Hidden Pieces

by Paula Stokes

  “Well, you could also tell her the truth. Then maybe you could just ask her for the purse and offer to pay her back.”

  It’s a good idea, and one I wouldn’t have come up with on my own, but then I remember the message said I had to steal the contents of her purse too. “She might give me her purse, but she’s not going to give me everything inside it too, like her wallet and her ID and stuff.” I pause. “You know, Julia has a fake ID now. She got it this summer while she was hanging around that Ness girl. Do you think that’s what this is about?”

  Holden shrugs. “I don’t really see how Julia’s ID would connect to the fire or you and me.”

  I bury my face in my hands. “You’re right. Fuck. I feel like someone is just torturing me.”

  “Well, I support whatever you think you should do.”

  I peek through my fingers. “Run away from all of this and never come back?”

  Holden chuckles. “That I do not support.”

  “You can come too if you want.” I rest my head against his shoulder.

  “Well, in that case.” Holden hops up from the sofa. He pulls a set of keys from his pocket. “Let’s go.”

  “Your bike? But it’s freezing outside.”

  “I’ll block all the wind with my massive body,” he says.

  I snicker. “Yeah, right.”

  “And I’ll loan you my warmest hoodie, if you promise not to make fun of my body again.”

  “Better, but I’m not sure a motorcycle ride will fix things.”

  “It won’t fix the future, but it’ll fix the present. And best of all, it’ll clear your mind.”

  Fourteen

  AS USUAL, HOLDEN IS RIGHT. It’s impossible for me to think about anything while I’m zooming through the dark on the back of his bike. Anything other than surviving the harrowing turns and blistering cold.

  Holden made good on his promise to loan me a hoodie, so my middle parts are warm, but the wind cuts right through the fabric of my jeans and after ten minutes on the bike, I’m pretty sure my face has literally crystallized.

  “How you doing?” he yells back, as he leans into yet another hairpin curve.

  I do my best to mimic the way he angles his body. “I’m alive . . . so far.”

  Holden laughs. We hit the outskirts of a small town and leave the shelter of the trees. We’re headed the same way I went with Julia to get to the outlet mall. It’s funny how the same scenic vistas I snapped pictures of out the window of her car look totally different at night.

  Holden slows the bike as we ascend a large hill. I gasp as we hit the top of it. The view over the dark ocean is otherworldly, the waves silvery in the moonlight, robotic in their endless ebbing and flowing.

  I position my cold lips next to his ear. “This is so beautiful.”

  “Isn’t it?” He slows his speed temporarily so it’s easier to talk to me. “The coast is something else. It’s like we live on a movie set.”

  Before I can reply, we come to a steep downhill grade. Holden guns the engine and accelerates sharply. I tighten my grip around his waist as the bike picks up speed again. The wind whips my hair back from my face like a blond flag. My eyes water, blurring the highway’s dotted yellow line into a single stripe. My lips start to go numb. We hit a dip in the road and my stomach lodges into my throat.

  Then suddenly we’re back on flat pavement, trees on either side, racing into the dark unknown. I bet this is what skydiving feels like. Just plummeting through sharp, cold air at high speed. Fast, free, almost flying.

  A reflective sign for a beach overlook comes up on the right. Holden signals and then turns into the parking area. He pulls the bike into a parking spot and cuts the engine. There’s no one here but us. He angles his head toward the overlook platform. “Wanna hop off for a few? Stretch your legs before we head back?”

  “Sure.” I rest my hands on his shoulders and lift myself off the motorcycle.

  Holden slides off after me. He unhooks the chinstrap of his helmet and lifts it off his head, shaking out his hair. “Feeling any better?”

  “A little.” I remove my own helmet and hand it to him. “Holy shit. That hill was intense.”

  “Holy shit is right.” He loops the helmets over the motorcycle’s handlebar and then rubs at his waist. “You were grabbing onto me so hard you probably left marks through my clothes.”

