“I’ll tell you what happened!” You’ve tried to leave him many times. Sometimes you get as far as the bus stop or a motel.
I pull the book from my bag and hold it up. “I wrote it all down, here, in my journal.”
“That book.” She freezes. “You and that book.” She grabs it out of my hands, her voice turned low and guttural with rage. “Always writing up in your room. What is it about that book that makes you act so strange?” She holds it open and rips it in two, and I dive at her, clawing at her hands, pulling both halves of the journal toward me, twisting her arms in the process. It’s only paper and ink, it’s only the past, but I’ve gone berserk. I’d die for this book, I’d kill for it. It’s me she’s trying to rip into pieces, that’s how it feels, and I’ll fight tooth and claw to save myself, till with a cry of pain she lets go.
That’s when I realize how badly I’ve scratched her hand with my nails in my fury to save the journal. I stare at the drops of red blood on her wrist. Thick and red and real. Somehow I had thought—why had I believed she wouldn’t bleed real blood? That her flesh was plastic doll flesh, that nothing could penetrate to make her feel pain.
I hug the two halves of the journal to my chest, overcome with guilt. Am I becoming like Jeffry, willing to hurt people when they frustrate me? “I am so sorry—”
“No, it’s okay!” She holds up her hand, tears running down her cheeks. “Tomorrow I won’t even remember where I got these marks, just like I don’t remember the others. Everything’ll be fine again, like none of this ever happened.”
“No it won’t.” A lump aches in my throat. She’s saying she’ll forget my abuse, just like she forgets Jeffry’s. I’m just another source of bad memories for her, calling the hungry ghosts to her window. Making her crazy. “It won’t be fine, because I won’t forget.”
“I know you won’t.” Her shiny eyes meet mine. “You’ve always been different from me, from most people. My life has been a blur, but you . . . you see more, you understand more.”
Her voice is sad, but there’s a spark in her eyes, the same spark as when she comforted me at the bus stop so many years before. “Thank you.” I’m not sure why I said those words. I don’t even know if what she said was really a compliment. But I’m so grateful to see her—the real Liz, the one from my happy memories. I never thought I’d get to see her again. Unconsciously I lean toward her, dropping my head on her shoulder.
She smoothes my hair, and I feel hot tears glide down my own cheeks. “You shine with a special light. Like you didn’t really come from me, just came through me. Passing through, from someplace better. On your way to something brighter than I’d ever see.”
After all the wipes, all that she’s endured and forgotten, maybe there’s only a sliver of a person left inside that body, trapped behind those tired eyes. But that person is real, and suddenly I don’t want to leave her behind. “Don’t say that. Your life’s far from over.” I take a deep breath, reach into my jeans pocket, and pull out the Amtrak passes. I hold one out to her. “Mom, why won’t you come with me?”
She bites her lip.
“Take it, please. What?”
“You called me Mom.”
Did I? “We could go anywhere, start over.”
“But why would I want to leave?” Her wrist rubs the wet creases of her eyes where tears have pooled. “I’m so happy here.”
“Don’t do this. Please don’t disappear on me again. I saw the real you just now, we had—”
“We had a moment, that’s all it was.” She shakes her head sadly. “I don’t know if there is a real me left.” She reaches behind her neck to the clasp of the ruby necklace. Grandma Bets’s necklace. She unhooks it, opens my hand, and lets the chain slip down and disappear into my palm. A good-bye present, the oval stone warm from her body. I came down here to steal from her, and instead she’s given me everything she had. Like she’s always done. Maybe not what I wanted, not what I needed, not enough. Just what she had.
“Liz!” Jeffry yells from the top of the stairs. “You home? Hey, wasn’t someone going to roast me a chicken?”
“Coming, honey!” she calls back cheerfully, and grins at me as if nothing’s happened. “Time for me to go start dinner.”
“Good-bye,” I say, though she’s already halfway up the stairs and can’t hear me.
She’s bought me time to escape. I swing my pack over one shoulder and sneak out the open garage door just as Joe’s car pulls up to the driveway.
