He let out an oof as he landed in the grass, my weight on top of his own, his arms still around my back, the ball cradled against his chest.
And from the background, I heard Hailey cry, “Victory!”
I was laughing, and so was Max. “You okay?” I asked.
He dropped his arms, rested his head back. “I will be, when you get up.”
I dropped the ball, stood, smoothed my dress down, reached a hand down for Max.
I heard Hailey taunting Julian in the background. “You think you’re the only Whitworth with moves, Julian? Allow me to introduce you to your sister.”
Max hung an arm over my shoulder, breathing heavy. “Well played, Jessa.”
Hailey was rummaging through the cooler, with Julian watching, his arms crossed, face frozen in a frown. Then I felt Max stiffen, quickly drop his arm, and call, “You gonna take your shot, Caleb?”
My shoulders tensed. I turned to the house, saw him leaning against the corner, watching. “Hey!” I called, jogging over to him. But his face was unreadable. “You made it.”
There was something indecipherable in his expression. And meanwhile I was thinking, Where were you? Where have you been? Why didn’t you answer my text? But he had an envelope tucked under his arm, Julian’s name printed on the front. And all he said was, “Sorry I’m late.”
The day was supposed to be a celebration, not about me at all. “Come on,” I said, hooking my arm through his, “I just earned you a beer.”
And all was forgiven.
—
“I guess this explains why it’s taking so long.” Eve’s words yank me from the memory. She’s standing just inside the entrance to the room in bare feet, her toenails painted a dark maroon. She’s caught me staring out the window, with the list on the surface of the bedside table, but she doesn’t seem to notice the paper.
“I was just remembering something,” I say.
Eve takes a step closer. “What were you remembering, Jessa?”
I swallow, feeling cornered, like this room is a bunker, exactly as Caleb described it, and there’s no way out. A narrow flight of stairs beyond his mother. A window behind me, too high off the ground, with nothing but concrete down below.
“Christmas,” I say, nodding my head toward the ribbon on the shelf, the last rays of twilight catching the shimmer. “That was from a present I gave him.”
“Any other surprises?” she says, and I can’t tell whether she’s asking out of curiosity, or if she knows. I wonder if he brought this other girl back to his house. If his mother knew all along, and is using this to punish me—hoping I discover it for myself.
“No,” I say. I do not take the bait. Not from her. Not from anyone. I step back slowly, circling my hand around the post of his headboard.
Except as I’m saying the word, my fingers brush against a thick string, a cord. Something that blended in with the grooves of the headboard.
I try not to look at it; I need her to leave me alone up here. “I need to go soon,” I say. “I have a test tomorrow. I’m just finishing up.”
Eve is upset with me, and I’m not sure whether it’s because I’ve had to remind her that life keeps going for me, and I must pretend to care about trivial things like tests and curfews, or because I am bailing on her, and it’s taking longer than she expected. She must want me out of here as much as I want to get through it.
Except it’s getting harder and harder to leave. With each piece that I put aside, there’s less and less of Caleb remaining. I don’t want to move any faster, scared there will be nothing, and scared there will be too much. Things I didn’t want to know. Pieces he never shared, and hid away.
“I have off last period tomorrow,” I tell her. “I’ll come right away. I’ll get more done.”
She doesn’t speak, just walks back down the steps, and I see a second shadow on the landing—Mia, hidden just around the corner, listening.
As soon as Mia retreats to her room and Eve is out of sight, I follow the cord hanging from the back of his headboard, follow it to the item wedged between the wall and the back of the bed, hanging beside his window.
It’s a small pair of binoculars, and I’m pretty sure these don’t belong to Caleb.
I spend a few moments holding them in the palm of my hand, a memory of warmth, followed by a sharp chill.
I quickly shove them in my purse, and I leave.
I leave in my car, but pull around the block, determined to fit the pieces together. As if by fitting them together, all that we’ve lost will suddenly be found again.
I knock on Max’s front door with the binoculars in my hand, but nobody answers. I ring the bell, but nothing. His car isn’t here, either. I consider sending him a text, but we don’t do that anymore. Not since the day of the flood.
—
“I’m home,” I call when I walk through the front door of my house. But I head straight up the steps to my room.
I flip through Caleb’s pictures, trying to find what had been on his bedside table, what glass had broken. I scan through all of them until I find the one of me and Mia on his bed. There’s a lamp behind us, and there’s a small glass figurine beside it.
I remember, suddenly. It’s a unicorn. Mia gave it to him. If I had noticed it missing, if I’d given it any thought at all, I might’ve assumed it had been moved to a different shelf, or a drawer, or maybe that Mia took it back for her own collection, changing her mind.
But I didn’t really notice. And now I know it was what had shattered that day. Shards of it ground into his beige rug. Another victim of his arms thrown out in dreams, or in nightmares.
Something settles inside me, this piece of information, as if I can make sense of things after all. Part of a movie scene, played in reverse: fragments from the floor un-breaking, un-falling, resettling on the surface of his bedside table. Everything slips into place, and I believe once more that I can trace the start and end, the cause and effect, the trail of events that led to Caleb in a car, heading east.
