Shattered

by Amanda Valentino

  “So, what do you think?” he asked after the last note.

  I reluctantly opened my eyes, disappointed that the song was over.

  “I mean, it’s still a little rough,” he added, resting his guitar on his lap.

  “It was amazing,” I said, hoping he believed me, because it was the truth.

  “Seriously?” He perked up. “Because I’ve never really played solo for anyone before . . . anyone besides Amanda, that is. She used to like to lie in the grass, stare up at the sky, and listen to me play. Sometimes, she’d take out her notebook and draw or write for a while. I know it sounds kind of weird.”

  “It actually sounds completely her.”

  Hal nodded and continued to thrum the strings. “Anyway, I really value your opinion. I know you never hold back, so I figured you’d be the perfect judge—jury and executioner if necessary.” He laughed nervously.

  “Well, thanks,” I said, looking toward the wall, where there was an abstract portrait of a girl lying in a field of tall grass. I assumed that it was Amanda. “So, do you think I could hear some more?” I nodded to his guitar.

  “For real?” He grinned, completely surprised.

  I was surprised, too—surprised at the fact that, though I hadn’t yet shared any of my news, Hal’s music was calming me down.

  Hal played “Angel Eyes” by Frank Sinatra. It was melodic and soulful, and reminded me of a trip my family and I took to Barcelona, where we had dinner at an outdoor café by the water, and a street musician entertained us with his guitar.

  Hal’s fingers were perfectly nimble as he plucked, pulled, and tapped at the strings like he’d been doing it forever. When the song was over, his eyes locked on mine as if maybe he had an agenda, too.

  “What?” I asked, when he didn’t say anything right away.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.” I nodded.

  “All that stuff you’ve been talking about . . . about how images come to you when you touch certain objects . . . is that something new or has that always happened?”

  I looked away, thinking back to a time in middle school when I was helping my dad find something in the attic. I came across Grandfather Rivera’s old military hat. I touched it and a flood of images practically overwhelmed me. I pictured an old army barracks, a huge explosion, and a hospital unit with rows of injured soldiers. At the time I figured I’d just been remembering something I’d been told before, that somehow I must have known my grandfather’s war history even though neither of my parents had ever spoken—or would speak—about it.

  After that experience with the hat, nothing like that had happened to me since. Until I met Amanda.

  “Pretty new, I suppose,” I told him, reluctant to share the hat story.

  Hal nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answer, but I could tell he wanted more. Before I could elaborate, however, there was a knock on his bedroom door. Mrs. Bennett edged the door open to reveal Callie just behind her.

  “Hey,” Hal said to her, practically beaming. The glow of his face was like a megawatt bulb.

  “Sorry if I’m late,” Callie said. Her face was glowing, too.

  She took a seat on Hal’s beanbag chair. In doing so, a spray of beanbag filling shot out from somewhere behind her, landing in her hair. Callie let out a giggle, and Hal laughed along. His Ken-doll blue eyes made a zigzag line down the center of her face, landing on her raspberry-stained lips. And suddenly I felt like the third wheel on Barbie’s Malibu beach bike.

  “So, shall we get right down to it?” I asked, eager to break things up. “Because we definitely have some important issues to discuss.”

  “Like what?” Callie asked, leaning forward on the chair.

  I told them about the list I found in my mother’s auction folder.

  “Just like the file I found,” Hal said soberly.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “Only the difference in this case was that the list in my mother’s office had the header ‘C-33,’ whatever that means.”

  “I think Thornhill’s file did, too, come to think of it, or at least that number was on there,” Hal said.

  “So, then, what does it mean?” Callie asked.

  “Exactly. And why does my mother have a copy of it? A copy that’s not exactly hidden away, but on her obsessive-compulsively neat desk, in the very folder that she’s been working with.”

  “Meaning it’s something she’s looked at recently,” Hal said, articulating my actual concern.

