by TE Carter
“Really?” She looked at her friend, who’d sat beside her and was texting. “Didn’t you say she was new?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.”
Being dead suits me well. Sometimes, I feel like I came into my own after dying. That this was who I was supposed to be all along. It’s not much different than being in high school. Things continue, life happens, people have conversations, and I’m still on the edge of it all.
Gina Lynn grabbed the girl’s phone. “God, who are you even texting?”
“What the hell?”
I went to stand, picking up my yogurt, thinking that somehow the conversation, or whatever it was, was over. But Gina Lynn turned back to me and gestured for me to sit. Obedient, I did, and I waited while they argued about someone named Ben.
The cafeteria was subterranean. All the windows were small portholes in the upper third of the walls, hinting at natural light. Strips of fluorescent hung above us, and I listened to the buzzing, a subtle sizzle that went unnoticed in the din of lunch. Underneath all the conversation, the music, the sound of the maintenance guy mowing the lawn from the ground overhead, there was a barely distinguishable hum. I liked the way it kept humming, music for the attentive few.
“’Kay, back to you, Ellie. Sorry.” The spray-tan girl sat chagrined, while Gina Lynn held her phone. “What I was trying to say was that, well, Caleb and I have always kind of had an understanding, you know?”
“I don’t.”
“We’re kind of a thing. But it’s like a whenever thing, you know?”
“Wait, what are you saying?” I thought about the night before. How he’d touched me. How we’d been so close. How I almost told him I didn’t need to go home yet when we realized what time it was. I remembered the way I’d tried to say yes, tried to see what would happen. I remembered how he’d told me he loved me.
“I just broke up with Trevor. You know him?” Gina Lynn asked.
I didn’t. Why would I know him? She couldn’t even remember my name and we’d met multiple times. Throughout the summer, I’d seen her with guys, but she was never with any one more than others. Except Caleb.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Yeah, well, anyway. He’s whatever. But you gotta understand. Being single sucks, right?”
“I guess.”
“So, yeah, the thing with Caleb is that he’s kind of my boyfriend when I don’t have one. And that’s gonna be an issue, right, I mean, if you’re in the picture?”
“Are you asking me to break up with him?” I asked.
She laughed, her hair spilling around her like she was in a damn shampoo ad. “You’re cute, Ellie.” It was the exact same way Caleb had said it when we’d first met. “Good talk, hon.”
She left, handing her friend back her phone, and the other girl shuffled after Gina Lynn. I stared into my cup of yogurt, blueberry swirls clinging to the interior edges of the plastic. I had no idea what had just happened.
By the end of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t make sense of the night before. I wondered how things could change so fast. I stood at my locker, trying to gather my books. Telling myself that it wasn’t real. That Gina Lynn was confused.
“Ellie.” Caleb stood behind me, his hand on my back.
I didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to see his face, in case he told me she wasn’t wrong.
“Ellie,” he said again. It was the fifth time he’d said my name, but nothing had followed. I waited for him to say something else.
I’d told myself school would be different this year. Some people knew who I was now, although they still didn’t know me. But I was attached to someone else and they acknowledged me because they had to. Sure, it was ephemeral recognition. It was the way you recognize the guy who works at the pizza place when you randomly run into him at your doctor’s office. Nothing but the way we deal with an illness, or a flat tire, or something that just has to be and we have to let it. But it was something.
I knew what Caleb was going to say, and I knew what I’d lose if he said it.
“Turn around, Ellie,” Caleb said.
I did. He was smiling. That awkward expression that he always wore.
“At lunch … I mean, today…” I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t make it true. “Do you want to go somewhere?” I asked.
It hadn’t even been a full day. Things don’t change that fast. Not in real life. I kept telling myself that I’d misunderstood. Even though I had known since lunch what was coming.
“Ellie,” he said again.
“Just say it, Caleb. Stop saying my name.”
“Fine. This isn’t working,” he said.
“Why?”
“Come on, you knew it wasn’t going to last.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
He pulled me close to him, holding my shoulders and leaning into me. His hair brushed my neck, and I wanted to kiss him. He could turn it off, but I couldn’t. Nothing had changed for me.
“I’m sorry, Ellie.”
“What happened? It was last night. Last night, you said you loved me.”
He sighed. The warmth collected against my collarbone. His body was tense against mine. I tried to remember what else we’d said the night before. Tried to remember what happened in less than a day.
Caleb pulled away, shoving his hands into his pockets. He stared at the locker beside me, not looking at me. I had stopped existing for him. “You’re sweet, and it was fun, but it’s just not a good time,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked. I kept asking questions he wouldn’t answer.
“It’s my last year. I have college applications and I should get my GPA up and our dad has us working a lot on another place. There just isn’t time.”
I don’t know why I didn’t cry. Not until later that night, at home, in my bed. I took it in, and I tried to see him as someone else. Not Caleb. Not this part of me, this person who filled my life where I was lacking. The person who was going to leave that emptiness behind because he had to fill out a college application.
“I can wait,” I told him. “We don’t have to see each other every day. I can help you with school. My grades are okay.”
