“That guard might have heard,” Jessica said anxiously. “We have to get out of here.”
They started for the door, and Jessica started running. The rest took off after her, picking up speed as they reached the hallway until they were racing, as though something were behind them.
“Run, run!” John called out, and they all burst into giggles, the panic feigned, but the urgency real.
They squeezed back through the door one by one, and pushed it shut with the same painful squeal, Carlton and John leaning on it until it sealed. They all took hold of the shelf, hefting it back into place and replacing the tools so that it appeared undisturbed.
“Look good?” Jessica said, and John tugged her arm, guiding her away.
They made their way quickly but carefully back the way they came using only Carlton’s penlight, back through the empty hallways and the open atrium to the parking lot. The guard’s light did not appear again.
“Little anticlimactic.” Carlton said with disappointment, checking back one more time in hopes they were being chased.
“Are you kidding?” Charlie said as she went to her car, already pulling the keys free from her pocket. She felt as though something locked deep inside her had been disturbed, and she was not sure if that was a good thing or bad.
“That was fun!” John exclaimed, and Jessica laughed.
“That was terrifying!” She cried.
“It can be both,” Carlton said, grinning widely. Charlie began to laugh, and John joined in.
“What?” Jessica said. Charlie shook her head, still laughing a little.
“It’s just, we’re all exactly the same as we were. I mean we’re totally different and older and everything. But we’re the same. You and Carlton sound exactly like you did when we were six.”
“Right,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes again, but John nodded.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “And so does Jessica, she just doesn’t like to admit it.” He glanced back at the mall. “Is everybody sure that guard didn’t see us?” He said.
“We can outrun him now,” Carlton said reasonably, his hand resting on the car.
“I guess,” John said, but he did not sound convinced.
“You haven’t changed either, you know,” Jessica said with a certain satisfaction. “Stop looking for problems where there aren’t any.”
“Still,” John said, glancing back again. “We should get out of here, I don’t want to push our luck.”
“See you all tomorrow then?” Jessica said as they parted ways. Carlton gave a little wave over his shoulder.
Charlie’s heart sank a little as Jessica settled herself into the passenger seat, tidily buckling herself in. She had not been looking forward to this. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Jessica, just that being alone with her was uncomfortable. She still wasn’t much more than a stranger. Yet Charlie was still exhilarated from the night’s adventure, and the lingering adrenaline gave her a new confidence. She smiled at Jessica. After tonight, they suddenly had something very much in common.
“Do you know which way the motel is?” She asked, and Jessica nodded, and reached for the purse down at her feet. It was small and black with a long strap, and on the drive to the construction site Charlie had already seen her remove a lip gloss, a mirror, a pack of breath mints, a sewing kit, and a tiny hairbrush. Now she pulled out a small notebook and pen. Charlie smiled.
“Sorry, how much stuff do you have in that thing?” She said, and Jessica looked at her with a grin.
“The secrets of The Purse must not be disclosed,” she said playfully, and they both laughed. Jessica started reading Charlie the directions, and Charlie obeyed, turning left and right without paying much attention to her surroundings.
Jessica had already checked in so they went straight to their room, a small beige box of a room with two double beds covered in shiny brown spreads. Charlie set her bags on the bed closest to the door, and Jessica went to the window.
“As you can see, I splurged on the room with the view,” she said, and flung the curtains open dramatically to reveal two dumpsters and a dried-out hedge. “I want to have my wedding here.”
“Right.” Charlie said, amused. Jessica’s prim demeanor and fashion-model looks made it easy to forget that she was smart as well. As children she remembered being slightly intimidated every time they got together to play, then remembering after the first few minutes how much she liked her. She wondered if it was hard for her to make friends, looking the way she did, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could really ask someone.
Jessica flopped down on the bed, lying across it to face Charlie.
“So tell me about you,” she said confidentially, mocking a talk show host or someone’s nosy mother.
