Towering

by Alex Flinn

  “It’s okay.” I tried to hide my disappointment. “My mom and her friends used to go there when they were teenagers. It’s probably closed now. She used to date a guy who played guitar there, a guy named Zach.”

  “He’s not your long-lost father, is he?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Though that would be a good cover story. “She just wanted to find out if anyone had heard from him.”

  “Zach Gray.” The old man with the TV suddenly came up behind us. “That’s Rebecca Gray’s grandson. He came to town eighteen years ago, then left.”

  “Eighteen?” It seemed pretty exact.

  “Yup. I remember because that was the year of the big snowstorm.” And then, he started in on a long, irrelevant story about the storm itself, the height of the snow, the number of days it fell, and how long it took for the flowers to come back afterward. But I was thinking eighteen years was right before Danielle had disappeared. Maybe he’d run away with her. Or maybe he’d killed her and gone on the lam.

  The old man finally concluded his story, saying to Josh, “Will you take twenty for this TV?”

  I thought he’d be lucky to get five, but Josh said, “I’ll have to ask my dad. He only authorized me to sell for thirty. And he’s not here today, so if you want it for the bowl games . . .”

  “You drive a hard bargain, son.” The old man took out a faded wallet and extracted some folded, soft-looking bills.

  After he left, Josh said, “I don’t know if you have plans for New Year’s.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I nodded. “I’m going to Times Square to celebrate with Ryan Seacrest.”

  “Whatever, man. If you don’t have plans, a bunch of us are getting together. My family has a place on Grouse Lake. It’s a three-season house, so it’s almost inaccessible right now. Good for partying. I could pick you up if you’re interested.”

  I nodded, realizing at that moment how much I really did miss hanging out with people. “That’d be great.”

  We made plans for the next day at ten, and Josh said he’d call when the hinges came in.

  When I got home, Mrs. Greenwood was asleep on the sofa in front of the TV. An old rerun of Star Trek was on, the creepy theme song that sounded more like a theremin, this weird instrument, than a human voice. I wondered if that was what I’d heard earlier, the voice I’d heard on the wind. But it seemed unlikely that the old lady was a Trekkie. I figured her experience with science fiction was more along the lines of H. G. Wells. I tried to tiptoe past her, but she woke up.

  “Oh, there you are. I can’t believe I fell asleep during Star Trek.” She picked up the remote and started rewinding. At least she had a real television. “I got cable just so I could still see William Shatner. That is one handsome man.”

  I grinned. “He’s about your age now too.”

  “Well, I know. He was my age back then. Are you a Trekkie?”

  “I can’t tell a Vulcan from a Romulan.”

  “I could teach you.”

  I smiled. “Maybe later. I want to check out the connection.”

  Of course, I didn’t do virtual school. The week between Christmas and New Year’s was sacred, even for the virtually bored. Instead, I went on Facebook. They’d made Tyler’s page into a memorial one with hundreds of messages, all talking about how they’d loved him, from people who wouldn’t have loaned him a pencil when he was alive. I checked my own. No one was posting on it, only a few invitations to play CastleVille and Texas HoldEm, from people I didn’t really know. Bored, I looked through my duffel bag and found the notebook from last night.

  9

  Danielle’s Diary

  I saw him again today! It has been three days since I first saw him. I haven’t been able to get out, but today I was, and I went, pretending to walk Ginger, limping to the road. And by some miracle, he was there! He smiled. I noticed his eyes again, a shade of blue I’d never seen before.

  “I couldn’t come before. I’m sorry.”

  “I know. I came anyway, in case you made it today.”

  He walked around to open the car door. So polite, so different from the rude boys at school, who joked about how their “women” had better be ready at the door when they honked. I almost wished I could tell Mom about him. She was old-fashioned and liked stuff like that.

  “I brought a picnic,” he said.

  “Every day?”

  “So I’ve eaten a few picnic lunches. It was worth it. I thought we could go to the lake.”

