by Jessi Kirby
“I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in the rain—and back in the rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.”
They’re the words of someone who’s been lost and lonely. Left something behind.
“I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”
I see her in my mind, walking a lonely street, eyes downcast, hiding from her past someplace far from home. Maybe in that little artsy town where Josh’s uncle found her painting, and where maybe . . . I can find her.
I can’t let myself think that far ahead yet though. First I have to convince Kat to see what I see. I lean against her locker and wait, my mind buzzing and trying to fit something that I know will sound completely crazy into words that won’t. But maybe it won’t matter for her. Maybe she’ll just go right along with it because it is so out there. She always goes more on possibility than logic. I’m usually the one bogged down in needing facts. And right now the fact that I see her coming down the hall with Trevor Collins, looking more than friendly, gives me pause.
They don’t see me yet, but as I watch them walk they look . . . close. She leans into him and says something that looks like it surprises him before it sends a grin from one side of his face to the other, then tugs at my stomach. I’m surprised. I didn’t think she . . . or he . . . I just didn’t think they would ever—
I tell myself I don’t have any right to be jealous. He’s not mine, and I’ve passed up the opportunity more than once. And after the way I acted yesterday I wouldn’t blame him if he stopped trying. But still. Why would she be so like that with him, when she knows I—I stop my tangent. Clearly I’ve had too much caffeine and too little sleep and am overanalyzing. Kat looks like she’s flirting no matter what she does. Even when she says hi to me.
“Hey, you,” she says with a smile.
I take a step forward to meet the two of them, loop my arm through Kat’s, and words come out in one breathless rush. “Hey you guys, good morning, Kat can I talk to you alone?” I grab her arm.
They both look a little stunned.
“Morning to you too, Frost,” Trevor says. He’s still wearing a hint of the smile Kat put on his face with whatever she said. “Guess that’s my cue to go.” He gives Kat a look I can’t read, winks at me, then turns and walks away from us without saying anything else.
“That was weird,” I say.
She looks me over. “You were weird. What’s going on? You look like crap.”
I ignore the comment and pull her close so I can whisper. “I decided on my one thing.”
“Huh?”
“My one thing I promised you I’d do.” She’s already looking at me like I’ve lost it and I haven’t even told her what it is yet. “The unexpected thing?” Still nothing. I take a deep breath and try again. “You said I had to promise you I’d do one unexpected thing before graduation, and I have it.”
Recognition slides over her face in a smile. “Oh yeeaah. What is it?”
“I can’t tell you right now. It’s a long story and I have to finish the last of the journals for Kinney. Come with me to the library.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Look at you taking charge. It’s too bad you didn’t yesterday.”
“What are you talking about?”
She ignores the question. “Never mind. Let’s go. I haven’t been to first period for the last four days. No need to break the streak now.”
After a quick stop at Mr. Kinney’s room to grab the box of journals, Kat and I find a seat at a table in the farthest corner of the library. She slaps another preprinted postage label on a manila envelope and tosses it in the box at our feet. “Okay. Let me repeat back to you what you just said so you can, you know, hear how insane you sound.” I nod, pretty sure that this is part of the process of her agreeing to go with me.
“You, Parker Frost, stumbled across and stole Julianna Farnetti’s journal from this stack here.” She pats it and I nod. “Then you read it, found out she was in love with some other guy who wasn’t Shane Cruz, but who you’ve decided is Josh from Kismet, and because of a tattoo and an anonymous painting in his café, you think Julianna Farnetti is still alive and it’s your duty to reunite the two people who were actually meant to be together, by taking our unofficial senior trip to some art town instead of to San Francisco and the beach?” She stops to take a breath just in time for Ms. Moore to give her “the look,” which Kat pointedly ignores. “It doesn’t sound crazy at all, right?”
I don’t answer right away. Instead I peel another postage label from the sheet to give Ms. Moore a chance to turn her attention back to her computer. Then I look at Kat. “Well, when you say it all dramatic like that . . .”
“You’re insane.” Kat peels and sticks another label. “And you’ve obviously read too much Nicholas Sparks.”
“Ha. You have too. And you love this, I know it.” She tries to hide a smile as she tosses another envelope into the box. “Kat, come on. It’s exactly the type of thing you’re always trying to get me to do.”
“Go chasing after a dead girl? What about Shane? Where does he figure into this whole thing? Is he alive too?” She leans in close and lowers her voice to a sinister whisper. “Or did she kill him and run off?”
“Kat—” I stop. I haven’t actually thought about where Shane fits into the puzzle. What the rest of his story is. “I don’t know. But I’m taking this trip, and the only other person in the world I’d want to take it with is you. So you’re coming. Right?” I try for the kind of confidence she usually throws at me, but it comes out as a question and a pathetic attempt at puppy dog eyes.
She rolls hers. “Of course I’ll come, you dork. I just had to torture you a little. Make sure you’re really committed to doing this thing.”
