by C. C. Hunter
He looks at the picture. “Your mom?”
I wipe a few tears from my cheek. “I’m pretty sure it was their wedding day.”
He looks up at me. “You look like her.”
I start crying again. “I haven’t seen the resemblance in any of the other pictures, but I do in this one. Why do people have to die? It friggin’ pisses me off!”
He puts his arm around me and holds me.
“I hate death,” I say, and I mean both my mom’s and his.
Before long we are stretched out on Dad’s floor. Spooning. I’m curled up beside him.
“How did she die?” His hand moves over my shoulders. The light fluttering touch feels so good.
“A brain aneurysm.”
“Were you there when it happened?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I can barely remember when she was alive. But the other day I kind of recalled him telling me she was gone. I didn’t even know how she died until I was like twelve and asked him. He didn’t want to tell me, but I forced him to.
“At least she didn’t linger and suffer.”
The way he says that makes me remember my promise to myself that I would try harder to get him to talk.
“Did you? Did you suffer?”
He rolls over and faces me. “You help me forget the bad stuff.”
“Maybe you aren’t supposed to forget,” I say. “Maybe you’re supposed to deal with it.”
He traces a finger over my lips. “You know, even with a black eye you are so damn beautiful.”
His mouth brushes mine and I’m weak enough to let him. The kiss deepens. He’s so close that my whole body feels tingly and wonderful. He never touches places he shouldn’t, but when his chest comes against my breasts, I wish he would. I ease closer.
Time seems to stop. My pain seems to stop. But we don’t.
It’s me and Hayden, tempting fate, finding comfort, and forgetting everything bad.
A dinging noise shatters the sweetness and brings me out of that wonderful moment.
I feel as if I’ve fallen back to earth. It takes several seconds and a few more dings before I recognize the noise. It’s the oven, telling me the chicken is done, telling me I’m making a mistake with Hayden.
I sit up, hug my knees and look away from him. “Hayden—”
“Don’t say it. Please don’t regret it. That’s the most I’ve felt alive in . . . a long time.”
I exhale. “It can’t be right.”
“But it didn’t feel wrong,” he says. “You can’t say it felt wrong.”
I gaze at him. He looks afraid I’m going to reject him. I feel afraid that I have to.
“It didn’t feel wrong, but it has to be. You can’t stay here.”
He looks away for a second, then back. “Not forever, but for a little while. You’re good for me, Riley Smith. I think I’m good for you, too. You’re smiling more. Sometimes when you see me, you look happy. I make you happy.”
But what about when you leave? Loving and losing hurts like a paper cut right across your heart. I loved and lost my mother. I loved and lost all my friends and Carl in Dallas. I’m afraid I might lose my dad. And if I don’t put a stop to what’s happening between Hayden and me, I’m going to end up loving him. Loving someone who is already lost to me.
With a sore heart and more confused than ever, I get up, and go pull the dinner out of the oven.
The heat of the oven blasts out when I open it. It’s only when I see the steam rise around me that I realize I have company. Cold company.
Chills spider up my neck and down my arms and legs.
Sitting the casserole dish on the stove top, I turn around, prepared to see a bloodied Abby.
It’s Abby, but she’s not bloody. She’s just sadder than I’ve ever seen her. Dark shadows ring her eyes. Her skin’s a light grayish blue color. She looks so . . . dead.
She is dead.
“Hi,” I say.
She glances at me. “Please. Please help me. I can’t—”
“I’m going to,” I say.
Her hollow, lifeless eyes show a touch of hope. “You will?”
“Yes. I’ll go to the park tomorrow, but you have to be there. If you aren’t, I won’t be able to find the ring. You understand?”
She nods. “I’ll be there. I’ll show you everything.” Then she hugs herself as if “everything” is ugly.
“Everything?” I ask. “We’re just looking for a ring, right?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I can’t stay at the park long. So don’t be late.” I hug myself now too.
She nods.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Tomorrow,” she says.
She fades. But now, standing almost where she’d been, is Hayden. He looks unsure of himself. As if he’s nervous to face me.
“So we’re going to the park tomorrow?” he asks.
I nod.
“What else did she tell you?”
“Nothing. She’s being mysterious. She’s not telling me everything.” I look at him, and I remember us making out on my dad’s bedroom floor. “Look, about what happened—”
“Don’t be mad,” he says.
“I’m not,” I say. “It’s just . . . this is hard.”
“I’m sorry.” He sticks his hands in his pockets. “Please don’t ask me to leave.”
My tonsils suddenly feel too big for my throat. For the first time, I feel I have some leverage, and I have to use it. I need to do the right thing by him.
“Only if you will tell me what happened to you. I know you don’t want to accept it, but the reason you are here is for me to help you.” I stop short of saying I’m here to help him “move on,” but I think he knows that. “And I can’t do that if I don’t understand what you are going through.”
He swallows. There’s a sheen in his eyes. There’s tears in mine.
“Talk to me, Hayden. Please.”
