Limetown

by Cote Smith

  Emile let Jacob sit in silence for a moment, trying to follow his brother’s thoughts. They moved too quickly. It was like trying to catch raindrops in your hands.

  “Even though I was—why didn’t she come back? Did they say where she is now?”

  “Something happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Emile,” Jacob said, and Emile heard his words before his brother said them. “Emile, she’s dead.”

  Emile shook his head. “What? She can’t be.” Someone would have heard. Someone would have told them. He felt the pull in his chest being replaced by panic. “How? When?” His eyes started to burn before he even realized why.

  “They found a death certificate in Kansas’s Department of Health records. She didn’t die too far from home, or too long after we left . . .” Jacob trailed off, unwilling to voice the question rattling in his head. If they had stayed in that house, if they had been there—

  “So there’s nothing—there’s no one—” The rest of his words got stuck in his throat. He tried to swallow them, to push them down into the well of his stomach.

  “We should leave,” Emile said, wiping his face. “Right now. There’s nothing for us here.”

  Jacob sighed. “I know,” he said. “I know you want to.”

  “So let’s go.”

  “We can’t.”

  Of course we can, Emile wanted to say. But before he could get the words out, Emile saw his brother sitting in an office somewhere that morning. The scene brightened. A curtain was pulled back, letting in daylight. A voice was saying things Jacob didn’t want to hear. “It is the best thing to do for him,” the voice said. “For both of you.”

  “They want to help us,” Jacob said. “To make up for not helping Mom. They said they’ll pay for my school, all of it. Yours when you’re ready.”

  Emile pressed his palms into his wet eyes, until the blackness burst with stars. He didn’t want to hear the bargain his brother had made. He thought about the dream he could have confessed to Max, in which he hid in the attic with Jacob. Why he was hiding he never understood. Was it from his mother or someone else? He took his hands away from his eyes and opened them, watched as the stars drifted across his vision and faded into nothing.

  “You’re just going to leave,” Emile said.

  Jacob winced. “I would come back. I promise.”

  The voice returned. “He will be fine. More importantly, he will be safe. But should you both leave, we can no longer guarantee his protection.”

  “From who?” Emile said, in the room. Jacob said, in the office.

  “From anyone,” the voice said. “Your brother is gifted. That’s why you came. You know what the world does to those who are gifted. As did your mother.”

  “Did they find our mother? Is that what happened?”

  “We can’t be sure,” the voice said. “But she loved you. More importantly, she trusted us, son. So much that she read to you from that gift shop book every night, just in case, so you would know where to go, when you were ready.”

  The curtain to the office window closed, shutting Emile out.

  Jacob said, “If there really are people after us, after you . . .”

  Emile shut his brother’s voice out. He didn’t want to hear any more. He tried instead to imagine his life here, once again. Working in the kitchen, as a cook or a busboy, someplace he could keep his head down and be left alone. He tried to imagine walking down the long hall, nodding at his subjects through locked doors.

  “I think this is the best we’ve got,” Jacob said. He wouldn’t look at Emile as he spoke though, and Emile realized that, this time, maybe what was best was best for Jacob, and not for him. But try as he might to feel angry, or betrayed, Emile could not begrudge his brother, who had watched over and defended him since he was a child. Who the night of the snowstorm had carried Emile barefoot through the snow, to what he thought was a better life.

  The two of them stood up. Emile let his brother hug him. He let Jacob promise again that he would come back.

  “I am always here for you,” he let Jacob say. “No matter what.”

  Then he let Jacob leave, and when he was gone, Emile turned the fan off. He was alone. He put his jacket on. He got back under the covers, trying to warm his entire body, but nothing he did would erase the bumps on his flesh.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lia

  Lia arrived in Australia on a Friday, and she was not alone. She met all ten of her classmates in Melbourne’s crowded airport, including a tall and loud girl named Julie who had sat next to Lia on her connecting flight out of Los Angeles. Despite Lia’s clear signals that she wanted to be left alone—headphones over her ears, book in front of her face—it was a long trip and Julie was persistent. They ended up talking for nearly half the time they spent over the ocean. Or, Julie did most of the talking, and Lia found herself happy to sit there and listen. She was happy too when, after the two departed the plane, Julie touched the crook of Lia’s elbow, guiding her the right direction into Customs, then, later, the small of Lia’s back, as they approached baggage claim, where they picked up their luggage and received welcome packets from the study abroad counselor. Long after her classmates squeezed into a taxi to campus, Lia’s skin felt a familiar buzz where Julie’s hand had been.

  On the drive to Deakin, Lia tried to take in what would be her home for the next four months. The immediate landscape was fairly stark and flat, but soon they arrived in outer Melbourne, a wide sprawl of suburbia. Lia was struck by how much it reminded her of Kansas, of the place whose mysteries and drama she’d flown across the world to escape. She tried to not think of the similarities as a sign.