Charlie shrugged awkwardly, put on the spot. “What does that mean?” She said.
Jessica laughed. “I don’t know! What an awful thing to ask, right? I mean how do you answer that? Um, how about school? Any cute boys?”
Charlie lay down across the bed, mimicking Jessica’s position. “Cute boys? What are we, twelve?”
“Well?” Jessica said impatiently.
“I don’t know,” she said, “not really.” Her class was too small. She had known most of the people in it since she moved in with Aunt Jen, and dating anyone, liking them “like that” seemed forced, and altogether unappealing. She told Jessica as much. “Most of the girls, if they want to date, they date older guys,” she said.
“And you don’t have an older guy?” Jessica said, teasing.
“Nah,” Charlie said. “I figured I’d wait around for our batch to grow up.”
“Right!” Jessica burst out laughing before quickly thinking of something to share. “Last year there was this guy Donnie,” she said. “I was gaga for him, like really. He was so sweet to everyone. He wore all black all the time, and he had this black curly hair so thick all I could think about when I sat behind him was burying my face in it. I was so distracted I ended up with an A- in Trig. He was super artistic, a poet, and he carried around one of those black leather notebooks, and he was always scribbling something in it, but he would never show anybody.” She sighed dreamily. “I figured if I could get him to show me his poetry, I would really come to know his soul, you know?”
“So did he ever?” Charlie said.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, nodding emphatically. “I asked him out finally, you know, ‘cause he was shy and he was never gonna ask me, and we went to the movies and made out a little, and then we went and hung out on the roof of his apartment building and I told him all about how I want to study ancient civilizations, and go on archaeological digs and stuff. And he showed me his poems.”
“And did you come to know his soul?” Charlie said, excited to be included in girl talk, something she felt like she’d never really gotten to participate in before. Charlie nodded eagerly. But not too eagerly. She calmed herself as Jessica scooted forward on the bed to whisper.
“The poems were awful. I didn’t know it was possible to be both melodramatic and boring at the same time. I mean, like, just reading them made me embarrassed for him.” She covered her face in her hands. Charlie laughed.
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I told him it wasn’t gonna work out and I went home.”
“Wait, right after you read his poetry?”
“I still had the notebook in my hand.”
“Oh no, Jessica, that’s awful! You must have broken his heart!”
“I know! I felt so bad, but it was like the words just came out of my mouth, I couldn’t stop myself.”
“Did he ever speak to you again?”
“Oh, yeah, he’s perfectly nice. But now he takes statistics and economics and wears sweater vests.”
“You broke him!” Charlie threw a pillow at Jessica, who sat up and caught it.
“I know! He’ll probably be a millionaire stockbroker instead of a starving artist and it’s all my fault.” She grinned. “Come o
n, he’ll thank me someday.”
Charlie shook her head. “Do you really want to be an archaeologist?”
“Yeah,” Jessica said.
“Huh,” said Charlie. “Sorry, I thought—”She shook her head. “Sorry, that is really cool.”
“You thought I’d want to do something in fashion,” Jessica said.
“Well, yeah.”
“It’s okay,” Jessica said. “I did too, I mean I do, I love fashion, but there’s only so much to it, you know? I think it’s amazing to think about how people lived a thousand years ago, or two thousand, or ten. They were just like us, but so different. I like to imagine living in other times, other places, wonder who I would have been. Anyway, what about you?”
Charlie rolled over onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. The tiles were made of loose, stained Styrofoam, and the one above her head was askew. I hope there aren’t any bugs up in there, she thought.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I think it’s really cool that you know who you want to be, but I have just never had that kind of a plan.”
“Well, it’s not like you have to figure it out now,” Jessica said.
“Maybe,” Charlie said. “But I don’t know, you know what you want to do, John’s known since he could hold a pencil that he wanted to be a writer and he’s already getting published, even Carlton—I don’t know what he has planned, but you can just see that there’s a scheme brewing behind all his kidding around. But I just don’t have that kind of direction.”
