Gone

by Lisa McMann

Smiles to himself and shakes his head a little as he goes to the stove to make dinner. “God, I freaking love you,” he mutters.

  6:56 p.m.

  Cabel pulls up to the building. Janie peers out the window and then checks the orange paper. “Yep, this is it.” She’s nervous. Not sure about this. “Can you just hang out here for about five minutes in case, you know, this isn’t cool?”

  “Sure, sweets. If I’m gone when you come out, just text me. I’ll come right back.” He gives Janie a reassuring squeeze on her thigh and kiss on the cheek. “I’ll probably just head down to one of the bookstores around here. Maybe drive through campus and take a walk around.”

  “Okay.” Janie takes a deep breath and gets out of the car. “See you.” She walks, determined, to the door. Doesn’t look back. Doesn’t see Cabel pick up the orange paper from the seat where she left it. He reads it. Smiles.

  7:01 p.m.

  A dozen people mill around the room, getting coffee and chatting. Mostly adults, but a couple of people who look to be about Janie’s age. Janie steps into the room, feeling awkward, not sure where to stand. Slowly she backs up to a wall and just looks around, a fake smile on her face, trying not to make eye contact.

  “Welcome,” says a stocky, middle-aged man as he walks up to Janie. “My name is Luciano.” He holds out his hand.

  Janie takes it. Shakes it. “Hi,” she says.

  “Glad you came. Have you been to Al-Anon before?”

  “No—this is my first time.”

  “Don’t worry. We all have something in common. Let me get this thing started.” Luciano turns to the room and calls out for everyone to grab a seat at the table. Janie makes her way, and a young man offers Janie some coffee. Janie smiles gratefully and accepts, adding her traditional three creams, three sugars.

  The small group quiets down and Luciano speaks. “Welcome to Al-Anon. For those who are new here, this is a support group for people who are dealing with the effects of an alcoholic on your life.” He looks at the young man across the table. “Carl, would you like to lead today’s meeting?”

  Janie listens intently to the introduction and testimonial from a woman at the table who talks about her alcoholic, abusive father. After that, Carl leads a discussion about one of the twelve steps.

  It feels good to know she’s not alone.

  And that Dorothea’s drinking isn’t Janie’s fault.

  When it is over, Janie takes some literature from the racks. She slips out of the room, texting Cabe that she’s ready, and she goes outside into the cool evening. Thinking. Realizing a ton of stuff about her mother. And feeling, for the first time, that part of the stress of her life, part of the responsibility, has been taken away. It feels fabulous, actually.

  Wonders why she never thought about doing this before.

  8:31 p.m.

  They tool around the U of M campus, first by car, then on foot, wandering through the parks and around the various buildings, Cabel pointing out what he knows about where things are and how to get there. It feels weird, and fun, and daunting, like a strange adventure, wandering the campus of such a huge school. Soon, they’ll be a part of it all.

  They stop for ice cream at Stucchi’s and laugh for what feels like the first time in a long time.

  When Cabel drops Janie off, she kisses him sweetly, holds him close. “I’m really happy about our agreement,” she says.

  “Me too.” Cabe says. “So . . . tomorrow . . . ” He sounds reluctant.

  “Yes?”

  “I need some junk for school. I suppose, against my better judgment, we should go shopping.”

  Janie grins. “Sweet,” she says. “I’ll bring a fork in case it all gets to be too much for you and you need to stab your eyeballs out.”

  He laughs. “It would be ironic if I went blind before you did, wouldn’t it?”

  They share a wry smile. A lingering, soulful kiss.

  11:05 p.m.

  When Cabe pulls out of the driveway, Janie walks slowly to the house and sits down on the step. Just thinks about things, and things, and things.

  Like the time Cabel brought her to this step on his skateboard.

  And she thinks about Miss Stubin, and how she never actually had a chance to say good-bye. She’s glad for the note on the chair.

  She thinks about Captain, and her eyes get misty. Family, she’d said.

  It’s good to have family like that.