I throw my backpack in the back and launch myself into the passenger seat. “Just get me out of here.” He doesn’t know how close I came to losing it all.
“Don’t ever look back,” he tells me.
“I won’t.”
“You’re doing the right thing.”
“I know.” I realize I’m still hugging the two halves of my ruined journal. “I just wish I could have talked my mom into going with me.”
“Oh, no, it’s way too late for her,” he says cheerily. “She’s getting close to used up.”
Used up. Such a brutal judgment. I can feel a sudden fury heating up my cheeks at the thought of my mother being used up. Of Jeffry using her to cook him dinner. And the founder using her to keep his spell working, and even the tourists using her as some kind of folksy R & R–providing robot that makes beds and serves breakfast, never once seeing her as a real person. And what about me? How long did I take her for granted for all her uses before I finally figured out there was a human being inside? But as harsh as Joe’s words sound, I wouldn’t be this angry if they didn’t contain a grain of truth. It probably is too late for my mom. I tried to talk to her, tried to help her. All I can do for her now is honor her memory. “Don’t talk about my mother like that,” I say to Joe. “She’s not an object, she’s a person.”
“Oh, of course, forgive me.” He gives an embarrassed chuckle and fumbles with the AC. “I’m afraid this assignment hasn’t been good for me. Seeing what this place does to people, it’s made me cynical.”
I nod, trying to calm down. I can’t blame him for that, seeing as how it almost had the same effect on me. Even though as a magic user he’s protected from the ghosts, he’s still a victim of this place too. There’s no way to just be an observer. “I hope they assign you someplace better next time.”
He chuckles. “They’ll probably find somewhere even worse, but it’s out of my control. Like the army.” Then he cheers up and spends the whole ten-minute ride listing all the wonderful things I absolutely have to check out in California. From the Golden Gate Bridge to the San Diego Zoo to Universal Studios. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’m sort of over California, now that I know he’s the one who wanted to go there after all—not me.
Then abruptly he pulls over to the side of the road, right under the “Welcome to Summer Falls” sign, beside the copse of aspens that Hazel stumbled out of to attack the sheriff.
“Looks like the new bus stop’s over there,” he says, gesturing. I can see it, too, the bench and its sheltering overhang, just on the other side of town limits. Across the strange line where dewy green grass all of a sudden gives way to hot, barren rock. Clutching the journal halves tight in my arms, I quickly cross the street and reenter the real world, once again marveling at the eerie transformation from lush garden to forsaken desert. Hot, dry air burns my lungs as I turn back and wave good-bye to Joe, who’s still sitting in his car. He waves back at me, an almost tender expression on his smooth, owlish face. Young mothers watching their toddlers wade into the pool on the first day of swim lessons have that look.
He’s way more jazzed about my future than I am.
Chapter 32
MARSHALL
After Elyse leaves I stay on the floor, where she told me to sit, for a long, long time. I stare at the doorway where I saw her walk away from me without looking back, and after a while I can’t even picture her quite as clearly, and I can’t remember if she was wearing my khaki jean jacket or just had it tied around her waist. I s
it there, still and silent, eyes closed, ignoring my rumbling stomach and the TV blaring from downstairs. I probably look catatonic, like Dan.
Eventually the sun comes up and two birds start chattering outside my broken window. I don’t know how much time has passed before I’m aware of the burning pressure of rough carpet branding my left cheek and realize I must have fallen asleep.
Light-headed and cranky, I stagger downstairs.
I can smell the kitchen trash from the living room. Bill’s still parked on the couch, chugging generic beer, his eyes glued to a baseball game on ESPN.
“Dad, let me make you some eggs or something.”
“I’m good.” He raises his beer can, a self-mocking salute. “Breakfast of champions, right?”
I shrug. I decide I might as well take out the trash now—since he can’t leave the house, I’m the only one who can do it—but before I can get two steps toward the kitchen, he calls behind me, “Where’s Elyse?”
