Towering

by Alex Flinn

  Now, people were splitting off into couples. Astrid and I moved to a chair by the window, far from the fire and everyone, where she said we could talk. But in ten minutes, we were making out, and I had my tongue in her mouth, my hand up her shirt, and she was pressing against me in a way that could have felt really good if there weren’t all these people here. And if I didn’t feel so dead inside.

  I kissed her again. Around me, everyone else was making out too, like it was required. I kissed her, long and hard to get all the voices in my head to stop. I fumbled with her clothes and tried to just go with it. Be normal. Maybe if you acted normal, if you pretended everything was normal, it would be again.

  Soon, Josh announced that it was almost midnight. We stood to do the countdown, and I kissed Astrid’s bruised lips even though at that point, it was a little redundant. Then, a little while later, someone said we should get going.

  I agreed and put on my coat, then helped Astrid with hers.

  Then, as the door opened, I heard it again. The voice. A girl’s voice. I didn’t say anything, though. I knew not to, in case I was crazy. But I glanced in the direction it had come from, and I saw something high among the trees. A light.

  Probably just the moon. Or a planet.

  I knew it wasn’t a planet, though. It was bigger than a planet, and lower. But, obviously, I was hallucinating.

  Astrid took my hand and pulled me down the path, but I knew I had to come back. Tomorrow. I had to find out what it was.

  When we got to the car, Astrid tried to get me to sit in the back, with her on my lap, but I offered to drive. “I think we’re the only ones that aren’t wasted, right?” I said to Josh.

  Astrid pouted, but Josh handed me his keys.

  “Are you sure?” she said, taking the seat behind me.

  “Lot of crazy people out on New Year’s. Kids get killed all the time.” I also wanted to make sure I knew the way back here. “Besides, I’d rather be alone with you, not in a car full of people.”

  “I understand.” But then, she leaned forward and kissed my ear.

  “I have to turn this thing around. It’s hard with the trees.”

  I somehow managed to do a three-point turn in the middle of a forest, and drove a long way toward the road. When I finally reached the main route, I looked at the name of the street I’d turned off of. Dickinson. I wondered who Dickinson was, some founding father of this crap town, or was it someone loftier, like the poet? Josh said to turn right, which was south, so I knew the cabin was even farther north. Then, I saw a sign that said Grouse Lake, and I remembered that was what Josh had said the name of the lake was.

  Astrid lived closest to town, so I dropped her off last, except for Josh. She made me get out of the car. “So, are we going skiing tomorrow?” She giggled. “I mean, today?”

  I thought fast. “I might be a little, um, tired.”

  “But we’re going, right?” Her voice had an edge like an ice-skate blade.

  “Oh, absolutely. Just, maybe, tomorrow.”

  “You’ll call me? Or I could call you?”

  “My cell doesn’t work up here. Let me get your number. I’ll call you from Mrs. G’s landline.”

  We exchanged numbers, and Astrid went inside. I dropped Josh off next, promising to bring the car back the next day. “Hey, your hinges are in too,” he said.

  When I got to the house, the path was covered with a fresh dusting of snow. I’d have to shovel it again. I fumbled for the key, and as I did, I heard a sound in the distant north. Singing. But that was impossible.

  Maybe I was crazy.

  But if I was, I might as well find out.

  Even though it was after two in the morning, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the wind outside. It howled like a lost soul. I wished I’d brought my television from home. Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I turned it on and it lulled me into a coma. I could go downstairs and watch. Maybe Mrs. Greenwood was even up, watching Star Trek. Instead, I watched the digital clock turn from 2:21 to 2:22. Tyler and Nikki had had a superstition about praying at 11:11 at night. I didn’t know about 2:22.

  2:23.

  2:24.

  I heard something downstairs, a key in the lock. I swam through the swampy waters of what had almost been sleep. Who was here? What was that sound? But it couldn’t be a key in the lock. There was no one here but me and the old lady, and she’d probably been asleep for hours. I glanced at the clock. 2:49. I’d been asleep, likely dreaming.