  Janie turns Henry’s ring so it catches the glow from the streetlamp. The ruby sparkles. She makes a fist. Presses the ring to her lips. Holds it there. Then lifts it up to the sky. Says, “Hey, Henry . . . ” and stops, because her throat hurts too much to go on.

  Janie listens to the crickets and tree frogs—or wires—buzzing in their last days of summer, before the sounds of crunchy leaves take over once again.

  She thinks about her mother in a different way. A new way, tonight. Plans on going back to another Al-Anon meeting. Might even share her own story sometime. If she feels like it. Or not. No rash decisions. No big commitments. Each day as it comes.

  Janie takes a deep breath and feels the briskness of the night filling her lungs. She sits a moment more on the step, and then eases to her feet and peers into the house through the kitchen window, pushing her face against the dusty old screen, wrapping her hands around her glasses to shield against the glare from the streetlights. Streams of soft light from the window cut diagonally across the kitchen.

  The box of memories is gone.

  So is the cake.

  Janie laughs quietly, but inside, she aches a little. For a moment, she left all this trouble behind. And now here she is again, and will be, for a while at least.

  It’s hard to get excited about that.

  But life goes on.

  Everything progresses in one direction or another. Relationships, abilities, illnesses, disabilities. Knowledge.

  School. A new life where few will know her. Where few will call her narc girl. But where many will dream.

  She sighs.

  One day at a time. One dream at a time.

  Her choice is made. For now. For today.

  “This is it,” she whispers to the buzzing wires. “This is really it.”

  The chill of the evening, the preamble to autumn, has arrived, and Janie rubs her bare arms, covered in goose bumps.

  It’s exhausting to think about it all. Quietly, she goes inside. Locks the door behind her. Slips off her shoes and tosses her backpack on the couch. But before Janie says a last good night tonight, she has just one more task in mind.

  She pads on bare feet down the short hallway in the quiet night.

  And pauses at the portal to another world.

  There’s just one more sorrow’s dream to change.

  BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

  Lisa McMann presents

  Janie—the way Cabel sees her . . .

  October 14, 2005, 10:05 a.m.

  “Good luck,” he says, his voice harsh. Cabel Strumheller shoves his way past classmates and off the bus, and enters the hotel in Stratford, Canada. Fuming. Still shaking a little. Eyes to the ground, not wanting to accidentally look at her, see if she’s coming.

  He goes straight to his room and flops on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Three other guys let themselves in. They rummage around the room for a few minutes, but Cabe barely looks at them, barely acknowledges their presence. They don’t talk to him, either. What else is new?

  Once his weekend roommates are gone, off to see the first play, Cabel rolls over on the hotel bed to think about things.

  About Janie Hannagan, and what exactly happened on the bus for the past four hours.

  About what the hell is wrong with her, and how she managed to get inside his dream.

  He slams his fist in the pillow. Can’t get the nightmare to stop.

  Cabel stands on the steps at the back door of his house, hand on the knob of the open door, looking in. Then he slams it shut and marches through the dry, yellow grass. His dad burst
s out the door after him, yelling, standing on the step, carrying a beer and a cigarette in one hand, a can of lighter fluid in the other. His dad screams at him, and Cabel turns, frightened of the towering man. He freezes as his father approaches. The man sprays Cabe’s clothes with the lighter fluid.

  Sets Cabe on fire.

  Cabel flops around on the ground in flames, screaming, pain searing through him, the fire blistering his skin. And then, with a furious roar, he transforms into an enormous monster with knives for fingers and he lunges for his father with only one goal in mind.

  Killing him.

  That’s how it starts—the nightmare Cabe has had for years. That, or some form of it. It changes a bit each time. Cabel can’t imagine a worse nightmare.

  But that’s not even the part that’s bothering him. Not now. He’s packed away all those emotions, thank you very much. That nightmare he can handle.

  But what happened on the bus? That was just crazy. Because this time, asleep sitting next to Janie, he actually watched himself have the nightmare. As if he were an onlooker to someone else’s dream.

  And Janie was there, too, behind the shed in the backyard with Cabel.

