Echoes

by Michelle Rowen

  She crossed her arms. “I don’t care.”

  “Then why is this such a big deal right now?”

  “It isn’t.” She looked away. “Forget it.”

  I was missing something here. Some piece of the puzzle that was Bree Margolis. I would have stayed her friend. I would have. Just because Helen had moved to town and become my best friend didn’t mean that I couldn’t have other friends. How stupid would that be?

  “Did Helen say something to you?” I asked, straining my brain to access events that happened four years ago. “Back then? Something to make you keep your distance?”

  Her lips pressed together.

  My eyes widened a little at the non-verbal confirmation. “She did, didn’t she?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Helen wouldn’t do something like that. She’s so nice. So cool. So popular. I can practically see the shiny halo hovering above her head.”

  “I never said she was an angel.”

  “Even if she did say something, it doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s not like you ever bothered to talk to me again unless you had to.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”

  I’d realized this week that Helen had a lot of secrets she’d kept from me in order to maintain her perfect exterior. I shouldn’t be surprised that there might be more left to uncover.

  “Yes, I do.”

  She looked me directly in the eye. “She said that if I didn’t leave you alone she was going to tell everybody that I was in love with you. Like, love love. And that I once tried to kiss you.”

  My mouth fell open. “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not. She makes things up so people behave themselves, or leave her alone, or not leave her. Or whatever. She’s a total control freak and my mom says her mother is the same way. I know you don’t believe it, but that’s what she does. She makes things up and uses it against people to keep them in line, whether or not it’s the truth.”

  I resisted this new information very hard, but after everything that had been happening I couldn’t pretend what I was hearing didn’t ring any bells for me. “And what she said about you...”

  “That I was in love with you?”

  I cleared my throat, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. “Yeah, I mean, was that, um, the truth?”

  Bree snorted. “No offense, but you’re not my type. I like guys. These days if she spread the rumor I was gay I wouldn’t give a smaller crap what she or anyone else thinks. But back then? The thought of it mortified me. So I did what she said and stopped hanging around you.”

  “Uh, well, okay then.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, you’re not that hot. Get over yourself.”

  I glared at her. “Okay, I get it.”

  “So you never knew that happened? For real?”

  I frowned. “Why would I know that?”

  “I don’t know, I just—I mean, you’ve been friends with her all this time…”

  “I think Helen may have a lot of issues I don’t know about.” Helen’s mom was a former Olympic athlete—she’d received a silver medal for swimming. Her father was a retired Army Sergeant. Both her parents always liked things just so, their house was always neat as a pin and scheduled to the minute when it came to meals and family events. Helen never said much about it before, except to complain, but now I saw that she might be like her parents. She wanted things to go perfectly according to Helen, and anything else would have to be dealt with.

  And she rarely dated. Nobody was good enough for her unless they were rich, popular, and gorgeous.

  I thought about how Helen had reacted regarding Ethan, like she was jealous that I was paying any attention to him. She liked him, but he wasn’t quite “good enough” for her to pursue seriously. And now to find out that she liked to spread rumors and gossip, whether or not they were true, in order to make people behave according to her wishes. Wow. It was a lot to accept all at once.

  All this time I’d thought that it was Bree taking her revenge on the more popular kids who ignored her.

  Like I’d ignored her.

  We’d been friends for years, despite her being a little eccentric back in elementary school—her and her family. However, I’d found it fun then, not embarrassing. We’d shared secrets, hung out, and laughed. And all that was forgotten, put in the past, when I got new friends, and when I didn’t get any friction from leaving my past behind and moving on.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  Her expression was tense. “What did you say?”

  “I said I’m sorry. I’m sorry Helen did that to you. Really. And I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you all this time. You and me—we were really good friends once. The best, actually.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, I have friends now. Great ones. But with what happened with you...I guess I let it fester.”

  I eyed her. “I never would have guessed it. You hid the festering so well.”

  That sarcasm earned me a sharp look. “Let’s just forget it.”

  “Really? Put it all behind us?”

  “I mean let’s forget about it right now. I don’t feel like dealing with this. I’ve been losing my Zen in a seriously big way ever since you got here.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Are you really dating Ethan Cole?”

  Tears welled in my eyes again uninvited and I swiped a hand at them and instead focused on the purple wall behind Bree that had a picture of her and her family back when she’d been a cute blonde who favored pink lip gloss. I heard the crackle of the fireplace from the living room. “Yes. Well—no. I mean...I don’t know. No.”

  She stared at me. “I don’t care what you say, you sound drunk to me.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that. She was right.

  “He’s always liked you, you know,” she said.

  My gaze shot to her. “What?”

  She shrugged. “Not that he ever came right out and did anything about it. But—I don’t know. It was obvious. To me, anyway. Don’t you remember that time in seventh grade, just before Helen moved here when we still hung out? The Halloween dance? His friends came up to you and told you he liked you right to your face. Don’t tell me you can’t remember that.”