  Now that I had slept, I couldn’t go back. It was like I’d slept a full night.

  I felt something hard under my head. The diary. It had been days since I’d read it. I was lucky Mrs. Greenwood hadn’t noticed it. Though I’d told her I would do my own laundry, she insisted she’d do it and informed me that the beds were changed Monday.

  It was Monday today.

  I didn’t know why I didn’t want Mrs. Greenwood to know about Danielle’s diary. Originally, it was because of the way she’d scared me that first night. Now, it was because I didn’t want to remind her, as if she needed reminding. Or, maybe, I didn’t want to give her hope when there was none. Still, I wanted to finish the diary. In these early lonely days, Danielle had become something like a friend.

  Too bad she was probably a dead one.

  I didn’t hear any footsteps in the hallway, nothing but the wind. The door had been my imagination. Of course it had. My imagination trying to persuade me I wasn’t all alone, when I was. Giving up on sleep, I turned on the light and, once again, opened the diary.

  12

  Danielle’s Diary

  He’s gone! I’m sure of it! He’s gone, and the world has ended. Ended!

  Every day for a week, he came to me, and it was wonderful. We made love among the trees by the lake, and I saw visions I had never seen before. I used to think this place was ugly, gray, dead. With Zach, it was beautiful.

  But now, he is gone. I have walked Ginger out to the road every day this week, and I’ve returned, having gained nothing but exercise. Has he left town? Or worse, has he died? Been hit by a car? Gotten sick?

  Or has he merely decided he doesn’t like me anymore?

  At night, I have been plagued by the strangest dreams, dreams in which colors have sounds and something chases me across the sky with spidery, flaming legs. I ran away from it, but also, toward something. Was it Zach? Before I could reach the end, I would wake, sweating, unable to scream.

  I began to make plans to sneak away, to concoct a ruse to go to the Red Fox Inn.

  And then, yesterday, I did.

  Mom has been sick for several days. It’s only a cough, but from the way she acts, you’d think she was near death. We are running low on groceries. Earlier in the week, I offered to go shop, but she said it was unnecessary. She’d be better soon. But now, it’s been several days. We’re out of milk and almost out of bread. I told Mom this.

  “We can get milk from Mrs. McNeill,” she said, “and I can make bread.” And then, a cough racked her body, doubling her up and making her hack grotesquely for over a minute.

  When she finished, I said, “I wouldn’t eat any bread you made. I could get the plague. Besides, you should rest.”

  “I’ve been in bed these three days, and it hasn’t helped. I can’t sleep for all this coughing.”

  “Some medicine, maybe. Maybe Dr. Fine . . .” I stopped. I didn’t want her to go to the doctor because, then, she’d come to town with me. “I could call Dr. Fine and describe your symptoms. Then, he could phone something in.”

  “He wouldn’t. Dr. Fine isn’t helpful unless there’s a check involved. He’ll want me to go there, and I’m too sick to go out.”

  Could she be any more difficult?

  “Oh!” I remembered the nighttime cold medicine I had in my bottom dresser drawer. Some kids at school said they took it to get high, but when I did, it only made me want to sleep forever and ever. Nothing like whatever I took with Zach. But if Mom took the cold meds, I could go out
or do anything I wanted. “I just remembered I have this really good cough medicine. I’ll get it for you.”

  “Nothing will help.”

  “Try this.”

  I measured the green fluid into the plastic dose cup, filling it a bit higher than necessary, but only a bit. I didn’t want to kill her, only to assure she slept a good four or five hours. I brought it to her, walking carefully so as not to spill it.

  “Disgusting color,” she said, appraising it. “It must be effective.”

  “Let’s hope so. But it tastes really bad.” I wanted to warn her. It would suck if she did a spit take and didn’t ingest it. “Maybe hold your nose.”

  “It’s okay. I have no sense of taste today.” She raised the cup and drank it all the way down. Yes! “It burns a bit.”

  “Why don’t you go lie down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea?”