  Watching.

  Watching Cabel’s dream play out as if they were right there, in it.

  And then afterward, when he woke up, seeing the shock in her face too—it was like a confession, and she didn’t try to deny it.

  He knows her. Knows where she lives. Casually, not weird like a stalker or anything. They’d ridden the bus together since middle school, back when Cabe was a grade ahead of her. Back before his dad messed up Cabe’s life.

  But Cabe doesn’t want to think about that now. Doesn’t want to think about his dad ever again. He’s done with that. Done with him.

  Still, the nightmare he had on the bus is fresh. He didn’t think he was still having that one. But now he knows he has been.

  And he’s not the only one who knows that.

  The monster man roars and runs away from the house, back toward the shed. There’s a girl back there. Janie. The girl he always dreams about.

  The monster man growls. He sees her.

  She squeaks and closes her eyes, her back pressed up against the shed, as if she’s trying to melt into the siding.

  And then the monster transforms, back into Cabel. He looks at the girl, so sorry, so very sorry for scaring her. Wanting her to see him like nobody else ever does. The guy that nobody really knows. When she opens her eyes and sees him, she steps toward him.

  He touches her face.

  Leans in.

  Kisses her.

  She kisses him back.

  “Ugh,” he says, remembering how the nightmare ends. Squeezes his eyes shut, trying to figure it out. Trying to understand how Janie Hannagan managed to see all of that.

  “She’s a freak,” he says slowly. “Psychotic. What if she’s an alien?” Cabe shakes his head. He’s seen enough weird stuff to know that weird stuff really happens. Not much surprises him anymore. And after what just happened, thinking Janie might be an alien or at the very least, psychic, isn’t much of a stretch. Is she dangerous, though? He thinks she might be.

  He feels the paranoia coming, lets it wash over him. Was she spying on him? How long has she known that he dreams about such awful things? And that he dreams about her? It’s embarrassing. And now, quite possibly, after four hours riding together in the freaking middle of the night, she knows the dreams and nightmares of half the people on that bus.

  But why are they oblivious when he’s not? Why aren’t they confronting her?

  Is he just imagining this?

  He can’t figure it out.

  He saw her on that bus. For hours, on and off, she shook. Out of control, like a multitude of seizures. She’d begged him to keep quiet about it after the first episode, made him promise her he wouldn’t get help, wouldn’t tell a soul, no matter how many more times it happened. He saw how she was too weak to get food when they stopped at McDonald’s. Watched her helplessly. She looked terrible. Would anybody subject herself to that on purpose?

  But she got inside his psyche, where nobody else could ever go. Where he doesn’t want anybody to go. And it’s scary. What is she?

  He hasn’t felt this vulnerable in a long time.

  Cabel shakes his head.

  He thinks about the first time she noticed him at the neighborhood bus stop on the first day of junior year. It was funny then—they’d ridden the same bus for a few years, but he’d never seen her even glance his way.

  He’d heard what Carrie Brandt had said to Janie back then while they waited for the bus to come. Lookie, it’s your boyfriend. And Carrie laughed. God, that was embarrassing. Janie shushed Carrie, but then she started laughing too.

  Cabe sat behind them on the bus to school that day. Pretended to sleep so he could overhear. In case they were going to make fun of him even more.

  But they didn’t.

  Not Janie. Not ever again.

  He caught Janie’s eye once or twice after that, and she didn’t look away in disgust or anything. But they didn’t speak.

  When the homecoming dance approached, Cabe thought fleetingly about asking her. Ha. Yeah, right. No way she’d go with him. He was a total loser. The only group that accepted him was the Goths. And they take anyone.

  He almost didn’t even go to the dance, but the guys were going to hang out, so what the hell, right? He never even went inside the gym. He just loitered outside the back door with the guys, smoking, and thinking about how he should quit now that he was getting his life figured out. And wondering if Janie was inside.

  When the door flew open, nobody saw it coming. The doorknob gutted him before his foot could stop it. Took his breath away for a minute. Searing pain. He doubled over. His friends laughed. Why not? It was funny for them, he supposed.