  I scoff. “Well, that’s what you get for trying to kill me.”

  “And yet you’re smiling.” As we head down the path to the overlook platform he adds, “I’m glad you still have your survival instinct.”

  “We’ve all got something.” I lift my fingertips to the exposed skin on my face. It’s colder than the night sea. Cupping my hands, I blow into them, let my breath warm my nose and cheeks. “I apparently still have a face, which is good.”

  Holden vaults up onto the wooden platform and I step up after him. “That is good,” he says, pulling me in close. He lifts his gloved hands to my cheeks. “After all, this is one of my favorite faces.”

  I scrunch my lips into a pretend pout. “One of?”

  He grins. “Well, you know. I’m a sucker for the classics. Helen of Troy, the Mona Lisa, that—”

  “Hey. The Mona Lisa isn’t even hot.” I give him a little shove away from me, toward the edge of the platform.

  “Disagree,” Holden says. “She’s beautiful in her own way. That mischievous smile, those dark, soulful eyes, the way she—”

  “Fine, whatever.” I cross my arms. “But I insist on being ranked above her.”

  “Okay, okay,” Holden says. “Yours can be my second-favorite face . . . right after that guy from The Scream.” He pulls me in close again.

  “You’re such an ass,” I say, as our lips touch.

  Holden laughs. “My girl Mona Lisa would never be so rude.” He kisses me again before I can reply, and after a few seconds I quit trying to think of a response and just drink in the sensation of his closeness.

  We break apart a few minutes later and wander to the edge of the platform, both of us bending down and leaning out forearms on the railing. The moon is almost full, its light shining down on the ocean like a beacon.

  “The only thing that would make this more perfect is if we saw a whale,” I say.

  “And if that whale came up out of the water and offered us hot chocolate,” Holden adds.

  I smile. “I like the way you think.”

  “I haven’t seen a whale since I was kid,” Holden says. “My family used to drive over to Depoe Bay from Portland.”

  “We used to go too—me, my mom, and my grandma. We couldn’t afford the boat trips, but we looked from platforms like this one. I’ve never seen anything but a couple of spouts.”

  “Really? No heads or tails or flippers?”

  “Nope. No pretty whale tales for this girl. Talk about childhood oppression.”

  Holden rests his head on my shoulder. “I meant what I said before, about your survival instinct.”

  “What? Am I supposed to just give up when life gets hard?”

  “No, but your life has always been hard, growing up with one parent, and then your mom got sick, and now you’re being harassed by some psycho. And not only are you keeping it together, you don’t seem bitter toward people who have it way easier.” He pauses. “Sometimes I get angry at the people who seem oblivious to how lucky they are.”

  “Well, it’s debatable whether I’m keeping it together. And as for the other stuff, I guess I’m just a realist. Life isn’t fair. It’s not right that some people have so much and others have so little.”

  “It isn’t,” Holden agrees.

  “But knowing that doesn’t change anything.” I shrug. “It used to bother me how Julia and I would talk about wanting to go to Greece or Australia, and then her parents actually took her on trips to those places and all I got were postcards. But I know I can see those places too someday—it just won’t be as easy.” I watch the waves roll in below us. “I also know a lot of people h
ave it worse than me too. My mom likes to say that happiness isn’t a zero-sum game. Julia getting to travel the world and go away to a fancy college and all that isn’t what’s keeping me from doing any of those things. So there’s no reason to be bitter toward her. That’s one of the reasons I feel bad about you and me. I feel sort of like I took you away from her. Like I don’t deserve happiness if it came from hurting another person. Life shouldn’t work like that.”

  “You didn’t take me away, because I was never hers,” Holden says. “No one belongs to anyone. And trust me, I was just a novelty—the brainiac gas station boy who is smart enough to be worthy but also safe because I don’t try to one-up her with grades or school activities.”