“It really doesn’t matter,” Jessica said. “I don’t think most people know at our age. Plus, I might change my mind, or not get into college, or something. You never know what’s going to happen. Hey, I’m gonna get changed, I want to get some sleep.”
She went into the bathroom, and Charlie stayed where she was, gazing at the sorry-looking ceiling. She supposed it was becoming a defect, her earnest refusal to consider the past or future. Live in the present moment, her Aunt Jen said often, and Charlie had taken it to heart. Don’t dwell on the past, don’t worry about things that may never happen. In eighth grade she had taken a shop class, vaguely hoping the mechanical work might spark something of her father’s talent, might unleash some inherited passion lying latent within her, but it had not. She had made a clumsy-looking birdhouse for the backyard. She never took another shop class, and the birdhouse only attracted one squirrel who promptly knocked it down.
Jessica came out of the bathroom wearing pink striped pajamas, and Charlie went in to get ready for bed, changing and brushing her teeth hurriedly. When she came out again, Jessica was already under the covers with the light by her bed turned off. Charlie turned hers off, too, but the light from the parking lot still shone in from the window, somehow filtering past the dumpsters.
Charlie stared up at the ceiling again, her hands behind her head.
“Do you know what’s going to happen tomorrow?” She asked.
“I don’t really know,” Jessica said. “I know it’s a ceremony at the school.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Charlie said. “Are we going to have to do anything? Like, do they want us to speak?”
“I don’t think so,” Jessica said. “Why, do you want to say something?”
“No, I was just wondering.”
“Do you ever think about him?” Jessica said.
“Sometimes. I try not to,” Charlie said half-truthfully. She had sealed off the subject of Michael in her mind; locked him tight behind a mental wall she never touched. It wasn’t an effort to avoid the subject, in fact it was an effort to think of him now. “What about you?” She asked Jessica.
“Not really,” she said. “It’s weird, right? Something happens, and it’s the worst thing you can ever imagine, and it’s just burned into you at the time, like it’s going to go on forever. And then the years go by, and it’s another thing that happened. Not like it’s not important, or terrible, but it’s in the past, just as much as everything else. You know?”
“I guess,” Charlie said. But she did know. “I just try not to think about those things.”
“Me too. You know I just went to a funeral last week?”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie said, sitting up. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jessica said. “I barely even knew him; he was just an old relative who he lived three states away. I think I met him once, and I hardly remember it. We mostly went for my mom’s sake. But it was at an old-fashioned funeral parlor, like in the movies, with an open coffin. And we all walked by the coffin, and when it was my turn I looked at him, and he could have been sleeping, you know? Just calm and restful, like people always say dead people look. There was nothing that I could have pointed out that made me think dead, if you asked me; every feature of his face looked the same as if he were alive. His skin was the same; his hair was the same as if he were alive. But he wasn’t alive, and I just knew it; I would have known it immediately, even if he wasn’t, you know, in a coffin.”
“I know what you mean, there is something about them when they’re…” Charlie said softly.
“It sounds stupid when I say it. But when I looked at him, he looked so alive, and yet I knew, just knew that he wasn’t. It made my skin crawl.”
“That’s the worst thing, isn’t it?” Charlie said. “Things that act alive but aren’t.”
“What?” Jessica said.
“I mean things that look alive but aren’t,” Charlie said quickly. “We should get some sleep,” she said. “Did you set the alarm?”
“Yes,” Jessica said. “Good-night.”
“Night.”
Charlie turned off her light, knowing sleep was still a long way off. She knew what Jessica meant, probably better than Jessica did. The artificial shine in eyes that followed you as you moved, just like a real person’s would. The slight lurch of realistic animals who did not move the way a living thing should. The occasional programming glitch, that made a robot appear to have done something new, creative. Her childhood had been filled with them; she had grown up in the strange gap between life and not-life. It had been her world. It had been her father’s world. Charlie closed her eyes. What did that world do to him?
