“What is this?”
“Don’t you get it?” She looks at me sadly. “They’re my memories.”
“In there?”
“Where they can’t be wiped.”
My eyes dart back to the crude crayon drawings. It hits me like a punch in the stomach. What she’s saying. What she’s been doing, all these years. She cracked the system.
Even when she was a little girl, Elyse could see ghosts. Frustrated at the people around her not believing her, she must have started drawing what she saw and then, when she could, writing about it. Over time, she would have amassed a pile of pages she didn’t remember writing. Pages that, experience taught her, contained vital knowledge. So she trained herself to record every bad thing that happened to her as soon as possible, before it got wiped away.
I remember her look of anger and defiant triumph as she held up the notebook page on which she’d documented Jeffry’s assault. She couldn’t remember scribbling those terrible words, but she never doubted they were true. She was that used to trusting her handwriting.
It was how she tried to preserve herself.
We flip through the pages together. Ugly words pressed into the paper jump out at me. It’s all ugly, or else just sad, or awkward. Arguments. Breakups. The Sunday her real father went to the bakery for bread and never came back. The afternoon two days later when her mother was weeding the backyard in a daze of tears and a Salvation Army man pushed his way past Elyse into the house and carried away all her father’s things. Even his socks. Even pictures of him. And when her mother drifted back inside, her jeans and peasant blouse caked in garden dirt, she was in a chipper mood and seemed to have forgotten Elyse’s father ever existed.
“I didn’t question it when I was seven,” she says, frowning, “but why would the Salvation Army want photos of some random guy?”
“Because whoever that was in your house,” I say, “he wasn’t from the Salvation Army.”
She shivers. “I know. But then who was he?”
“Maybe someone who knew how the ghosts worked, like you. Who wanted to ease your family’s pain.”
She chortles. “If they really wanted to ease our pain, why not just take us out of there?”
I think back to my parents, how they’d felt bad about the locals’ plight but never even entertained the thought of rescuing them. “Not everyone’s a hero.”
We turn back to the book and read about Elyse’s mother remarrying a man with strange habits and a temper. Her husky puppy, Silver, getting run over by a drunk tourist’s rental car. Her waking up at twelve to find a male guest in her bed kissing her breasts.
“God.” Elyse exhales sharply. She hands me the open book. Silently I read:
Dear Elyse, I’m still shaking. Sorry if the handwriting’s hard to understand. Mom was waiting in my room when I got back from school. Her makeup was a mess. Mascara all over her face. She held up this book—said she was cleaning the baseboards and she found it. She started crying hard and calling me a liar. I just stood there. “I know none of this is true,” she said. “Your father loves you and would never lay a hand on you.” She asked me why, what would make a girl tell such terrible lies about her own loving family. Did I do it for attention? To hurt my parents? To feel sorry for myself? “I know you’re a liar,” she screamed at me. “Admit that these are lies.”
She never hit me, but her words cut me to pieces. Of all the things to call me, liar hurts the most. I try to tell the truth, but deep down I’ve always been afraid that maybe nothing I’ve written in this book really happened the way I wrote it. What if I do exaggerate or make things up? How can I be completely sure I’m not crazy? But those doubts live in my mind. Not my body. And no matter how much I wanted for her to stop screaming at me, I couldn’t do what she told me. Couldn’t say it was lies. My mouth wouldn’t let the words come out.
In the end she fell down on her knees and begged me. “Please say it’s not true, please say it’s a lie.”
Looking down at her—my own mother, crying on the floor—I felt overwhelmed with loneliness. Like she had magically transformed into a little kid and I was supposed to be the parent. Only I didn’t know what to do, how to comfort and calm her. I still couldn’t bring myself to say what she wanted to hear. Then I saw it appear behind her, the ghost in the window. A white-haired lady in a long black dress and reading glasses.
I made a grab for the book and pushed Mom as hard as I could toward the ghost, then ran out the door.
I take my hand off the book. “Do you want me to stop reading this? I feel like I’m inside your head or something.”