  That was old-fashioned too, charming like the picnic basket—not a cooler—he’d brought, with its red-checkered lining. He held out his hand to help me into the car. Again, that shock. I shivered.

  “Are you okay? Need a sweater?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a nice day.”

  It was a lovely day, and as we drove to the lake, a drive I’d made a hundred times before, I began to notice things I never had, the beauty of the black-eyed Susans, how the brown inside was like a dog’s nose, and each petal formed a ruffle around. How it and the Queen Anne’s lace grew against the craggy, gray rocks, sometimes clinging, sometimes avoiding, like a flirtatious girl. Even the rocks themselves glowed and sparkled. I mentioned that to Zach.

  “Do you know why?” he asked.

  “Of course. Everyone knows. There are bits of garnets in there, just little flecks It’s my birthstone.”

  He nodded. “A red stone, fiery like you. There’s a garnet mine about an hour from here. But they don’t use the garnets for rings and necklaces. They make scouring pads out of them, or use them for stone washing jeans.”

  “That’s not very romantic,” I said.

  “You’re right.” He touched my arm, maybe unintentionally. “In the right light, they glow just like diamonds. Just like you.”

  We went silent again after that. I realized I should speak. He wouldn’t like me if I didn’t talk. He’d think I was a weirdo.

  But he spoke first. “I wasn’t telling the whole truth the other day.”

  My heart clenched, wondering what he was going to tell me—that he’d been in jail or was thirty years old? But he said, “I have lived a lot of places, but I’ve been here before. My grandmother lived here, and my uncles still do. I used to visit them when I was younger, and now, I live with them. Actually, they own the bar where I perform.”

  I stared at him, mesmerized by his eyes.

  “I thought you’d think it was geeky, living with my uncles, or that I was a loser. You were so beautiful, I wanted to impress you.”

  “I’m impressed,” I said.

  “It’s kind of loserish. I left home, thinking I’d make it as a big rock star in New York, only to come back here with my tail between my legs.”

  “Are you still going to try to be a rock star?”

  “Absolutely. I just ran out of money, so I’m working here for a while. They let me live for free. As soon as I’ve saved enough, I’m going back.”

  “That sounds like a good plan.” He was so hot I thought he could make it even if he couldn’t sing. “It was brave to leave home in the first place. I complain about my mother, but going to the big city all by myself sounds kind of daunting.”

  He pulled off the road then to a beautiful spot by the river. We waded in the water for a while. He took out the sandwiches. Over lunch, he asked me about my life.

  “It’s boring. I’d rather hear about you.”

  “It’s not boring. You’re not boring.”

  “There were only thirty kids in my graduating class, and I’ve known all of them since kindergarten. They’ll all stay here and marry each other and have kids who’ll stay here and marry each other and have kids who’ll stay here and marry each other. A hundred years from now, the people in this town will look exactly the same.”

  “But that’s great. That’s what’s cool about this place. It’s like everything here, the rocks and the trees and the people too. They never change. That’s what I loved about visiting here when I was a kid. We had all these traditions—li
ke we’d always eat ice cream at the same places every year, the one near the waterfall and the old-fashioned one on Main Street. And we’d always go to the drive-in movie theater. Do you know how few towns have a drive-in movie anymore, but they do here because it always has to be the same.”

  “But I’ve never eaten a snail before.”

  “A snail?”

  “On TV, you hear about people going to fancy restaurants and eating things like caviar or snails. But we don’t have any restaurants like that here, and if we did, people would think it was gross anyway. Here, people just eat things like pot roast. Pot roast!”

  He smiled. “That, I can help you with.”

  From the picnic basket, he removed a small container of what looked like salad. I’d noticed it before, but I hadn’t gotten too excited about it. Salad wasn’t my thing. “Try this?”

  “Lettuce? Not very exciting.” He didn’t even have any dressing from what I could see.

  But he opened the container and reached inside to take out one single leaf. He held it between two long, slender fingers. Beyond it, I could see his strange blue eyes, and then, the green itself seemed to glow almost blue too. It was shaped like a heart with little tendrils of smaller hearts hanging from the stem. I opened my mouth.