Chapter Three
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Charlie startled out of sleep, disoriented. Something was banging on her door, trying to force its way in.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Jessica said grumpily, and Charlie blinked and sat up.
Right. The motel. Hurricane. Someone was knocking on the door. As Jessica went to answer the door, Charlie got out of bed and looked at the clock. It was 10:00 AM. She looked out the window at the bright, new day. She had slept worse than usual, not nightmares, but dark dreams she could not quite remember, things that stuck with her, just beyond the back of her mind, images she could not catch.
“Charlieeeee!” Someone was screeching. Charlie went to the door and found herself immediately enveloped in a hug, Marla’s plump arms gripping her like a vise. Charlie hugged her back, tighter than she meant to. When Marla let go she stepped back, grinning. Marla’s moods had always been so intense they were contagious, spreading out to whoever was in her path. When she was gloomy, a pall fell over all her friends, the sun gone behind her cloud. When she was happy, like now, it was impossible to avoid the lift of her joy. She was always breathless, always slightly scattered, always giving the impression that she was running late, though she almost never was. Marla was wearing a loose, dark red blouse, and it suited her well, setting off her fair skin and dark brown hair.
Charlie had kept in better touch with Marla than the others. Marla was the type who made it easy to stay friends, even at a distance. Even as a little kid she was always sending letters and postcards, undeterred if Charlie didn’t respond to every one. She was resolutely positive, and assumed that everyone liked her unless they made it clear otherwise, using the proper expletives. Charlie admired it about her—she herself, though not shy, was always calculating: does that person like me
? Are they just being polite? How do people tell the difference? Marla had come to visit her once when they were twelve. She had charmed Charlie’s aunt, and made fast friends with her school friends while still making it abundantly clear that she was Charlie’s friend, and she was here only to see Charlie.
Marla’s gigantic smile turned serious as she studied Charlie, peering at her as if trying to spot the differences since they last met. “You’re as pale as ever.” She took Charlie’s hands in her own. “And you’re all clammy, don’t you ever get warm?” She dropped Charlie’s hands and proceeded to study the motel room skeptically, as though uncertain exactly what it was.
“It’s the luxury suite.” Jessica said without expression, as she searched for something in her bag. Her hair was sticking up in all directions, and Charlie stifled a smile. It was nice to see something about Jessica in disarray, for once. Jessica found her hairbrush and held it up triumphantly. “Ha! Take that, morning frizz!”
“Come on in,” Charlie said, realizing she and Marla were still in the doorway, the door wide open. Marla nodded.
“One sec. JASON!” She shouted out the door. No one emerged. “JASON!”
A young boy came trotting up from the road. He was short and wiry, darker-skinned than his half-sister. His Batman t-shirt and black shorts were made for someone twice his size. His hair was cut close to his head, and his arms and legs were streaked with dirt.
“Were you playing in the road?” Marla demanded.
“No?” He said.
“Yes you were. Don’t do that. If you get yourself killed mom’s gonna blame me. Get inside.” Marla shoved her little brother inside and shook her head.
“How old are you now?” Charlie asked.
“Eleven,” Jason said. He went to the TV and started fiddling with buttons.
“Jason, stop it,” Marla said. “Play with your action figures.”
“I’m not a little kid,” he said. “Anyway, they’re in the car.” But he stepped away from the television and went to look out the window.
Marla rubbed her eyes.
“We just got here. We had to leave at six this morning, and someone,” she said pointedly; glancing over her shoulder at Jason, “wouldn’t stop fiddling with the radio. I am so tired.” She didn’t seem tired, but then she never did. At their sleepovers as kids, Charlie remembered her bouncing around like a maniac while the rest of them were winding down for the night—then falling asleep abruptly, like a cartoon character who’d been hit over the head with a rolling pin.
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