The Window

by Amelia Brunskill

  Instead, for what felt like an eternity, she looked right at me.

  * * *

  —

  “DID YOU SEE THAT?” I asked Sarah quietly as we streamed out of the gym after the assembly finally finished.

  “What, you mean those slides she showed at the end?” she said. “Yeah, but I wish I hadn’t. Those were grim. Also, is it just me or did she spend a really long time talking about not letting anyone come near your drink when you’re at a party? I mean, a really long time on that?”

  I shook my head. “No, before that. I meant how she looked at me.”

  “Looked at you when?”

  “Right after her whole banging-up-the-garage-door story.”

  She shrugged. “No, sorry, I didn’t notice. She probably wasn’t really looking at you, though. She was probably just looking out around the room. I’ve heard there’s a technique people use to make everyone feel like they’re being looked at so they pay attention or whatever.”

  “No, she was definitely looking at me.”

  “Fine, she looked at you. So what? Unless you’ve been secretly getting wasted and plowing into garage doors, I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”

  I was about to argue and then I stopped myself. Sarah was probably right; it didn’t mean anything. People had to look somewhere and her gaze had simply happened to fall on me.

  Still, it was like a piece of sand in my brain the rest of the day, a low-level irritant that kept resurfacing.

  * * *

  —

  I CALLED THE POLICE STATION that night and asked for Officer Heron. I was told that she’d just left for a family vacation and would be out of town for the next two weeks.

  “Did you want to leave her a message?” the chirpy voice on the other side of the line asked. “I can send you to her voice mail.”

  “No,” I said after a moment had passed. “That’s all right.” And then I hung up.

  It was probably nothing, I told myself, my phone still in my hand. Probably nothing at all. Probably. Still, I opened my phone’s calendar and marked the exact date that Officer Heron would be back in the office.

  This was a mistake, I told him. We need to stop.

  I must have looked panicked, determined, because he didn’t argue with me—didn’t try to talk me out of it. He said he’d been thinking the same thing, that he should never have let it happen to begin with.

  I felt so relieved.

  I LET SARAH TALK ME into going to the basketball game with her. “He’s intense,” I told her as the coach blew his whistle, forcing all the players on the court to skid to a stop.

  “Yep,” Sarah said. “That’s part of what I love about these games. So much blood, sweat, and tears over nothing. My only regret is that Mona isn’t a cheerleader anymore—I enjoyed making fun of her bopping around in formation.”

  “Do you know why she quit?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess she came to her senses. That or she got sick of my awesome cheerleading impression.”

  I leaned forward and tried to focus on the game. As a whole, not just Nick. Although he was an important part. Even from an unbiased perspective.

  As I was watching him, the coach blew his whistle again—loud and hard.

  “What happened?”

  “Another foul from Charlie,” Sarah said. “Not even a subtle one that time. One of these guys will get fouled out soon if they don’t watch themselves.”

  “Fouled out?”

  “Too many fouls and you get benched for the rest of the game.”

  I shook my head. “This game is bizarre—more than half the team isn’t even playing.”

  “The couch will sub them all in at different points.” She pointed as Brian headed from the court to the bench and another guy jumped up and headed into the fray. “See, the coach is putting in someone else to be shooting guard now.”

  I gave her a blank look.

  She laughed. “Okay, I probably wouldn’t know that either if my dad didn’t watch so much basketball. Here’s the short version: there are five positions—point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, and center.” She pointed out at the court. “See, they’ve got Nick as point guard, and then Charlie as power forward, and then that beanstalk in the middle, Trent”—she waggled her finger toward the guy who was by far the tallest guy on the court—“they’ve got him as center because he could probably dunk the ball without so much as leaving the ground.”

  “Got it,” I said. “The game now fascinates me.”

  “Wow, sarcasm. You’re learning.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Pro tip,” she said. “If you want to soften Nick up, you should tell him that he’s a super-awesome point guard with amazing ball-handling skills. He’ll be like putty in your hands.”

  “I do not want him to be ‘putty in my hands,’ ” I told her.

  “Actually,” she said, with a wicked grin, “I think you kind of do.”

  * * *

  —

  SARAH WAS NOT RIGHT. BUT then again, she wasn’t wrong. It was confusing.

  And I was still thinking about that—about Nick, about hands—the next day when Mona slid into the seat across from me in the cafeteria.

  “I’m here to give you back your phone,” she said.

  I nodded, bracing myself for disappointing news. “Nothing you could do, right?”

  “Oh no,” she said, smiling. “I fixed it.”

  “You fixed it? Really?”

  Mona started to search through her bag. “Yeah. It still looks like hell, of course. It’s up to you if you want to pony up for a new screen. But it turns on now, and I’m ninety percent sure that everything will still be there—though you’ll only know for sure once you put in your—I mean her—password.”