—
Logging onto my computer, I see I have a message. My pulse picks up, and my finger hovers over the icon. It’s from Ashlyn Patterson, and it’s like there’s another version of Caleb in the screen tucked just beyond here. I can almost see him, waiting there.
She has written a single line in return: I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know any Caleb Evers.
I groan out loud and go back to scrolling through the images on the other profiles, but no other Ashlyn Patterson fits the description. They’re either too young or too old, too unrecognizable.
I keep scanning faces until my dad calls me for dinner.
Downstairs, I eat in the dining room with my parents, but my heart isn’t in it. My stomach isn’t in it. But my parents let me be, ignoring the fact that I’m just moving the food around my plate. I’ve been in and out, here and gone, since that day in mid-September, when Caleb drove off the bridge. I’ve quit cross-country, but I run alone, at night, in the dark, with nothing but the sound of air rushing in and out, the imaginary rumble of a river between my gasping breaths.
I’ve also taken to my room, for days on end. My mom brought food up to me instead, when I didn’t come down for it. They’ve been trying, I can see that. They’ve said all the right words, alternately given me attention and then given me space. I think they’ve read a book on dealing with your teen’s grief. Everything feels like a sound bite.
“Do you need anything?” my father asks, clearing his throat. And I know he’s asking about more than the food. Opening the lines of communication. I feel I must’ve run them dry by now.
“I have homework,” I say. “But thanks for dinner.”
“Jessa,” my mother calls after me, but something in her voice makes everything too close. Spending so much time in his room, it all feels too raw.
I have to get out of here. I pack up my backpack, throw the binoculars in the bag, and blow down the stairs. It’s almost eight—Max must be home by now.
“I’m meeting Hailey,” I call, and I leave before they can call me back.
—
I ring the bell, and this time I hear footsteps coming down the stairs. Max throws open the door wearing worn jeans and a thin T-shirt, and I think he’s been working out. But he holds his breath, seeing me there.
“Max, did you go through his email?” I ask.
He shakes his head, his mind trying to catch up. “Did I what?”
“His email. You went through his room, looking for money. And his email password was changed.”
We’re standing in the dimly lit kitchen, just to the side of his front door. “And you think that was me?”
“I’m running out of options as to who else had his password.”
“I didn’t know his password.”
“You never saw it?”
He doesn’t answer at first. He doesn’t just lie and say no. “I don’t try to look. But I know part of it.”
“Which part?” I press.
“Thirty-six. His lacrosse number.”
I nod. “Yes. And now it’s changed.”
“So he changed it.”
But I’m shaking my head. “After, Max. Someone changed it after.”
He has frozen, both believing and disbelieving. “What do you want me to say, Jessa? I said it wasn’t me.”
I want him to tell me the truth. I want to look in his eyes and know. I want to see the lie, the expression shutter, his gaze shift to the side. Instead I unzip my bag and pull out the binoculars, watch as his throat moves as he swallows. The way he instinctively takes a step back, as if remembering that night himself.
The binoculars hang from my hand. “Are these yours?” I ask, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Oh,” Max says, reaching for them. He lifts them to his face, but the string is still wrapped around my hand. “Maybe. I think so. Where did you find these?”
“In his room,” I say, and Max’s gaze fixes on my own. “You didn’t give them to him?”
He shakes his head. “No.” His eyes narrow on the binoculars, and he says, “The last time I saw these, I think they were still in my car.”
The moment hangs between us, all the unspoken things filling up the space around us.
—
Things changed after the day in New York. The way Caleb looked at me. The way Max looked at me. Each the inverse of how it was supposed to be. At the river; at Julian’s graduation party; at the beach.
In August, Caleb went on vacation, a family trip. This was after Sean left, and Eve pulled Caleb in closer, relying on him a little more. They went away to a cabin in the Poconos, where there was no cell reception, and no Internet. Caleb was just gone.
In August that same week, I ran into Max at the mall—Julian had driven, and I said I’d call if I needed a ride later—and we hung out just like we would’ve if Caleb were there. Going to a movie, hanging out in the food court, all normal things, it seemed. Unless you paused to think about it. Unless you noticed the part that was absent.
It was me who suggested going somewhere else, who didn’t want the day to end, who said Ice cream, and then, when it turned dark, Did you know you can see Saturn tonight?
The day had been a string of moments that I didn’t want to pause, or stop. There was a pull of momentum, and we had to keep going. “There’s too much light,” he said, staring up between the streetlights by the ice cream shop.
It was Max who suggested grabbing the binoculars from his house. He left me in his idling car while he ran inside to get them. They were small, the type I’ve seen people use at ball games. But it was me who suggested driving out to the fields behind the school, now abandoned. Who found a spot to sit in the middle of the goalposts. The night air cooled and the grass tickled the backs of my legs as I raised my finger and pointed it out.
I took his binoculars and tried to focus on the object in the sky, but everything blurred as I moved them too fast.
“I mean, I think that’s it. Maybe we should look it up,” I said, laughing to myself.