“You will?” I jump out of my seat in a rush of relief and excitement and hope, and wrap my arms around Kat, not caring if Ms. Moore shoots another look our way.
“But you know you’re gonna have to let me read the journal,” she says. “Just in case you missed something important.” She reaches around me for my backpack.
I grab it first. “Um . . . I—”
“Girls,” Ms. Moore says with another pointed look, “I think it’s time you get back to your classes. The period’s almost finished, and it seems your work is too.”
“Sorry,” I say, slipping back into my normal, authority-fearing self. “You’re right. We’ll pack up right now.” I lean across the table to gather up the various stacks of envelopes, and all in one motion Kat slides her hand into my open backpack, snatches out Julianna’s journal, and slips it into her purse. I kick her under the table.
“Calm down,” she smiles. “I’ll give it back to you by the end of the day, and I won’t show anyone. Promise.”
Before I can answer her the bell rings and she spins on her heel and makes for the door, leaving me with the box to return to Mr. Kinney’s and the hope beyond hope that she keeps her promise.
17.
“So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.”
—“REVELATION,” 1913
I’m waiting at Kat’s locker after seventh period when I get her text: Almost done w/journal. Holy. Shit. Meet me @ Kismet in an hour.
This freaks me out for multiple reasons. First off, I know she’s going to want to talk about it. At great length, and at a volume better suited for my house or hers than the place where the topic of conversation might actually be working. I’d trust her with my life, but I don’t trust her not to interrogate Josh in a completely inappropriate manner.
I also know she won’t change her mind or even answer if I text her back with a different place to meet. It’s how she gets her way a lot of the time. By not giving people any other choice. The other thing that worries me when I walk outside is that her car is still in the parking lot.
I text her back: Where are you??? Why an hour?
I don’t expect an answer, but I linger in front of the school just in case, watching the cars stream out of the parking lot and off into the warmth of the spring afternoon. Only when it’s mostly emptied out do I really notice the other cars that are still there. With graduation only a few weeks away, most seniors are gone from campus after lunch, taking full advantage of their free period. Trevor always is. Not that I keep tabs on him, but I never see him at his locker after fifth period, so I’m pretty sure he leaves. Except he didn’t today.
Today his Suburban is parked a few spaces away from Kat’s truck, and he’s nowhere to be seen either. Again that twinge of jealousy tugs at me, and I push away the foreign possibility that they could be together. I flash on how close they were in the hall this morning, what she said later about me not stepping up yesterday, and I check my phone again. No text.
I don’t want to think about it. And I don’t want to be mad at her when she shows up, because we have a lot of planning to do and only a few days to get it done. So instead of walking back in or texting her again, I get in my car and head over to Kismet, wondering if I really did miss my chance with Trevor, and hoping that she didn’t decide to take it.
Josh is hanging a painting when I push through the door, and I very nearly turn around and walk right out.
“Be with you in just a sec,” he says over his shoulder. He pushes up on his toes to get the frame in place high on the wall. Then he glances back at me. “Oh, hey. Come to order a chai you’re not going to drink?”
“No.” I force a laugh, but it comes out nervous. “I’m meeting my friend here for . . .” I stumble when he turns around and waits for me to finish. In the golden light of the afternoon I can see it again. That flash of him as Julianna saw him. “We’re doing a project. Town history. Sort of.”
“Exciting. Want something while you wait?” He smiles, and his eyes warm, and I can’t help but imagine how they’d look if Julianna were the one who had walked through the door—if somehow I was right, and I could find her and tell her that he’s been here all this time, and that I don’t think he ever moved on. I’m getting ahead of myself, I know.
“Maybe just a water,” I answer.
“Sure.” He nods and walks back around the counter to grab me a bottle. I reach for my wallet, but he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. You pretty much keep me in business these days.”
“Thanks.” I smile and take a nervous sip, awkward in the silence that follows.
“So what’s your project about?” Josh asks. “The mine? History of the resort? What?”
I could lie and keep the conversation completely surface and safe, but he just gave me a wide open door for so much more than that. I decide to inch my toe over the threshold. “No,” I say carefully. “It’s actually not for school. It’s a lot more . . . important than that. I mean, it could be.”
“Yeah?” He wipes down the spotless counter. I decide to go for it.
“You know that billboard at the edge of town? With the two kids who disappeared a long time ago?” He seems to tense, just slightly, but it passes quickly and I wonder if I imagined it.
“Sure,” he answers. He ducks below the counter, comes back up with two packages of paper coffee cups even though the stacks already tower far above the register.
“Well, the girl—Julianna . . .” I pause and watch as he adds more cups to each stack without looking at me. “She left a journal.” His hands stop moving, hover empty in the air between us. And now his jaw tightens and he avoids my eyes completely.
