by Alex Flinn
After Tyler died, his mother had come to stay with us for a while. When the crime scene people finally cleared out of their house, my mother and I had offered to go over and clean out Tyler and Nikki’s rooms. The house was being sold to whoever would buy it. Mom suggested that I, as Tyler’s best friend, would know what was most important to save and what he might have wanted given to friends. I didn’t know, though. Tyler hadn’t thought about what he wanted to leave people. He hadn’t planned to die. He wouldn’t have. You don’t consider your own mortality at sixteen. He wasn’t like my grandfather, who had talked about what he’d leave me for years before he had. Death in the elderly seemed inevitable. Death at sixteen is usually sudden and seems escapable, as if you should simply be able to rewind, turn the page back, and get on with the course that had already been charted. I should have told a guidance counselor or someone about Tyler’s stepdad. Then, Tyler would have lived, played football, taken the SAT. He’d have gone to prom, then college, done all the things he was supposed to do. Death, in Tyler’s case, wasn’t an ending. It was like one of those books where they don’t tell you what happens to the characters because there’s a sequel. Only, in Tyler’s case, the sequel had never been written. Instead, I was in Tyler’s room, looking at each binder in a backpack he’d never use, thinking I couldn’t just throw them away, that he’d need them. Then, realizing he wouldn’t. He never would. So I separated out the textbooks to give back to the school (trying not to think of the kid next year being assigned a dead guy’s American History text) and stuffed the rest of his backpack into a black forty-gallon trash bag. I did that with every drawer in his desk. Yet, I felt like I was looking for something, a note maybe, a sign, some sort of last words of wisdom for me. Of course, there was nothing.
That was how Danielle’s room was too, now that I knew she was dead. It seemed unfinished, its contents pointless, worthless. I looked around for the photo, the one that made me sure she’d never come back.
It had been in the yearbook. The shot had been taken on a winter day. Danielle wore a coat—the same coat, I now realized, I’d taken from the closet to bring to Rachel. She held her arm up, threatening someone, the cameraman, with a snowball. Her hood was up, covering her dark hair, which made it easier to recognize her face.
It was Rachel’s face.
Danielle had been Rachel’s mother, not the old man’s long-lost daughter. I remembered Rachel saying her mother had been killed, and how Josh’s friends had joked about Mrs. Greenwood killing Danielle.
Maybe it wasn’t a bad joke. Obviously, Danielle had gotten pregnant, had a baby. Maybe Mrs. Greenwood had found out about it, had killed her. Or maybe just sent her away?
Or maybe she really didn’t know anything about it.
But who had taken Rachel? Who was protecting her now? Was it Mrs. Greenwood? Or someone else?
Whatever. It was better for now to leave Rachel where she was, far out of the way in a tower in the woods, where no one could find her. No one could hurt her. I had to make sure she didn’t leave.
Carefully, carefully, I pulled the page from the yearbook. The paper was thick, sewn in, and it came out with barely a shudder. I folded the paper so the photo wasn’t creased and hid it inside my shirt. I walked to the bedroom door, opened it. The hallway was empty. Downstairs, Spock said, “Fascinating.” My watch said five thirty. I shut the door, walked to the desk, and opened each drawer, searching for something, some evidence of what happened to her, a note, a clue. As with Tyler, there was nothing.
With one final check of the hall, I shut the door and tiptoed to my own room. I hid the photo in Danielle’s diary. That, I stowed in my backpack. I’d bring it to Rachel tomorrow.
I used Mrs. Greenwood’s land line to call Astrid.
“Thanks for calling back.” Her voice was sarcastic.
“Sorry, sorry. I was in a dead zone.”
She muttered something I assumed was unflattering, then said, “So are we ever getting together?”
“Of course.” I hated lying. “Look, I’m sorry someone bugged you. Did they leave a number?”
“You think I’m an answering service?”
“No, no. I just wanted to give them this number so they wouldn’t bother you again.”
“But why did they call me in the first place? Did you give them my number?”
Her voice was shrill. I had to keep mine calm, so Mrs. Greenwood wouldn’t hear me. I waited until she was finished.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I must have told someone we were seeing each other, and they looked it up.”
