by Marissa Lete
“So what do you say about that haunted house tonight?” he asks. I stop in my tracks, listening.
“I don’t know. I’m sad to admit, but I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat,” my echo admits. It’s a lie, of course, but an expected one. I had to find some excuse not to go to a loud place, I guess.
“That’s what I’m here for. I’ll save you from the monsters,” Maverick teases. My echo laughs.
“Yeah, but still…” I trail off.
“It’s not that scary, honest. And we can leave if you decide you don’t want to go in,” Maverick assures.
“I’m not sure…”
“Hey,” Maverick’s voice goes serious. “Do you trust me?”
I count one, two, then three seconds before I hear my reply. “Of course I do.”
“Then what do you have to worry about?”
“Okay fine. I’ll go with you. But no promises I’ll go inside,” my echo finally gives in.
“That’s fine with me,” Maverick replies, and our footsteps start back towards the kitchen.
Later that night, I hear the echo of me and Maverick leaving the house between doorbell rings. I feel strange, like I should be leaving, following the sound, taking part in the echo. But after what happened the last time I tried to follow myself on a date, I know that it’s not the best course of action. So instead, I stay inside, taking turns with my parents passing out candy to kids, wondering what the night was like for my past self one year ago. I don’t remember going out that night, but I do remember having Mom’s meatballs. When I try to remember how I spent the latter part of the evening, my memory comes up blank.
Toward the end of the night, I finally work up the courage to ask my Mom a question. “Do you know anyone named Maverick?”
Mom’s sitting on the couch across from me. She yawns, flipping through the channels on TV. “Not that I can think of, why?”
“I just… heard the name somewhere, is all,” I tell her, feeling disappointed. Mom not remembering Maverick isn’t helping my case.
Mom looks over at me, like she wants to ask more about it, but decides against it.
“What about that house across the street? To the right of Kate’s. Do you know who lived there before?” I press.
“To the best of my knowledge, it was foreclosed a while ago, years before we moved here,” Mom replies. “Why? Have you been… you know…?” Mom trails off. I can fill in the blanks for her: hearing things?
“It’s not important,” I reply, shaking my head. I get up from the couch.
“You know you can talk to me, if you need to,” Mom tells me as I’m walking away.
I turn to look at her for a second, a sad smile pulling at my lips. “Thanks, Mom,” I say, wishing that I could just talk to her, and come clean about everything I’ve heard lately. But I don’t, because I’m afraid of what might happen if I do. Will I finally be able to put the puzzle pieces together, or will I only end up with more questions?
Chapter 15
The next day at school, Leo appears at the lunch table, setting down his tray in front of me. I blink in surprise.
“Before you say anything, I already know I’m an idiot,” he says.
“Leo—” I start.
“Don’t even try to deny it. I was stupid to think…” he closes his eyes. Sighs.
“I had no idea,” I tell him.
“It doesn’t even matter anymore.” He shakes his head.
“You don’t know that,” I say. I think of all the times I’d heard Leo and Grace bickering about random things. How they frustrated each other but were always best friends at the end of the day. They’d be a good match.
“I do know that Grace is probably never going to speak to me again.”
“You and me both,” I reply. “I’m pretty sure I actually ruined her life.”
“For now. When things go south with Andy again, she’ll come around.”
“Is it bad for me to hope it will happen soon?” I ask.
“If it is bad, then I’m the worst.” He pauses, pushing a piece of salad around on the plate with his fork. “I just hope I didn’t screw everything up with her.”
“I doubt it. She’ll come around, like you said,” I tell him, hoping he’s right. She can’t just throw away an entire year of friendship like that. Right?
“Maybe to you. But I made things weird. I can’t ever take it back,” he replies. It dawns on me that he’s probably also wondering if she’ll ever want to be more than friends with him.
It’s an interesting thought, Grace and Leo dating. I’m not sure how that might change our friend group. Would it be more fun, or would I always feel like a third wheel?
The thought of dating leads me to Maverick. The boy that only seems to exist in the echoes of the past. And a name tag. And maybe a vase. But what other evidence do I have that he exists?
The lady at Coffee and Cream, perhaps. She had recognized me that day when I ran in there to escape the person chasing me. Either that, or she thought I was someone else. But the fact that she knew I’d ordered cookie dough ice cream makes me think that it wasn’t just a weird mistake. And I’d been so frazzled from the whole ordeal, I hadn’t thought about going back to talk to her. If she remembers me, even from what could be months ago, maybe she remembers Maverick, too. Maybe she can lead me to him.
I look directly at Leo, a new idea crossing my mind. “Do you want to grab some ice cream with me after school?”
Leo narrows his eyes. “If this is your way of asking me on a date, I don’t think you understand what happ—”
“Ha, ha,” I cut him off, rolling my eyes. “No. I just need to go do something. Distract myself from all this drama.”
Leo shrugs. “I mean I guess if you want to. You know I’m always down for food.”
I sigh in relief. I don’t want to end up alone downtown again, being chased by a stranger.
