The Year They Fell

by David Kreizman

  Blank expressions on their faces.

  I picked up a black crayon and pressed it to the paper. Nothing. Not even a freaking hand outline turkey. “Sorry,” I muttered. “This never usually happens to me.”

  I spent the next hour shoveling as much food into my mouth as I possibly could. The meal was as bland as ever, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to stuff myself, to bury everything under a mound of carbs, to be too full to think. I wanted more plates to cover the blank tablecloth. I wanted to watch my fork scrape the leftovers instead of watching Lucas sending witty texts back and forth to his boyfriend.

  I would’ve kept on eating all night, but Aunt Sarah and Kimberly Hunt and James stopped by to clear the table.

  “Show starts in five,” said Sarah. Oh God no. “This year’s theme is ‘Thanks for the Memories.’” Oh dear God no, no.

  The Thanksgiving show was a tribute in song and performance to Mom and Dad. Uncle Tommy ushered us into the living room, where we took our seats and waited. Tommy hit the lights and the room went black. Then fwwwip! A floor lamp turned on, aimed toward Aunt Sarah like a spotlight. There were already tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “Memories,” she said. “We thank you for the memories.” Uncle Tommy touched his phone and the music started. This was worse than I even imagined. But before Aunt Sarah could start singing or reciting poetry or God knows what else, a phone buzzed. I turned and glared at Lucas. If I was going to suffer through this horror show, then so was he. But he wasn’t looking at his phone. When it happened again, I realized the buzzing was coming from my own pocket. Someone was texting me. I discreetly fished out my phone and gave it a quick look.

  Where are you Rn?

  Need to C U

  I jumped out of my chair, bumping into Jim and knocking over his glass of wine. Everyone in the room looked at me, including Aunt Sarah, who signaled Uncle Tommy to pause the music. “Arch? You want to say something?”

  I felt all the eyes on me as Uncle Tommy swung the light around and shined it on my face. Now I couldn’t see anyone else’s face, except for Lucas’s, lit up by his phone. He was so hard to read. Once in the spotlight I could’ve said something nice. I could’ve found a story to tell about Mom and Dad. Maybe I could’ve talked about how hard they worked to bring me home. Or all the nights they let me sleep in their bed even though I tossed and turned and Dad had to get up early for work. Or the way Mom walked me to school and kept touching my arm, but did it in a cool, secret way so that it wouldn’t look like she was holding my hand.

  I could’ve said all of those things, but I didn’t. “I had four plates of food and my stomach is … You do not want me to … I have to go. I’m sorry.”

  Uncle Tommy said he’d drop Lucas home in the morning. I was already heading for the door.

  I barely remember the drive home. My brain was spinning and my stomach was doing flips. As I pulled the car into our driveway, Josie was sitting on the steps, her arms wrapped around her knees. She was shivering and I instantly hated myself for leaving my jacket back at Aunt Sarah’s. It always seemed like such a cool move when the guy takes off his jacket and puts it around the girl’s shoulders. “Come inside,” I said. “You’re freezing.”

  “Ease up, Granny. I’m fine.”

  I ran inside and grabbed the quilt off the couch. My stomach gurgled. Coming home to Josie Clay on my porch didn’t exactly do wonders to settle things down, intestinally speaking. I came back outside and draped the blanket over Josie’s shoulders. I wasn’t sure what to do next. Sit down with her? Slide under the blanket? I chose option three: stand and hover. All of it was very confusing. My house was a place where I only thought about Josie. She was never actually here.

  “Why have you been avoiding me?” she asked. Her breath shot out under the light.

  “What?” She thought I was avoiding her?

  “Do you blame my dad for the plane crash or something? You think he got involved with bad people and your dad got in the way and—”

  “What? No, that’s crazy. I didn’t … No.”

  “Then why’d you go radio silent? You haven’t texted. You look away when I see you at school. You’re totally blowing me off.” She wiped her eyes with the blanket.