  I looked down at my lap, feeling the anxiety creep back into my stomach. “Is it possible that my parents are part of this whole mess?” I ventured, hearing my voice tremble over the words.

  “Maybe,” Callie said. “But you have to remember, our names are on that list, too. And it’s not like we’re conspirators, right?”

  “And my parents? They are not really striking me as super-spies or anything,” Hal added.

  “Okay, so how do we explain the fact that I also found a snapshot of Thornhill wearing the hospital-bracelet-turned-ring that we found in Amanda’s box?”

  “In your parents’ office?” Callie asked.

  “Hidden under a vase,” I clarified.

  “Wait, what?” Hal asked.

  “It’s true.” I nodded. “I practically knocked a vase over and found it hidden underneath. Very deliberately taped underneath, I might add. And why? I didn’t even think my parents knew Thornhill.”

  “And you’re definitely sure it was Thornhill in the photo?” he asked.

  “Definitely.”

  “And you’re absolutely positive that the ring around his finger was a hospital bracelet?” Callie asked. “Because it must’ve been pretty small in the photo . . .”

  “Yes, but I could still make it out,” I told her. “It was a close-up shot, so I was able to see Thornhill’s face and the baby bracelet. I obviously couldn’t make out any of the actual type, but it was clearly from a hospital.”

  “So then maybe it was someone else’s hospital-bracelet-turned-ring,” Hal said.

  “Are you even listening to yourself?” I asked. “How many other hospital-bracelet-turned-rings have you come across in your lifetime? Bottom line, Thornhill’s obviously even more connected to all this than we thought.”

  “Or at least he’s connected to someone named Ariel Feckerol,” Hal said, referring to the name on the baby bracelet in Amanda’s box.

  “And that Ariel person must also be connected to Amanda.” Callie nodded. “I mean, why else would Amanda keep Ariel’s bracelet in her all-important box?”

  A second later, there was another knock on Hal’s door. His younger sister, Cornelia, stood in the doorway with her laptop under her arm. “Did someone say Amanda?” she asked. Without even waiting for an answer, or for permission to come and join us, she took a seat on Hal’s bed and flipped open the cover of her laptop. “We’re way overdue for an update.”

  Cornelia was only in the sixth grade, but she acted more like one of the middle-aged detectives on CSI. An absolute guru of computer design, she was the one who created the Amanda Project website for us.

  “Can’t you see that we’re a little busy talking here?” Hal asked her.

  “And while you’re busy talking, time is ticking, and Amanda’s still a no-show. So, are there any comments, details, or additional clues to share?” Her fingers rested firmly over her keyboard, ready to type as we dictated.

  “Ignore him. Glad to see you. What additions have you made since the last time?” I sat next to her.

  “Well.” She angled the laptop so we could see the screen. “I’ve already put in a blurb about the first-edition copy of Ariel. Nia, I’ll need to come over and take a photo of that—stat. And please”—she rolled her eyes—“tell me the lipstick heart hasn’t totally been obliterated, though I know that at least part of it has, because otherwise I’ll be forced to describe the original look and/or replicate it in some way, which, as you can probably guess, isn’t the most authentic. I also added
the information about the business card—another pic needed, please. And I posted a call-out to people for the 411 regarding herbal tea shops in the area, a street named Sunflower, and any news on Amanda’s alleged aunt . . . a woman by the name of Waverly Valentino.”

  “Wow,” I said, utterly impressed.

  “I’ve been feeding her information as we get it,” Hal explained.

  “I also did my own online search for Sunflower Street,” Cornelia said. “But I came up dry.”

  “And how about herbal tea shops?” Callie asked.

  “There’s one an hour away in Stoughton,” she said, minimizing the Amanda Project screen and clicking on a spreadsheet entitled Amanda Leads Too Preemie and/or Privileged to Post. “But I doubt that’s the one. It was a different number than on the card and when I called them, they answered with the name of their shop—Tea-licious—rather than saying ‘tea department.’ I asked them if they even had an official tea department, which really confused them, and they were even more confused when I asked for an herbal tea remedy to help get rid of freckles.” She pulled a strand of her dark red hair over her nose, perhaps trying to mask the spray of freckling there.