“Well we’re not seeing each other, are we?”
“No,” I admitted. “Look, I’m really sorry. It’s just . . . I met someone else.”
“You are such a jerk.”
The line went dead. Terrific.
I went downstairs to have chicken with Mrs. Greenwood, but my thoughts were about Danielle and Rachel. Mrs. Greenwood said something I didn’t hear.
“What?” I asked.
She said, “I remembered the name of that ski place. Beaver Brook Outfitters. We used to buy all Danielle’s equipment there, from her first pair of skis when she was a little girl.”
“So you skied too? When you were younger?”
“Oh, yes. We loved skiing. And Danielle took to it from the first day of ski school. I used to worry because she was a bit reckless.” She laughed. “Well, not a bit. Quite reckless. While the other children were carefully snowplowing down the slope, Danielle was flying, flying. I always worried she would crash, that she would leave me.”
She got a faraway look on her face.
What had happened to Danielle?
35
Wyatt
I left even earlier the next morning, to avoid being followed. No one there, at least that I saw. Still, I took a winding route, just in case.
When I reached the tower, it was dawn. I could barely make out Rachel’s hair, hanging down already. Just seeing it there made me feel sort of giddy. She was waiting for me. I climbed the rope with ease, and when I reached the top, the window was open.
“You’re here!” She ran to me. “And early! I’m so glad. You have no idea how it feels, wanting to see you, wanting to say your name, yet having to hide it, having no one to talk to.”
I kissed her. “I get it. Once, when I was about twelve, I had a crush on this girl, Caroline, and all I could talk about was Caroline this, Caroline that, and do you remember when Caroline said that, until my friends wanted to kill me.”
Rachel frowned. “Were you in love with this girl, this Caroline?”
“Of course not.” I didn’t want to upset her. “It was a crush. Every guy in school had a crush on her.” I held her tighter. “The only girl I love is you.”
“I’m sorry. I haven’t—I’ve never felt this way about anyone else, never known anyone else, except the characters in books I read.”
The sun had almost risen. I had a fleeting thought, that maybe she just thought she loved me because she’d never known anyone else, that once she escaped her tower, she’d find someone she liked better.
But, no. She was right. I had found her for a reason. It was meant to be.
“Besides,” I said, “I barely remember anything about Caroline, except that she wasn’t as beautiful as you.”
She led me to her sofa and sat down, then kissed me. “I wasn’t worried. You are my destiny. I have seen your face in my dreams.”
“I’ve seen your face before too, but not just in a dream. Let me show you.”
I opened my backpack and removed the carefully folded yearbook page. “Here. I found this. I think . . . I’m sure this is your mother.”
She stared at it, stunned. “It is me . . . just like me.” She shook her head, then looked back at the photo. “Who is she? Where did you find it? It is me! But it cannot be me because I have never seen this place.” She pointed to the background, the school.
“Her name was Danielle Greenwood. She was the daughter of t
he woman I’m staying with. They say she disappeared about seventeen years ago, right around the time you were born.”
“That is so sad.” She touched the photograph with one finger, reverent as if it was one of the religious icons in the churches I’d visited on vacations. “But to have her picture, like she was a truly real person, a mother who might have given me cookies when I came home from school instead of a pretend character in a book. I can’t quite believe it.”
“She was real all right. She kept a diary—I brought that too. And I think your mama is right to protect you, to tell you to stay hidden. Okay, the tower’s a little weird, but . . .”
She tore her eyes from the photo. “I know, I know. But I wish I could be a normal girl, like everyone else. Go to school. Would your friends like me?”
It was hard to look at her without wanting to touch her, to stroke her hair. But it wasn’t like our relationship was only physical. “Of course they’d like you. You’re so sweet, and . . .” I stopped, wondering if that was true, if people would see her as I did, or if they’d just think she was odd. Sometimes, people at school wanted everyone to be the same and think the same. But she was so beautiful, and somehow, her very strangeness was what I loved about her, that she made me feel less weird.
I wondered, maybe, if everyone felt weird sometimes, if they just didn’t tell anyone.