The question makes my chest ache all over again. I turn back. “Gone.” And maybe it’s not fair, but suddenly I’m pissed at Bill for making me say it out loud. For being so checked out, he didn’t know. “Didn’t she walk right by you? Didn’t you hear the door slam?”
“I, uh . . . must have dozed off.” Bill glances at the pyramid of empty cans on the coffee table, then up at me, a troubled look spreading over his face. He sets his can down, smoothes his AC/DC T-shirt, where it was riding up his belly, rakes his fingers along the back of his neck like he’s trying to comb his hair, which long ago fell out. You can tell he’s trying to will his way into sobriety, into Concerned Parent mode. He pats the couch cushion next to him. “Hey, buddy, sit down. . . .”
I really don’t feel like explaining, but I sit next to him and grab a double handful of popcorn from the bowl. It’s so stale and dry, it tastes like little pieces of confetti, but I don’t care. Then I reach into the cooler at Bill’s feet and crack open a beer. What the hell.
Bill meets my eyes and sighs, as if to say, We both know I don’t have the moral high ground to stop you. “So what happened?” he prompts. “You two had a fight?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Son. Let me give you some advice. . . .”
I can’t help it, I snort. Maybe it’s more like a snicker, even. Guess there’s something about a bleary-eyed, drunk dude in torn sweats offering me advice that just pushes my buttons. Bill looks away from me, clearly hurt. Apparently I couldn’t cry to make myself feel better, but I can laugh to make someone else feel shitty. “No offense,” I add, though that ship has sailed. “It’s too late for advice.”
“No, it’s not.” From his urgent tone you’d think our lives were in danger. But then again, his relationship with my mother was his life. “If you’re both alive, it’s never too late. Call her. Go after her. Apologize for whatever stupid-ass thing you did.”
“I tried, okay?” I gulp down the cold, bitter liquid. It tastes foul. Fine with me. “Hey, why are you assuming it’s all my fault?”
He gives me a look. “Come on, Marsh . . . I know you.”
I blink. Ouch. My own father thinks I’m a jerk. “Know what? You don’t really know me all that well. I’ve changed.”
“If you say so.”
Passive-aggressive Bill strikes again.
The thing is, I can’t really argue with him. Because knowing someone means you know who they were in the past. Anything else is just a glimmer of possibility, a distant hope, and probably wishful thinking. He’s judging me by my past actions, not my words. That’s fair. Which only makes me angrier. I can feel my fingertips turning to ice, my pulse pounding. “Why don’t you just say it? You think I’m an ass.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, because a nice guy like you would never straight-up call his son an ass. Well, I didn’t turn out nice like you. I make a lot of mistakes, yeah. But I make a lot of smart decisions too. At least I do something.” I fold my arms. Am I really going to say this? “Not like you with Mom. You never even asserted yourself at all. You just followed her around while she did magic.” Until magic killed her.
He snorts and reaches for the popcorn bowl. “You don’t know shit about my marriage.”
“Yeah? I know that if you had died, right now she’d be in some cave in New Zealand doing magic. Not sitting on this sofa remembering how great you were.”
“She wouldn’t have to sit here.” Bill stands, but he’s had so many beers, he stumbles and has to pull up his baggy sweatpants. “Because she wouldn’t need your help to get out of this goddamn town. I never thought you’d grow up to be so selfish.”
“Maybe you raised me to be selfish.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means why didn’t you ask someone else for help, Dad? Other than me. You couldn’t, because Mom was the only other person you were close to. You didn’t have a friend in the world.”
“You and Eva were my world. We gave each other all we ever needed.”
“Bullshit. I needed friends. A home. I was a kid, and I didn’t know what I was missing. But you should have known. You two took me all over the world, and what do I remember? All my memories are of hotel suites with us in them. Like our own cozy little space pod. Nothing could touch us. No one could even see me. And because of that, I never thought of reaching out to anyone else either.” Until I met Elyse. “I’m not saying it was right that I didn’t help you break out of here. But I understand it. For once I didn’t want you to drag me away to the next place.”
