by Anna Carey
The thought of what was beyond the wall, beyond this…a life without so many limitations and rules and expectations. A life that was free of my parents and their lies. It wasn’t a choice now—I couldn’t stay caged.
I peered out from under the comforter. The sky beyond my window was a perfect, flat blue. The sun hit the clouds in this way that made them look like something you could eat. I wasn’t sure how many hours had passed. I’d drifted in and out of sleep, trying to dull my thoughts. At some point my parents came in and left a bowl of soup on my desk, but instead I reached for the bag of Twizzlers hidden in the back of my throw pillow. I ate them in pairs, satisfied by the chewy tug of each bite.
My room was mine, wasn’t it? I’d stuck each glow-in-the-dark star to the ceiling, re-creating the Big Dipper in the corner. I’d helped my mom pick out the lavender curtains and the wicker armchair and ottoman. I’d covered the corkboard above my desk with photos and a giant yin/yang sticker, and I’d hung my guitar on the wall beside it. I’d taped up the Romeo + Juliet poster myself. But when I saw the framed picture of me, Amber, and Kristen at Homecoming, or the bouquet Tyler had gotten me for the talent show, now dried and tacked to the wall…I wasn’t sure what was real.
The talent show hadn’t even been my idea—it had been my mom’s. She’d heard about it through one of her clients and kept telling me I should do it. Then my dad agreed, then Sara, and once I mentioned it to Amber and Kristen, that was it, it was over. Kristen said if I didn’t sign up she’d march over to the list outside the auditorium and sign me up herself. But how much had I really wanted it? Everyone had been so insistent, filling my head with a barrage of constant encouragement, it was hard to know where they ended and I began.
I heard the familiar sound of a car pulling into our driveway. Two doors slamming, one after another, and whispered words I couldn’t quite make out. The doorbell rang. My mom said something, and then I heard her footsteps on the stairs. I threw the pillow over my head.
“Jess, you have visitors,” she said. “Amber and Kristen want to see you.”
No one waited to hear what I wanted. Kristen barged in and sat down on the bed, throwing her arms over me, her long curly hair spilling everywhere. I didn’t bother to move the pillow. “Ohmygod, Jess,” she said. “We’re so sorry. So, so sorry.”
Amber knelt beside me. Her face appeared in the tiny window between the pillow and the folds of the comforter. “Come on, sit up. Talk to us. We brought you frozen yogurt with cookie dough.”
She waved the cup in the air, like just the smell of it could lure me out.
“I just want to sleep.”
“Jess, we’re worried about you,” Kristen repeated. “Please, talk to us. What happened? Sara, she’s really…I can’t believe it…”
I didn’t want to have some faux-emotional conversation. They were already poking and prodding me, wanting me to tell them every detail of the past day, to reveal my most devastating feelings. The audience needed to see me cry. They all did.
“We’re so sorry, Jess,” Amber repeated.
I pulled the pillow off and sat up. I was certain my hair was a mess, but I didn’t care.
“It’s just a lot to take in,” I said.
Kristen nodded, like she totally understood. Like she hadn’t spent the last eight years lying to me. Maybe it was just a job to her. Maybe she’d been plugging away like a worker on a factory line. Looking back, our entire relationship had existed Monday through Friday between seven a.m. and five p.m., and there’d been huge blocks of time when they were both unreachable. When I’d asked Kristen why she could never eat dinner over my house, she’d said she had food allergies, even though I’d seen her eat everything from cheesecake to pad thai. She and Amber were never online on the weekends, and we hardly ever spoke or saw each other after school unless it had been planned in advance, like when we visited Kristen at the diner. I’d never even had a sleepover with either one of them.
“I can only imagine how you must feel,” Amber said. “We thought she was stable. We thought she’d been doing better…”
“It all happened really fast.”
Kristen smoothed down the comforter with her palm. She pressed her finger into one of the small, lavender flowers. “Your mom called us. She’s worried about you.”
