by ID Johnson
“Emma, can you tell me the rest later?” I asked in a calm voice. “I think Lucy wants to talk about something else.”
“Fine.” Emma shrugged and fixed her glasses again. Then, as if rehearsed, she looked at Lucy and said, “What would you like to talk about, Lucy Burk?”
I think Emma’s tone must’ve made Lucy realize she was being unreasonable because she closed her eyes for a second and settled back into the couch. After she’d composed herself, she said, “Cassidy, when we spoke on the phone Thursday, you mentioned some weird things were going on, and you wanted to wait until we could talk about it in person, remember?”
She was talking to me like I was either a three-year-old or clinically insane, but then, the way my memory was working at that point, I wasn’t sure that she was wrong to do so. “I vaguely remember that conversation.”
I could tell she wanted to let out another whopper of a sigh, but she held it back. “Cassidy, I’m a little concerned about you. Maybe the stress of this situation with your sister is starting to get to you.” Lucy folded her arms across her chest, the pillow now in her lap.
“Or maybe you’re just bonkers.”
We both turned and looked at Emma, who had a sly smile on her face. “Ha, ha! Emma O’Sullivan makes the funny jokes!” I said, proud of her for the effort. She just grinned. “Okay, I’ll admit, something weird is going on.”
“I know. And that’s what you’re supposed to be telling me about,” Lucy replied, matter-of-factly.
“No, not just with my sister. With me.” It wasn’t easy to say out loud, but it was true. Ever since I found that notebook, I hadn’t stopped wondering when I’d penned what was written there. It was my turn to sigh. “Let me show you something, and then maybe we can figure it out together.” Lucy nodded and Emma leaned forward in her chair.
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the notebook. I’d dog-eared the page when I found it, halfway thinking I might not be able to find it again later and think that I’d imagined the whole thing. “Here.” Relieved to still see the message I’d left for myself, and nervous about what Lucy and Emma might think, I handed it over to Lucy, and Emma came to sit on the arm of the couch. I was glad she seemed interested in helping. We would likely need her brain power. Lucy and I are smart, too, but not genius level smart like Em.
They read it over, and then Lucy stopped and stared at me for a moment, her pretty little face puckered. She opened her mouth, closed it, and dipped her head once more, and I assumed she was reading it again. After she finished this time, she set the notebook down on the couch between us and simply asked, “What the crap?”
“I know,” I said, with a shrug. “But here’s the thing, you guys. I don’t remember writing that.”
Lucy cocked her head to the side, and Emma said, “Hmmm.” Then they looked at each other.
“Seriously. Like, I found it, and I don’t know when I wrote it.” I was beginning to panic a little on the inside. What if I started to forget other things, too, like my friends or the days of the week?
“Well,” Emma said, straightening her glasses as she got up and moved back to her chair, “I guess that means you don’t remember any of those things actually happening either?”
It was a good question, and the short answer was no, I didn’t. But then, I’d just discovered this page before I’d come over, and I hadn’t really thought about trying to remember.
“This is so bizarre,” Lucy said. “What would make you write something down and then forget it? Were you sleeping when you wrote it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember writing it.”
“Okay—well what is the last thing you do remember? Maybe we can work backward.”
Emma had a good point. I took a deep breath and started talking through my day. “I remember riding over here with my dad, finding the notebook, asking my parents if I could come over while eating pancakes. And… Aaron came by this morning.”
“Aaron? The same guy you wrote about?” Lucy asked, gesturing at the notebook.
“Yes. And I know that wasn’t the first time he’s been there, but I don’t really remember anything about what he said the first time he was there. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“But the first time you talked to him wasn’t the first time he was there,” Emma reminded me. “Your notes say he was in your sister’s room the night Drew died.”
“That’s true. There’s something about his voice. It’s hard to describe, but it’s memorable. I think he was the one in my sister’s room that night. But I don’t really remember what happened the night Drew died. I just have a feeling about it.” I let out another sigh, this one in frustration. “It’s so hard to explain.”
“That’s okay. We might be getting somewhere,” Lucy said, reassuringly. “So, you do think what you wrote here is accurate?”
“I do.” My voice didn’t sound too resolute though. “I think I remember enough to say it’s probably accurate—at least according to what I knew at the time.”
“All right, so that strategy seemed to get us somewhere. What did Aaron say today? Do you remember that?”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her. “I remember today, Luce.”
“Well, I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I remember yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that….”
“All right,” I said, cutting her off. “I couldn’t really hear a word Aaron was saying, but I did hear some of my parents’ responses. So… they said Cadence was sleeping.” I tried to go back over their conversation in my head. “Oh, and they said something about a procedure.”
“A procedure?” Emma asked. “Like a medical procedure?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I couldn’t hear the context. Just that the procedure went well. I don’t even know if it had to do with my sister.”
“That’s bizarre.” Lucy scratched her chin for a second. “You know what, we need to write this down in case you forget again.”
“Good idea,” Emma agreed.
Lucy got up and walked to a desk across the room, producing a pen. She came back and started a fresh sheet. “I don’t want to contaminate your questionable work.”