“I don’t want to be the only one who knows this stuff happened. It helps that you’re here.”
We keep reading, but it’s so grim, I want to stop. If Elyse weren’t turning the pages, telling me she didn’t want to be alone with these memories, I would shut the book and throw it away. Especially when Jeffry enters the picture. Half the entries are about Jeffry. Jeffry breaking Elyse’s pinkie finger, kicking her down the stairs, calling her names. Worthless. Disgusting. Her mother’s miscarriages. Grandma Bets dying of a stroke. Pain. Physical pain and emotional pain. And she doesn’t just write the bare facts, she tells the stories, including how she felt. That’s part of why it’s so hard to read.
Halfway through, she lets the book snap shut and sinks down to the bottom of the lockers. She sits with her head in her hands and weeps, and none of my magic spells can help her feel better. All I can do is watch while the girl I love hurts.
Chapter 27
ELYSE
After a few moments, he sinks down to his knees beside me.
“You did something amazing with that book,” he says. “You outsmarted the system of Summer Falls.”
“Ha. Not really.” I sniff and wipe my eyes with the back of my hands. “Don’t get me wrong . . . I’m grateful to have this record of my past. It must have been hard to keep it up, all these years. But there’s nothing amazing about doing what you have to do to survive. It just makes me sad, reading all these awful pages. What a waste. I mean, I started out as this healthy, happy little girl—you can see it in that picture—and then I spent so much time being scared. And running away from ghosts. And feeling alone. And feeling ashamed. I didn’t outsmart the system, it shredded me. Like it shreds everyone. The only difference is I chose to remember. Maybe I’d be happier if I hadn’t.”
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t have been you.” He pulls me close and holds me tight in his arms. “I wish I could go back in time and rescue that little girl,” he says. “I’d do anything to stop those things from happening to you. But as bad as it was, you did survive. You grew up to be strong, and fierce, and in control . . . and the best person I know.”
“Then you need to leave this town and meet some better people.” I pull back from his hug. “You don’t get it, Marsh. I’m not upset because bad things happened to me. I’m upset because they infected me with their badness, and now I’m bad too.”
He fixes me with a dark, questioning gaze. “So let me ask you this: You think I’m a bad person?”
“I don’t want to talk about—”
“No, for once we’re actually going to talk about this.” Gently he turns my chin toward him, forcing me to look him in the eye. “Yes, we slept together,” he says. “Last I checked that’s a two-player game. So, how come it makes you a bad person but not me?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Why, because I’m a guy? Or because I don’t have to be perfect, like you?”
I stand, slam the locker shut, and turn away, toward the classrooms. “Because you weren’t cheating on anyone. You weren’t lying. You just . . . trusted the wrong person.”
“Still, I’m not exactly a paragon of ethics if we slept together while you were with someone else. Plus I’m a known liar with a huge ego. Nobody’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.” He picks up the book. “And anyone who’s been through what—”
“Don’t make excuses
for me. Just because I have reasons for being broken doesn’t mean it’s okay.”
“I’m not saying it’s okay. I’m saying there’s such a thing as forgiveness. Ever heard of it? It’s this fucking brilliant invention that lets you learn from your mistakes and move on, instead of just repeating them and saying you can’t help being bad.”
“Maybe you can learn,” I say, “because your whole brain is in your head instead of part of it being in some book. When you finish getting all your memories back, you’ll be whole. Well, I won’t be. Ever. If this is all there is to me, I’m damaged goods, so don’t make me try to celebrate that. I have a right to be pissed about it.”
“Don’t call yourself damaged. And you do have a right to be angry, but please don’t take it out on me.”
His saying please—not a word that often comes out of his mouth—almost stops me. I know he’s right: I am taking it out on him, and maybe it isn’t fair, but I’m jealous of him. For having a mother who protected him from ghosts, protected him forever. For having a father who loves him even though he isn’t perfect. For having a chance. A chance to grow up and be okay someday, when it’s too late for me. When no matter how hard I work to glue the shards of myself back together, I’ll always be broken. Shattered.