“Why? Because I haven’t broken down yet?” I couldn’t hide the edge in my voice.
“Well, yeah,” Amber said. “Kind of. She was your sister, Jess.”
Was she? Or was she just acting? I wanted to say. The words were right there. I had to fight to hold them in.
“I guess I’m still in shock.”
“That makes sense. But you know we’re here for you, right? We’d do anything for you, Jess.” Kristen squeezed my knee through the blanket. “Just ask.”
I stared at the CD case on the floor. There was one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about. Maybe it was just a coping mechanism, maybe I was just grasping. But if Sara hadn’t been sick, if she’d been completely coherent when she was talking to me, then why’d she bring up that park we’d gone to as kids? We’d been in her room, talking about the Harry Potter book, and she’d pointed to the picture of us rolling around in the grass. She’d asked me if I remembered going there. As many times as I’d replayed the conversation in my head, it didn’t make sense.
“There is one thing you could do,” I said. “Would you mind giving me a ride?”
22
“You’re joking.” Amber stared out the window at the tattered tarp. It was strung up between the fence and a lamppost. The gutter was clogged with broken beer bottles and soggy newspapers.
“No way. We can’t let you off here,” Kristen said. She hadn’t put the car in park yet. Instead she peered over the steering wheel, staring at the same homeless encampment Amber was looking at. There were two Toys “R” Us carts against the fence, right beside an office chair with a missing wheel.
I’d forgotten how bad it was on this side of town. The old library had been emptied out and turned into a used-car dealership, its high, open first floor now packed with dented Mazdas and dusty pickup trucks. The park was right next to it, and on the other side was a strip mall with a bail bonds place. The sidewalks were usually crowded with homeless people, some drinking forties out of paper bags, others sleeping under cardboard shelters, but now there was no one. The last time I’d been here was the night of the break-in. Kristen’s car had run out of gas, and we had to walk a mile to the Hess station at eleven o’clock at night. It must’ve been orchestrated, set up so I wouldn’t come back until after midnight, only to discover the first floor of the house had been robbed. This “bad neighborhood” on “the other side of the train tracks” was just another way to inject danger into our otherwise peaceful town.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Don’t wait for me.”
“Don’t wait for you?” Amber said, glancing around. “Have you completely lost it, Jess?”
“Sara and I used to come here when we were kids,” I said. “I just want to be alone right now.”
Amber turned back to Kristen, but neither of them responded. I crossed the sidewalk to where the park entrance should’ve been. It wasn’t obvious at first. Vines and weeds covered the front gate, and an overgrown tree spread its low, cracked branches along the fence. I had to dig to get to the wooden posts, and even then it took a few minutes to find the latch. The gate was locked. A rusty sign hung underneath the weeds, reading: DO NOT ENTER. PARK IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED.
Kristen finally turned the car around and left, but she was going five miles an hour, still watching me in the rearview mirror. The fence wasn’t that high, so I wedged my foot above some vines and hoisted myself over. It took a few tries to clear the top, and when I hit the ground on the other side the grass came up above my ankles. It wasn’t until I saw the playground, with its warped seesaws and rusted merry-go-round, that the memory of tha
t day finally came into focus.
The park had been full. Screaming kids and parents clustered around the sandbox, swapping stories. Ours had their backs to us as we crept higher on the swings. Sara jumped off in one long graceful arc, and then yelled for me to follow her.
How old had she been? Five, six?
I scanned the edge of the park, looking for the path she’d run down. I went through an arched trellis covered by vines. The tunnel was dark, the sun blocked by the thick mess of leaves above. As I neared the end I saw the statue Sara had mentioned—the stone fairy. She sat in the center of a fountain, wings tucked behind her back. Benches lined the large, square courtyard.