  “Did you look up witch doctors, too?” I said, only partially joking.

  “I started to,” Hal said. “But there isn’t exactly a listing labeled ‘Wizards, Witches, and Sorcery’ in the yellow pages.”

  “Practitioners of folk magic do exist,” Cornelia corrected him. “But I’d suggest looking under something a bit more user-friendly . . . something like New Age Apothecaries, Naturopathic Medicine, or Herbal Remedies.”

  “Listen to you.” Hal smirked at her.

  “Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes for a second time. “Will that be all?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “There’s actually one other thing we should add to the site.” I spent the next couple minutes filling them in on my visit to the pharmacy with Amanda, and the whole bowl-and-serpent-with-the-onyx-eye mystery.

  “See.” Callie plopped down on the bed. “I knew that travel agency was a front for something else.”

  “But what?” Hal asked.

  “I can’t even believe that Amanda would notice something as tiny as a black stone in the eye socket of one of those serpents,” Callie said. “I mean, those markings are all over town.”

  “Or at least they’re on all the old Orion College of Pharmaceuticals buildings,” I clarified.

  “Still, I barely even give them a second look,” she said.

  “But I suppose we will now,” Cornelia chimed in. “As will others, especially once we post a photo of the serpent-and-bowl on the site.”

  “So, that’s obviously why Waverly Valentino’s card has an eye,” Callie said. “She’s part of this somehow.”

  “And for all we know, that pharmacy you visited with Amanda,” Hal began, focused on me, “was the same place we called when we phoned Waverly.”

  “Except that pharmacy was on Rantoul Street,” I told them. “Not Sunflower.”

  “Maybe the pharmacy moved,” Callie said. “Or else ‘sunflower’ is more code.”

  “Let’s go check it out,” Hal said. “At the very least to see if that onyx stone is still there.”

  Cornelia didn’t look up for a second as she typed all the information in. “Give me twenty-four hours,” she said, slamming her laptop cover shut. “I’ll have it all up and live. In the meantime, get me pics—jpegs, preferably 300 dpi. Get me an address for some of these serpents. And be sure to email me with any more info.” She pulled a stack of business cards from her pocket, and handed a bunch to each of us. “Feel free to pass these out to your friends and family members.”

  I knew better than to laugh as I read the card over:

  Cornelia would never forgive me.

  CHAPTER 15

  As soon as Cornelia left, Hal was determined to go check out the pharmacy. Tonight.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Maybe because we all have something called a curfew,” I said.

  “I’ll tell my parents we need to go to the library for a project,” he insisted. “I’ll have my mom drop us off, and we can walk from there.”

  “I’m game,” Callie said, her father being the most lenient of all our parents.

  I glanced at the clock. It was just about 8:15. “Yes, but Cisco’s picking me up in an hour.”

  “Couldn’t you ask him to pick you up a little later?” Hal asked.

  “I’ll call my parents,” I said, reaching for my phone, wondering what I could possibly give as an excuse. But before I could even dial, there was yet another knock on Hal’s bedroom door.

  “Come in,” Hal said.

  The door edged open and a boy walked in. With shaggy dark hair, olive-toned skin, and the deepest brown eyes I’d ever seen, he was probably around our age, or maybe a little older.

  “Hey, man,” Hal said to him, sounding more casual than usual.

  The boy had a pair of drumsticks sticking out the back pocket of his cargo pants, and some sheets of music in his hand. “Sorry, your dad let me in. I didn’t know you were busy,” he said, staring right at me, though he was talking to Hal.

  In the side leg pocket of his pants was a book. I angled myself to see the title: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I must have read that at least eleven times.

  Hal introduced the boy as West Kincaid, a junior at Endeavor, and the lead vocalist/part-time drummer/part-time bass player in their band. “This is the guy I was telling you about,” Hal said to me. “The one who writes all our music.”