“And what?” she asked.
“And you’d have me. I think the coolest thing about you is that you didn’t go to my school. You’re different, unspoiled.”
“Of course.” She touched my hand. “But tell me about it, your school. The books Mama brings me, they seem very old. I worry that it might not be the same.”
I tried to think how to explain school to someone who’d never been. It was strange. I wished we could watch a movie or something. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Start with the first thing you do in the morning. Do you walk there?”
Somehow, I knew she was picturing Little Women or Little House on the Prairie, one of those books girls liked. “No. I live too far. I drive now—I mean, when I went, but when I was younger, I took the bus.”
“And a bus is . . . ?”
I laughed. “It’s a vehicle. It picks you up near your house. It’s big and yellow . . . orange and ugly. A lot of people sit in it, fifty or sixty, two on each seat.”
“Sort of like a train?”
“Not as cool as a train.”
She got a faraway look in her eyes. “I remember a train once, before Mama brought me here. It was nighttime, and we had a private compartment, away from everyone else. Mama wouldn’t let me come out. She was too afraid. I felt sick, and she told me to look out the window, that moving while looking at the other stuff, not moving, was what made me sick. But if I saw movement, I’d feel better. She was right. I stared out, and most of the time, there was nothing outside—just like my window here. But, sometimes, there were towns and houses and stores lining the track. You could tell the name of each town by the signs on the businesses and the post office. Finally, I went to sleep, and when I woke, Mama was carrying me away.” She stared off, remembering. Finally, she said, “So you went on the big yellow-orange ugly bus. Were your friends on the bus too?”
“A lot of them.” I thought of Tyler and Nikki. We’d waited for the bus together, of course.
“It sounds wonderful.”
Sitting there, in the still room, I could almost smell the bus exhaust, hear the farting sound the vehicle made when it stopped, the screaming kids, and the bus driver, shouting at us to be quiet. “It was sort of loud. Every once in a while, the bus driver would flip out at us for being so loud.”
“Flip out?”
“It’s an expression. Get mad, upset.”
She nodded, like she was still picturing someone flipping over. “I don’t even know what loud would be like. My world is quiet, so quiet. Sometimes, I sing just to keep myself company.”
“I know. I’ve heard you.”
She looked at me, surprised. “You have?”
“When I was at my friend’s cabin one night, it was quiet outside. The sound carries here, I guess. I heard you sing. That’s how I knew you were here. I’d heard you before, but this was closer. But no one else heard you. They said it must be a bird, a loon. But I knew it wasn’t.”
“You were meant to hear me, and they were not. I had heard you too, for days before, or rather, sensed you. I knew you were coming.”
It was so weird when she said things like that. Yet, I believed her. I reached over and took her hand in mine. It was small, so small, and cold. I squeezed it.
“Tell me more about your school, when you arrive. What does it look like?”
I tried to picture the school, how it would look to someone who had never been there, who’d never been to a school at all. I closed my eyes, remembering me and Tyler walking up to it, any given day.
“The building is brick. The bus parks in the back by the basketball courts.” She wouldn’t know what that meant. “Basketball is a game we play. There are no trees or anything back there, but there are trees in the front, not as big as these trees. When we get there, there are already lots of people. Everyone finds their friends, their little group. At seven thirty, we go inside.”
“And inside?”
“There are hallways, white tile. Well, it used to be white, but now, it’s gray from all the people stepping on it for so many years. The walls are white too, but they’re covered with posters and signs, so you can’t really see the walls.”
She leaned forward. “What do the posters and signs say?”
“Um, different things. If there’s a student government election—where they choose the people who run things—they put up signs saying things like Vote for Lisa Amore or whatever. Or sometimes, they think of slogans. Like, once, this girl named Sara Mitts ran for president. Her signs had a picture of a shoe on them, and they said If the shoe fits, vote Sara Mitts. Or, sometimes, there was a pep rally.”
“What’s that?”
“Um, football, it’s a game, a contest. People get pretty excited about it.”
“Like the jousting contests in The Once and Future King?”