  The second the leaf touched my tongue, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of incredible peace. As I chewed, the world grew sharper, brighter. I could pick out the songs of individual birds and smell the pine trees and each flower. In fact, I could even see the flowers blooming.

  Zach leaned toward me. His eyes were psychedelic blue. “You know what else is exciting?” he said. “You.”

  And he kissed me. I kissed him back, and I don’t know what was real after that and what was a dream. I could see the reflections of trees on the lake, and I felt like I could jump in and climb them, entering another world, a tree world. Then, Zach was carrying me across a field of flowers toward a ruined tower I’d never seen before. All I knew for sure was that I was in love, so in love, and from this day forward, everything in time will be divided between the days before I met Zach and the days after.

  I’m in love.

  As I finished the page, Mrs. Greenwood called me, for dinner. Then, we watched Star Trek, which apparently is on all the time somewhere, if you have five thousand cable channels. It wasn’t as dumb as I thought it was.

  I told Mrs. Greenwood that.

  She nodded. “Gene Roddenberry, the creator, wanted to show what mankind might develop into, if only they learned from their mistakes.”

  “Fascinating,” I said, imitating Mr. Spock.

  “He wanted to end violence. For example, the Vulcans had a very violent past but learned to control it by controlling their emotions.”

  “Should people control their emotions?” I asked.

  “Sometimes, you have to, I suppose. You have to avoid thinking of what upsets you. If not, it will take over your life. I know. . . .”

  She meant Danielle, her thinking about Danielle. I wanted to find out more about what had happened to her. Had Zach drugged her? Why? But by the time I went upstairs, I was tired, so tired. I thought it was the altitude, ’cause I just fell into bed and slept with no trouble, the first time since Tyler died.

  But a few hours later, I woke once again to an eerie voice, singing on the wind.

  It wasn’t the Star Trek theme. It came from outside my window.

  I bolted up and walked across the room, thinking maybe it was Danielle. But there was no one there, only the voice.

  10

  Rachel

  Sometimes, I like to crouch on the floor and look upward, out the window. Then, I can tell if it’s a blue sky, which I know from books means a clear day, the kind of day on which Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters might walk into town in Pride and Prejudice, or a gray sky, which might mean a stormy day, the sort of day on which Jo March in Little Women might huddle under an umbrella with Professor Bhaer.

  Not that it matters, for I never go out. But still, I like to know. It makes me feel like a part of the world.

  Even though I’m not.

  I’ll leave soon, though. I know I will.

  I worry that I won’t be ready, that I won’t know the things I need to know and that people (people!) will think me stupid. I’ve been doing exercises, trying to remember what I knew of the outside world. If I read a book, I try to picture the objects mentioned. Some things are easy to envision for they are things I own. Chair. Hairbrush. Picture. Others, I cannot visualize at all. Like, in Emma, when Mr. Knightley sent his carriage to pick up Harriet, I thought and thought of what a carriage might look like, but I completely failed to envision it. I am certain I have never seen one.

  And then, there are items in the middle, items I might remember if I only try hard enough. Dog. When Mr. Rochester meets Jane Eyre for the first time, he has a dog with him, Pilot. At first, I could not think what a dog might be, though I assumed it was some sort of animal, a furry one like the animals I see from my window, which Mama tells me are called squirrels (the small ones) or deer (the larger ones). But, gradually, if I closed my eyes, if I reached back into the far recesses of my memory, I thought I could remember a creature, larger than I had been at the time. I could feel its rough fur between my fingers, and its tongue on my face. It made me happy to think about the dog, so happy I wished for a moment that I could have a dog myself.

  But, of course, that wouldn’t do. A dog can’t live in a tower. Dogs, I now remembered, were vigorous creatures. They needed to run, to play.

  But didn’t I? I had never tried to escape, had always just listened to Mama. What would happen if I had?