  “Nice to meet you,” West said, still looking exclusively in my direction.

  Even though he went to Endeavor, I was sure I’d never seen him before. Wearing a plaid flannel scarf, and with a slight scruff on his chin, he embodied the definition of rock star.

  Only better.

  He smiled just a little, and I realized I was smiling, too. Hal looked back and forth between the two of us and cleared his throat, perhaps trying to break the sudden awkwardness in the room.

  Because four had become a crowd.

  My heart pounded and my palms pooled with sweat. “Have you read that book?” I asked West, nodding toward his pocket.

  “Are you kidding? I’ll read anything that’ll make me a better writer. This one just happens to be my favorite.”

  “Are you a poet?”

  “Some days I like to think I am. A poet and a songwriter.”

  “And other days?”

  “Other days I guess I’m a student, trying to soak up as much as I can. Do you want to borrow it?” he asked, referring to the book.

  “No, thanks. I’ve already read it.”

  “Oh, really,” he said, more of a statement than a question, though still seemingly surprised. “It’s pretty great, wouldn’t you say? ‘Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise,’” he quoted.

  “‘At its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create,’” I continued. “‘Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it.’”

  “Cool,” he said.

  And, to be quite honest, I was sensing it, too—as corny as that notion may have sounded inside my head, I felt fantastic magnetism everywhere else. “Hal played me your song earlier. It was powerful,” I told him, getting goose bumps all over just thinking about it.

  “Really?” He smiled. “You liked it?”

  Callie cleared her throat, echoing Hal from a few moments before. “So,” she said, in an attempt to switch gears, “I thought there were only sophomores in the band . . . aside from Hal, that is.”

  West nodded, not fully paying attention. Instead he stayed focused on me, like I was the only person in the room.

  “So, what’s up?” Hal asked in an assertive tone, finally snapping West to attention.

  West explained that he’d written some new lyrics, and he wanted Hal to check them out. “I also wrote notes to accompany them. So, play it and see what
you think.”

  “Sounds good,” Hal said.

  “Very good.” West gazed back at me.

  A second later, Hal’s mother sidled into the room again, clearing the magical tension in one fell swoop. Standing right behind her, to my complete and utter shock, was Beatrice Rossiter.

  Practically straight from the hospital.

  “Hal, you’re not planning a party here tonight, are you? I think maybe we’ve reached our capacity. You kids want to move downstairs and I can get some snacks out or something?” his mother asked.

  “I actually have to run anyway, dude,” West told him. “Call me later?”

  “Sure thing,” Hal said. “I think we’re okay, Mom. But thanks.”

  I waved good-bye to West just as Mrs. Bennett led Bea farther inside the room. “Callie, Nia, you both know Beatrice, right?” Mrs. Bennett asked.

  Callie’s mouth fell open in shock. Hal noticed, and tried to smooth things over by mentioning that Bea lived right across the street, and how great it was that she was finally out of the hospital. Mrs. Bennett left, still muttering about snacks and moving downstairs to a bigger space.

  I didn’t know whether to look at Bea or look at Callie. One night last winter, while Bea was walking home, Heidi pulled a hit-and-run. Bea was the victim. And instead of calling the police or helping Bea, Heidi drove straight to Callie’s house, looking for an alibi.

  Callie agreed, finally succumbing to Heidi’s tears and threats. Luckily Beatrice survived the accident, but it left the entire side of her body disfigured, her face included. Somehow Amanda had uncovered the truth and she told Callie about it. Shortly after she’d disappeared, she left Callie a message that prompted her to do the right thing, which in turn stripped Callie of her VIP membership to the I-Girl Club.

  Much to both her and our benefit, in the end.

  Callie ended up alerting Heidi’s mother to the whole ugly story. And though Mrs. Bragg denounced Callie and her family, the next thing everyone knew, some exclusive plastic surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital were donating their time and services to Bea’s case.