  Once in her dorm Lia opened her welcome packet to discover two pieces of unexpected news: she would room with Julie, and intern at a public radio station. The first, surprisingly, thrilled her; the second, not so much. Lia assumed her internship would be working with a local paper, and pictured herself in the same sort of office where she’d spent the previous summer, fact-checking for Art. And this was true, for everyone except her. While her classmates were assigned desks at various papers with words like “Sun,” “Observer,” and “Herald” on their front pages, Lia was sent to DJHK, a public radio station. She protested to her study abroad chaperone, a well-meaning but privileged master’s student who was studying communications and whose parents owned a vacation house in Perth. Lia didn’t know anything about radio and had never been fond of her own voice, which she had always considered too sweet-sounding for how she normally felt. The girl told Lia she was really sorry, but media was media.

  That night, Julie and Lia skipped orientation and went out to drink watery beer. Lia thought about how nice it was to spend time with someone who wasn’t weighted down by any drama. Nicer still when, as they walked back to their dorm, Julie took Lia’s hand and rested her head on Lia’s shoulder.

  They spent the weekend touring the campus—a small suburban bubble on the eastern outskirts of Melbourne—and suffering through even more orientation. Lia’s first day at the station was on Monday. Her supervisor was Wiley, a large fortysomething male with no distinguishable marks other than his receding hairline and faded comic book T-shirt. On Lia’s first day he told her he didn’t know what to do with her. They were sitting in the production booth. Lia liked the room more than she expected she would, its strange quiet. It was as if the air had been vacuumed free of any noise or worry. It reminded her of an attic.

  “What if I helped out in here?”

  “And do what?” Wiley said. “There’s barely enough work for me. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

  “So why did you hire me?”

  “Your chaperone was pretty. I work in public radio. I didn’t know how to handle it.”

  Eventually he did find a job for Lia, something he said should easily last the semester. Early that evening he showed her a long but narrow closet stacked with old tapes and reams of dot matrix computer paper.

  “I want
us to go digital,” he said. “See all this? These are transcripts of all the shows we’ve done the past few decades. I want you to type them up and put them online. Oh, you’re gonna need to make a website first. You know how to do that?”

  Lia lied and said she did, though it depressed her to think of spending the entire fall in this closet, while Julie and her classmates were out there, covering real news stories.

  “Great. We’ll get you a desk. You have a laptop, right?”

  “Are these organized by year or anything?”

  “Let’s say yes,” Wiley said, and after retrieving a wobbly desk, shut her in.

  Lia took out her laptop and worked hard those first few hours. But once Wiley left, and she realized his replacement probably didn’t know that this room or Lia existed, she took her time reading deks and headlines. She had fallen into a bit of a rabbit hole, she thought, if when Alice fell she tumbled into a world of perpetual boredom. Most of the transcripts were unbelievably uninteresting. Or, if they were interesting, they were dated. Stale reports of crimes committed and personal tragedies whose endings were written years ago. There were, as Miss Scott would say, no more questions worth asking.

  It was after midnight by the time Lia returned to the dorm. Everyone else was asleep, no doubt exhausted from their first days, which, Lia was sure, were much more compelling than her own. She snuck into her room without turning the light on. Julie slept in the bottom bunk, and Lia climbed to the top as quietly as she could.

  “Everyone hears you,” Julie said.

  “Sorry.”

  Julie rustled below. “You got mail.”

  “Really?”

  Julie’s hand reached up holding a large postcard. Lia slid to the back of the bed and read under the dim light of her phone.

  Apple,

  I know you are upset with me. You must be. But you should know that I’m done disappearing. The answers I’ve sought have only led to more questions. When would it end? It would never end.

  I know what I want. I want to be happy. I want to hear your voice, the excitement in it when you talk about your life, about school and work, and someday, when you’re ready, your own family. Most of all, I want to be here for you. No matter what. God, I sound so sentimental. But if I’ve learned anything from this whole mess, it’s the importance of telling the ones you love how you feel, before it’s too late.

  I hope this was waiting for you when you arrived. Tell me about Australia. Tell me what you discover on the other side of the world.

  Lia reread her mom’s words several times, before flipping the postcard back over, expecting a picture of rain and tall green trees, a microcosm of their new home in Oregon. Instead, an elk lorded over a crystal lake that reflected purple mountains.

  “Who’s it from?” Julie said.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  She hid the postcard in one of her pillowcases. She had two pillows, because Julie liked to sleep with her head against the mattress or, if Lia was willing, Lia’s chest.

  “Do you want company?” Julie asked. She reached up to touch the bottom of Lia’s feet.

  “No. I think I want to be left alone.”

  * * *

  In the morning Lia acted like nothing happened. So did Julie. Lia got ready, and on the way to a visual media class, Julie told her about her first day interning with a beat writer for some nationally famous rugby team. She might even get to go on the road and help cover an away match.

  “So how was life at the station?” Julie asked.

  Lia was embarrassed to tell her about her experience, the small, dark closet, the towers of transcripts. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Julie stopped. She zipped up her gray hoodie quickly, in a way that said she was annoyed. “God. Are there any subjects that aren’t off-limits?”

  Lia apologized. She said she was homesick, which was true. But she was also sick of home. The postcard she’d received was an unwanted reminder of all the problems she’d left behind, and the questions that lingered. Limetown. Her uncle. Her mother.