So half an hour after school, Leo and I push through the doors of Coffee and Cream and the deep, rich smell of coffee fills my nose. No one is in the shop beside us, but I can hear a conversation at the back of the shop mixed with the sound of a child laughing. The noise must be a few years old, however, because it’s low and so muffled that I can’t make out any of the words.
Good. Nothing to distract me from getting answers.
No one is at the counter when we get there, but after a few seconds, the door to the back room opens up. My heart speeds up when I recognize the girl walking in our direction.
“Hello,” she says, a flash of recognition crossing her face when she sees me. She looks over to Leo, then back at me. “How can I help you?” she asks, avoiding my eyes. I glance at the nametag pinned to her shirt. Elle.
“I’ll have the usual,” I say. Elle blinks at me, nods, then turns to Leo. She knows what I’m talking about. She recognizes me again, meaning it probably wasn’t a mistake the last time.
“And you?”
Leo stares at the menu for a minute. “Chocolate chip mint. Double. In a cup.”
“Sounds good,” Elle replies, then walks over to the back counter to get our order ready. When she pulls out a waffle cone and scoops cookie dough ice cream onto it, I realize how close I might be to finally getting answers. She passes my cone across the counter, then goes to scoop Leo’s.
“Come here often, then?” Leo asks me.
“I guess I do,” I reply, worried that it might be true. What happens if this girl—Elle—confirms Maverick’s existence? How do I explain my lack of memory and the fact that no one else seems to remember him either?
When Elle comes back to hand Leo his ice cream, I almost fire all of my questions that second, but I hold back, remembering that none of it will make any sense to Leo if I do it in front of him.
After we pay, I lead us to the opposite end of the shop and sit down at the table. I wait a couple of minutes before making my move. “I need to get some napkins,” I tell Leo, then stroll over to the front of the shop. Elle has already gone to the back room again, an
d although I can clearly see the napkin dispenser along the counter, I ring the bell. I just hope that Leo doesn’t question it.
When she comes out, I take a deep breath.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” I ask. She eyes me suspiciously but nods. I move closer to the counter, my voice low. “Last time I was in here, you recognized me. You said that I hadn’t been here in months, right?”
Another nod.
“Here’s the deal,” I say. I’d rehearsed this story a hundred times since I came up with it at lunch, but I still hesitate before I continue. “I was in a car accident recently, and I got a bad case of amnesia.” The story almost doesn’t feel like fiction, because amnesia would explain a lot of what’s happening. “I don’t really remember much from the past… well, year of my life. And I was just hoping you could help me clear up some things since it seemed like you knew something I didn’t.”
I watch, my heart pounding in my chest, as Elle’s expression changes from confusion to shock to realization. “Oh my gosh,” she says, putting a hand to her mouth.
I wait, trying to listen over the blood rushing in my ears.
Finally, she speaks. “So you don’t remember anything? Ever coming here? With that boy?”
My heart stampedes in my chest at the word boy. “No,” I barely manage to say.
She covers her face with her hands. “This is so tragic.”
I don’t know how to respond, so I wait.
“Listen, I don’t know much, honestly. I’m probably not the best person to ask.” She shakes her head.
“I need someone to tell me. Please,” I beg. I don’t have to fake my desperation.
She sighs, nods, then starts talking. “It started last year around this time, I think. You and this guy started coming in here every week, it seemed. You’d always get a scoop of cookie dough on a waffle cone, and he’d always get a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. Even when it got hot outside.”
I blink, trying to process what she’s telling me. “Got hot outside?” is all I can say.
“Yeah. You two were, like, so in love. You’d come in here and sit down for hours, just talking. But then, maybe around June, you just stopped coming. I didn’t see you again until the last time you were here.”
A string of chills runs through my body, from my neck down to my toes. “June?” I choke out. June, as in four months ago? As in, eight months after meeting Maverick for the first time?
“Yeah. It didn’t even cross my mind that y’all might not be together anymore. You seemed so… happy. I thought maybe you’d gone away for the summer or something.”
I have to focus to control my breathing. “What happened to him?” I say, barely above a whisper.
Elle gives me a pained look. “He wasn’t in the accident with you, was he?”
I breathe in slowly. There was no accident. There is no explanation. He’s gone, vanished from my life, leaving nothing behind, not even a memory of him. Except for this girl, in this random coffee shop that I’d never have stumbled into if I hadn’t been chased that night. Why would she remember, when neither I, my parents, or even Tony can remember him? None of it makes any sense.
“I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea you—” Elle begins to say, but I cut her off, feeling my eyes starting to water.
“Thank you for telling me,” I choke out, then turn around. It takes everything I have to pull it together as I walk back to Leo.
“I thought you were going to grab some napkins?” Leo asks as I sit down across from him. He glances up, then frowns. “Are you okay?”
I stare down at my melting cookie-dough ice cream cone. “I’m fine,” I say.
“Look,” Leo shakes his head, “everything’s gonna be okay with Grace, just give it some time.”
I nod, wishing he knew that there was so much more going on in my life. “I think I should get home,” I tell him.
Leo nods and doesn’t say another word to me as we exit the shop. He gives me a small wave as he walks past my car towards his own, and then I drive home in silence.