  Amazingly, she agreed to that. I took my time, making the tea, and when I went upstairs, she was already asleep, snoring, the phlegm rattling as it gushed in and out of her nose. Gross.

  “Here’s your tea, Mom.” I said it soft, so as not to wake her. Nothing. Her purse was on the dresser. I reached inside, quiet as I could, keeping an eye on her the whole time my hands searched for her car keys. She had a keychain with an old photo of me in a Lucite frame. One side was cracked, and I felt the scratchy, thick edge. I pulled up on it.

  A slight tinkling noise. In her bed, Mom stirred, but she didn’t sit upright and accuse me of stealing from her. That was good. I was just being paranoid. I left the tea on her nightstand.

  The car didn’t want to start at first, but finally, it turned over. I had at least three hours, maybe more. I decided to go to the store first so I wouldn’t forget and also, because Zach might not be at work early.

  There was a grocery store in Gatskill. No one knew me there. Slakkill is so small that, one summer, when Emily and I got jobs bagging groceries, Mr. Gates, the manager, told us to follow anyone who wasn’t from around here. We knew who bought cigarettes without permission, and we knew who bought condoms. Soon, everyone else knew too.

  So I went to the grocery store and bought milk and bread and something else.

  Then, I went to the Red Fox Inn.

  It was a seedy-looking place with dirty windows and a parking lot that was either dirt with patches of grass or grass with patches of dirt. Even though it was only four, there were already cars outside, and I guessed they’d probably been there a while. The rusty doorknob stuck when I tugged it, but finally, it gave way. I was in a dark room that smelled of old beer. My shoes stuck to the floor. I made my way to the bar.

  “Hey, girlie.” The bartender smiled, showing an incomplete set of teeth. “Aren’t you a little young to be in here?”

  “I’m seventeen.”

  “Drinking age is twenty-one. But I’ll play along. What can I get you?”

  “Nothing.” My eyes were barely adjusted to the darkness, and I squinted at him. “I’m looking for Zach. A guy named Zach who works here?” As I said it, I felt a sudden uncertainty. What if he didn’t work here after all?

  But he said, “I know who Zach is. You and me both are looking for him.”

  “What do you mean?” But I knew. He was gone.

  “He’s gone,” the guy echoed. “Disappeared. One day, he said he’d done what he came here to do. The next night, he didn’t show up at work. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but he was bringing the ladies in. Girls like you, they came to stare at him, and the men came to stare at them.”

  I barely heard this because my blood was pounding, pulsing in my ears like the feedback of an electric guitar. Once, when I was little, my mother took me to the beach, Fire Island, way far away from here. I remember being surprised at how the ocean attacked me, so unlike the peaceful lakes I knew. I just stood there, and it took me down to the sandy floor, so rough against my cheek. That was how I felt, and through it, I could hear the bartender’s words: “He said he’d done what he came here to do.”

  What he came here to do.

  What did that mean?

  “So what’s your name, little girl?” the old man said.

  “Me, um, Danielle. If Zach comes back, can you tell him to call me? Or find me? It’s really important.”

  The old man didn’t answer for a moment. I looked up at him and saw that his eyes had taken on a sort of fixed look, a little scary. Then, they latched onto me. “Danielle? Wouldn’t be Danielle Greenwood, would it?” He reached out his hand toward me. It was old and gnarled.

  I backed away. “I have to go.” How did he know my name? Maybe from Zach?

  He took a step closer, his hand brushing my wrist, almost grasping it. “Wait! I may see him. I’ll give him a message.”

  I pulled my hand away. “No! That’s okay!”

  And I ran.

  I am still trying to understand as I sit here, writing in my journal, waiting. But I don’t need to wait. I know what I’ll find out.

  And I know he is gone.

  13

  Rachel

  Is it a dream if you’re not even sure you’re asleep?

  Lately, I’ve been having these dreams, strange dreams. Or maybe, they’re fantasies. In my dreams, there is a man. He comes to my window because the door is locked, and he says, “I’m going to steal you away.”

