You Were Never Here

by Kathleen Peacock

  Aunt Jet shut herself up within the walls of Montgomery House, and I’ve built my own set of invisible walls to keep people away.

  As I step into my bedroom, my gaze flickers toward the desk. Noah’s folder is out in plain sight, and the pages are scattered in all directions.

  My entire body goes cold. I know I put the folder back in the desk before Noah and I left yesterday. Ever since that afternoon Skylar came over, I’ve been careful not to leave things lying out.

  Joey. My heart rate kicks up a notch as I glance toward the closet door, half expecting him to come bursting out of it like the killer in a slasher flick.

  But no one comes crashing out, and after a few seconds, my heartbeat drops down to something approaching normal.

  I gather up the sheets of paper, checking each one off against a mental list. It’s not hard: I’ve studied these pages so many times that I can probably recite the contents of the entire folder from memory.

  Downstairs, the phone rings. Before I can even think about going to answer it, the noise cuts off—picked up by Marie or Sam, probably.

  Only one piece of paper is missing from the folder: the map I had taken from Riley’s room, the one Skylar had sworn she didn’t recognize.

  Was she in the house? Did she take it? Does she know something I don’t?

  As I turn to put the folder back in its place, I realize that the curtains are open. I reach out to shut them and then freeze.

  Marie is running for the gap in the hedge. She’s running toward Noah’s house.

  Thirty-Three

  FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A SINGLE SUMMER, I FIND MYSELF in the Montgomery Falls Hospital.

  The emergency room isn’t crowded. A man with a cut over his eye. A mother with a crying toddler. An elderly couple with wrinkled, paper-thin skin. No Noah.

  I don’t know if he’s still at the station; I don’t know if anyone has told him what’s happened. They have to tell him, don’t they? Even Jensen can’t be that horrible.

  Aunt Jet tries asking a nurse about Noah’s mother.

  “Are you family?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Then I can’t tell you anything.”

  “Please,” Aunt Jet says. “She would have arrived by ambulance within the last hour and a half . . . She . . .” Jet falters, apparently unsure if she should say why Mrs. Fraser had been brought in. After finding Noah’s mom, Jet had called the paramedics and then Marie, reasoning that Marie might be able to help and was closer. We wanted to follow the ambulance directly to the hospital, but a police officer had kept us at the house, asking a seemingly endless string of questions.

  I pull in a deep breath. “She tried to hurt herself,” I say. “My aunt found her and called the ambulance.”

  The nurse’s detached expression becomes a little less aloof. “I really can’t release patient information,” she says, “but if someone self-harms, they’re usually treated and then taken up to the psychiatric unit for evaluation. Fourth floor.”

  “Thankyou.” The two syllables come out together in a rush. The nurse nods and turns her attention to a stack of paperwork.

  We take the elevator up to the fourth floor and follow a line of red dots to a door with a small window—the kind that has the wire mesh inside—set at eye level. I try the handle: it’s locked.

  There’s a sign to the left of the door—Ring for Assistance—just above a small, black button. I hesitate. The nurse downstairs wasn’t supposed to tell us anything. Odds are, if we ring that bell, another nurse will just show up and tell us the exact same thing.

  Aunt Jet must have the same thought. “Why don’t you stay here in case Noah shows up. I forgot my phone in the car. I’ll go get it, and then we can try calling the police station.”

  “You know they won’t tell us anything, either,” I say, a terrible weariness settling deep inside me as the adrenaline wears off. “If he’s still there, they won’t let us talk to him.”

  “Oh, they’ll let me talk to him,” she says, eyes steely. She heads for the elevators, leaving me alone.

  After a few minutes, an orderly rounds the corner at the end of the hall. I lean against the wall, trying to look casual, as he approaches. He slides a key card from his pocket as he nears the ward and then presses it to a small scanner. He barely glances at me.

  I try to grab the door behind him, but I’m too slow: the lock clicks softly into place just as my fingers skim the handle.