  I wracked my brain and came up with the fuzzy memory. I’d been distracted by something, by someone, and suddenly a couple guys from class tugged on my sleeve. They’d been laughing so hard it made them difficult to understand. They said Ethan wanted to ask me to dance, but wouldn’t leave his corner and that I should go over and ask him instead.

  I hadn’t. I think I’d smiled at their dumb joke, and they’d left, still laughing about it.

  But it hadn’t been a joke. They’d been trying to humiliate their friend at a school dance. Take how he felt about a girl and use it against him.

  My mother remembered Ethan riding his bike in front of my house. She thought he liked me. Bree thought he’d liked me. The memory of his friends asking me to go over to him—to ask him to dance just once…

  I’d forgotten about it as soon as they’d walked away.

  I didn’t remember speaking directly to Ethan again after that. He’d totally kept to himself from that night on. I didn’t think I’d spoken face to face with him until Sunday night after Helen’s party...when he’d saved my life.

  “Where’s the locked case?” I asked Bree, the words coming out as more of a choked sound. “I need to see it. Please, Bree. Please let me see it.”

  She regarded me cautiously. “Fine. It’s upstairs. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  I followed her through the house, the same one she’d lived in when we were younger, when we were friends, with colorful walls, cream colored furniture with bright, patterned cushions, hardwood floors. It was so easy to forget that all these years had passed now that I was here again. It felt exactly the same. Maybe we’d play with our Barbies later. Watch TV. Play video g
ames.

  Or maybe we’d try to find a journal that might or might not exist. That might or might not tell me what I needed to know to survive. And what I was supposed to do about Ethan if I proved he really was a monster.

  The case was a wooden one, about five feet long and three feet tall. She swung the lid open and I looked inside at the photo albums, old clothes, and a knitted afghan. I immediately began sifting through the contents. Bree didn’t try to stop me.

  But there was no journal.

  “But you said it was here.” I got up and paced to the other side of the room and back. “You said it.”

  Her expression was strained. “But why would I say that? Why wouldn’t I remember?”

  I swallowed hard. “Because someone made you forget. Because whatever was in that journal could help me. Help us.”

  She shook her head. “Why do you keep talking about some journal? It doesn’t exist. If it did I’d show it to you.”

  “You knew until this morning. And then he looked into your eyes and made you forget.” I tried to breathe normally. “He tried to do the same thing to me, but it didn’t work. If he could make you forget, why didn’t it work on me?”

  She stared at me quizzically. “Who are you talking about?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her everything, but I stopped myself just short. Not yet. Not until I knew if I was right or wrong about Ethan. There was still a chance that he was innocent. That everything that had happened had been my overactive imagination and coincidence combining to mess with my head and confuse me right down to my bones.

  I shook my head. “Just forget it.”

  “According to you I’ve already done that.”

  “I don’t understand, forgetting doesn’t make something disappear. You had it. I know you did. And now it’s gone? Where?”

  Bree got a faraway look on her face and her thin, penciled-in brows drew together. “It’s so strange, but the more you talk about it, the more it...I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “The more it starts to sound kind of...right.” She shook her head “Like it’s something I should remember. Kind of like when you’re thinking of a word and it’s right on the tip of your tongue but you can’t remember what it is. Like...like trying to grab a fish but it slips right through your hands.”

  I gaped at her. “Any more metaphors you want to share?”

  She laughed nervously. “Probably. Give me a moment.”

  “Think, Bree. Think. Try to remember.”

  “I’m thinking.” Her lips curved downward after a moment. “I’m thinking so hard I think my brain’s on fire. Can you smell that?”

  I sniffed the air. “I think that’s your fireplace.”

  “It can’t be. We never use it after March.” She frowned harder before her eyes snapped to mine. “Wait a minute, that’s not true. When you called and said you were coming over, I lit a fire. I got some wood from the garage and everything.”

  “Why?”

  “I...I don’t know.”

  My eyes widened and I didn’t wait for her to say anything else before I turned and bolted out of the room, down the stairs, and into the living room where there was indeed a fire blazing as if this was Christmas Eve and we were planning to roast some marshmallows.

  Bree stood beside me. Her face was a study in confusion as she gazed at the flames licking the wood.

  “I remember now,” she said, her voice so quiet I could barely hear it. “I got home, I started the fire like I was on auto-pilot, and then I went and got...it. I threw it in there. It’s gone, Olivia. And I—I don’t understand. Why would I do something like that?”

  My gaze whipped back to the flames. I could see it now. A thick black leather bound journal, falling apart before my eyes. Only ashes now.

  All my answers had turned to ashes.

  Chapter 13

  “It’s like I’m trying to remember a dream.” She shook her head. “I had the journal the whole time—just like you said I did. And it’s gone. I burned it. I destroyed it!”

  Yes, she’d done that. She’d done exactly that.

  All because Ethan had told her to.

