Missing, Presumed Dead

by Emma Berquist

  Jane follows me and I pause, seeing the room through her eyes: hospital bed, plastic table, toothbrush, a small bottle of light green liquid that’s body wash and shampoo and doesn’t really get anything clean. I can’t take care of myself is what this place says. I keep my back straight, defiant as I sit on the bed and face her. This is me, the real me, for Jane to finally see. Maybe I’m fucked up and messy, but at least I’m being honest.

  “Why are you here, Jane?” I ask.

  She takes a deep breath. “What I did to you . . . I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to burn you like that.”

  “I know.” Does she think I blame her for this? This is my fault, all of it.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  “Don’t,” she says, holding out her hand. “Just don’t.”

  “Please,” I blurt out, standing up. “Give me a chance to explain.”

  “Explain?” She whips her hand down, takes a step toward me. “You missed your chance to explain every single day we spent together. I can’t believe I trusted you. That I liked you. That I—” She closes her eyes. “God, just looking at you makes me want to break something.”

  “I was afraid that you’d hate me,” I tell her, almost begging. “That you’d run, and I’d never see you again.”

  “You were right to be afraid.”

  I hug my arms around my middle, until the burns start to sting. “Jane, I was a coward, I know that. I should have told you the truth the moment I saw you in that alley.”

  “No, you should have saved me that night,” she yells.

  “I couldn’t,” I yell back.

  We stare at each other, both of us desperate and bloody and furious.

  “Tell me why,” Jane says finally, her voice harsh. “You want to explain, well, here’s the one and only chance I’ll give you. Five minutes. Tell me why you let me die.”

  I swallow hard, and nod. “Okay. Will you sit?” She doesn’t move. “Please?”

  Her jaw flexes, but she sits on the bed, as far away from me as she can get. It’s still close enough to feel waves of heat blowing off her body.

  “The universe . . . tends toward disorder,” I say, grasping for a way to explain.

  “What?” Jane snaps.

  “In thermodynamics, a change in a system that cannot be restored to its original state without expenditure of energy is called an irreversible process,” I say, the words memorized from a defunct textbook. “Heat flows from a hot body to a cold body and always will. You can’t unscramble an egg. Some things, once done, can never be undone. Once set in motion, can never be stopped. The entropy of the universe is always increasing.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jane says.

  “Neither did I, for a long time,” I tell her. “I just knew I was different. Like how I knew my mom was going to die at sixty-three, from a blood clot. Deda understood. He said the two of us were the same, but we weren’t like everyone else. And he made me promise that if I touched someone, never to tell them how they would die. But he didn’t tell me what would happen if I did.”

  There’s no mistaking the bitterness in my voice, and Jane sucks in a breath.

  “You tried, didn’t you?” she whispers.

  “I’m not a monster,” I tell her, my voice thick. “Whatever you may think of me. I never asked for this.”

  “What happened?”

  I close my eyes against the onslaught of memories, the hole inside me snarling. “Mrs. Kimble was my second-grade teacher. She let me eat lunch at my desk instead of the cafeteria, so I wouldn’t have to be around all those other people. She brought me her old National Geographics to read. She taught me the difference between stalagmite and stalactite.”

  “You tried to save her.” It isn’t a question.

  “I saw it the first time she patted my shoulder,” I say. “I knew when it was coming. I made her promise to wear her seat belt that day. I made her swear it.”

  I stop, because I don’t want to remember the next part.

  “What happened, Lexi?” Jane asks, and I shake myself. She wants the truth, and I owe it to her.

  “She made it home in one piece.” I try to keep my voice steady. “And at the exact moment she was supposed to wrap her car around a tree, my mom fell over in the kitchen. She never got up.”

  “Jesus.” Jane’s lip trembles. “But—you said your mom—”

  “It’s not how she was supposed to die,” I say dully. “I did that to her. I tried to interfere, and she paid the price. Just like my grandma did when Deda tried the same thing.”

  Jane stares at me, her eyes searching. “What happened to Mrs. Kimble?”

  I look down. “I bought her a week. No one escapes death for long. Some things, once set in motion . . .”

  “Lexi—”

  “I wanted to save you, Jane,” I say. “I want to save everyone. But it doesn’t work that way.” I meet her eyes, because this part she needs to understand. “You can’t outrun death. If you try to cheat it, it only comes back for more. It took my mother. It took my grandmother. Deda is all I have left. I can’t stop it. All I can do is get out of its way.”

  Jane stands up, backing away from me. I watch her retreat, watch her run away from me just like everyone else.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she asks.

  “Because I didn’t want you to look at me like you’re looking at me,” I say. “Like I’m the one who killed you.”

  “You’re not the one who killed me, Lexi.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “What do you mean, what difference does it make?” Jane says, throwing out her arms. “How can you say that?”

  “Because it doesn’t matter,” I yell. “You’re still dead, you, Trevor, Mrs. Kimble, all of you are still dead, so what does it matter? What is the point of this fucking thing I have if I can’t do anything with it? Is it just to make me suffer?”

  Jane stops in place, but I’m not watching her anymore.