  “Maybe, but I still lied,” I say. “She’s going to DC for New Year’s Eve, to visit her friend Ness. When she gets back from that trip, I’m going to tell her everything. And after that, Luke will be in town and I can tell him everything too. It’ll feel good to get it all out.”

  “It will,” Holden agrees. “It’ll be scary, but you’ll be glad afterward.”

  “I hope so.”

  Without warning, rain starts to fall and Holden and I hurry back to the bike. As we head for home, I press my body tight against his for warmth and angle my face to the left so I can look out at the ocean. The wind takes my hair and the night air freezes my face again. As we fly across the slick roads and the ocean water blurs to a mix of black and silver, it occurs to me that Holden and I haven’t slept together in almost a week, and yet somehow I’ve never felt closer to him.

  Back in Three Rocks, the rain has faded to a soft drizzle. Holden cuts the engine to the motorcycle across the street from my house. He kicks down the kickstand and I swing my leg over the bike to dismount, using his shoulders for balance.

  He slides off after me. “So do you know what you’re going to do yet?”

  “About the text messages?” I shake my head. “My mind does feel clearer, though. Or at least it did until you asked me that.”

  “Glad I could help.” Holden laughs under his breath. “And then mess things up afterward.”

  I lean in to give him a kiss on the cheek. “What are guys for?”

  “Seriously. I’m always here if you need me.” He wraps his arms around my lower back and gives me a gentle squeeze. “And text me if you need me to help with whatever you decide to do.”

  “Okay.” Reluctantly, I untangle myself from him and head across the street. He fires up his bike and pulls away as I make my way up the driveway. I pause on the porch, watch his motorcycle fade into the night, swirls of mist swallowing him up in a way that makes it seem like he was never there at all.

  I turn to let myself inside, but then something moves in my peripheral vision. I freeze, expecting a cat or a raccoon to emerge from the fog, but instead I see the silhouette of a man. He’s walking along the far side of the street, looking down at his phone. It’s nothing. It’s just someone out for a late walk, I tell myself.

  But as the man approaches I see he’s wearing a baseball cap. I can’t tell what color his jacket is. Is it the man in the brown bomber jacket who Mom and I saw in the parking lot of Fintastic? I can’t be sure.

  I’m tempted to call out to him, but what do I say? What if he’s just a tourist or someone visiting one of my neighbors for the holidays? Before I can say anything, the man realizes I’m watching him and quickens his stride, cutting across someone’s lawn in a shortcut back to Highway W. He turns toward town.

  Trying to stay quiet, I hurry across our front lawn and follow him. When I get to Highway W, the man is turning right onto Main Street. I cross the highway and jog past the cemetery, trying not to notice the wavering shadows, the half-frozen flowers adorning the graves.

  By the time I hit Main Street, the man has vanished. I peer into the lobby of the Three Rocks Motel, but there’s no one there except for an older man sitting behind the front desk. Nothing else is open this late—I don’t know where the man in the hat could have gone.

  Shivering in the damp air, I walk to the end of the street and take the stairs to the beach, just in case he’s down on the sand. But there’s no one out here except for a couple of college kids walking hand in hand out by the water.

  As I turn back toward my house, a car pulls out of the lot from behind the community center. It’s a black BMW, like the car the man jumped into at Fintastic. I fumble my phone out of my pocket and snap a picture of his license plate. 896TRE. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but maybe Holden knows how to access his mom’s DMV database. It’s worth asking at least.

  I head home and slip back inside the house without waking my mom. I shrug out of my jacket and lay it on the back of the futon couch so it can dry out. There’s a pile of mail there that I didn’t notice earlier. My eyes are drawn to red printing on one of the envelopes. My heart accelerates in my chest as I fish the letter out from the bottom of the stack, praying it’s not another message from Unknown. But it’s actually a business length envelope with a plastic window in it. Stamped on the front, above the window, are the words “FINAL NOTICE.”