  “Josie, I … I thought you didn’t want me around. After Jack…”

  “After Jack what?”

  Josie dropped her head into her hands.

  I started to reach out to touch her shoulder, but I still wasn’t sure how that would go over.

  “Jack’s not … Jack’s still dealing with a lot of problems. I did a search on WebMD. I know you’re not supposed to do that because everything you look up says cancer, but … They said concussions make ADHD like a million times worse. I know he never really admits he has it, but he’s, like, all over the place. He gets furious for no reason. It’s scary and if he said something to you … He doesn’t mean it. And I … I missed you.”

  “Oh.” For once I didn’t feel like jabbering around her.

  “Where’s your sketchbook?”

  “I … left it inside. Why did you text me?”

  Josie wrapped the blanket tighter around her. “We were at my grandma and grandpa’s for Thanksgiving, you know. I didn’t want to be there. I’m just sitting there freaking out and I see this little picture hanging on the wall. A picture from Mom and Daddy’s wedding day. They’re cutting the cake and Mom’s laughing with her mouth open like she always did in pictures. I couldn’t believe how young they looked. Even though they were getting married, they didn’t look like two adults. They looked … like us. And we’re going around the room saying what we’re grateful for. But I can’t say it. How am I going to say thanks for what happened to us? Everyone’s just looking at me. Waiting.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I left. I ran out and I texted you.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “I want to know, Archie. Did someone do this to them? To us? Why are people always hurting each other?”

  “I don’t know yet. I mean, Harrison and I talk every day, but half the time I don’t understand what he’s saying. I’ve gone through Dad’s stuff and called his friends at the base to ask about the kind of work he did. They pretty much say nothing, which is exactly what they’d say if they were trying to cover something up. There’s no way we’re going to get anyone from the government to talk to us about it. I think—I think this investigation is gonna have to get more personal.”

  Josie tossed off the blanket as she stood up. “So let’s do it. Let’s make this personal. I mean, it is personal. Someone killed our parents, right? Or they might have,” she said. “Daddy’s firm keeps calling and asking if Jack and I would stop by to help clean out his office. I’ve totally been avoiding it for months.”

  “His office is still there? Everything?”

  “Dayana’s mom is a paralegal at the firm and I don’t think she’s been back to work since the crash. The other partners are really worried about seeming cold, so they just … waited for me and Jack to come around. We can go over there right now. Will you do it? Will you come with me? Please.”

  “Of course I will.”

  We stopped off at her house for the office keys. “Come inside,” she said. “Jack’s still out and I don’t like being in the house alone.”

  We walked in the door and Josie went off to grab the key. I looked around the massive white living room. A towering stack of mail sat on the bar. And if quiet can be loud, then the house was deafening. I remembered what I felt in here the night of the party. The first day of senior year was coming and everybody was high on possibility. Even me. I showed up that night with this feeling that something was going to change in my life.

  I guess for once I was right.

  * * *

  The offices of Tovaris, Kesselman & Clay occupied an entire building in a large industrial complex off the highway. In my mind, Rich Clay’s office would be in the penthouse of a huge skyscraper like Tony Stark’s in Iron Man. This buildi
ng was big and modern, but mostly it felt like an office. Where were the retinal scans and the laser alarm system? Not even an old security guard on patrol. Josie opened the glass door and flipped on the lights in the outer office, which was filled with dozens of cubicles, each personalized with family photos and novelty calendars.

  We walked by Dayana’s mom’s cubicle. On the desk was a framed photo of Dayana as a tiny girl in a white dress on a sandy beach I assumed was in Costa Rica. Josie entered the office and I almost ran right into her back when she stopped short. I saw inside the office and understood why she froze. His desk was untouched. Nothing seemed to have been moved since the day Josie’s dad died. They didn’t even take away the newspapers he’d been reading. It was like they were afraid to disturb anything.