Catch me, Sara had yelled. Jess, you have to catch me! I’d chased her through the long tunnel and we’d spilled out on the other side. I’d tagged her once, and then the game turned on its head, with her chasing after me. We’d sprinted all the way to the edge of the woods. Sara stopped but I kept going, darting through the trees, trying to get away. When I was out of breath and could see her on the grass, waiting for me, I finally slowed down and rested against one of the trees. My palm ran along the smooth trunk. The brown plastic didn’t have a single variation to it. Even the leaves didn’t feel right.
The closer I went to the back of the park, the more trees were like that. I didn’t stop until I reached the cinder block wall. It was a towering, impenetrable thing. It must’ve been twenty feet high. At some point I heard my dad calling for me and I left. When I’d come out my parents were furious. They kept asking me where I’d been, told me I never should’ve gone in the woods alone. I knew I’d done something wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. I was eight or nine then. Old enough that I didn’t have to be with them every single second.
I wanted to find that exact spot outside the park, the place where the trees became different, fake, but a high chain-link fence had been put in at the edge of the courtyard. KEEP OUT, a sign said, a skull and crossbones right beneath it. When we asked to go back to the park, my parents had claimed it was closed, that the police had discovered a toxic dump site there.
Sara had been trying to tell me, she’d been trying to remind me. Everything I’d suspected was right, true. Why else would she have brought it up like that?
The courtyard was overgrown with weeds. Tall, wiry things that sprouted up in the cracks between bricks. The inside of the fountain was a dark, moldy green and scattered with dead leaves. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for until I followed the statue’s gaze. When I saw the bright flash of pink and purple I knew immediately what it was. One of Sara’s Lisa Frank stickers was on the ground, stuck to the top of a moldy brick.
I knelt in front of it. It was the same sticker she’d put in the CD case—a purple kitten sitting on a rainbow heart. The leaves and weeds around the brick had been cleared away, like someone had recently pulled it out.
It was impossible to know if I was still on camera. The park had presumably been empty for years now, so there wouldn’t be a need to have cameras here, and I knew Sara wouldn’t have chosen this spot if there were. But I’d made a mistake, telling Amber and Kristen exactly where we were going in advance. I should’ve just given them directions one street at a time. It was possible the producers had gotten here first and hidden one.
I sat down, trying to seem deep in thought. I peeled off my denim jacket and laid it on the ground, then reached my hand under it and maneuvered the brick free. It was a giant lump beneath my jacket, and I could feel a tin box right beneath it, but it was impossible to see what was inside. I’d found whatever Sara had left me. It was right here.
Frustrated, I peeled back the jacket. It was the Hello Kitty box I’d gotten Sara for her seventh birthday. It was still shiny and new, and when I opened it the missing lyric book was inside. A gray plastic knob sat on top of it.
I glanced over my shoulder, checking to make sure no one was there. I flipped through the lyric book. The pencil marks were subtle enough that I didn’t notice them at first. But she’d put a dot under random letters. When I started from the front, ordering the first letters HCN, it didn’t add up to anything. It was only when I flipped through from the back to the front that it worked. I pulled a pen from my bag and started writing each letter on my palm.
ARDEN PL
WHER U TGHT ME HOW TO RIDE BKE
RED HOUS
I kept copying the letters down, making my way to the front of the book. Arden Place, the cul-de-sac where we’d learned to ride bikes, was on the edge of town, maybe a twenty-minute walk from the park. There might’ve been a red house on it, but it had been so long since I’d been there that I couldn’t remember. They were clearly directions, though—she was telling me what to do.
MAPLE TREE BEHD TH—
I still had several pages to decode when I heard footsteps.
“What is that?” Amber’s voice was flat. “Jess, what are you doing?”
When I turned back she was just a few yards away, trying to see what I was holding. I could already feel how different it was between us, how something had changed. Amber had always floated through life in a way I’d never been capable of. It didn’t faze her when she got a B minus on her Calc final, or when Lizzy Hayworth spread rumors that she’d made out with some rando freshman. Nothing could get to Amber…except maybe this. Her mouth was twisted to one side and she kept working at the corner of it with her teeth. She knew that I knew.