  “I thought I could make it up to you somehow,” I say, more to myself than to her. “That if I helped you, maybe it would make up for not saving you. But I messed it up, didn’t I? I just wanted . . .” I sigh, trying to sort out the truth. “I don’t know. I just wanted.”

  A pair of black shoes enters my vision, and when I look up, Jane is standing in front of me. Her shirt is still bloody, but her eyes are brown, and they’re looking down at me.

  “Was that five minutes?” I ask.

  She lets out a watery laugh. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really keeping track.”

  “Thank you for coming here,” I say. “You deserved to know the truth.”

  She nods, then carefully sits down next to me. Her shoulder brushes mine, a small blast of heat.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should,” she says. “I almost didn’t. And I almost turned around, until I saw you. Then I knew. I didn’t want to leave things like that between us. I didn’t want that to be the last time we saw each other.”

  “Me, neither.” I find myself leaning into her and I have to push away.

  “It matters,” Jane says softly. “To me. That you helped me.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ve done a stellar job so far. That’s why your killer is still out there and I’m in a clinic.”

  “I don’t mean about that,” Jane says. “I mean the rest of it. You could have left me in that alley, and I would have become something awful. Something twisted. Being with you, talking with you, touching you . . .” She bumps my shoulder. “It means something to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “That I couldn’t save you. That you died like that. No one should have to die like that.”

  Jane blinks, looking at something I can’t see in the distance. “I’m angry,” she says. “Not at you, not anymore. But I’m angry. I’ll probably always be angry.”

  “Yeah, well.” I shrug. “I’m angry, too.”

  Jane smiles, almost, and silence stretches betwee
n us.

  “So what now?” I ask into the quiet.

  “Now we get you out of this place,” Jane says, glaring at the door to the room.

  I frown. “How did you find me, anyway? I never told Trevor where I was.”

  “Yeah,” Jane says with a wry smile. “But you told your grandfather.”

  I look up in surprise. “You went to see Deda?”

  “It took a long time for Trevor to calm me down. I couldn’t think straight, I just wanted to . . .” She pauses. “Hurt something. Someone. But Trevor wouldn’t let me. He held on to me, even when I fought him. I don’t want to think about what I would have done if he wasn’t there.”

  Trevor shouldn’t be strong enough to stop a murdered ghost, but nothing about Jane has ever been normal.

  “You would have stopped,” I tell her.

  Jane’s eyes are on my arms, her mouth tight. “I’m not so sure. That wasn’t me; that was that thing you found in the alley. I don’t know what she is, but I don’t trust her. And neither should you.”

  “You’re here now,” I point out. “You came back.”

  “Only because of Trevor,” she says. “I don’t even remember what he said. I think it was nonsense mostly, but it was like I was following his voice through the dark. And eventually I found the way out. Only you were long gone by then.”

  “So you went to Deda?”

  “Trevor said you disappeared sometimes, for days at a time. He didn’t know where you went, but he thought your grandfather would know. I swear, it was like he was expecting me.”

  I wince. “Yeah. I kind of made a scene over there.”

  “So I heard,” Jane says dryly. “I sat down and he just looked at me and said, ‘She’s at County Mental Health. Tell her not to scare Nancy again.’”

  “Sounds like Deda,” I say. “Did he say anything else?”

  “Yeah,” Jane says with a small smile. “He told me I should give you five minutes.”

  Her smile tugs at something in my chest, and I’m suddenly afraid. I can’t go down this road again, trying to fill myself up with Jane, trying to plug the hole with some sort of redemption. It hurts too much to lose it. And I will lose it again, when we find the killer, when Jane decides she’s ready to go. I can’t keep her forever.

  “Come on,” Jane says, taking my hand. “Let’s go home.”

  And I realize it doesn’t matter how much it’s going to hurt. I’ll follow her anywhere, because even when I’m burned and in a psych ward, Jane doesn’t hesitate when she takes my hand.

  “Wait,” I tell her as she stands up. “Just give me a minute, I have to take care of something.”

  17

  THE DOCTORS WANT ME TO STAY, BUT NOT ENOUGH to fill out the paperwork required to keep me here. I sign myself out and find Dr. Ted to tell him I’m leaving. He doesn’t make a fuss, though, not after I promise to start coming to see him for an hour every week. He even pats me on the back and says we’re “making good progress,” whatever that means.

  “Was it because of me?” Jane asks softly as we wait for the bus to arrive. “That you came here?”

  “No,” I tell Jane. “Not entirely. I came here long before I met you, and I’ll probably be seeing Dr. Ted long after you’re gone.”

  “Gone?” she asks. “Where am I going?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Buenos Aires? Paris? Istanbul? Wherever you go when you finally get sick of fires and palm trees. And there’s always . . .” I can’t bring myself to say it, because I can’t imagine a world without Jane, in whatever form.

  “Yeah. There’s always that.” She shakes her head. “But Trevor doesn’t leave. Not even LA.”

  “Trevor’s from Midland, Texas,” I tell her. “Los Angeles is his Paris.”

  The bus arrives in a cloud of exhaust and I cough as we climb on.

  “You know, I’ve never left California,” Jane says, sliding into the window seat.

  “Me, neither,” I say quietly, the bus loud enough to hide my voice.