I absently wondered if I might, at some point, forget there were now two important sheets in the notebook. Lucy began to write. “So… after that, I heard the name Jamie. I am pretty sure I’d heard that before.”
“Yep, it’s right here,” Lucy said, turning the page and pointing to the last paragraph I’d written. “This says Jamie has a process—do you think that might be the procedure Aaron was talking about today?”
“Those words are very similar in meaning,” Emma noted.
“Maybe. It’s a possibility.” Lucy wrote that down. “And I heard two new names today. Eliza and Christian.”
“Are you sure they weren’t saying someone is a Christian?” Lucy asked. “You know, like religious?”
“I don’t think so. I think my mom said she’d never met Christian, but I couldn’t make out the exact sentence. I think it’s a person named Christian.”
“Do you think the purple-haired girl you mentioned is this Eliza?” Emma asked.
“Maybe.” It seemed like that was my favorite word now. “I thought my mom said something about a car in that sentence. Like maybe Eliza would be the one bringing Cadence home tomorrow.” I was seriously considering rigging up some sort of surveillance in the living room so I could hear my parents’ conversations from now on.
“Anything else today?”
“Not when Aaron was talking to my parents,” I said, feeling more confident than I had about anything else. “But my parents did say something weird when they got back to the dining room table.”
“What’s that?” Lucy asked, pen poised.
“My sister is dropping out of college.” I couldn’t even believe the words, so I didn’t expect them to.
“Shut up!” Lucy said, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.
“That’s unfortun
ate,” Emma stated quietly. “She won’t be able to find gainful employment easily that way.”
“Actually, that’s the thing,” I said, “my parents said that she was going to be working with Aaron.”
“Say what?” Lucy asked. “Doing what?”
“That’s also weird.” I replayed the conversation with my parents. I realized I hadn’t asked a lot of questions, and I remember feeling, at the time, that I didn’t really care about the answers. I had no idea why that might be. I certainly cared now. “My mom said security, but that it was complicated. But…” something in my notes jarred my memory, “My dad said that Aaron used to work with my grandma—but he almost said grandparents.”
The other two girls exchanged glances. “Why is that weird?” Emma asked.
“My grandpa died in the ‘80s, a long time ago. Aaron looks like he’s about my sister’s age, maybe a little older. I’d be shocked if he’s even thirty.”
“So… he couldn’t have worked with your grandpa unless he was a little kid or something,” Lucy reasoned.
“Exactly. And my grandpa was an engineer, like my dad.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe your dad misspoke?” Emma asked.
“Maybe.” There was that word again. “But even the idea of Aaron working with my grandma doesn’t make sense to me. As far as I know, she’s never had a job. Not in my lifetime.”
“So weird.” Lucy’s pen moved to capture every word. “What else? What about this other dude who showed up?”
I inhaled through my nose, trying to remember. The notes I’d written down seemed so cryptic now. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I remember there being another guy.” I closed my eyes. I thought back to when Aaron had knocked on the door that morning. My initial reaction was to hope that it wasn’t him. That it was someone else. “Elliott.” My voice was a whisper.
“Who?” Emma asked.
“Dr. Elliott Sanderson.” It was coming back to me now. “The guy with the curly hair, the one I wrote about, he was the doctor. He was there the night Drew died. And he came to talk to me about it.”
“Hold on a minute,” Lucy said, setting the notebook down. “You mean, the last thing you did before you talked to that doctor was write in your notebook that he was at your house, and then you don’t remember having written this stuff down?”
I nodded. Things were suddenly starting to come back to me now. I remembered sitting across from Dr. Sanderson, the soothing tone of his rich voice, the things he said to me about Drew. “Lucy… do you think he has something to do with me forgetting?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said, her face turning even more pale than normal.
I couldn’t believe it. I had trusted that guy. He seemed legitimately concerned about me. And my parents had encouraged me to talk to him. “So… all those things he said to me, about Cadence being okay, and Drew’s death being no big deal… all of that was just in an attempt to… to….”
Emma finished my sentence for me. “Brainwash you.”
Chapter 9
My mom came to pick me up a few hours later. By then, I had gotten over the initial shock of realizing my parents had allowed some strange man to come into my house and brainwash me into thinking the death of my sister’s friend was no big deal, but I was still miffed. And confused. Why in the world would my parents want me to think that Drew’s death was just a blip in my existence and not something to worry about?
Something very strange was going on, and I had no idea who I could talk to about it. If my parents were part of the conspiracy, then I couldn’t trust them. My grandmother also allegedly knew these people, though I wasn’t sure I could trust that either. As hard as it was, I decided to wait it out. My sister was supposed to return the next day. Maybe when she came home, she’d spew out some acceptable explanation for all of this weirdness and life would go back to normal.
I wasn’t holding my breath.
Saturday night, I tried to watch a movie to keep my mind off of everything, but I couldn’t pay attention and ended up going to bed early. Every creak and groan of the house had me on edge, though, and it was either really late or really early when I finally fell asleep, depending upon how you wanna look at it.