✽✽✽✽✽
That night, I can’t sleep, something that’s becoming a recurring pattern in my life. I pace back and forth in my room for hours, thinking I might eventually tire myself out, but every time I lay back in bed, I end up just staring at the ceiling, wide awake. Over and over I try to make everything make sense, but I can’t. The ice cream girl had seen me and Maverick coming into her shop for months. And then, in June, we’d just… stopped. What had happened in June? Would I have to wait until then, listening to these echoes for months, to find out? The idea sounds like torture.
Sometime around two in the morning, I’m pacing around my room again when I pause by the window, peering out at the street. I do a double-take when I realize that there, sitting in the driveway of the house that’s been abandoned—Maverick’s house—is a car. I can’t exactly see it very well through the dark, but the dark shape of it is unmistakable.
My heart skips a beat. Someone is there, right now. Could it be him?
I don’t even think about it, I just move, grabbing my coat, rushing downstairs, and slipping on my shoes. Then I’m quietly opening the front door, slipping outside into the cold night air, moving towards the house.
When I get closer, the car in the driveway becomes more visible in the moonlight, and my stomach drops. It’s a black sport’s car. I don’t recognize the brand or model, but it looks exactly like the one that showed up the night of the Halloween dance.
When I get even closer, I see that the entire right side is crushed. I pause, the pieces falling into place. This could be Maverick’s car. He could have been the one protecting me from the Suburban chasing me. If we were so in love like Elle had explained, then it would make sense that he’d want me to be safe. Right?
But, then, who was chasing me? And more importantly: why?
Slowly, I creep closer to the house. I crouch down as I get to the front, not wanting whoever’s inside to see me. I step past the bushes covered in slowly dying yellow flowers, peering at the front. The door has a padlock on it, the same kind I’d seen on houses that have been foreclosed. The blinds in the windows are drawn, and I can’t see anything inside, not even a hint of light.
I slowly shuffle across the front of the yard, making my way to the side, then the back of the house. Whoever parked the car must have gotten inside somehow, and I intend to use the same point of entrance.
At the back, I crouch as I move past each window, trying to see inside. Eventually, I spot what I’m looking for: just past the padlocked back door, a window is wide open with the screen on the ground beside it. The glass is broken through in one corner, a hole just big enough for someone to reach their hand inside and unlock the window.
I sit crouched a few feet away from it, contemplating. If I go, I could run into whoever is inside. If it’s Maverick, I might be able to get some answers. But if it’s someone else, or if Maverick isn’t the sweet, fun guy he sounds like in the echoes…
I shake the thought away. I’m willing to take that risk more than anything right now.
So I wait just outside the window for a few minutes, listening. There’s no noise coming from inside, not even from the past. When I peer into the house, I don’t see any movement, so I throw a leg over the window sill and slip inside.
It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when they do, I’m surprised by what I see. I’m standing in the living room, and instead of being empty like I’d expected the abandoned house to be, it’s full of furniture. Couches, a TV, end tables, and lamps are scattered across the room. Further down, the kitchen and dining room look pretty well furnished, too. Almost as if someone is still living here, or, I suppose, like they had to leave in a hurry without taking anything with them.
After I take it all in, I move deeper into the house. The echoes are just as quiet as the house is right now, and I’m sure I could hear a pin drop from across the room. My eyes are peeled, looking for any sign of
movement, and I’m crouched low to the ground. But as I move from kitchen to bathroom, I don’t see any signs of life.
Eventually, when I’m sure that the downstairs is empty, I creep over to a staircase I’d passed earlier, listening for any sounds from up above. When I’m sure nothing is coming, I quickly and quietly climb the staircase, pausing at the top to look around before I go any further. The upstairs opens into a hallway with three doors, two on the right and one on the left. The door on the left is slightly ajar, so I slide towards it, peering inside.
It’s a bedroom. A glance around tells me that no one is here, either, so I slip inside and take in my surroundings. A queen-sized bed stands in the center of the room with a dark plaid comforter spread on top. In the silence, I can hear an echo of someone breathing softly on the bed, probably sleeping. Who was it? Maverick?
There’s a bookshelf next to a dresser on one side of the room, and on the other, a desk and an office chair. I walk over to the desk, noticing a stack of papers on it as I get closer. In the dark, I can barely make out the letters that form the words, “Argumentative Essay,” at the top of the first page. It looks like a school assignment, so my eyes are immediately drawn to the top left corner.
I try to control my breathing as I read the name at the top.
Maverick Schall.
A sudden noise cuts through the darkness, startling me. Downstairs, it sounds like a window being closed. I wait for a second before I go to the bedroom window and make a small gap in the blinds to see out of. I can see the driveway, the little black car still parked there. After a few seconds, a figure appears from the side of the house, walking toward the car. I spring into action, exiting the bedroom and rushing down the stairs. I can’t let him leave. I need answers.
When I get to the window I’d climbed through earlier, it’s closed. The screen is replaced and the only sign that it was ever tampered with is the small hole in the corner of the glass.
I throw it open, kicking out the screen with as much force as I can muster. When I finally get outside, I break into a sprint, whipping around the side of the house.