“I never even had a chance,” I whisper.
Marshall reaches out to touch me, his gaze liquid with compassion. His gentle hand strokes my cheek, then rests soft and warm against my collarbone, on my heartbeat, as if to say, I know how you feel. But he doesn’t. Can’t. And I just want to push him away as hard as I can.
I step back, away from the warmth of his touch. “If I were you I’d give up on the broken girl,” I tell him. “And get your father the hell out of town, before it’s too late for him too.”
With that I drop the book on the ground at his feet, turn my back, and walk away from him.
Nothing’s quite as surreal as reading your depressing autobiography, then walking through a town square still abuzz with carnival lights and games. The Ferris wheel’s running, packed, and tourists wearing childlike smiles roam like lost buffalo. A barker calls out to me, “Get your cotton candy. Fifty cents for blue, fifty cents for pink!”
Down the street I see a familiar figure, hands full of grocery bags, entering the antiques-and-secondhand shop.
“Mr. English!” I call.
“Elyse.” He looks as guilty as a thief caught red-handed, but what’s in his bags is mostly boring sports equipment: a catcher’s mitt, jerseys. Then I see the letterman jacket.
“Are these . . . Dan’s?” I pull out the jacket. His half-empty pack of cigarettes spills out.
“I’m so sorry you had to find out like this,” he says. “Hikers found Dan near the waterfall. Catatonic.”
“Oh my god.” The ghosts surrounding him. They ate into his mind until it was picked clean. Guilt washes over me. Could I have saved him, if I’d been thinking of helping him instead of just being anxious to break up with him? Even though I don’t smoke, I put the half-empty pack of cigarettes in my backpack’s front pocket.
“They used my cabin’s phone to call the sheriff. Hank just drove him up to the asylum. Look, it happens,” he says. “I’ve seen how crazy the families can get when they keep seeing the person’s things. So I took the liberty of dismantling Dan’s bedroom while his parents were out.”
Just like the Salvation Army man, I think. I’m almost certain he was an occultist too, although that couldn’t have been Joe since Joe would have still been in England at the time (and about twelve years old). Funny how occultists seem to have this caring, sensitive side they’re careful to keep hidden, so it doesn’t mess up their tough, spooky mystique.
“So when will you be quitting the charms of this picturesque hamlet?” Joe’s voice drips sarcasm. “Bet you’ll miss the . . . oh, no, wait. You won’t miss anything.”
I know I was just saying how much I hate this place and can’t wait to be out of here ASAP, but something about his mocking it that way bugs me. It’s like, I can say that, I’m from here. You’re not, you can’t. “No disrespect,” I say, “but this is still my hometown, the only place I’ve ever known. Sure, I’m saving up to move away, but even then, it’ll be my hometown. Not yours.”
I stumble numb through downtown, images of Dan floating in the water surrounded by ghosts stuck in my head.
The redheaded homeless woman is dancing a jig (or possibly a reel?) on the library steps. Should I talk to her? I don’t know if I can talk to anyone right now.
She sees me and stops dancing. “You don’t have much of a poker face, girl,” she says with a cackle. “Everybody knows what you’re thinking before you do. You want to talk about ghosts, don’t you?”
I blink, stunned that she could be so lucid. “So we have met before.”
“I’ve met you once, you’ve met me a hundred times. I’m Elizabeth, since you forgot again.” She thrusts out a dirty, sticky paw. I hope she didn’t notice my hesitation before I took it. “Hundred and one,” she says, winking.
“I do want to talk about the ghosts,” I whisper. “If you can see them too, why don’t you run away?”
“Ghosts don’t bother me anymore.” Sharp eyes, like a bird’s. “Not the same way. Now they give me the poison that flows in my veins.”
Oh-kay . . . so she’s clearly gone back to crazy mode.
Sheriff Hank’s squad car pulls over beside us. He hops out and strides over to us. “Time to move along,” he tells Elizabeth. “I’m getting reports of you scaring off tourists.”