  Yesterday, I had quite a shock. I was rereading Wuthering Heights, which is my favorite book. I especially like the part where Catherine, who never seems to leave the house either, sneaks out with Heathcliff to spy on the Linton children. Their dog (dog, again), Skulker, bites Catherine on the leg, and she must stay with the Lintons until she recovers.

  I liked that part because Catherine is like I am, sheltered from the world. But as soon as she meets the Lintons, they like her. They take her in, and she ends up marrying the charming and wealthy Edgar.

  But what upset me was, when I turned to the end of the book, for the first time I noticed there was a page about the author, Emily Brontë.

  And it said she was dead!

  Long dead from the look of it. It said she had died in 1848.

  Which motivated me to look through my other books to learn about their authors. The authors, after all, seemed the most like friends of anyone. I learned that Daphne du Maurier was born in 1907, almost sixty years after Emily Brontë had died. And her characters, unlike Brontë’s or Austen’s, drove around in motorcars!

  I could picture a car. Mama had one, and when she took me to this tower on a rainy, gloomy day, it was a car that brought me here. Or, at least, most of the way. The last part, we walked.

  I remember the feeling of being in the car. Mama made me put my head down so I couldn’t look out, but I felt the motion of the road beneath me, and when we arrived, I felt the grass and rocks beneath my feet. It was the last I’d felt them.

  When Mama arrived to see me, I had some questions for her.

  “Mama, what year is it?”

  She stepped back a bit at the question. “Please, Rachel, you must allow me to catch my breath before you bombard me with questions.”

  “I’m not bombarding,” I said, thinking I probably didn’t question enough. But then, I apologized. My tower, I knew, was over fifty feet high, and Mama reached it by walking up steps from the bottom and crawling through a trap door. When she came, she was out of breath and needed to rest. She hadn’t always been so out of breath but, she explained, she was getting older.

  Sometimes, I wondered what would happen if Mama died. Did anyone else know I was here? Would I die too?

  But I didn’t ask that question. I would leave before that happened.

  When she caught her breath, she reached for a
book to read to me. She always read before we ate. She said it was therapeutic. But before she started reading, I said, “Mama, you forgot to answer my question.”

  “What question is that?”

  “What year is it?”

  She fidgeted through the pages of the book. “Why do you care so much?”

  “Why would I not care?” And yet, it was difficult to put my reasons into words. “Because it is . . . strange not to know such a thing. I understand that you are trying to protect me from . . .” What? Life? The world? “. . . those who would do me ill.” Mama had told me that the man who had killed my mother had also tried to have me killed, but she had saved me. “Yet, someday, I must go out into the world, and I do not wish to be thought strange. I wish to be ordinary. I’m not mad, after all, like Bertha Rochester, who needed to be locked in an attic.”

  I wasn’t mad, was I? What if I was and I only didn’t know it because of the level of my dementia? Did madwomen know they were mad? Or did they think they were sane, and it was the world that was off-kilter? What if everything, my tower, the trees, even the squirrels were all figments of my mad imaginings?

  But if these were my imaginings, why would I not imagine something else, something better?

  “Am I mad? Is that why you keep me here?” I twisted my neck to see her, for she had moved behind me.

  “Of course not, darling Rachel.” She reached to stroke my cheek and, simultaneously, to move my face so that I was not looking at her. Yet I detected a strange expression on her face, an expression like panic. “It is not you who are mad but the world, Rachel.” She reached for my hairbrush. Even though she no longer had my special brush, she sometimes brushed my hair when she came, for old time’s sake. But this time, the brush caught on a knot. I clutched my head.

  “Ouch! You’re hurting me!”

  “I’m sorry, my dear Rachel, so sorry. I do not wish to harm you. I only . . . you must stay here a bit longer. Perhaps you do not trust me.”

  “Oh, no, Mama. I do trust you.” Up until this minute, I had. But why was she becoming so agitated when all I wanted was a few answers to my questions. If she intended to release me, I would need to know.