I take a step forward and lean across the counter so he has no choice but to look at me. “She wrote about a guy in it,” I say, timidly at first. But then I get brave with what I know. “A guy that seems like he could’ve been you a long time ago. Except she called you Orion in her journal. She wrote about the first night you met, and how you made her feel like someone new, and how you swam in McCloud and sketched her on the beach, and kissed her under the stars—”
I stop, shocked at myself. Josh’s face has gone white, and his eyes blink repeatedly in the silence that stretches dangerously tight between us.
The cups he’s stacking topple. If they were glass, they’d go crashing to the ground, shattering and sending shards flying in every direction, which is what it looks like has just happened inside of him.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” My voice is barely above a whisper, and I have no idea where the nerve to say any of this is coming from, but it courses through me strong, like it’s the truth, and as soon as I look at him I know it has to be.
Josh fixes his eyes somewhere beyond me, out the window and maybe all the way back to the past and to Julianna. I wait for him to answer. Bend to pick up the scattered paper cups. Hope that Kat doesn’t walk in at that moment and give away the fact that I’m not the only one who knows. That I didn’t keep their secret.
“She was . . .” Josh clears his throat. “She was one of those people that just kind of shine, you know? Everybody thought so.” He smiles, but the edges of it are tinged with sadness. “She was just . . .” Finally, he looks at me. “Yeah, I loved her. Whatever that means when you’re nineteen years old. From the second I met her I did, but—you already know she wasn’t mine to love. And I don’t think it was mutual.”
The words you’re wrong want so badly to burst out of my mouth, but I hold them back. He’s leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his chest, and is now looking at me like he wants to keep talking. And I want to hear what he has to say.
“She told me that after a little while, and I was so messed up over it I just left town. I had to get out of here. I didn’t tell her I was leaving or bother to say good-bye.” He looks at the cups scattered over the floor. Chews his bottom lip for a moment. “But, um, I came back as soon as I heard. Drove all night long so I could help search and rescue, even though the last thing I wanted was to find her out in the snow or under the ice.”
He pauses, and I can see he’s gone back there in his mind. I picture him searching alongside everyone else, hoping for a miracle.
“I kept going out there for a long time after that, just looking for something. Even after they called off the search.” He shakes his head and brings his eyes back to me, and now they’re more contemplative than sad. “It was stupid, but I kept thinking that somehow she’d come back, because it didn’t seem possible she was really gone.”
He pauses and picks up a cup from the floor, turning it in his hands, and I want to tell him maybe he was right. I want to say what I’ve been thinking since yesterday. That even now, there could be a chance. A little thread drifting along out there in the ether, waiting to be connected to the story it belongs to.
He smiles tightly and sends the cup in his hands sailing into a nearby trash can. “Anyway.”
I can tell by the shift in his tone he’s about to end the conversation, but there’s so much more I want to ask him. I want to know what made him tell me so much, why he didn’t ask me more about the journal or how I got it, or what else I know. I want to ask him what he’d do differently if he could go back. And what he would do now if he could have another chance.
But the question that I say out loud is, “Why did you stay here? After.”
He shrugs. “I probably should have left and moved on. Traveled, forgotten about it, let it go. But I kept staying and hoping, and eventually I opened this place and . . . that was it. Here I am.” He spreads his hands out, then drops them to his sides like that’s it. That’s all there is to his story.
It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, and it’s all I can do not to tell him everything I think right then and there, but fear holds me back. What if I’m wrong? What if I get his hopes up only to have them come crashing right back down?
The jingle of the bell above the door and Kat’s voice keep me from having to decide.
“Parker! Good, you’re here.” She brushes past me, hardly registering Josh sta
nding there. Her eyes search the walls. “Where’s the painting? I need to see it.”
“Kat—” I hope the tone I say it with is enough for her to understand that she needs to stop right now.
She does, and seems to suddenly notice that Josh is standing there looking from one of us to the other like he’s waiting for an explanation of what the heck is going on. She looks him over carefully, her eyes wandering down the length of his arms. “Oh my God. Did she just tell you? Did she tell you what she thinks about the painting?”
“Kat.” This time I say it through gritted teeth, and since I know it’s not enough, I grab her by the elbow and give her my best smile. “I need to talk to you. Outside. Now.” I don’t give her a chance to argue. Instead, I yank on her arm and usher us out the front door of the café, leaving an understandably confused-looking Josh inside.
“What are you doing?” I can barely contain my anger at her. “Why would you say that to him right now?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” She shakes my hand off her arm. “Parker, I read the journal. She was totally in love with him, and he was with her, and they screwed it up. Don’t you think he’d want to know if there’s even the smallest chance that you’re right?”
I glance inside, but Josh is nowhere to be seen. I don’t blame him. “No,” I say. “I don’t think he’d believe me. As far as he’s concerned, she’s gone. It’s a closed chapter of his life. I don’t want to open it up with any false hope until I know for sure. I think he had enough of that the first time around.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s not a closed chapter of his life. He never got over her. That’s why he is the way he is.” Kat looks from me through the window of the café and back again. I don’t say anything, and I don’t move.