  It takes only a few minutes for someone else to come through—a doctor with a thick beard and tired eyes—but he’s more observant. “Are you supposed to be up here?” he asks.

  I mumble something about being lost. He doesn’t look convinced. For a moment, I’m sure he’s going to call security, but then someone on the other side of the half-open door calls his name, pulling him away.

  “Cat?”

  The soles of my sneakers squeak against the tile floor as I whirl. “Noah!”

  He stands at the end of the hallway, staring at me, bluish circles under his bloodshot eyes. There are dark patches on the knees of his jeans and a rip in his T-shirt. His hair sticks up in peaks, like he’s spent the past few hours raking his hands through it, and the cut on his cheek is angry and red—deep enough that it might need stitches.

  He looks horrible, but he is still the single best sight I have ever seen.

  I launch myself across the space between us and throw my arms around him. I don’t lose all self-control—I’m careful not to touch bare skin—but I squeeze him so hard that the muscles in my arms shake.

  My relief is so strong that it takes me a long moment to realize he’s not squeezing me back.

  I step away.

  His expression is cold and remote. “What are you doing here?”

  The tone in his voice matches the look on his face, and I struggle to understand it. “Aunt Jet found your mom. She called the ambulance. They weren’t supposed to tell us anything because we’re not family, but a nurse said she was probably up here.”

  His eyes slide past me, to the ward beyond the locked door. “I should have made her stay at the hospital in Saint John, but all she wanted was to come back home and the doctors thought it would be okay. I should have known better . . . I’ve spent all this time running around, not watching her. I should have been there.”

  “Noah—it isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.”

  He lets out a sound that’s a little like a laugh, but it isn’t a laugh at all. “You’re right.” There’s something in his eyes that scares me. Something that’s bright and fierce and dangerous.

  Just like at Harding’s, though, I’m not scared of Noah; I’m scared for him and of what he might do.

  And because I’m scared for him, I reach out and touch his hand.

  Back at Harding’s, back in that basement, I saw Noah’s fear. This time, though, I try to go looking for something else. This time, I try to see desire. I try—

  Blood. Thick and tacky. Sticky on my hands.

  A pair of broken glasses and sightless brown eyes. Joey’s eyes.

  A low, ragged sound. A scream. I can’t tell if it’s Noah or Joey, I can’t . . .

  Noah yanks his hand away. “Stay out of my head, Cat,” he snaps.

  He moves to step around me, but I move, too, blocking his path. “Noah, even if you find Joey, you have to let the police deal with him. If you hurt him . . . They’ll throw you in jail. You won’t be able to do anything for your mom. You’ll lose everything. Do you think Riley would want that? Do you think he’d be able to stand it?”

  Noah’s eyes narrow. He stares at me in a way that is painfully familiar even though he’s never, ever looked at me that way before.

  He stares at me the way Lacey did that night in New York. The way Riley did the last time I saw him. Like there is something fundamentally wrong about me. Like I’m something monstrous.

  “What makes you think you have the right?” he says. “Down in that basement? Here? What makes you think you h
ave the right to slip inside my head?”

  An orderly—the same man I saw earlier—steps out of the ward and shoots us a curious glance as he walks past.

  Noah makes an almost visible effort to control himself until the man is out of sight. “You had no right, Cat.”

  “You asked me to do it.” My voice rises and breaks. I can’t help it. “You asked me to help you. You didn’t have any problem with me slipping into Skylar’s head or Harding’s. You practically asked me to touch every person in town. You even suggested I practice on you, remember? That day in the diner? ‘I’m a perfect guinea pig’—that’s what you told me.”

  “That’s different!”

  “How?”

  “Because it was to help find Riley.” He’s so angry that his voice is almost a shout. “This—what you just did, what you did in that basement—is different. You didn’t do it because you had to. You did it because you could.”

  In the distance, the elevator dings. A moment later, Aunt Jet rounds the corner. When she sees the look on my face, she stops.

