saw—what I saw probably doesn’t mean anything—but because I want someone to tell me that I’m okay. I want someone to tell me that seeing monstrous things does not make me monstrous myself.

  “Cat?”

  I glance up. Skylar is standing next to me, on the church side of the wall. It takes me a second to recognize her. Gone are her usual clothes, replaced by a long, floral-print dress and a beige cardigan. Her black hair is tied back in a simple ponytail. When I glance down, I see pantyhose-enclosed legs ending in a pair of low, practical pumps.

  “Why do you look like a Sunday school teacher?” I ask, not even trying to keep the confusion from my voice.

  “Because I am. Sort of. I help out with the Sunday school classes. I should be in there now, but I saw you.” She tugs on the edge of her sweater. “You looked upset.”

  “I’m okay,” I lie. In my head, I still see fire.

  Skylar does not seem convinced.

  “Really. I’m just not big on church. I’m waiting for my aunt, but you should go back inside.” It’s hard to make my voice all that emphatic with the growing pain in my head, and I’m oddly distracted by a bright yellow sticker stuck to the bottom of Skylar’s cardigan. A smiling sun encircled by the words Jesus Loves You.

  It’s hard not to stare at that sticker. It’s like Skylar is some kind of Jekyll and Hyde . . . if Jekyll were an adorable goth and Hyde were a cardigan-wearing Sunday school teacher.

  Okay, maybe not my best analogy.

  Instead of leaving, Skylar slips off her shoes and claims a spot next to me on the wall. “I don’t really want to,” she admits. “Everyone in there is talking about Rachel.”

  “Do you know if she’s awake yet? If the police have talked to her?”

  “One of my mother’s friends works at the hospital. She said Rachel woke up yesterday but isn’t well enough to be released. No idea if anyone other than the doctors have spoken with her.” She runs a hand over her ponytail. “I wanted to call you.”

  “Me, too,” I say. And it’s true: I had wanted to call. I had even gotten her number from Aidan.

  “It’s just weird, right? Like, what do you say? ‘Thanks for hanging out—sorry about the whole finding-an-almost-dead-person thing. I promise we’ll have more fun next time.’”

  I laugh before I can stop myself. The pounding in my head is not impressed. For a second, I feel like I might throw up, and the sensation is so strong that I lean over and put my head between my knees.

  Why didn’t I think to bring my pills? Well, that one’s easy: it’s not like I had planned on deliberately diving into anyone’s head. My only saving grace is that the contact had been so brief. The pain isn’t what I’d rate low-to-moderate, but I can already tell that it’s not going to build to the level it hit the night I went snooping in Noah’s head.

  “You really do look awful.”

  “Thanks.” Then, because I know she wasn’t trying to be critical, I add, “I get migraines.” Not the truth, but better than an outright lie.

  “Do you want me to take you home? I have my car. My mom’s staying for Bible study after the service, and she always gets a ride with one of her friends, so I don’t have to wait for her.”

  “What about Sunday school?”

  “There are five of us and only thirty kids. Pretty sure they can cope. Besides, I’ve gotten volunteer of the month six times in a row. I’m, like, one of only two volunteers under sixty they trust with a set of keys to the building—supposedly because I’ve earned the privilege, but really because I’m the only one who always comes in early to set up. That’s got to be worth a little grace.” She stops, suddenly, and blushes. “Sorry. That’s probably way more information than you wanted. Or needed.”

  I gesture at her clothes and the church. “Is all this for your parents?”

  She thinks it over, then shrugs. “Maybe, I guess. It’s hard. You know? Figuring out how much of anything is you. How much is for somebody else.”

  I do know. “And the horror movies?” I ask.

  “What about them?”

  “Are they a form of rebellion?” I realize that in the span of just a few minutes, I’ve pretty much abandoned my earlier intention not to ask her any personal questions.

  Skylar shakes her head. “No. That would be sad and cliché.” She pushes herself off the wall. “Come on. We’ll text your aunt. Tell her you weren’t feeling well.”

  “I don’t have a phone,” I remind her.

  “You can use mine. Incidentally, you did me a total favor dropping my old one by the river. Perfect excuse to ask my parents for a new one.”

  “You know, there are easier ways to get a new phone.”

  “Not in my house, there aren’t.”

  She grins. Despite the pain in my head, I find myself grinning back.

  Eighteen

  SKYLAR MAY BE DRESSED LIKE A SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER, but she drives like a demon. While the air from the open passenger-side window makes the pain in my head recede a bit, the speed at which she takes turns and the abruptness with which she breaks at stop signs make my stomach both flip and flop.