  I sigh. Mom has never been one to tell me about money stuff, but since she got sick she’s gotten even more secretive. I understand—I mean, it’s not like I can do much about the bills we’re behind on—but still, I’d rather hear it from her that the electricity is going to get turned off than just come home to a dark house one night. Maybe instead of fixing the furnace she’ll use the money I gave her from my father to pay whatever this is.

  Flipping through the other envelopes, I find two more that look like bills—one from Tillamook General and one from a group of radiologists, probably whoever reads the scans Mom has done. I want to open all these and see just how bad things are, but my mom would not be okay with that, and I wouldn’t be okay with her opening my mail either.

  As I set the envelopes back on the edge of the futon in a neat pile, my stomach drops low in my gut. There’s no way I can make things harder on her by being arrested or sued over the Sea Cliff fire.

  Which means I’m going to have to do what Unknown wants.

  I’m going to have to steal Julia’s purse.

  Fifteen

  I TOSS AND TURN, unable to get much sleep. For a fleeting moment I imagine calling Julia, waking her up in the middle of the night to confess everything. Hi. I slept with your boyfriend, lied about it, kept sleeping with him after you broke up, started a fire, almost killed someone, lied about that too, and now some whack job is threatening me and people I care about. Oh, for some reason he wants your purse and everything in it. Can you hook a sister up?

  Yeah, no. That would not go over well. I have to steal it. I am going to steal from my best friend. I keep saying it over and over in my head, like eventually it’ll sound less horrible and gross. What’s a little petty theft to go with my trespassing and destruction of property?

  My mind plots and replots exactly how I’m going to get away with it. I’m sure Julia will be swimming laps tomorrow morning since swim practice is canceled for the rest of the year. That means her purse will be locked in her gym locker, which luckily is the same gym locker I shared with her freshman and sophomore year when we were both on the swim team. I’ll take Mom’s car to school so I can arrive earlier than usual. Julia usually swims for about thirty to forty-five minutes. That’s plenty of time to slip into the girls’ locker room, grab her purse, and deposit it into the trash can in front of school. Assuming she hasn’t changed the lock, I can probably pull this off. Still, the step up from liar to thief makes me hate myself. And Unknown—I hate Unknown for putting me in this position.

  If only there were someplace where I could hide and watch and see who comes to get the purse. The student parking area is behind the school, so I can’t sit in my car. Also, if I’m late for first hour, the school will call my mom and I’ll have to explain myself to her.

  Then I remember Holden isn’t allowed in class for the rest of the week.

  Grabbing my phone,
I dash off a quick text message:

  Me: You awake?

  He calls me instead of texting back. “I’m always awake,” he says. “Until fifth hour anyway. Civics and American Lit make for some great napping.”

  “You’re not going to class tomorrow, though, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “If I grab the purse and toss it, can you watch the front of the school to see who picks it up?”

  “As long as I get out of the house without my mom catching me. She gets home from her overnight shift around six-thirty and goes right to sleep, so I should be able to watch in the morning at least.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “If I have to become someone I hate to protect the people I care about, at least maybe we can figure out who’s blackmailing me.”

  “Then what?” Holden says.

  It’s a good question. I’ve been so focused on protecting Holden and me, and keeping Unknown from hurting anyone else, that I haven’t really thought about what would happen if we met face-to-face.

  “Then we put a stop to this,” I say. “One way or another.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Holden says. “If I don’t recognize the person, maybe I’ll recognize the car.”

  “Hey, speaking of cars. I’ve been seeing this guy around town—first outside the coffee shop, then Fintastic. I think I saw him again tonight outside my house. I’m worried my mom might have a stalker. Do you know any way to look up a license plate?”

  Holden clears his throat. “Legally?”

  “Ideally. Or I thought maybe you could access a database or something through your mom?”

  “My mom’s search capabilities are through the sheriff’s department, via a laptop she checks out of the police station to plug into her cruiser. I’d not only have to be able to hack her account, I’d also have to break into her police vehicle during one of her shifts to use it.”