I am usually a morning person, but Sunday, I was dragging. Sometimes we go to church; sometimes we don’t. My mom wanted to go that day. She thought it would be a nice show of support for Drew’s family—even though they didn’t go to our church, and my parents would be attending the funeral the next day. (They had decided I was too young, which I thought odd since Drew wasn’t much older than me, and unfortunately, she was going to be there. But I didn’t argue. I wasn’t too excited about attending anyway.)
A lot of people were crying at church, and our pastor delivered a lovely message about cherishing those we hold dear. I looked around for any of my sister’s friends. Most of them didn’t go to church at the same place, but Jack did. He wasn’t there, though. I saw his parents, Alice and Steve, sitting toward the back. They both looked extremely upset, and I guessed that was because Jack was probably distraught. Who could blame him? Who knew what he actually saw the night Drew died—whether she really fell down a cliff and cut her neck open or if something more sinister had happened.
I was leaning toward the sinister theory, especially after having spoken to Lucy and Emma the day before. Lucy made a copy of all of my notes, just in case I forgot again, which was a good idea. She said she was going to do some research. I don’t know exactly what she was intending to do, but I was eager to see if she could come up with something. She said to make sure I sent her a text every time something unexplained happened so she could write it in her own notes, and I agreed to do so.
After the last song, my parents solemnly trudged the length of the pew and down the aisle. I could tell by the way my mom kept looking at Alice that she intended to stop and speak to the Cooks if she had a chance. While Alice looked determined to get out of the church before too many people bombarded her, she gave my mom a small smile, sort of a kinship recognition, I think. They were both moms who were sharing in another family’s tragedy, one that touched too close to home. I silently wondered if any people dressed in black had visited the Cook residence.
My mom didn’t catch up to her while we were still in the building, but once we were outside, we saw Alice and Steve standing near their car, which wasn’t too far away from Mom’s minivan.
“I’m going to go speak to Alice,” my mom said, touching Dad lightly on the arm.
“Me, too,” I said. My mother turned and looked at me questioningly. “I want to make sure Jack’s okay,” I said with a shrug, and she nodded. I knew that my mom understood that Jack was very important to me, and while I felt bad using our relationship as a means to potentially exploit information, I didn’t see that I had any other choice.
“Hello, Liz,” Alice said, her voice small. She has poofy blonde hair that is usually styled a bit like she has forgotten it is no longer the 1990s and doesn’t mind floral prints and mom jeans. Her husband Steve used to be an athlete, like Jack, and sometimes I think they don’t quite match, but it’s always very clear that they have a solid marriage.
“Hi.” My mom’s greeting was a sigh. “How are you holding up? Jack hanging in there?”
“He is,” Steve nodded. I heard footsteps behind me and realized my dad had decided he was obligated to come along. He shook hands with Steve and hugged Alice. “How is Cadence?”
My mom’s lips pressed together in a thin line. “She has been at her grandmother’s trying to get some rest. She should be back later today. I know she’s… struggling.”
Alice dabbed at her eyes with a tissue that looked like it was the only one she’d ever possessed in her whole life. “Jack is as well. He… goes from being nonchalant about the whole thing to… paranoid.” She said the last word like it was a secret, and I saw a shift in my mother’s eyes.
“Paranoid?” she repeated, her forehead crinkling up. “About what?” As soon as she
asked the question, I could tell she regretted it. She glanced at me and looked like she was going to tell me to leave right then and there, but that might seem odd to everyone who didn’t realize there was something she was trying to keep from me, so she didn’t.
“It’s hard to explain,” Alice replied. “He just keeps looking out the window. I ask him what’s going on, and he either says he doesn’t know, or he’s afraid someone is watching the house. There are times when he seems to think someone is after him.”
My mom shook her head. “That’s terrible. Cassidy, why don’t you….”
I interrupted. I had no choice. “Poor Jack,” I said loudly, so that my mother sending me back to the car would be drowned out. “He’s probably having bad dreams, too. Has he said anything about that?” I wanted to add “or people walking on the roof” but didn’t want to be too obvious.
“He has,” Steve said, looking at the ground. “But when he wakes up, he says he can’t remember what happened.”
“It’s just awful. The whole thing.” Tears started to careen down Alice’s face again. “I’ve heard the other girls aren’t doing well either.” I assumed she was talking about Sidney and Taylor.
“Who ever would’ve thought someone could lose their life rock climbing around here?” I wasn’t sure if Steve asked the question in such a way as to feel my parents out to see if they had accepted the explanation, or if he was truly just flabbergasted by the idea that this is how Drew had passed away, but my parents didn’t admit they also thought it was odd.
“It’s such a tragedy,” my dad agreed. “I know it’ll be hard for the kids to get back to their normal routine.”
“Jack says he wants to go back to Lincoln on Tuesday,” Alice sighed. “Says he needs normal. Is Cadence going to wait a few days to head back to Iowa City?”
“Uh, actually, she’s not going back. For now.” My mom looked at my dad in confirmation, like she wanted to make sure it was okay with him for her to mention Cadence’s plans. “She’s going to get a job, for a little while, and then try to go back later, once she feels more like herself.”