“You’re a sophomore.” I was, but I was in advanced classes. He didn’t know that, because we didn’t talk about school. We didn’t talk about anything, but I only realize that now. I only know now that we were entirely resting on the surface. At the time, I still thought it was okay that all we had were summer evenings in the back of his car. Borrowed nights in other people’s houses. Conversations cut off by kisses. I thought that was the same thing as love.
“Caleb, please don’t.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I promise, it’s nothing you did. Maybe things will change. Maybe in a month or two, when everything settles.”
He kissed my forehead and left me there with my textbooks poking me in the side from my bag. I stood with my fingers against my lips, trying to remember. Trying to hold on to where he’d kissed me.
The next day, he and Gina Lynn were together and everyone knew it. I didn’t hate her; I couldn’t. I saw how his arm fit around her waist, saw how they smiled together and how the whole school watched them, envious. I knew they made sense and we didn’t.
When I went home that night, after seeing him with her in the hall, I threw away all the clothes Kate had picked out. Everything she’d given me. But in the morning, before dawn and while my dad was sleeping, I snuck back outside and dug through the trash can. I changed my mind because I believed I could exist in a way that wasn’t touched by him.
I saved a few things. Two T-shirts, a black sweater, and an $18 pair of jeans.
chapter twenty-six
Now that the room is sterilized, wiped clean of what happened here for good, I drift. There’s nothing left in the house anymore. I don’t know why I stayed except I didn’t know where else to go, but now, I can’t even justify that. So I walk through town. I accept that I’m here an
d that I’ll probably always be here. I rediscover Hollow Oaks. The park. The school. Stores where I bought aspirin and pencils and hair dye. The one on the hill, where my dad was—is—but I don’t go in there. I can’t see the sameness of it, can’t look at him continuing because I might come back. He’ll never leave, at least not until there’s a body to bury. And even then … I don’t know. Maybe he’ll hang on to it. Maybe he’ll stay because while this town is what it is, it’s also all that’s left of me.
There’s this entire freedom of not being seen, but I don’t know how to use it. I move from place to place, trying to get a sense of what’s happening, trying to piece together what they know and what they don’t. They can’t find me. Even though they know I’m gone, there’s nothing they can do. This thing has been introduced into the world, but it just festers and the world goes on.
I don’t want to go home again. Home is the worst place. It’s all the things I need to feel, held away behind an invisible veil.
So I walk instead. I observe. Hollow Oaks. The oaks were taken down for the factories, and the factories sit empty in their space. The name became ironic.
One of the factories, right on the river, is a brick behemoth. The age on it shows. Spray-paint tags, broken windows, padlocks and chains designed never to be cut or opened. Where there used to be a sign, an announcement of what this was, of what creation came from the hollow vastness of it, is now a darker patch of brick. Just a hint.
Once upon a time, there was.
That’s the theme of this town.
This was where my dad worked. I sit on the hill behind the factory, a small hill that drowns itself in the river a few feet farther from where I sit. The silence of it isn’t disturbed by my presence. There are no crunching branches when I settle. An owl continues its melancholy keening. The river knows where it’s going and it takes no notice of me.
When Kate left, I had nobody to talk to anymore. I guess I could’ve gone to my dad, but I’d crossed that chasm and I didn’t know how to get back.
I hadn’t known loneliness before. Not really. I’d known the idea of it, but since I’d never had anyone, I had only imagined loneliness. I had to imagine love and so the absence of it was just something I guessed at. But now, I knew what it felt like to miss someone. To have someone fit into your life and take parts of you for themselves, only to abandon you and those pieces without care. To leave you with pieces missing and somehow changed, while they tore away the parts they’d loaned you for a time, too.
When Gina Lynn burst into my life, into my quiet, I learned. I’d thrown myself into whatever I had with Caleb so fully that I couldn’t figure out what was left without him.
It’s a dangerous companion, loneliness, and it scares me now, as it takes my side by the river. I can’t last an eternity with no other friend.
The owl agrees.
I sent Kate an e-mail that night, trying to put it into words. I sat alone, needing him, and I hated that need. Kate replied with a sad face emoji and a promise that she’d call soon. She never did, but I never reminded her, either.
Death is a mirror. It’s a reflection of the things that happened and the shimmering edges of what could’ve happened instead. There are all these pieces. Each memory, each moment. I sift through them, trying to put them together. Trying to understand why I can’t move on. I cling to the idea that I’m still here because of something unfinished. Believing in those ghost stories I read as a kid. Because otherwise it means this is it. This constant reminder, the regret and what-ifs just spreading into forever.
Maybe Father O’Connell was wrong about Heaven, or maybe I just wasn’t a good girl.
Maybe this is Hell. An endless flood of all the things you should have said, could have done, and the constant knowledge that you put yourself here.
There aren’t other dead people in this place. It’s a small town, but not small enough that I’m the only one ever to die. If I had been, I’m sure they’d be looking a lot harder. So why is it, even in death, I’m all alone? It doesn’t feel fair that this is my punishment.