  She handed over the Ziploc with Anna’s phone. The phone looked just like it had before, the screen a maze of spiderwebs, but somehow it felt different, now that I knew it worked again, like it contained more than metal and chips. “That’s amazing. Thank you.”

  She nodded, then blushed. “Oh,” she said. “I just realized…wouldn’t it have been turned off by now?”

  I shook my head. “Family plan,” I told her.

  “Oh, okay. Good.” She paused. “I can stay for a minute if you want me to look at it. Make sure all the data is still there.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’d prefer to do it on my own.”

  “Right. Of course,” she said, and started to stand up. Then she stopped. “If she has anything weird on her phone, maybe you could let me know?”

  “Weird how?”

  She paused. “I wondered if—” Then she stopped. “You know what? Never mind. I hope it works, Jess. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.”

  * * *

  —

  AT FIRST NOTHING HAPPENED, AND I thought Mona had been wrong, that it was still broken. I almost dropped it on the floor of the bathroom—where I’d retreated for privacy—when it lit up and buzzed in my hand.

  Anna’s password was the month and year of our birthday. I’d told her a million times to change it, to make it something harder to guess. Now I was grateful that she hadn’t.

  I looked at her texts first. The last one she’d received was from Lily:

  Sorry, but need to push it back by 30. And the boys may stop by first before we head out.

  Anna had texted her back shortly afterward:

  Okay, see you then!

  That was all there was. On the surface, it kind of fit with the narrative Mom had proposed—that Anna and Lily had been planning to hang out together but expected that some boys might drop by. The boys. One must have been Charlie for Lily, and the other…Brian? Certainly, Lily wouldn’t have described Mr. Matthews that way. But maybe he was the next
part of the itinerary—what they were heading toward.

  I kept scrolling back through her messages with Lily, hoping to find something more concrete—a name, a telling detail. Nothing.

  I went to Anna’s photos, thinking maybe I’d find some picture of her with the guy—their faces close together, smiling. Or even just a picture of Mr. Matthews alone. She would have wanted that, I thought, some proof, something to carry around with her. Except there was no photo like that. Close-ups of flowers and trees and ruined old barns, yes; some goofy group shots from cross-country, photos of her and Lily, and some shots of me and her, her arm stretched out to catch us both.

  And then, from a few weeks before she died, there was something different. A photo of her taken in a mirror. A full-length one of her completely naked.

  And she hadn’t sent it to one phone number.

  She’d sent it to two.

  A week later, Lily disappeared while we were at the bar, leaving me alone as time ticked by.

  After a while, I got nervous. I checked the bathroom, every corner of the bar. I finally went out into the parking lot. And there she was walking back, wearing a secret smile, hair mussed, arm around some guy. I pretended not to see her—just headed back into the bar.

  So when he put his hand on my leg again, I didn’t move away. Instead, I thought of Lily that night. And I moved closer.

  If Lily could have her secrets, then I could have mine.

  I FELT SICK TO MY stomach, knowing I’d seen something Anna would never have wanted me to see, and also deeply confused. If she’d sent the photo to one number, I’d have assumed I had my answer. But two? Two was different.

  Additionally, there was something off about the photo. She wasn’t smiling—wasn’t looking flirty or pouty or anything I thought someone might aim for in that kind of photo. Instead, she looked almost angry. Like she resented taking it.

  One of the numbers had no name attached, only the number. There were no other texts to that number.

  The second one was listed as “pf5.” There were other texts from this number, unfortunately all unhelpfully short and clipped:

  Not today.

  Meet me in the parking lot.

  You’re late.

  * * *

  —

  I HEADED OUTSIDE TO TAKE the next step. When I reached the outermost white line of the football field and took a deep breath. Then I used Anna’s phone and called the first number she’d sent the picture to.

  As it rang, I couldn’t help but picture it vibrating in Mr. Matthews’s pocket, his fingers reaching in to picking it up. Couldn’t help but wonder what his face might look like when he saw her name on his screen.

  No one picked up. And when the phone finally stopped ringing, I was dumped into a generic voice mail box.

  My hands were shaking so hard that I had to hit the button twice to hang up.

  Then I tried calling the second number.

  It rang three times before a voice came on the line. A cold, mechanical voice telling me that the number I had dialed was no longer in service. I listened to the message four times before it sank in and I slowly hung up.

  I sat down in the grass, my nerves shot. I’d thought Anna’s phone would provide answers. Instead, I only had more questions.

  I PAGED THROUGH MY FRESHMAN yearbook after I got home, searching for someone with the initials PF. I went carefully through each grade, all the teachers, all the staff. It was strange to see how each individual looked, boiled down to a single shot. Some of my classmates had already transformed within the space of less than a year into someone almost completely different, while others had never really looked like their photograph to begin with—the image missing some essential aspect, flattening them into a pancake version of themselves.

  The only one with the initials PF was Penelope Fetts, a junior with shiny dark hair and a wide gap between her front teeth. While I was trying to be open-minded, the birth control pills in Anna’s locker seemed to squarely rule Penelope out.