  “Sorry!” she says as I brace myself against the dash.

  By the time we reach Riverside Avenue, I’m seriously wondering just how hard it is to ge
t a driver’s license in this country.

  As Skylar slows for the turnoff to Montgomery House, I crane my neck to get a look at the driveway next door. The front gate is closed, but I can see clearly through the gaps between the wrought-iron slats. The BMW isn’t there. Even though I know Noah isn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, I still feel a small pang of disappointment.

  “She really is beautiful, isn’t she?” says Skylar as she eases the car down to a crawl.

  “Who?”

  “The house.”

  I stare up at Montgomery House, trying to see it through different eyes as we come to a complete stop. I’ve always loved it, but I’ve never really thought of it as beautiful. I guess it is, though—in a neglected sort of way.

  “Do you want to come in?” The words feel stiff and awkward. Other than Lacey, it’s been years since I’ve really invited anyone over. I’m not entirely sure why I’m doing it now. I try to tell myself that it’s just because Skylar went to the trouble of driving me home, but I don’t think that’s the only reason.

  “Really?” Skylar grins like an invitation to my aunt’s run-down boardinghouse is the best thing that’s happened to her in ages. Given the events of the past week, I guess that might actually be a possibility.

  I know getting close to her—getting close to anyone—is a bad idea, but I like her. I can’t help it.

  Still beaming, Skylar climbs out of the car and bounces on the toes of her tiny pumps. Her heels make a click-click sound against the pavement as she waits for me to join her. “Joey texted me before church. We were going to hang out this afternoon, but he had some flash of inspiration and wanted to work on his script instead.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe.” Her brow furrows as we walk up the stairs and across the porch. “Should I?”

  I shrug. Honestly, I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve ever been in a relationship.

  It’s not the first time Skylar has been in Montgomery House, but she still stares at everything like she’s trying to soak it all in as she follows me through the door and into the front hall. Brisby winds around her ankles, and she reaches down to scratch him behind the ears. “You remember me, don’t you?” she says softly. To me, she says, “Did you know a pair of ghost hunters spent a week here in 1991?”

  I do know. It’s a story Dad likes to tell—how this couple who claimed to have investigated haunted houses all over the world spent a week in Montgomery Falls, poking around the grounds of the old textile mill by day and sleeping at Montgomery House at night. How every time they felt a draft, they claimed it was a spirit trying to communicate from beyond. On their way out the door, they’d been caught with a suitcase full of old knickknacks and moth-eaten strips of cloth. Things they claimed were soaked in psychic energy.

  “You know the house isn’t really haunted, right?” I’m not opposed to the idea of ghosts, but surely if there were any here, I would have seen them by now.

  Skylar straightens and then raises her shoulders in a tiny shrug. “All things are haunted—at least to somebody.”

  She walks to the staircase, lowers herself to the bottom step, and coaxes Brisby over. When he complies, she pulls him onto her lap. I expect him to hiss or squirm away—any affection Brisby bestows is always strictly on his own terms—but he purrs and settles in.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say as Skylar fishes a bag of cat treats from her bottomless purse.

  I head up to my room and duck into the bathroom. After popping two pills, I splash some water on my face. Skylar wasn’t wrong, I think, leaning toward the mirror to study the dark circles under my eyes, I really do look kind of awful.

  When I step back into my bedroom, it’s to find Skylar has followed me upstairs. There’s a piece of paper in her hands—one of the newspaper articles Noah had printed out—and a puzzled expression on her face. When I glance down, I realize the contents of Noah’s folder are still spread out over the floor. “Sorry,” I mutter, rushing forward to sweep up the mess.

  She lifts another piece of paper: the mystery map I had found in Riley’s desk. “What is all this stuff?”

  I say a small prayer of thanks that the notes about her supposed obsession with Riley are on the very bottom of the pile.

  “I don’t suppose you know where that is?” I ask, nodding toward the piece of paper in her hand.

  “I don’t think so.” She studies the lines for a moment and then shakes her head and looks up. “No. I don’t recognize it. Cat, why do you have all of this? Where did you get all of this?”

  I hesitate. I don’t want to tell her that Noah gave me the folder.

  To me, keeping the folder is an understandable act in a situation that is anything but understandable. But people might twist it somehow. I think about the way Noah tried to protect me up at the mill all those years ago, how he pulled me to his chest and told me not to look; I don’t want to give anyone another reason to say he’s strange—no matter how angry I’ve been at him over the past few days.