  But even in my dreams, I know I cannot go with him. At first, I thought it was because of Mama, because she would be alone and miss me. But one day, I realized that wasn’t the reason at all. In fact, I am meant to leave Mama. But first, there was something else I had to do, something so important that only I could do it.

  I liked that thought. There is nothing like sitting alone in a tower all day to make a person feel worthless, depressed. Often, I’ve thought that nothing in the world would change if I did not get up in the morning, if I didn’t get dressed.

  I told Mama this and, not surprisingly, she disagreed. I was important to her, she said. She loved me and would miss me if I was gone.

  But how much did that matter, really?

  Perhaps the dreams were something I made up myself, to make me feel better. But I didn’t think so.

  I did not waste time, wondering what it was I must do. I knew that, eventually, I would find the answer. Just like I found the answer to the other question that had been troubling my mind—the question of how my rescuer would be able to reach my window, so high in the air.

  In my vision, at first I only saw his face. It was a handsome one, dark hair and eyes the color of the evergreen trees outside my window.

  But something lurked in those eyes too, something troubling, as if some tragedy had befallen him, a sorrow he could never quite forget.

  Like what happened to my mother.

  At first, I merely saw his face, his hands on the window ledge. Then, his whole body as he swung himself through the window. Only I could not see what he swung on.

  Until, one day, I told my dream self to look down. I approached the window, looking not just at the man, who had, up until then, fascinated me, but at the mechanics of his being there.

  And it was then that I saw how he had come to my window. He had not flown, but almost. Almost. He had climbed on a rope. I knew without asking that the rope had been one of my own tying.

  I knew for two reasons.

  First, the rope was tied to an iron bench by my window, an object firmly in my control.

  Second, the rope was woven from silken strands of yellow. It was woven from my hair.

  This may seem insane. How can hair be woven into rope, a rope long enough to cascade to the ground from such a height, a rope long as the trunks of ancient trees?

  My hair has always grown quickly, so quickly that it must be cut once a week, just to stay at a length where it doesn’t trip me. But, lately, it has been growing even more quickly.

  Mama usually cuts my hair on Sunday. She allows it to grow to my waist, no farther.

  But, this past Sunday, when I went to bed at night, I felt a tuggin
g. I was sleeping on top of my hair. It had already grown far past my waist, and it had been mere hours since it had been cut.

  Thinking this strange, I braided it up and threw the braids over my shoulder, so they just touched the floor.

  When I woke, the braids were on the floor, all the way on the floor. But I couldn’t see them because coiled over them was more hair, so much more golden hair than I had braided. It grew so fast that I could see it move if I watched it. When I stood, it reached the floor, and if I folded it over, it would reach my head again.

  For some reason, I knew not to tell Mama. Rather, I brushed and braided it, a task of hours, and then, I hid it under my covers. I even tucked part of it under the mattress.

  When Mama came, I dimmed the lights. “I feel sick today. Please don’t turn on the lights. It hurts my eyes.” I often got headaches, so this was believable, though I never caught cold. Girls in books got sick from the cold or going out in the rain or being exposed to others who were ill. I did none of those things.

  But Mama said, “Oh, my poor dear,” and pressed her wrinkled hand to my forehead.

  “No fever, at least. Had I but known, I would have brought you a nice chicken soup.”

  But, of course, there was no way for her to know because she was not there. But I did not say it. I would argue sometime when I was not hiding twenty feet of hair beneath my covers. Today was a day to be sweet, not cross. “Can you bring it tomorrow? Or come back later?”

  She never came twice in one day, but I thought perhaps this one time, she might.

  “I get so lonely here, especially when I am sick.”

  She smiled, so I added, “And can you bring me some items as well?”

  “What is it you want, my dear?”

  I had thought a great deal about this, about a list of items, a long list, to mask my real request.

  “My art supplies are dwindling. I need some paper and paints, watercolors and acrylics.” She had replaced my paints quite recently, but I hoped she would not notice their nearly full condition in the dark. “Oh, and scissors.”