  The hallway blurs, and I wipe roughly at my eyes. “It’s the same thing. What I did and what you asked me to do: it’s the same.”

  Noah shakes his head. His voice becomes a little softer, but somehow, that’s worse. “No. It’s not. All you had to do was ask me what I was scared of in that basement or what I want now. I would have told you. It’s different, and if you can’t see how, then I can’t explain it to you.”

  He steps around me. This time, I don’t try to stop him.

  I can’t tell whether or not he does it on purpose, whether or not he does it to hurt me, but as he passes, his arm brushes mine. I can’t tell, and in a way, it doesn’t matter.

  Noah’s anger at me is so strong that I don’t see anything at all when his skin touches mine. His anger is so strong that it drowns out everything else. Desire. Fear. Everything.

  I don’t know how long I stare at the door to the psychiatric ward after it swings shut. My head hurts—everything hurts—but it doesn’t matter.

  He hates me.

  Just like Riley.

  Just like Lacey.

  Eventually, Aunt Jet places her hand on my shoulder. “He just doesn’t understand. He can’t.”

  “No. He understands.” And maybe he’s right. Maybe what I did was wrong. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.

  “Oh, Cat.” Jet folds me into a hug. She’s careful to keep her hands away from my skin. Somehow, that makes everything worse—the fact that Jet could calm me with a touch but that maybe she knows it would be wrong. “It’s a gift, what you can do. I know it’s hard to believe sometimes, but it is. You’re like your grandmother. She could see so many things.”

  Ever since I arrived, Aunt Jet has been so careful not to admit what I am—what we are. Because she doesn’t want to upset Dad. Hearing her acknowledge it now feels so strange.

  It isn’t until she lets me go and steps back that I realize she called me Cat and not Mary Catherine.

  “Let’s go home, okay?” she says, rubbing a small, careful circle on my shoulder and steering me away from that locked door.

  I want to ask her if seeing things had ever done my grandmother any good, but I don’t. I know she’s trying to be kind.

  When we get home, she says something about how the police department treated me, about how Jensen abused his power, about how she’s going to get a lawyer—she seems to be blocking out the part where Noah and I actually did commit a crime. She doesn’t seem to notice that I don’t say anything. She doesn’t even notice when I don’t follow her inside.

  I walk to the end of the porch and sink down onto the old swing.

  I slide my hand to the underside of the bench, to a rough patch where we had carved our initials, Riley and me. I trace the letters and try to remember the way his voice had sounded on that last day.

  “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

  That’s how it had started. Five words as we sat next to each other on the swing.

  I thought about lying—just for a second. But I had never lied to Riley. “No.” I waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. Each second the silence stretched out, it felt like my heart beat a little faster. “Have you?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Gross.”

  “Gross,” I agreed, even though I was pretty sure I didn’t agree at all, even though the thought of what it might be like to kiss Riley had started slipping through my head when we were walking in the woods or hanging out on the porch or swimming in the river.

  Silence settled around us again. Riley had an open comic book on his lap—some old issue of an X-Men comic we found in the basement of Montgomery House—but it was taking him a long time to turn the pages. I pretended to be deeply engrossed in a game on my phone.

  “Cat?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to kiss you.”

  “Oh.” That was the only response I could manage. My head was too full of thoughts, and my heart was beating too fast. I set the phone facedown. My hand shook. Just a little.

  “Do you want to kiss me?”

  I had seen Riley blush before, but never like this. His whole face was red.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes: you want to kiss me?”

  “Yes, I would like to kiss you.”

  We twisted toward each other on the bench and then realized we were sitting too far apart. I scooted toward him. We stared at each other, neither one of us sure how to proceed. I licked my lips, and Riley watched as he leaned forward.

  “Wait—what if . . . ?” I shook my head. I wanted this. I wanted this so badly, but what happened if I saw something?

  “What is it?” He pulled back. The expression in his blue eyes was so concerned, so earnest, that I told myself I was being ridiculous. I had touched Riley before. More than once. Even if I did see something, it wouldn’t be that bad—it was Riley.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Everything’s okay.”