  I take the papers from Skylar and slip them back into the folder. “I know it seems stupid—like some sort of Nancy Drew complex—but after we found Rachel, I started thinking maybe there was some sort of connection.”

  “Between what happened to her and Riley disappearing?”

  “Yeah.” I walk over to the desk and slide the folder into the top drawer. Leaving it out was beyond careless. Aunt Jet is already on edge about the whole Rachel thing. What would happen if she walked into my room and found all that stuff spread out on the floor?

  “What’s a Go-Go?”

  I turn. Skylar is holding my Go-Go’s shirt up to her chest. It’s obviously way too big for her, but she nods approvingly at her reflection.

  I shake my head. “Girl group from the eighties. My friend Lacey and I—” I cut myself off. I had been about to tell Skylar how I got the shirt, how Lacey found out the band was in New York for some sort of charity concert and insisted we stake out their hotel. Lacey didn’t even like their music—she just thought it would be fun for me. Because she knew I liked them. We couldn’t get tickets to the show, but Lacey managed to find the room number of the girl who managed the merch table.

  For the past few months—ever since the night things fell apart—I’ve been careful to think of Lacey in certain ways. It’s like if I focus only on the bad stuff, I won’t miss her as much and I won’t be as hurt by the things she has—and hasn’t—done.

  It’s the same thing I did with Riley, I realize. On the rare occasions I allowed myself to think of him, I only let myself think about how much he had hurt me. It seemed safer that way.

  Skylar stares at me expectantly, waiting for me to finish my sentence. “My friend Lacey and I got matching shirts,” I say. The words are awkward and anticlimactic.

  “It must be hard: being away from everyone for the summer.”

  I shrug, uncomfortable. “It’s not that bad.” Given that Lacey and pretty much everyone we know had stopped talking to me long before I got on that bus, being here shouldn’t feel all that different. But it does, somehow.

  “Hey—Joey and I are going to Saint John sometime this week. Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after. You should come.” Skylar’s voice is casual, like the invite is an afterthought. She rushes on. “They have this great old record store down there—at least, I think it’s supposed to be great, I don’t know much about records—and all of these neat secondhand shops.” Her words come out so fast that I have to replay them back in my head.

  She twists one of the buttons on her cardigan around and around until it’s in danger of popping off

  She’s nervous. The realization takes me aback. I think about the first time I talked to her, how she told a total stranger that the word scrawled on a poster referred to her, how she had stood there, head held high like it didn’t matter what I thought.

  Skylar stares at me, waiting for my answer.

  Given that Aunt Jet was talking about finding me a babysitter as
recently as an hour ago, I can’t see her letting me take a road trip. “My aunt’s kind of paranoid with everything that’s happened. I don’t think she’d let me go.”

  Disappointment flashes across her face, though she tries to hide it quickly. “Makes sense. Totally understandable.”

  “Do you want to sleep over?” I blurt the words out on impulse, without thinking them through. On some level, I suspect this is a horrible idea, but I hate the thought that I might have hurt her feelings. And I really don’t want to spend the evening by myself. “I know you probably have other stuff to do, but I thought—”

  “Yes!” The single word comes out so loud that Skylar presses her fingertips to her lips as though she’s startled herself. “Yes,” she says again, at a normal volume.

  “Your parents won’t mind? After what happened with Rachel, I mean.”

  A little bit of the brightness leaves her face. “Honestly, I think they’ll be happy at the idea of me spending time with a girl. They don’t exactly like the fact that all of my friends are guys.”

  “Why?”

  “They think boys lead to trouble.”

  I want to ask about what happened between her and Riley—about the posters and the girls and that flash of images I got when I touched her on the bridge—but I don’t know how. Despite my determination not to get attached to anyone, I like Skylar—I really like her—and I’m scared that if I ask her about Riley, she won’t want to stay.

  So instead, I tell her something that I haven’t told anyone. Not Aidan. Not even Noah. “My dad sent me here because I got into trouble in New York. Not over a boy—not exactly—but it was pretty bad. My best friend doesn’t even talk to me anymore. No one really does.” I think about the online groups and the hashtags about how I’m a lying freak. Maybe Lacey wasn’t responsible for the posts, but she had liked them. The night I trashed my phone, I had seen her name in a long list of people who thought I was getting exactly what I deserved.

  A series of expressions crosses Skylar’s face, too quick and complex to make sense of. I wait for her to say something, but instead, she pulls out her phone.