“Remember this place?” Harrison asked Aidy as we crept downhill. He seemed to be unable to keep the quiet she wished of him. “I kissed you here for the first time.”
“On a dare,” she countered, sounding more annoyed than sentimental. “I believe you also had to kiss Teeny. And the bottom of your own foot?”
Ruby picked up Marley’s box, surely thinking of our own—filled with all the rejected trinkets we used to collect when the big kids left the room. She rubbed the lid of the new Marley box. It was plain, unpainted wood. No special puffy paint swirls and doodles on it like the one we’d made.
I took the red notebook and showed the two pages to Bigs and Teeny. Then I opened the folder. In it were six sheets of computer paper, each with a name in the header. A paper for me was on the very top of the pile.
OLLIE STANTON
Welcome to the Adventure. Eyes on your own paper, please.
I started this in my notebook, but it’s much easier to type. Words find me faster this way. Plus, I can erase the sentences I don’t want. Isn’t that powerful? To erase things and have them disappear for good.
Congratulations on getting here. I trust you will do what I wish, and I trust you will find this at the right time. You have a knack for getting the goods. Consider this your belated props. Well, maybe. If you’re here, you probably haven’t gotten to everything else yet.
Come on, Ollie. Make the right choices. Now’s not the time to mess things up.
Remember, to pay attention to me is to pay attention to details. Everything is Something.
So go on and make something memorable.
What are you waiting for?
Love always,
Marley
July 11
Five Years Prior
When we arrived at Arbor Street’s dead end, desert and weeds waiting beyond the road, Marley climbed onto the aluminum barrier intended to stop cars from driving into the desert. It was a precarious balance, I learned. And it hurt. Much more than the pebble in my foot had. The top of the barrier had a fine edge. Staying put required looping my legs into the space between the two rails, then leaning backward to counteract the forward pull. The threat of falling was constant. The only way to hold still was to let the railing dig into the back of my thighs.
Farther to the left of where we sat, the abandoned train tracks were a little nicer. The tracks here had been swallowed up by brambles and covered in sand, only peeking out in sad fragments. Farther to the right of us was the POINT OF NO RETURN sign. We were in the undesirable middle ground.
“Cadence is different, isn’t it?” Marley asked. She looked comfortable atop the barrier. Balanced and carefree.
I thought again of the bird. “Yeah,” I said.
Marley laughed like I was so obvious. Like I’d ever do anything but agree with her. “Maybe we’re different. Not this place.” She cupped the railing with her palms. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been anywhere else.”
“Neither have I.” I took a deep breath. I wasn’t a follower. I had my own thoughts, and I’d prove it. “I think it’s both. This place is special, and so are we. Me and you.”
“Oh, Ollie.” She patted my head. I don’t know how. My hands were glued to the rail. If I let go, I’d fall. “You’ll learn.”
“I’ll learn what?”
She shook off the thought. “It’s so ugly here,” she said, even though the sky was turning pinkish-orange, and I was positive neither of us had ever witnessed anything more magnificent than the lazy rise of that morning’s sun.
I tried again to be brave. Challenge her. “I think it’s beautiful.”
“No, you don’t,” she informed me. “You’re what? Nine? You don’t know any better. Wait ’til you’re fifteen like I am. You’ll get it.”
She knew full well that I was eleven—she’d given me a very nice handmade birthday card earlier in the year—so I said nothing about her error. Because she was the oldest, she always hurled my youth against me when she didn’t have a better point to make. “You don’t know any better either. You just said so.”
“I was exaggerating. My mom’s driven me to other states for pageants. Nevada and Arizona, mostly. Utah once. You’ve barely left Cadence.”
Of all the things she’d said to me, this hurt the most. How could I leave Cadence? I only had a bicycle. The next town was more than ten miles away. Leaving Cadence wasn’t up to me.
I wouldn’t want to, anyhow. Things were different here. I had no proof other than what my heart knew to be true. I’d really meant it when I said that Cadence was special, and so were we. Marley also saw the life inside that long-dead bird. That couldn’t be how it was in every town.
“Plus,” Marley continued, paying me no mind, “I can see what isn’t even here. If I close my eyes, I can see the whole world at once.”
“I don’t have to close my eyes to do that,” I told her. If I wanted, I could make the mountains shrink into nothing. I could pull the tide of the Pacific Ocean in until it washed up to where we sat, hundreds of miles from shore. I could make its frothy waves clean our dirty feet. I could rescue that California quail from his perch and set him free, watching him fly until he disappeared into the clouds. My imagination always lifted me up above reality and into a better, brighter world.
“I know,” Marley said, and nothing more.
The sun woke up right in front of our eyes. I closed mine to feel the warmth of the morning glow press against my lids.
That’s when Marley pushed me.
If my hands weren’t death-gripping the rail and my feet weren’t hooked below me, I would have fallen onto my head. Instead, I hung upside down like a bat.
Marley’s laugh was casual. “I thought you didn’t have to close your eyes,” she said, teasing.
I started to cry. I didn’t mean to be so scared, but the fall had jolted my heart. I couldn’t find my breath.