His eyebrows sink down sadly, and the knuckle of his right index finger finds its way between his lips. “I knew you needed a home, but your mother needed to travel for her work. If she had one true love it was magic.”
“Then why are you so hell-bent on remembering her?”
“Because I loved her, you dumb kid.” He turns away from me, drunk tears in his eyes. “I loved her, even if I came second. That’s what love is.”
“Well, that’s very moving, Dad. Too bad you were so busy being in love with a dead person, you didn’t notice your son turning into a monster.”
Maybe I went too far, or maybe he’d just had enough, because he turns from me and walks away. I can hear his bare feet clomping around on the kitchen linoleum and figure he must be getting more snacks, when a shaft of sunlight illuminates a strip of the carpeting and the front wall.
“Dad?” I hear the back door creak open. “What are you doing?”
I race into the kitchen, but he’s already stepped outside onto the back porch step, into the brilliant sunlight. He throws out his arms in front of him and mutters something, and I hear him sigh.
Then his body crumples and he collapses on the wooden deck with a sickening thud.
Chapter 33
ELYSE
The bus is half empty and takes an hour to get to the hot, loud, crowded train station. The people look startlingly different here. Different from Summer Falls people, different from me. So many more shapes and sizes. So many dark jackets and scuffed shoes. Their skin and hair look dull, as if they’ve never seen the sun. There’s a sadness weighing each and every one of these people down—I can feel it emanating from their cores—yet they seem to move faster than I do, with an energy I’m unused to seeing. Their faces look sharper, more alert. Tougher. It’s a whole new world, just like that first morning, sun and grass and dandelions. Only this new world isn’t beautiful. It’s gritty, gray, and ugly. A man in an overcoat leers at me, then goes back to whispering about concert tickets to anyone who’ll listen. The dank corners smell like urine. I disappear into the crowd, just another anonymous traveler with sunglasses and a backpack. No one knows who I am; no one cares. I couldn’t have asked for more.
I scan the Arrivals and Departures. There’s a coach to Denver leaving in an hour. Whatever. Sure. Fine. I present my pass, buy a bag of chips, and don’t eat them. On the train I listen to music on my headphones until I get sick of playing the same old songs o
ver and over. I leave the headphones on as a “Do Not Disturb” sign. The last thing I want to do right now is talk to anyone. Eventually I fall asleep, and someone has to tap me when we arrive.
It’s late, after nine. There’s a motel across from the train station, but it’s got no vacancies. The bald guy behind the counter tells me to walk ten blocks to a Radisson. It has revolving doors, like in the movies.
At the front desk, I attempt to register for a room. It’s going well until the glossy, black-haired clerk named Clarissa asks, “May I have a credit card, please?”
Credit card? “Um, I’ll just pay, if that’s okay. You know, with money.”
“I’m sorry, we need a card for incidentals.”
Incidentals. I don’t even know what those are.
The other clerk, a bored-looking blond boy, looks up. “Ris, it’s okay. We can turn off pay-per-view in her room, and she won’t have a tab for room service, but we can do cash.”
I thank him and hand over a staggering $109 for the night. I feel like I got mugged.
“Room nine-oh-nine has a river view,” he says, “if you stand on your tiptoes. Here’s your key.” He slips me a flat envelope. Too flat for a key.
I open it and see a single plastic card, like a credit card. Huh?
“Something wrong with your key card, miss?”
“Key card,” I mutter, feeling like a prize idiot. “Um, no.”
“One more thing, did you do valet parking? Because—”
“I took the train,” I say.
Clarissa purses her lips and mmms softly under her breath. I wonder what sort of theories and judgments are brewing in her head: train, cash, doesn’t know what a key card is. Clueless hayseed in over her head.
Or maybe I’m just judging myself again. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.
In the hotel room’s shower I wash off the grime from the train and put on clean clothes, feeling a little surge of panic at how quickly my supply of money and clean clothes is being depleted.
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