“Jess, we’re all worried about you. Why don’t you come here and give me whatever that is. Whatever you found.”
“Who’s we?” I asked.
The question hung in the air between us. We wasn’t just Kristen and Amber. It was my parents, it was the producers, it was all the people who relied on me to keep the show going. I shut the box and shoved it in my purse. I grabbed my jacket, trying to gather myself up off the ground. She was already coming across the courtyard, closing the distance between us.
23
Amber put herself between me and the exit. She held up both hands in front of her.
“Look, Jess, I’m sure this is a really painful time,” she said. “You must be really confused. But I’m worried about you. Kristen’s worried about you.”
“I’m sure you are,” I said.
When I took a few steps to the right she mirrored me, blocking my way out.
“What did you find?” she asked, nodding to my bag. “What is it?”
“You must have an idea. Otherwise you wouldn’t have followed me in here.”
“I followed you because you demanded to be dropped off in some creepy neighborhood with drug addicts on every corner,” Amber said. She gestured around the abandoned park. “Jess, this is not normal.”
“Bullshit.”
Amber jerked her head back like I’d hit her. “Excuse me?”
“I said it’s bullshit, what you’re saying is bullshit,” I couldn’t stop myself now, I didn’t care if anyone saw or heard. My hands were trembling and it was hard to hold onto the box. “You want us to be normal again? Tell me the truth. Just this once, tell me everything.”
Amber just stood there, and for a moment I actually thought she hadn’t heard what I’d said. Finally her expression softened, and she met my gaze. Her eyes were wet. She crossed her arms tight against her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice so low I could barely hear her. “I’m doing my best. Please, just give me the box and we’ll take you home.”
She wasn’t going to give anything up. Even now, knowing that I knew, she still wanted things to be how they’d always been. But I wasn’t the same person I was three days ago. Nothing would ever be the same.
I swung my purse around to the front of my body and unzipped it, my hand resting on top of the box. Just when her eyes were fixed on it, I darted back toward the right, where the trellis was. I was quick enough to gain a small lead.
“Jess! Stop!” she yelled af
ter me.
I ran as fast as I could, through the tunnel covered in leaves, out past the rusted playground. I saw the fence up ahead. Amber was still running after me, and she was crying now. She whispered into a flat metal device, pressing it against the side of her face, and I realized it was the same thing that had fallen out of her bag that day in the locker room. It was some kind of phone. She paused, saying something to the person on the other end, and I hurled myself over the fence to the other side.
Kristen and Millie were at the curb, the engine still running. The Volvo faced the used-car dealership, so I went behind the back bumper and cut across the street, toward the bail bonds place. As soon as Kristen saw me she peeled out and did a U-turn.
“Jess! What happened to Amber? Jess?” She pulled into the strip-mall parking lot and waved out the window, as if I hadn’t noticed her. I took off around the side of the building, not stopping until I reached the road behind it. I tried to remember how to get to Arden Place.
“Excuse me, young lady? Would you mind giving me directions?” a woman with stiff gray hair called from across the street. She had a grocery bag on her arm and she kept waving me down, like I hadn’t heard her. I might not have noticed before, but she was wearing a prosthetic nose, I was sure of it. They’d styled her hair in big curls, but I could tell it was the same woman who’d been our sub in band, the same one who’d played the nurse at the hospital.
“Sorry…” I doubled my pace, guessing at the right direction.
A pawn shop, a liquor store, and a supermarket I’d never been inside before. I was practically running when I turned the corner into a residential neighborhood. If I was right, Arden Place was north of here. A quiet, dead-end street—the last in a whole row of dead-end streets. But even if I made it, even if I found the red house Sara wanted me to find, what was next?
An elderly man stumbled out of a house up ahead. He was coughing, and as I got closer I noticed thick gray smoke streaming from an upstairs window. He looked familiar too, but I couldn’t place him.