  But his eyes stayed on her as she flew out of there as if on a mission in the dark, cool evening, heading down the same street Cabe had walked dozens of times a year, every time he missed the bus.

  She wobbled on high heels like she’d never worn them before. It was a long walk home, and not very pleasant—it was getting cold and the farther away from school, the worse the neighborhood got. Once Cabe got his breath back, he eyed his skateboard. Maybe now was his chance. He adjusted his beanie, shoved his bangs up under it a little so he could see. Lit another cigarette and smoked it slowly, his fingers shaking just a little.

  “You going after her?” one of the guys, Jake, asked him.

  “Maybe,” Cabe said coolly. He took another drag and let it out slowly, then crushed the butt with his shoe and grabbed his board. “Yeah.”

  “I’m coming,” another guy said. “Curfew.”

  “Me too,” said another.

  Cabe took a breath and frowned in the dark. “Whatever.”

  Before he could change his mind, he tucked his board under his arm and they set out.

  It took several minutes to catch up to her on foot, and for a short time he thought he’d lost her. She’d abandoned the high heels by now, but the neighborhood was deteriorating rapidly as they moved toward the crappy side of town, where both Cabel and Janie lived.

  He saw her tense up as the three approached. The two guys laid their boards down and she froze. Cabel cursed under his breath. He didn’t mean to freak her out.

  “Jeez!” she said. Recognizing him, thankfully. “Scare a girl half to death, why don’t you.” She looked pissed.

  Cabe shrugged. Outwardly cool, inwardly a mess. His gut twisted and churned. What the hell am I doing? But it was too late to go back now. He tried desperately to think of something to say. The other guys skated up ahead, giving him some distance.

  “Long walk,” he said. Cringed at how lame it was. “You, uh”—his voice cracked—“okay?”

  “Fine,” she said, clipping the word. “You?”

  Cabel gulped. He took a deep breath. No idea what to do next. But he could hardly stand to watch her walk barefoot. She was limp
ing already.

  “Get on,” he said, and put the board down on the ground. Took Janie’s shoes from her hand. “You’ll rip your feet to shreds. There’s glass an’ shit.”

  Janie stopped. Looked at him. And he could see something in her tough-girl face. Vulnerability or something. It made his stomach twist.

  “I don’t know how,” she said.

  He grinned, then. Relieved. She didn’t tell him to get lost. Definitely a step in the right direction. “Just stand. Bend. Balance,” he said. “I’ll push you.”

  And, after staring at him for a long minute, she did it. Unbelievable. He placed his hand gently on the small of her back, hoping that was okay with her, but not about to ask. Pushed her, and after a few wobbles, she figured out how to stand without falling and tilt the board to steer as he pushed her through the crappy streets of South Fieldridge.

  He hadn’t felt this good about himself in a long time. And even though he couldn’t think of anything to say, it was okay, there in the dark. The two of them, awkward, silent. The warmth of her back on his hand in the chilly evening. The fact that she trusted him. That she wasn’t afraid. That she didn’t run away screaming. She let him touch her, for crying out loud.

  Incredible.

  He hardly noticed when the other guys took off, heading to their respective homes. It was all he could do to keep his concentration on avoiding stones and glass.

  When he pushed her up her driveway to the step, he knew it was over. For the moment, at least. But it was enough for now. It was hope.

  Janie hopped off the skateboard and opened the screen door.

  He set her shoes on the step, hesitated for a moment, then picked up his board and left her there without a word. Just a nod. Totally at a loss.

  He was at the road when he heard it. “Thanks, Cabel.” Her voice was thin, soft in the air. “That was sweet.”

  Freaking music, it was. Enough to make a guy a little bit crazy inside.

  Cabel thinks about that day a lot lately.

  He sits back up on the hotel bed and then goes into the bathroom. Splashes water on his face and just leans over the sink, his head butting up against the mirror, thinking. Thinking about how, back then, he had no idea just how complicated this thing was going to get.