Max took out his phone, pulled up some night sky app.
“Wait, you have a night sky app?” I’d asked, pushing his shoulder, teasing.
“Oh, yeah, let’s all make fun of Max until nobody can figure out where Saturn is.”
He realigned his phone, scanned it across the horizon, moved my arm to point in the other direction. “There,” he said. “You were nowhere close, Jessa. Seriously.”
Max’s fingers circled my wrist, and we were both looking at the bright spot in the distance. We didn’t need the binoculars at all—everything in the universe feeling suddenly so vast, and so possible, all at once.
It was me who turned my face first. It was me who talked low enough to make him look, whose eyes drifted shut first, who leaned closer.
But he put a hand on my shoulder firmly, stopping me—my face hovering an inch from his, so close I could feel his breath.
“Oh God,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just…” What? I was thinking this was how it should be, with the clarity of the night sky and the boy I liked beside me. Only it wasn’t Caleb beside me.
He shook his head, not looking at me, and stood abruptly.
I was on my feet, even though the rush of blood from my head made me dizzy. Max had his car keys out already. “Oh God,” I said again, because that about covered it. “Please don’t say anything. Please, Max. You’re my friend too.” I was begging him at this point; this wasn’t how to break up with someone, by breaking their heart in the meantime.
He wouldn’t look at me. “Okay,” he said.
“Max,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I was still holding the binoculars on the way home, wrapping the cord tighter and tighter around my hand, winding and unwinding. Until he pulled up in front of my door, and I left them on his passenger seat, neither of us saying a word as I left.
—
Now, Max is still staring at the binoculars, as if remembering the same moment I am.
“Had Caleb been in your car? Since then?” I ask, not wanting to elaborate on then.
“Yeah, sure. Plenty of times. Even borrowed it once or twice. I think there was some sort of issue with his car. He probably saw these and figured he’d borrow them, too. It’s not like they’re expensive or anything. Where were they?” he asks.
“Hanging from the back of his bed.” Hidden, I want to say, but I’m not so sure if that’s true. “Why do you think he took them?”
Max shrugs. “Anything, I guess. A ball game?”
“Was he going to a ball game?”
“I don’t know Jessa,” he says. The frustration on his face evident. “Did he say something to you?”
I throw my hands in the air. He told me nothing. His actions don’t make sense. He was going to see you, Jessa. Like always, his mother said. Nothing makes sense.
I can’t reconcile the two Calebs.
The one who was lying to me, in places he kept hidden. And the one who took me to the library, kept the seashell, unwrapped the ribbon on his box. The expression on his face. That wasn’t a lie. It couldn’t be.
I can’t reconcile the two Maxes, either. The one who drove us carefully to the game, the one who came back for me in New York; the one who tore through Caleb’s things, in his anger.
But if I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that nobody was who I thought. Everyone had secrets. Trust is a luxury for fools. The more I discover, the less I trust my own memories, even.
“Max?” a woman’s voice calls from upstairs. “Is someone here?”
Max looks at me, backs away. “No, Mom,” he says. As if he’s pushing me back once more. Reminding me that there’s a line between us, that I’ve forgotten.
I hear her steps coming downstairs, and I step back. I’ve barely turned around when I hear the door latch closed behind me.
This is a story of losing more than Caleb. This was where I lost Max, too. This was the boundary never to be crossed, not then and no
t now. If anything, it was worse in death. I would always be Caleb’s girlfriend. I could be nothing more.
When I wake, there’s a text from Max, asking me to meet him early at school. I jump in the shower, dress quickly, and grab a Pop-Tart as I run out the door. It’s the first text I’ve received from him in nearly two months. Part of me thinks Max must’ve remembered something. Something about the binoculars. Something that will slide effortlessly into place and suddenly everything will make sense: the missing piece that will trace Caleb’s path from the race to the bridge; the what and the why. I’m so anxious I have to remind myself to slow down as I drive to school.
There are security cameras on storefronts on either side of the bridge. One, about a half mile down the road, caught the blur of Caleb’s car in the dark streaks of the torrential rain. The other camera isn’t for another mile or two beyond the bridge, and it’s angled more at the parking lot than the road, but it would register a vehicle going by.
It never did.
This is the certainty.
This is what prevented the hope from growing too strong, before they pulled the pieces of his car from the river, with finality.
I think about that now, anytime I’m driving somewhere. I think about who’s watching, or inadvertently acquiring evidence. I think about that now as I pull into school early—wondering if there are cameras on the buildings, inside or out as I pass, and what people will think if they watch the tape.
—
Max’s car is the only one in the senior lot, and the engine is still running, the exhaust white in the winter air. I rub my hands together to fight the chill as I make my way across the junior lot, to Max.
I knock on the door before pulling open the passenger side, so I don’t surprise him. I’ve always loved Max’s car. He got it late last school year, and it’s used, with fabric seats. There’s something appealing about it all, where you can imagine a whole story—the people who sat here, what they were like. It feels broken in. “It feels broke,” is what Max said, laughing, when I told him this. “But it runs. Most days.”
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