I listen to the owl. Over the trees, beyond the river, a white burst of light drenches the night. Pollution from the store on the hill, constantly invading even the quiet places.
Time passes through the night. In death, time is forever. Night becomes day and time means nothing anymore. I stay on the hill by the water, by the factory, until the owl goes to sleep and cars begin to pass.
The thing about Hollow Oaks is that it’s not a place that creates people. The whole world is made up of places like this, I think. Places that churn out lives, but those lives fill space without shaping it. We don’t make it onto the news. Even during the weather report. Billowbrook and St. Agatha do, our neighbors hinting at what we can expect, but Hollow Oaks only exists to the people who live here.
So when the news vans arrive, one, two, and then a parking lot full of them, it’s something people notice.
Cassie Haddom, the reporter I saw that night while I watched TV beside my dad, stands in front of the police station. She’s figured out the weather now, and she’s trying to blend in, but the way she shivers when she thinks nobody’s watching still identifies her as an outsider. She sips her coffee, waiting for something. A crowd of reporters builds around her.
When a police officer steps out of the station, the reporters become a mass of cameras and microphones. I don’t recognize the officer, but then again, I never had much cause for knowing the town’s law enforcement.
“Good morning,” the officer says. “On behalf of the Hollow Oaks Police Department, I’m Officer Shannon Thompson.”
She’s young. She looks like she’s barely out of high school. She tries to cover for it. Posturing as confident, authoritative.
“We are confirming that, effective immediately, the department will be launching a full-scale investigation into two claims of alleged sexual misconduct against Noah and Caleb Breward, sons of Wayne Breward. Wayne Breward is well-known in Hollow Oaks and in the surrounding area, serving not only as the town’s tax assessor, but also recognized for his work in real estate.”
This is why the reporters are here. They’re here for a name. A headline: Sons of Local Politician and Real Estate Mogul Accused of Sexual Misconduct.
Misconduct. I wish they’d call it what it is. Misconduct sounds like something you do to earn yourself a time-out as a toddler.
“Two young women have recently come forward with similar accusations. We will be determining the validity and strength of these claims, as well as cooperating with the district attorney’s office regarding what we find. As of now, no formal charges have been brought. In addition, while there have been media reports that this may be linked to the case of Ellie Frias, who has been missing for approximately six months, we do not have reason yet to connect the cases. Of course, should that change, we will investigate as expected. At this time, we do want to ask the media to respect the privacy and rights of both the Breward and Frias families. We will not be taking questions, but we welcome any information you may have about this situation. Thank you for your attention.”
The storm of questions echoes through the parking lot. Officer Thompson takes her prewritten statement and rushes back into the station, as reporters follow. I wonder what happens when she goes inside. Does she want to be the voice of this? Does she want to be the one reporters link to the questions that go unanswered?
I watch Cassie, who doesn’t move, readying herself for a quick report where she is. I don’t know why Cassie feels like the one I should follow. Maybe because she was first. Maybe because she was here before any of them. Maybe it’s the way she said my name.
“This is Cassie Haddom for WLKV News, coming to you from the town of Hollow Oaks. As you just heard, the local police department is now revealing that the accusations we previously reported on, claims of sexual assault, involve the sons of Wayne Breward. Breward, as many know, has built an empire in the region as a real estate professional, capitalizing on the
economic downturn by assisting mortgage lenders and banks with maintaining abandoned, or zombie, properties. He is also the tax assessor for Hollow Oaks, and the Breward family is well respected here and beyond for their work during and after the economic crisis.”
She pauses, reaching for the scarf she’s not wearing.
“We will be following this investigation and reporting to you with anything we learn. Again, this is Cassie Haddom reporting for WLKV News from Hollow Oaks. Back to you.”
She and her cameraman pack up their equipment, while the other reporters, having gotten nothing else from Officer Thompson, begin their own stories.
I head past them and enter the police station. I wish I could tell them how close they are.
The lead detective is old. Older than my dad, and he doesn’t want to work on this case. He sighs every time Officer Thompson speaks. I figure he’s in charge, though, because everything gravitates toward him as they discuss.
“We have to get the girls’ stories again and confirm them before we give anything to the Brewards,” Officer Thompson argues.
The conversation happens around a table—one of those sort of plastic-over-wood ones that show up in church recreation halls and schools. The few items in the room are a coffeemaker that was burning coffee before I was born and a vending machine. Only two of the beverages are available—water and root beer. The little lights that warn you not to feed your money into the machine, that tell you someone beat you to the last Sprite, form a vertical row behind the lead detective’s left shoulder.
“Shannon, those boys have every right to know what’s being said, what we have. It’s human decency,” he replies.
“I hate to say it but Gomes is right,” the other officer says.
“This is bullshit and you know it,” Officer Thompson says. “We give them that information, we may as well throw the case out. Do you think Adrien Deschaine is just going to sit on it, is going to leave even one detail for us to turn over to a prosecutor?”
“I don’t like it, either,” the other young officer replies. “But either way, we’re stuck. If we don’t tell them what we have, they’ll turn that on us and we won’t get anywhere anyway.”