Marley hopped down. She put her hands beneath my armpits and lowered me to the ground, then picked me up until I stood face-to-face with her. When she saw my tears, she softened. “Oh, Ollie. I knew you wouldn’t hit the ground. You were holding the rail so tight, your knuckles were purple.” She hugged me until I was almost hidden inside her arms. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I lied.
4
“What does yours say?” and “I’m not supposed to show anyone,” and “This is so much to take,” and “Let me read it,” and “What’s going on?” and “I don’t want to share mine yet,” and “Let’s show each other. It’s not like Marley is here to know,” and “What was that you said?”
Bigs cleared his throat to stop a fight from breaking out. The entire group fell quiet at the promise of words from his oft-sealed lips. “We should do whatever the letters say. It’s from Marley.” He said her name the way the rest of Cadence feared, like tears threatened to burst out. Or worse, a real memory might slip through his clenched teeth. I hadn’t heard it said like that since her funeral, the last day I remember that kind of sentimentality being not only acceptable, but welcomed.
Our seven sets of eyes found one another, like dots connecting, tracing the outline of Marley’s silhouette between us.
Teeny sighed at her brother. “Can everyone tell me if theirs also says this is the Adventure, though? I need to know I’m not the only one.”
Everyone nodded.
“My letter also says for me to tell you all that the tunnel goes farther than we know,” Harrison said.
Our attention moved to the tunnel. Going inside meant no going back. As if there was a choice. Every millisecond in Marley’s absence had been leading up to this. Year five. Cadence Park. The Albany kids huddled together in the bottom of the bowl. I never pictured it as such, but living it, I knew it couldn’t happen any other way. It was year five, after all. Everything had to be bigger.
In a group of ou
r size, discussion did not last long before someone sprung to action. Two choices remained: follow or defy. Precious Ruby flew into the depths of the opaque hole. No doubt farther than we’d ever gone. One of the only warnings we’d ever received in the days before Marley died came from Officer Bricket about that very tunnel.
“It’s filthy and filled with rodents and shit. Actual shit,” he’d said. “If you go too far, you’re stuck in a maze. Don’t screw around in there, you hear me?”
Marley snickered at him.
“Marls, look me in the eye and say you aren’t going to go in there.”
“I won’t, Dad.”
“Look at me and promise!”
She ran across the room and pressed her nose to his, grabbing his cheeks with her flour-covered hands. We were in the middle of baking her melatonin cookies. “I promise!”
Of course, we’d already been in the tunnel long before that moment—years before—finding most of what he said to be true. It was dank with a smell that lived up to its fame. To prove my loyalty, I got tasked with the investigation. On my hands and knees, I crawled through the hole. Several feet in, it dropped off into a walkway. I did not step down into it, only confirmed its existence. The edge of the entrance served us fine, although I’d always figured Marley hid her best scavenger hunt clues deep inside there, knowing we wouldn’t enter again.
Officer Bricket’s warning came after a dead body was found somewhere deep in the workings of the tunnel system. A homeless man had stumbled upon him and ran out of the hole screaming. The dead man’s eyes were in his outstretched hands. They said he looked like he was reaching for something above him. Nothing of a nature that gruesomely strange had happened before or since, and they ruled it as an accidental death by drug consumption.
There were no memorials for that stiff-armed corpse with his hands to the gods. No paintings. Not even a wooden cross hammered into the dry dirt of the bowl.
The image of his death flickered into my head, and I had to crawl into the hole after Ruby. To have her back, quite literally. Right on my heels, Nick followed. The flashlight from his phone sputtered out faint assistance. I yelled Ruby’s name. She replied with a gasp. Soft, but noticeable. Her own phone’s light gave faint promise of the upcoming ledge and walkway. I switched from bear-crawl to scoot, letting my feet find the drop-off first. It came and still I thumped down. Nick remembered me enough to know not to ask if I was okay. Instead, he came up behind me and brushed his hand against my back to clean off the dirt. We came to where Ruby stood. The cell phone’s brightness carved new shadows into her full cheeks. Her eyes filled with tears as she read the words spray-painted low on the wall.
You didn’t love me like I asked of you.
Still I love you back.
Beneath it, in a little hole chinked into the concrete to avoid the trickle of water running through the walkway, was the head of the trophy I’d used in Marley’s bedroom and a wallet-sized copy of her freshman year school photo.
Nick gasped at the sight of the picture. His body trembled beside mine.
“It’s really happening,” Ruby whispered.
From farther up the walkway came an unexpected sound. It echoed down to where we stood. Startled, my elbow jammed into Nick, causing his phone to fly out of his grasp and land facedown. Ruby pulled her hands to her chest as a protective instinct. With both of their phone’s lights swallowed, the blackness gasped out more mysterious noises.
“We can come back tomorrow.” Nick found his phone as he spoke. Only a pat or two before it returned to the safety of his grasp. We ran down the walkway, which seemed infinite on the return.
When we collided into the rest of the group inside the tunnels, I let out a small scream. “The noises. Was that you guys?” I asked once I realized. Fear made me sound petulant, and the indignant tears I hadn’t dealt with in forever resurfaced with a vengeance.