  Josie was practically shaking. I touched her hand and she jumped. “Maybe this was a mistake,” I offered, pulling my hand back. “We can call Jack…”

  “It smells like Daddy,” she said. “Mom never let him have his stinky cigars at home, but his suits reeked like smoke when he came in the door. Like this. I know it’s a totally weird thing to say, but that was, like, my favorite smell in the world. It meant that he was home.”

  Josie held his pencil and his letter opener and picked up his phone as if they might all still have a little bit of him left on them. For three months since the crash, our houses had been walked through, cleaned, rearranged. Changed. They were lived in. Reminders of our parents were far from gone, but there were less and less of them every day. The foods they liked went sour in the fridge until we tossed them out. Their shoes didn’t live by the front door anymore. Little things they left behind—notes on the corkboard and loose change and single socks—had disappeared one piece at time. Even their smells—aftershave, shampoo, coffee—were drifting away. Mr. Clay’s office, on the other hand, was … preserved. It felt alive, like he could walk back in at any second. So I let Josie linger. On his books and his cigars and his laptop. She sat down in his oversize leather chair, closed her eyes, and breathed.

  “We should look through his computer,” she said, finally opening her eyes. “Daddy did everything on this stupid laptop. It was a big thing that Mom made him leave it at the office before their vacation.” She slid it over to me.

  “I think you should do this,” I said. I didn’t feel good about going through Mr. Clay’s computer. Computers weren’t just devices. They collected history. Like a diary, or my sketchbook. They stored what was inside you. Someone combing through your laptop could probably learn more about you than they could in a thousand hours of conversation.

  “You’re better at the computer stuff than I am.” She got up and let me sit in the big chair. I couldn’t believe how soft it was, how my whole body sank into the brown leather. As I turned on the laptop, Josie leaned over me and rested her hand on my shoulder. Her face floated right next to mine. I had to stay focused on the job, but she was pressing her body against my back. As she exhaled, I felt her breath on the side of my neck. I took off my glasses and set them on the desk. My stomach tightened. The tightness spread lower, too. I tried to ignore the feelings, but my body wasn’t taking messages from my brain anymore. I felt warm and uncomfortable. I shifted in the chair. If I turned my head just a little bit …

  Josie pushed away and stood up straight. Did she suddenly realize what I was thinking? I gave myself away, didn’t I? Did she look down and see that I … I mean … I wasn’t … Not fully … Okay, maybe I was, but what do you expect? We were alone in an empty office and she was pressing against me and … She was Josie.

  Josie backed across the room to give herself some distance. She wasn’t even looking at me. That’s how disgusted she was. I felt ashamed. She brought me here to help her find out how her parents died and I got turned on. What was wrong with me?

  The login screen came up. I cleared my throat. “It, uh … it needs a password.”

  Josie looked around at her dad’s pictures and memorabilia and rattled off a few options. Family names, their first dog, his favorite teams. None of it got me into the system. “Birthdays,” she said. “Let’s try birthdays.” Without asking I punched in 081301. August 13, 2001. Josie and Jack’s birthday.

  Josie finally looked at me. “You remember my birthday?”

  Of course I remembered her birthday. “Just one of those things that sticks with you, I guess.”

  Josie started to cry and she grabbed a tissue box from the bookshelves. “It’s so stupid how this happens all the time. I didn’t let myself cry for, like, three years and now I can’t get through a freaking day without going into full-on blubber mode.”

  “I cried in PE the other day,” I said. “Softball. It wasn’t that I cared about striking out. I always strike out. But I was swinging the bat and I had this flash of Dad trying to teach me how to hit in the backyard.”

  “Did it work? When he taught you?”

  “No, of course not. I was a complete disaster. Dad just kept moving closer and closer and throwing the ball slower and slower until he was basically placing it on the bat. When we were done he hugged me and told me he was proud of me. Anyway, that’s what came back to me on the field behind the science lab that day.”

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “Pretended I got dirt in my eye. Totally humiliating.”

  Josie smiled. “I’m sure no one noticed.”

  “Everyone noticed.”