He shuffles his feet. “It was a car accident. My fault. I wasn’t paying attention. I ran a red light. It’s killing my mom. We were arguing at home and I jumped into my car and left just to cool off.” He swallows. I hear him gulp. “I want to go back to that moment and not screw up. Not even for me, but for her. I know she blames herself and it’s not her . . . It’s my fault.”
I move so close to him, I feel his energy. I feel his sadness. I feel his pain.
My head leans on his chest. He wraps his arms around me and we stand there in each other’s arms.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
His face leans down on my head.
“Tell me another secret,” he says.
I know he just wants to take the focus off of him, and perhaps I shouldn’t let him, but I can’t help myself.
“I’m afraid to go away to college. Afraid I’ll miss Dad too much. Afraid he’ll miss me too much. Afraid of really being completely alone in the world.”
His hold tightens. Warm and tender feelings travel through me.
“Tell me one,” I say.
“My stepfather is cheating on my mom. I hate him for it. My real dad would never have done that to her.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Me too.”
And I realize in that moment that it might be too late to protect my heart. I’m a whisper away from falling in love with Hayden Parker.
• • •
“Here’s another one, Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” Hayden says, humor filling his voice. He’s riding shotgun and we’re on the way to Lake Canyon State Park.
I laugh. “You’re making this shit up.” The conversation started with us talking about the different kinds of music we like and then moved to crazy song titles. We’d been laughing about one thing or another since we left.
“I swear it’s a real song, by Frank Zappa,” he says. “And then there was a group called The Cramps that had one titled, Don’t Eat the Stuff Off the Sidewalk. Or even better, Billy Broke My Heart at Walgreens And I
Cried All the Way to Sears.”
A laugh pours out of me. “I haven’t ever heard of any of those.”
“Some of them are from a long time ago.”
I look at him and the thought hits. “How do you know about them? You aren’t from a long time ago, are you?”
“No,” he says. “I wrote an essay on crazy song titles for English last year.”
Last year? Does that mean he died last year? I’m still trying to piece together things about his life.
“And,” he continues, “There’s one, If My Nose Was Running Money, I’d Blow It All on You.”
I laugh so hard I get tears in my eyes. “Hey, I’ve got one,” I say. “She Thinks My Tractor Is Sexy. I forget the artist’s name.”
“Kenny Chesney. He was on my list, too. In fact, country and western music has some really good ones, like, You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly or Did I Shave My Legs for This?”
We both laugh and our eyes meet for one second.
I quickly glance back to the road. I think he’s going to say something romantic, or sweet, because it just feels right, but nope. “Then there was one, How Can I Miss You if You Won’t Go Away?”
That one earned a snort from me. But it’s short-lived when I realize how much I’m going to miss him. I recall the saying about it being better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all. I think it’s the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard.
I’m already grieving his loss.
He continues, “One of my all-time favorites is, I’m So Miserable Without You It’s Almost Like Having You Here.”
Laughter fills the car. I get tears in my eyes again but this time they’re only partly due to my laughter.
We’d started out for Lake Canyon State Park at nine this morning. I’d been a big pile of raw nerves, worrying about lying to Dad, worrying about not finding Abby’s ring, but Hayden had made me forget.
Thankfully, convincing Dad I should stay home from school was a cakewalk. All I had to do was say the words “cramps” and “period,” and Dad cratered. I hated lying to him, but I didn’t see another way to help Abby. If he ever finds out I drove this far, or that I lied to him, my ass will be grass.
That said, I’m pretty sure Dad’s lying to me, too.
Last night he hadn’t gotten home until almost nine. He hadn’t smelled like alcohol. I know. I hugged him twice to find out. But his eyes looked so tired, maybe even a tad bloodshot. He barely ate any dinner. And he went to bed early. I sat halfway down the stairs for an hour waiting to hear ice clinking, swearing if I heard it, I would run down and confront him. That tiny sad noise never happened. I tried to take comfort from it, but it was hard.
Before I went to sleep last night, I texted Kelsey to say I wouldn’t be at school, using the same lie I told Dad. I also wrote that if I were feeling better by the afternoon, I’d call her to hang out. I’m just hoping Abby is as good as her word and shows up at the park.
“You’re not smiling anymore,” Hayden says.
“Sorry. I was just thinking about Abby.”
I glance at him. He looks genuinely happy. I wonder if our talk yesterday helped him.
I hope so. Because telling him about my worries for Dad and about leaving for college had taken some of the weight off my shoulders. But there’s a chance he’s using humor as a ploy to prevent me from asking more questions. If so, it’s working. Talking about stupid song titles is much more fun than talking about death.
Or about him crossing over.
“Right up here is where you turn,” he says.
I realize what this means. “You said you’ve been here before, right?”
“Yeah.”
I recall he told me he was from Texas. “Did you live close to here?”
“Pretty much,” he says. The vagueness in his answer hangs on longer than his words.
I’m about to call him on it, but I see the entrance to the park and I pull in. Discovering Hayden’s truth will have to wait until I solve Abby’s mystery.
Chapter Fourteen
I get out of the car. The warm weather trend is over and now the January cold seeps through my hoodie. I pull it closer. The sky is gray and we could use a little sun to lighten up the day.