  I searched her face, trying to see the truth there, trying to see if maybe she was lying to me. Maybe she was working with the Upyri, helping them. Getting her revenge on me by—what? Helping them steal my body by burning a journal?

  No, of course not. I didn’t believe that.

  “Do you remember anything about what you read in it? Think Bree, this is so important, you have no idea.”

  Her face scrunched as if she was concentrating very hard. She shook her head. “I don’t remember. I wish I did, but I don’t. I can see the pages in my head, sort of. Blurry. I remember flipping through them, but not what they said. Small handwriting. It was hard to read.” She pressed her palms against her temples. “This is making my brain want to explode.”

  “Ease off a bit. It’s there, in your head, I know it.”

  “I remember looking at the pages. And there were—Wait a minute, I remember something else. There were pictures tucked in. A few pictures, not many.”

  “Pictures?”

  She nodded, then her eyes bugged. “I was scanning pictures for my mom. I’m in total scan-mode right now. Oh my God. Maybe I...” She blinked. “I think I might have scanned them in.”

  My heart flew into my throat. “Where?”

  “My computer.”

  “Show me.”

  She turned and headed back up the stairs from the blazing fireplace in the living room to her bedroom on the second floor. I eyed it as I went through the door. Black walls. My parents never would have let me paint my walls black in a million years, not that it was even a temptation for me. Thick purple curtains covered the window. A banner that looked as if it had been stolen from a local concert was tacked to the wall above her unmade bed with dark purple sheets. It looked like a dungeon in here—or the lair of a potential vampire hunter in waiting.

  That was, except for the teddy bear. It sat perkily on top of Bree’s black-shammed pillow looking at us as if it was confused about how such a friendly guy like him had ended up here beyond the gates of hell.

  Bree ignored my sweeping assessment of her room and sat down in front of her computer. There was a scanner and a printer hooked up next to it.

  “Here’s where I’ve been putting the photos for my mom,” she said, double-clicking a folder. “By decade. Got them all—wait a minute...” She swore under her breath. “How could I not remember doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  She looked at me. “Scanning the journal.”

  I gasped. “You scanned it? All of it?”

  “No, that’s the problem. Not all of it. I’d just started. There’s only a few jpegs in the folder.”

  My breath held as she clicked on one and it opened in Photoshop. The writing was small and very hard to read. Her great-great-grandfather likely hadn’t meant this for anyone’s eyes but his own. She kept opening the files and they layered on top of each other. It was disappointing how few pages there were, but considering I’d thought we’d lost it all, it was better than nothing.

  “Wait—” I said. “Go back to the picture.”

  She went back to a worn, blurry black and white posed photograph of three men.

  “Yeah, that’s him, I think,” she said, pointing to the man in the middle.

  A chill went through me. “Your grandfather?”

  She nodded. “It’s his journal.”

  I literally stopped breathing for a few seconds as I stared at the black and white photo on the screen of Bree’s computer.

  The bearded man looking out at me from the old, weathered picture—the original now reduced to ash in the fireplace—

  It was Frank.

  No, it had to be a coincidence. The photo wasn’t that good, wasn’t close up. I could be mistaken. I had to be mistaken.

  It couldn’t be Frank. Because if it was that would mean that he hadn�
��t aged a day in a hundred years.

  “You look like you just saw a ghost,” Bree said.

  That’s exactly what this felt like. I’d been completely and totally spooked. “Can you print these pages for me, Bree? Please?”

  With only a couple clicks her printer started chugging out the pages.

  “What’s going on, Liv?” Any bit of mocking, annoyance, or even guardedness had left her expression completely by now. “Have the Upyri really escaped? I thought it was just a joke, but...they’ve seriously escaped and they’re back?”

  My jaw tensed as I took the pages away from her. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Ethan has something to do with this. He’s helping you, isn’t he?”

  My mouth went dry. “Yes, he’s helping me.”

  I desperately wanted to confide in somebody, but that would mean admitting out loud what I’d done and, well, I wasn’t there yet. I was too ashamed, too scared, and if someone else knew, then it would be out of my control. Not that I had any illusions I was actually in control right now.

  She nodded. “If you need more help—I mean. I know we’ve had problems, but I’m here for you, especially when it comes to fighting these monsters. I’m serious about that.”

  A fresh lump of emotion formed in my throat. “Thanks.”

  She squeezed my hand. “If it helps, my father always used to tell me that Upyri are stronger after the sun sets. Like the whole “sunlight kills vampires” thing isn’t quite right, but isn’t quite wrong either. So just stay in after dark, okay? I’ll do the same.”

  Ethan told me that the Upyri in wraith form avoided sunlight. They’d need a body to withstand it properly.

  “Prom,” I said, thinking about tomorrow night. “It doesn’t start till eight o’clock. That’s just before sunset.”

  She made a face. “I’m not going. Way too lame. But should we warn somebody?”

  “And what? Tell them it’s possible that there are Upyri wandering around town that might crash the party?”