Harrison scoffed. “What do you mean?”
Nick pushed through them and kept moving toward the exit. “Let’s go back outside anyway.”
“C’mon,” Ruby said with a head nod. “We’ll explain out there.”
“This is so ridiculous,” Harrison said under his breath. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Stop muttering,” Aidy warned him. I awarded ten mental points to my sister for finding her backbone and shoving it in Harrison’s face as often as she could, though it struck me that the two made a bitter pair. Where a deep and full history elevated some relationships, it seemed to be souring theirs.
Back out quicker than we climbed in, I learned Teeny had not joined us. She sat in the lowest part of the bowl with a paper in her hands. “Hey!” I screamed. “You’re not supposed to be reading that!” I ran and snatched the paper—Aidy’s paper—from her hands.
“Don’t act like you wouldn’t do the same thing if you got the chance,” she said.
“You’re right,” I admitted, tamping down my unwarranted frustration. Teeny’s respect was always best earned through honesty. I hoped she could see how hard I worked to be better. I returned the paper to Aidy.
“How much did you read?” Aidy asked Teeny.
“The first few lines.”
I would never leave my paper behind. I’d folded it down to a tiny square and tucked it into my bra, where I knew it would not be compromised. In remembering my letter’s actual contents, it really was not so private as to be worthy of hiding. If Teeny had read mine, there would be nothing to be that angry about.
Everything is Something, Marley whispered in my mind, reciting the last line from my letter. So much had happened in the last few hours. I felt the delirium of staying up all night and it was barely ten o’clock. “Let’s go through all of this tomorrow,” I said.
“Is this really happening?” Teeny asked no one in particular. “This can’t be happening.”
Nearly everyone but me had asked that question. We had letters. A notebook. A box. Messages spray-painted on concrete walls.
What more proof did they need?
Yes, it was happening.
They’d lost more than Marley in the years since she died. They’d lost their sense of adventure too. Of course they had.
She was our adventure.
“All this time,” Harrison whispered. “We never looked.”
Aidy crossed her arms. “We cannot be upset with ourselves for not looking for letters we had no idea Marley wrote. It’s not like she ever mentioned when her little scavenger hunts were going to start. We didn’t know she’d had one already planned before the accident.”
“We could’ve tried,” Harrison replied. “The Adventure always started sometime in July. We knew that much, at least. It makes sense there would be stuff left. It’s not like she let any of us in on how she planned each one.”
“What were we going to do? Leave her funeral and go hang out in the sewers?” Aidy stalked off, only a few feet. She wasn’t done. Whenever she got emotional, she became unbearably logical. “We were all very young. We had no idea what we were doing most of the time. Continuing to behave the same way we did before we lost Marley wouldn’t have helped any of us,” she said. Two tears rolled down her cheeks. “I won’t put up with any pitying behavior from any of you.”
“You’re right,” Harrison countered, his voice soft. “But we’re older now. This is different.”
“It’s scary, is what it is,” Teeny said. “This kind of stuff gives me goose bumps. Letters from someone who died. It makes it seem…”
“I know,” Harrison agreed, cutting her off. “I used to think about the Adventure all the time. If she’d planned another one before she…”
No one would finish a single thought.
“I always kind of wished there was more from her we never found, but I don’t know if I mean that now that we’re here.” He turned to Aidy. “Didn’t I say that to you before? That I wan
ted to find stuff from her?”
Aidy shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Let’s look at the rest of it tomorrow,” I suggested again.
“We should definitely look at the rest of it tomorrow,” Aidy echoed. “This is a lot to handle in one night. On the anniversary, no less.”
Half of the group looked at me. Half looked at Aidy. I swallowed back words. It was my idea to wait until tomorrow.
“Who should keep the box while we wait?” Nick’s hand brushed against the small of my back.
“Ruby?” Bigs suggested.
The group nodded. Aidy was the best choice, but since I was her sister, and most of them didn’t trust me farther than they could throw me, Ruby made the most sense. She wouldn’t look inside until we all agreed someone should. The one thing we’d learned from the great Team One and Team Two debacle was that we had to share the things meant to be shared and keep what we got from them to ourselves.
We walked up the bowl and over to the playground, past the idling swings and swaying bridge. One by one, everyone mounted their bikes and waited, until only Harrison, Nick, and I were without.
“You’ll have to walk,” Aidy told Harrison. He shot a look to me.
What could I do? The bike was mine.
It was smaller than I remembered, even with the seat hiked up as high as possible to accommodate Harrison’s six-foot frame. Climbing onto it, I felt like Little Ollie yet again—young and small and unsure of my purpose in our group.
That wasn’t who I was. But I’d shed the skin of the me I’d been for five years. It was time to become the newest version of myself. The one Marley had prepared me to be. I didn’t know if I was ready yet, but I had to try.
I walked my bike to the spot that once belonged to Marley herself. She always pedaled at the tip of our V, her soft blond hair spiraling through the wind, thrashing across her rosy cheeks. “Close your eyes!” she’d scream as we rode across an intersection.
When the Light Went Out Page 5