Hayden appears beside me. “Is she here?”
“I don’t see her.” I glance around.
“I don’t feel the iciness either,” he says.
The question tumbles out before I can stop it. “Why aren’t you cold like the others?”
“You kidding? Just look at this bod. I’m too hot to be cold.” The tease in his tone, in his expression, makes me smile. Then I turn away before I’m tempted to do just as he suggests and look at his body. There’s no denying it. He’s got the whole muscle thing working for him. I wonder if he worked out, or if he played sports.
I lean against my car. I’m just about to ask him when someone walks up to get in his car. I realize people would think I was talking to myself. It’s so easy to forget that he’s not really here. That he’s not real to anyone but me.
I wait until the man pulls away before speaking up again. “I really hope I haven’t come all this way for nothing.”
“You’re nervous.” He inches closer.
I look at him. “If my dad finds out I’m here, I’m up Shit Creek without a paddle.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll throw you a line.” He moves even closer and chuckles. “I’ll take on a little shit to protect you.”
I chuckle. His shoulder comes against mine. I want to lean into him, but I hold myself stiff. At the front of the parking lot, a pregnant woman gets into a car. My thoughts shoot to Mom’s baby bump in the photograph I found in Dad’s drawer.
“What’s on your mind now?” Hayden asks.
I tell him what I noticed in the picture.
“Do you care?” he asks. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“No, I don’t care. It’s just . . . I hate knowing my dad is keeping secrets from me.”
“Yeah, but he’s a parent. He might think if you knew your mom got pregnant before marriage, it would encourage you to try it.”
“That’s stupid,” I say.
“Yeah, and parents are stupid sometimes.”
I can’t argue with that. Right then an unnatural cloud of cold falls on me. And it doesn’t come from Hayden. I glance around.
“She’s here, isn’t she?” Hayden asks, and rubs his hands up his arms.
“Yeah.” I see her standing a few feet in front of me. She’s hugging herself, looking ten times more afraid than I am. My anxiety builds. I know it’s from her, but I feel it like it’s my own.
I check to make sure no one is about to walk up, then move forward. “Abby?”
She looks at me. Her eyes are round. She’s trembling. Her hands are fisted.
“Are you okay?” I move closer.
“When this is over I will be.” Tears fill her eyes and one spills out. As it rolls down her cheek, it takes with it the makeup applied to cover up her deadly pallor. Her blue-tinted skin shines through. She looks toward the paths leading into the park. “Go up Trail A. I’ll meet you there.”
I reach out and touch her arm.
The burn of cold makes my palm ache. I pull it back. She fades. I rub my hand up and down my hip.
“What’s wrong?” Hayden asks.
“She’s scared.”
“So that’s why you’re afraid, right?” Hayden asks.
I nod and start walking. “She said to walk up Trail A.” With each step, I hear a tiny voice saying “I don’t want to do this.” I’m obviously still feeling Abby’s emotions. Hayden stays close to my side.
“Do they all project emotions?” he asks.
“Yeah, most of them.”
“Do I?” The moment the question leaves his lips, he looks as if he was sorry he’d asked.
“A little.”
“What kind?”
I debate answering, but then just blurt it out. “Sadness, but only every now
and then.”
He moves in until his shoulder brushes against mine. I recall the icy cold burn I felt on my palm from touching Abby and again I wonder why he’s so different.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’ll work on that.”
I think of our whole song-title conversation, and know he’s already been working on that. “You make me laugh more than I feel sadness,” I say and it’s the truth. He makes me feel a lot of things.
We start up Trail A. Trees hug the path. Their shade makes the day feel damper, darker, denser. The trail leads up. You can tell why they call this the Texas Hill Country.
The vision from the other night, running up and falling off the side of a cliff, starts playing in my head.
Hayden, as if tuned into my fear, slips his hand into mine. It’s comforting. The only burn I feel from him is my heart warning me not to let myself care too much.
But I already do.
“Why do you think she’s so scared?” he asks.
“She fell and laid there on that path for a long while. I would be scared to come back here, too.”
Then I remember something from the vision. “Shit!”
“What?”
“I had a vision or something the other night. She was running when . . .” My mind continues to collect data and connect dots. “She was already afraid of something when she fell.”
“Was she running away from someone?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” A cold wave of dread circles me, closes in on me.
He exhales. “You don’t think that . . . someone was after her, do you? That someone pushed her off the ledge?”
Cold fear climbs my spine. I stop walking. The ugly possibilities start crowding my mind, causing a feeling of claustrophobia. Everything feels too close: the trees, the weeds, the truth.
I remember something else. “She said she wanted everyone to know the truth. I hope the truth isn’t that . . . that she was murdered.”
He squeezes my hand. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there. This might be too dangerous. Let’s just turn around,” Hayden says.
I consider it, but then I remember Abby and the desperation I saw in her expression. How can I just leave, knowing how frightened she is and that she’s up there on that trail now, waiting for me? For help. For peace. And maybe for justice.