“Sort of like that. People at school sometimes acted like it was like that. Yeah, we’d challenge other schools to see who was the fastest and strongest, so yeah, just like that. Anyway, before the team competed, they’d have a pep rally, to sort of get people excited about it.” I pictured the school gym as one of those long jousting arenas like they had in movies, the cheerleaders like ladies of court, waving ribbons instead of pompoms. “The band would be there, playing the school fight song, and people cheer—they scream stuff like, ‘Let’s go, Spartans!’”
“And you were on the team.”
She seemed impressed. I nodded.
“That must have made you feel like a hero.”
“It did.” It almost was like being a knight, the deafening applause as I ran into the school gym, Tyler behind me. I remembered smiling so much my face hurt. Where had it gone? What had it come to, if you could just be there one day and gone the next. It all seemed like a wasted effort.
I changed the subject. “Sometimes, they have a school play or a dance. They put up posters for those too.”
“A dance! At your school? How fun that must be!”
“It wasn’t that big a deal. They were mostly . . .” I stopped. I’d been about to say the dances were lame. I’d never gone. I didn’t even know anyone who went, except to prom. But I realized that would sound ungrateful to say that to someone like her, like complaining about the food in front of a starving man. “I mean, they were fun. They’d usually have some kind of theme, like . . .” I reached back into my mind, trying to visualize the posters. “Under the Sea, or Western, or Winter Wonderland.”
“Winter Wonderland?”
“I think . . .” I pictured the posters. “They decorated everything blue and white, and the girls wore white dresses too.”
She gestured to her own dress, which was white and lacy. “Like this one?”
“Exactly. If I’d taken you to that dance, you could have worn that.”
In fact, that dance had been last winter, a few weeks after the New Year’s Eve when Nikki and I had kissed. I had thought about asking her, even though she’d said no to me before. But I’d chickened out. I couldn’t tell if it was better that I hadn’t asked her. Would it have changed anything if I had? Would it have been like one of those time-travel movies, where every different decision upset the space-time continuum, changed the future just a little bit? Would Nikki be alive today if I’d gone?
I couldn’t think about it. I said, “I’d pick you up at your door, and I’d want to say, ‘You look so beautiful,’ but I wouldn’t say it.”
“Why not?”
“I’d be scared silent, in awe of you, that you would even go out with me. It would make me shy.”
She nodded. “That answer is acceptable.”
“But I’d help you on with your coat. My mom would tell me to. We’d walk out to the car together.”
“Would you hold my hand?”
“Of course.” I took hers now. “I’d use the ice as an excuse, to keep you from slipping as I walked you to your car.”
“You wouldn’t need an excuse.” She squeezed mine.
“I know.” She was so sweet, and I wanted to make her happy. She’d had so little happiness. I realized now that my life—all of it, even the bad things—was a gift. It hadn’t been perfect, but it was my life. Mine, and I’d lived it.
Bolder now, I said, “We’d go inside, and everyone would stare at me, at us, wondering how I got you to agree to go with me when you’re so beautiful.”
She smiled. “How did you?”
“I asked. None of the other guys did. They were intimidated, afraid to. But me, I was just so stupid. I just asked you, and you figured it was better to go with me than to sit home and cry from loneliness.”
I gave her a goofy look, and she giggled. “Oh, I am sure I found you attractive—in a funny sort of way.”
“So before you could realize your mistake and dance with someone else, I’d lead you onto the dance floor. The band would be playing . . .” I realized I had my phone. I scrolled through the play-lists. The first slow one I saw was “I Will Follow You into the Dark,” which was a guy saying he’d go with his girlfriend if she died. Morbid, much? I wished I had some classic songs like “Unchained Melody” or “When a Man Loves a Woman,” but I didn’t have those. I’d never been the kind of guy to download songs girls liked. Finally, I found “The Only Exception” by Paramore. I’d liked them at one point. There was no speaker, of course, so I turned up the sound on my phone as loud as it would go. Rachel was right. It was quiet here, and she could hear it. The voice started coming out of that tiny speaker. I held it to Rachel’s ear. “They’d be playing this, and I’d lead you out onto the floor.”