  Julie wrapped her arm around Lia’s waist. She pulled Lia close. She said, “Look at this, my first hostile interview.” Julie smiled. If old mom had asked, Lia might have been embarrassed to admit what she was feeling.

  * * *

  The next two days the internship was a monotonous slog. But when Lia showed up at the station on Thursday evening, Wiley was buzzing around the station with excitement. Apparently, the star of a locally syndicated sci-fi show Lia had never heard of had agreed to an interview. “By yours truly,” Wiley said.

  Wiley’s excitement did not carry over to Lia’s closet. The work was the work, unremarkable and outdated. Lia couldn’t imagine anyone anywhere wondering about articles like “Indigenous Spores of the Temperate Coast” or “Personal Computers: Future or Fad?”

  After eight, she took a much-needed break, drinking the break room’s questionable coffee and contemplating the poor decisions that had led her to this sad station of radio and of her life.

  When she returned to the closet, the stack of scripts she’d left on her desk was gone. In its place was a single transcript from a different decade. Lia looked around, as if there was anywhere someone could hide in such a small space. She said hello to the empty closet. When no one answered, she sat down at her desk and read.

  A schizophrenic man in his thirties, named James, had made a miraculous recovery thanks to an unorthodox treatment. James’s brother knew someone who worked at DJHK, and the station invited James on to discuss his recovery.

  HOST: Tell the viewers what it was like for you before the treatment.

  JAMES: I don’t entirely remember. But I know I had a tough time sorting things.

  HOST: What sort of things?

  JAMES: Reality. Real from fake. Fact from fiction. I remember waking up with these wonderful ideas about the secret ways the world works. But when I rushed to tell someone—my brother, for example, or my sister—they would just stare at me. Like they couldn’t understand. Like something inside of me was broken.

  (James cries)

  HOST: Take your time.

  JAMES: And then I was sitting there. In that facility. There were two of them.

  HOST: Who were they? Doctors?

  JAMES: I don’t know.

  HOST: Psychologists?

  JAMES: No. No. They made that very clear.

  HOST: What were their names?

  JAMES: I never found out. I wish I did. I wish I could thank them.

  HOST: What would you say? If they were here with us, or somewhere out there, listening today.

  JAMES: I would say . . . I would tell them . . . I need their help again. But not me. I have a daughter. That’s why I’m here. Why I agreed to this. I’m worried she’s like me. Worried that—

  “Lia.”

  Lia jumped. “Wiley! Goddammit.” She touched her chest, calming her pounding heart. “Were you there the whole time? Did you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  Wiley blinked through his unfashionable glasses, his eyes two goldfish trapped in fishbowls.

  Lia took a breath. “How’d the interview go?”

  “Terrible. I should’ve never allowed myself on-air. What do you got there?”

  Lia didn’t realize she was still holding the transcript. “I don’t know. It’s about these miracle workers or something.”

  Wiley took the transcript from her hands and skimmed through it. “You know, this will go faster if you don’t think too hard.” He rolled up the transcript and itched his beard with it.

  “I’m not thinking too hard,” Lia said. “This internship—I’m not thinking at all. That’s the problem.”

  “I’ll try not to be offended by that,” Wiley said, and ducked into the hall. Lia followed him.

  “Wiley, I’m dying here. There has to be something else for me to do.”

  “Like what?”

  Lia searched her brain. “I don’t know,” she said. “What about . . .”
She searched the hallway for an answer, but all she saw was the miracle-worker transcript crumpled in Wiley’s paw. “What about a follow-up?”

  “A follow-up? You mean reporting the same thing twice? We barely have the money the first time.”

  “Not the same story,” Lia said. “Or, yes, the same, but a different chapter.” She took the transcript out of his hands and unrolled it, smoothing the pages and looking at the names. “Like, whatever happened to James, for example? Don’t you want to know? Or his daughter maybe? What about her? Is she okay?”

  Lia could feel her mind start to turn; even if she was making the questions up as she went, it felt good to let that part of her brain work again, to turn it on and set it in motion, and for a second there she saw herself tracking down James, his daughter. Investigating, solving a mystery, even if it was of her own invention.

  “Lia,” Wiley said. “Did you hear what I said?”

  Wiley was staring at her, a mix of annoyance and pity on his face. “I’m sure everyone is fine. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a crisis of confidence I need to attend to in the men’s room.”

  * * *

  Lia returned to her dorm on an old bike Wiley had lent her for errands, winding through Melbourne’s alleyways and past the bars, cafés, and music venues she had yet to frequent. She’d read in her orientation packet that Melbourne was an artist’s city, filled with murals, museums, and pop-up galleries down random laneways. Even her boring dorm building had a sizable sculpture out front, a large bronze, blocky figure that looked like it was doing Tai Chi.

  When Lia got to her room, there was a boomerang on the door. Julie’s idea of a joke.

  “I thought you had company,” Lia said. This, after she put her ear to their door, listening for an unfamiliar laugh.

  “Would that have bothered you?”

  “Maybe,” Lia said, and she was surprised at how true the statement was.

  Julie popped up from her bed. She told Lia she was going on a late-night run, and to please leave the door unlocked. She wasn’t taking her key.