  “I’ll give you lessons someday,” she said. “No more strikeouts.” I looked at her. Did she just offer to help me play softball? I knew what that meant for her and I knew she wouldn’t say it by accident. She hadn’t picked up a ball or a bat since …

  “Archie…?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I said earlier that at the table I didn’t have anything I was thankful for … that wasn’t true. I’m thankful for Jack. And even though I don’t always show it, I’m thankful for you.”

  I tried to respond, but my mouth dried up. Whatever words I was trying to say got stuck in the back of my throat. I’m thankful for you, Josie. I’ve been thankful for you since I was four years old. “I—”

  “JackJosie081301! Try that. Try JackJosie081301. Daddy used that for our Wi-Fi at home.” I typed it in and poof! I was in. Josie celebrated our victory with a little touchdown dance. She wagged her finger in the air and spun around on one leg. My heart felt like it might burst through my chest like a baby alien.

  The computer was stocked with files, all labeled by client names and dates. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, but it would be easy to sit here for days going through depositions and memos without finding anything. I was okay with that. There was no place I wanted to be more. So I started at the top and scrolled through the files one at a time while Josie went to track down sodas and snacks from the kitchen.

  I scanned down the list, looking for anything related to my dad’s work at Fort Benson, the government, or my father. Bachman deposition 8.3.15. Baird closing arguments 4.16.09. I stopped at one file with a different type of file name. The Beach.rar. I knew RAR files were compressed, which meant multiple documents or a lot of data. I double-clicked on the file, but a message popped up telling me the file was password protected. An extra level of security. Now I was really interested. I tried all of the passwords Josie had given me and when they didn’t work, I decided to grease the wheels.

  Junior year I sat next to this kid named Cole in computer lab. Cole was a creepy hacker, like the kind you see in bad movies. Pale skin, greasy hair, the whole deal. Who knows what he was using his skills for? All I know is he liked showing off and he taught me how to get into password-protected RAR files. As Cole had instructed, I downloaded and installed a hacking tool on Mr. Clay’s laptop. Then I experimented with brute-force and dictionary methods of password de-encryption. Took less than five minutes to break the code. The password was “mojito.”

  When the file opened, it didn’t reveal a long deposition or list of case notes. It was full of compressed photos. I ope
ned them in order. Photos of a tropical beach. A woman wearing a bathing suit, a wide-brimmed hat, and a small cover-up. She held a brightly colored drink and she smiled at the camera. No, she smiled at the person behind the camera. These photos were meant to be seen by him and only him. I could tell by her smile. She was shiny and flirty. There were so many of these pictures. In one she seemed like she was waving for her cameraman to join her in the shot. And so he did. He came around the other side of the camera. And there in the last few pictures was a tanned, shirtless Richard Clay kissing his colleague Vanesa Calderón. Dayana’s mother. Dayana’s mother and Josie’s dad … Josie’s dad and Dayana’s mother.

  Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like. They worked at the same law firm. They were on a business trip and maybe they were just having fun for the camera. For all I knew, Nelson and Michelle were there on the other side of the camera. But I didn’t believe that. No one who saw these pictures could ever believe that. This was exactly what it looked like. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have put these pictures in a protected file where no one but he was ever supposed to see them.

  “All right, I got trail mix, Red Vines, pretzels, water, and lots of drink options. How extreme do we want to go?” I hadn’t even noticed Josie standing in the doorway. When I snapped my head up, she must’ve seen the look on my face. “Did you find something?” she asked.

  I panicked. What was I supposed to do, tell her about her dad and Dayana’s mom? Show her the pictures? She thought her father was the greatest. Was it my business to change that? Rich Clay never thought someone like me would be snooping around in his files. He’d kept it a secret to the end of his life. Was it up to me to blow it, now that he was dead? And what would it do to Dayana’s family? I shouldn’t have hacked into his private file. That’s illegal. It’s wrong. But I couldn’t lie to Josie. I couldn’t look her in the eye and lie about something this important. Could I?