“Good,” she snaps, “maybe they won’t come back.”
Quick as a wink Hank’s handcuffs come off his belt. “Going to have to move you myself, ma’am,” he says, ducking his head apologetically. “For your own good, and everyone else’s.”
It’s finally happening. He’s taking her off to the asylum. Where people go in but don’t come out. And that’s when it occurs to me that there is one place I can go where I could never make another stupid, thoughtless decision. Where my brokenness could never cause anyone else pain again.
“Sheriff. Put me in the asylum too, please.”
Sheriff Hank half turns, sees me, and groans, and several tourists turn to look at me too. “I’m not locking anybody up. Just taking her to Green Vista, where the church provides extra beds.”
Oh. “Fine, so just lock me up then. I’m about to go crazy. I might qualify as crazy already. Seriously, I’m begging you here. . . . I’m a danger to myself and others.”
“She sure sounds crazy,” Elizabeth speaks up in my defense. “Only a crazy person wants to be locked up.” But she gives me a look as if to say, What are you playing at, girl?
“Run along, Elyse. You’re not crazy, you’re just a pain in my backside.”
It’s now or never. In full view of dozens of tourists, I let my knees buckle and, my arms flailing, crumple to the ground. Gasps of anticipation fill the air, and even with my eyes closed I can feel the tourists watching me. I don’t stand up.
“Oh, good gracious,” the sheriff says, and I can almost see him roll his eyes, even though my gaze is fixed on a spot on the sidewalk where someone spilled a chocolate milk shake. “Come off it.”
I keep doing my best imitation of Hazel while Sheriff Hank gets Elizabeth into handcuffs. She seems to offer no resistance.
“Is that girl okay?” says an unfamiliar voice of concern. A tourist.
“She’s just fine, ma’am,” Sheriff Hank says. “Elyse, get up.”
“She doesn’t look fine,” says another voice.
Hank waffles. You can just tell he wants to do the right thing, but just like when Kerry talked him into giving me a ride home instead of reporting me to the doctor, he lets other people change his mind about what the right thing is. It takes about ten minutes for the tourists to wear him down. From being sure I’m pretending . . . to being equally sure I should be the state mental institution’s next guest. I stay deadweight, my eyes focused straight ahead of me o
n a stray lock of my hair, as he carries me to his car and deposits me into the backseat next to the uncomplaining Elizabeth.
The car rolls along, lightly bumping my head a few times, but I don’t mind. I guess Hank doesn’t mind either, since he figures my brain’s useless now anyway. The radio clicks on with plenty of static, and Hank whistles along to an old-time country song. I let my eyes dart toward Elizabeth just for a moment, and she winks at me.
A second song starts, and Hank sings along instead of whistling. Then, abruptly, he stops singing and yells, “Holy shit!” He slams on the brakes.
What could have happened? Our car doesn’t appear to have hit anything. I would have felt a bump. So what could make the squeaky clean sheriff cuss like that? I’m dying to know what’s up, but since I’m pretending to be catatonic, I can’t exactly turn my head to check it out.
Still, it doesn’t take long for me to get a chance to figure it out though. He kills the engine, throws open the door, and runs out.
“Hey, Elizabeth,” I whisper. “Where’s he going?”
No answer.
I steal a glance to my right and see the handcuffs hanging empty from their hook.
Her seat belt’s still buckled. But she’s not in it.
Holy shit indeed.
Where the hell did she go?
As my confusion edges toward fear, I feel my senses growing more acute. My eyes zero in on the key ring, jangling like a wind chime, still in the ignition. I catapult myself into the front seat. Wait, do I know how to drive? Dan said I was the only girl he’d ever let drive his car, so I must. What if I don’t remember how? Then I feel my fingertips tingle. And I see her in the rearview mirror. Ten feet back, standing by the side of the road, next to Hank, who’s yelling and pointing his finger at her. He’s so much bigger than she is. I can’t just leave her there.
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