  I did a second sweep through the book, to see if I’d missed anyone. This time, I lingered for a moment when I got to the photographs of me and Anna, which were, as always, side by side. Even in black-and-white, Anna glowed with that wide, unmistakable smile, like a child who’d just been handed a warm puppy. Next to her, I looked sullen, watchful, like I was deciding what I wanted more: to vanish into thin air or to kick the photographer in the shins. Our parents had laughed when they’d seen the photos. “There it is,” they’d said. “They got you both.”

  Neither of us appeared in any other photographs. Nick, I noticed, showed up three times—his official school picture, jumping to make a shot in a game, and then in the back row of the basketball team photo. It was only in this last photograph that he was smiling, his teeth shining a brilliant white, a hint of dimple in his left cheek.

  It was distracting, that dimple. It really was.

  THE BREEZE FLARED AND SKATED along the surface of my arms and neck, cooling the patches of sweat that had formed as we’d run.

  “I went to the basketball game the other day,” I told Nick, casting it into the air like confetti at a wedding. I planned to follow up with some astute commentary about the game—totally stolen from Sarah—into which I’d skillfully weave one or two compliments about his playing.

  I was thrown off course when Nick nodded and said, “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “Oh. I didn’t realize you’d seen me.”

  He smiled a little at that. “Our fan base isn’t exactly so vast that it’s hard to take everyone in. In fact”—he raised a finger and closed his eyes for a second before opening them again—“I believe you and Sarah were there together, four rows up near the edge, by the exit that goes out to the bathroom.”

  “That’s pretty good,” I said. Sarah and I had actually been five rows up, but I thought I’d let that slide.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to see you there—hadn’t pegged you as a big sports fan.” He paused. “You know, I thought maybe you’d come say hi once it was over.”

  I’d wondered about that, how it would feel to make my way over to him, navigating the crush of people who’d descended upon the court after the game—the parents, friends, girlfriends who’d surrounded the various players. It had seemed so public, so vulnerable a thing to do, though, to stroll up to him like that and publicly demand his attention.

  “Sarah had to get her parents’ car back,” I lied. “So we left right afterward.”

  “Sure,” he said, his voice a fraction stiffer, like it had taken on a protective coating. “I get it. Running is our thing. That’s fine.”

  “That’s not—”

  I was interrupted by a sharp chirping sound. He paused and then reached into his pocket for his phone. He stared at the screen and laughed.

  “What is it?” I asked, both relieved and annoyed by the interruption.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just my mom. She’s decided that her fight against global warming involves texting me every time I forget to turn off a light or mess up the recycling.”

  He flipped his phone around and showed it to me.

  She’d sent a picture of what I assumed must be his room, lights on. Below she’d written:

  Every time you do this, a polar bear pup dies.

  “That’s dramatic,” I said.

  “I’m getting better about the recycling. Left to my own devices, though, I’d probably end up leaving all the lights in the entire house on. So maybe I secretly hate polar bears.”

  “Or maybe you really like seals,” I said.

  He smiled. “Good point.”

  We could have just gone on from there, not circled back. But I felt that I’d messed up, left behind an incorrect impression. So I tried again.

  “I really am glad that I went to the game, you know. And I wanted to say hi afterward,
I did.”

  He shook his head. “It’s okay.”

  “No, I wanted to….I particularly, uh, enjoyed watching your point guarding. And all that ball handling you did. But there were all these people, and I just…I don’t know.” None of it came out the way I wanted it to. My original version, my planned version, had been so much better. I closed my eyes and willed the blush rising in my cheeks to subside.

  He was quiet. After a few painful moments, I snuck a look at him and found that he was smiling at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m glad you enjoyed watching me play.”

  “I wasn’t like watching you, watching you,” I said. “I just noticed, in the larger context of the game.” Even as I said it, I started smiling. I couldn’t have explained why.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “You can tell yourself that if you like. But now I know the truth, that you’re a huge fan of…point guarding.”

  And I smiled wider. It made no sense, because my plans had gone totally awry, yet I was pretty sure it had all ended up where I’d hoped it would. The two of us outside in the sunshine, flirting.

  We didn’t talk much, him and I. Not when it was just the two of us.

  I feel so ashamed saying that. I want to tell you that there was something beautiful there, that we spoke of deep things together, shared our hopes and dreams. But then it would be a love story, and that’s not what this is.

  THE REMINDER THAT SHONE OUT at me from my phone two days later was unnecessary. Because I’d known from the second I woke up that this was the day Officer Heron would be back at work.

  The night before, I’d sat outside Mr. Matthews’s window and tried calling the number from Anna’s phone again. His phone was in front of him on his coffee table. I couldn’t see the screen, couldn’t tell if it lit up, but I couldn’t hear it ring, and his attention didn’t waver from his television. No one else picked up either.