  “My mom used to take me to the zoo in San Diego for my birthday,” Jane says. “And we went to San Francisco for a field trip. They took us to a fortune cookie factory, and they gave us bags of fortune cookies, but none of them had any fortunes in them. They were just these flat, crunchy disks.”

  The bus lurches forward, rush hour traffic still stopping up the roads.

  “We could go somewhere together,” Jane says. “Trevor, too. We could take a road trip, see all the places we’ve never been before.”

  I can almost picture it, Jane’s bare feet on my dashboard, Trevor yelling at me to change the music on the radio. We could go east, find a place where the sun isn’t always shining, spilling lies of happiness over everything. Then the bus jerks to a stop and the fantasy breaks apart in my mind. I can’t afford a trip, and my car would never make it across state lines.

  “Yeah,” I say lightly. “Maybe one day.”

  Trevor’s waiting for us inside and gives an exaggerated sigh of relief when he sees us.

  “Finally,” he says, looping his arms around our necks. “You two kids had me worried sick.”

  His voice is joking, but the hug goes on long enough to tell me he was scared.

  I dip my head a fraction so I can speak directly into his ear. “Thank you,” I say.

  I don’t know if Jane could have really gone through with it, but I know I wouldn’t have stopped it. Without Trevor, I would have let her kill me.

  He squeezes me hard, then lets me go.

  “So the gang’s all back together,” Trevor announces, gesturing widely with his hands. “First things first. Lexi, we voted and it’s two against one; you need to get a TV.”

  I roll my eyes, but I appreciate what he’s doing, trying to act like everything is normal. “Ghost votes only count as half a person,” I say.

  “That’s discriminatory,” Trevor argues.

  “When you start paying rent, you can start making demands,” I counter. “Play rock paper scissors if you need stimulation that badly.”

  Trevor groans as Jane flops onto the bed and my phone buzzes where I left it on my dresser.

  “I swear to god, it’s always something,” I mutter, answering my phone. “What? I’m not working tonight, Ilia; don’t even ask.”

  “I need a favor,” he says, his voice strained.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Who is it?” Jane asks.

  “I’m hanging up now,” I say.

  “You owe me, Lexi,” Ilia says. “You know you do.”

  I grit my teeth and count to three in my head.

  “What do you need?” I ask grudgingly.

  “A pickup,” he says. “Right now.”

  “Seriously, Ilia? Just call a car.”

  He gives a hollow laugh. “Not a good idea. You coming or not?”

  I sigh and run a hand over my hair. It’s getting longer, moving from fuzzy to spiky. I’ll need to buzz it again soon.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m coming.”

  “I’ll text you the address,” he says. “Come alone.”

  The phone goes dead, and I resist the urge to throw it against the wall.

  “What’s up?” Trevor asks, watching the expression on my face.

  “I have to go out,” I say curtly.

  “You just got home,” Jane says.

  “I know.”

  I grab a clean shirt from the floor and find a pair of jeans that aren’t stained and take them to the bathroom. I don’t have time to shower, but I wash off my face and peel off the clothes I’m wearing so I don’t smell like hospital anymore.

  “Where are you going?” Jane asks through the door.

  I bang it open and come out, kicking my dirty clothes aside.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “Ilia needs a pickup.”

  “Can I come?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know what the situation is, but it can’t be anything good. I’m just gonna pick him up, drop him off; it won’t
take long.”

  Jane walks with me to the front door, her brow creased.

  “Be careful,” she says. “And come right back.”

  “I will,” I say. I turn around at the door to face her and Trevor. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

  “Good,” Trevor says. “We can talk more about that TV.”

  I shake my head. “Can’t wait.”

  My phone lights up once I start the car; Ilia’s off Wilshire, near the ballroom venue downtown. I head south, rolling up the windows when I hit the freeway and the wind starts to chap my face. It smells wild out tonight, smoke and eucalyptus and gasoline. I still smell like cheap soap and starched sheets, and as soon as this is over I’m taking a shower and sleeping in my own bed.

  I pull up in front of a darkened car wash, the parking lot deserted, and check to make sure I’m in the right place. I cut the lights but not the engine, and then a dark figure slips by my window.

  “Jesus.” I jump as Ilia runs around to open the other door. “Make some noise next time.”

  “Go,” he says, sliding into the seat and slamming the door shut.

  I take a sidelong look at him; he’s dressed like me, in a black hoodie, and his arms are crossed over his chest as he slouches down. He has his hood pulled down low over his face, so I can only see his mouth and chin.

  “Go, Lexi,” he says.

  I flip the lights back on and pull out of the car wash, back onto the road.

  “You want tell me what’s going on, Ilia?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “Do you want to tell me what happened to your wrists?”

  I scowl and tug my sleeves farther down over the gauze. “No.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Yeah, well.” I shrug. “We’re square now.”

  “Can you drop me off at the complex?” he asks. “You remember how to get there, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I mutter. Ilia lives in Echo Park like most of the others, in a boxy apartment not much nicer than mine.

  I stop at a red light and take another glance at him. He’s still got his arms crossed, his shoulders hunched.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. “Are you hurt?”