  He leaned forward again and pressed his lips to mine.

  Grape bubble gum, I thought. He tastes like grape bubble gum. I had just a second to wonder what I tasted like to him, if I tasted like the peanut butter and honey sandwich I’d had for lunch, and then I was sucked down—

  Hands gripped my shoulders, shaking me. Shaking me so hard it felt like the inside of my head was rattling.

  A smell flooded my nostrils. Sharp and sickening. “Why did you take it?” A face inches from mine. Eyes white with cobwebs. Veins turning black. The girl from the mill, but not really her, not anymore.

  She pried open my hand, and a silver disc fell to the floor. I tried to pull free, I tried . . .

  “Cat!” Riley’s face swam above me. I was on my back on the swing, and my head was in his lap. At any other time, I’d be mortified that my face was just inches from his crotch, but right then, the thought that maybe I should be embarrassed barely registered.

  I rolled away from him. Rolled off the swing. I crouched on the porch floor and gagged, but nothing came up. It felt like there was a spike being driven into my head.

  Riley crouched next to me. He reached for my arm, but I flinched away. “Don’t touch me. Please don’t touch me.”

  A stricken look flashed across his face.

  “You kept it,” I whispered. “Why did you keep it?”

  He shook his head, confused. “Kept what? What are you talking about?”

  “The medal. You told the police you dropped it.”

  Awareness dawned in his eyes. Awareness and fear. He rocked back up on his heels and pushed himself to his feet. Riley was almost never clumsy, but he stumbled a bit, like he was having trouble finding his balance.

  “Why would you keep it? Why would you want it?”

  He took a step back, away from me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He sounded scared, but that couldn’t be right. He couldn’t be scared of me.

  I pushed myself up. The pain in my head was
staggering, so strong that I had to use the swing and then the porch railing for support. “You have to tell someone. Your parents or Noah. You can’t keep it, Riley.”

  He shook his head and took another step back. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Why are you lying?”

  Something in his face changed. The fear became something harder. “I’m not lying. You’re just a freak. You’re a freak, and I’m glad you’re leaving.”

  He turned and started to walk away.

  “Wait—” I tried to go after him, tried to grab his sleeve, tried to stop him so that we could talk, but the pain in my head was getting stronger and stronger. It was always so strong back then, and it was almost like the emotions from the kiss had supercharged it. Something happened when I made a grab for his sleeve. I lost my balance. I hit him. It shouldn’t have been hard enough to hurt, but he was scared. He was scared of me. He tried to wrench himself away, but he was standing at the top of the porch steps.

  The drop wasn’t far—four feet, maybe five—but he fell badly and awkwardly, and even through the pain in my head, I swore I heard a crack.

  Other people were suddenly there. Aunt Jet. My father. Riley’s mom.

  “Broken,” I heard someone say.

  I turned and ran into the house, but I couldn’t outrun the way Riley had looked at me.

  He had stared up at me like I was something fierce and terrible. Like he was afraid of me. Like I was a monster for knowing he had taken that dead girl’s medal from the mill.

  We are the monsters . . .

  The words I had seen in Skylar’s head.

  Suddenly, I know why they were familiar.

  I had seen them before—with Riley and Noah. I had seen them the day we went to see the chimney swifts.

  Most of the outer buildings around the mill—warehouses, cottages for the overseers, row houses for the workers—had been razed to the foundations, but a few had still been standing, and Riley had been itching to see inside them.

  Noah agreed—as long as we looked in from the outside.

  The first building we came to hadn’t been all that large—not when you saw it in the shadow of the hulking mill, anyway. All of the windows had been smashed, letting in plenty of light. Old beer cans and cigarette butts littered the floor, and the walls were covered in graffiti. Someone had written Here there be monsters on the far wall in large, black spray-painted letters. Underneath, someone had scrawled We are the monsters in blue.