Last Things

by Jacqueline West

  I rub Goblin’s head. “Then where was he?”

  “Miles away.”

  Miles away? I want to ask Goblin what the hell he was thinking. The cat sags against me. He’s purring so hard that I can feel the resonance in my rib cage.

  I look straight at the girl instead.

  Her cheeks are pink. Tendrils of hair blow across her face.

  “Is that how you knew about the other night, when you showed up at my window?” I say, before I know that I’m going to say it. “About the music executive, and the contract. Because your aunt saw something?”

  The girl pauses again. She doesn’t look surprised, or like she’s trying to come up with a cagey answer. She just looks straight into my eyes. “Some of it,” she says at last. “Some of it I saw and heard myself.”

  “So you have, like, psychic powers? Like your aunt’s supposed to have?” I hit the words supposed to extra hard, to show that I’m not quite buying all of this. I’m not sure if I’m showing her or myself.

  The girl just smiles. “No,” she says. “I’m not like her that way.”

  “Oh. Then . . .” I start, trying to look like I don’t put any stock in her answer either way, “you don’t know anything about Frankie Lynde, do you? Like—where she might be? Or what happened to her?”

  The girl gives me another long look. The edges of her smile have softened away. “No,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.” I feel myself deflate, but I try to hide it. “I just thought . . . no stone unturned. Or whatever.”

  I start to turn away.

  “I do know one thing.” Her voice stops me. “I know that you had nothing to do with it.”

  For half a second the words are comforting. Then they turn creepy, because how the hell could she know that? And who would believe some obsessive stalker, anyway? I wonder if a stalker can give you an alibi.

  “Okay,” I say again. “Well . . . thanks for saving my cat. Really. It’s been the only decent thing in this whole messed-up week.”

  For a second the girl looks weirdly surprised. Her pale eyebrows go up. She smiles. Her face gets even softer. She looks like I’ve just given her some grand personal compliment, not a simple thank-you.

  “You’re welcome,” she says.

  I start to walk away again, but this time I stop myself. “Hey.” I turn to face her again. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  I can see her suck in a breath. “It’s Thea,” she says.

  “Thea,” I repeat. “I’m Anders.”

  Now her smile shows her teeth. She looks like she might laugh. “I know.”

  “Okay. Well.” I jut my chin at Goblin, who’s bumping his head against my chest. “I’d better go feed this guy.”

  I head toward the house. Dead leaves shuffle under my feet. I hold Goblin tight against my body with one hand, rubbing his ears with the other. I don’t see or hear the girl leave. But when I get to the front door and glance back at the woods, she’s gone.

  Goblin laps up an entire dish of fresh water while I find a can of special wet cat food at the back of a high cabinet. He devours it and then eats a whole serving of his usual crunchy cat food, and then he finally passes out next to me on the living room couch.

  I keep one hand on his side.

  We’re both still sitting there, me staring at a movie on the TV screen, Goblin snoring, when I hear the garage door open.

  My heart jolts upward. I check the TV clock. 3:18. I might have gotten home from school by now if I’d left just a little bit early.

  Dad walks heavily—but fast—across the kitchen and into the living room. He halts when he sees me. He’s still got his Day-Glo work vest on. His phone and keys are in his hand. His face is tight. I can’t quite read it.

  “Found Goblin,” I tell him before he can do the math in his head and ask me anything about why I’m home so soon. “Somebody from school found him in the woods. He was stuck in an old basement, I guess.”

  Dad nods. I don’t think he even heard me. He looks like he’s making a decision about something else. I see his jawline flex. He’s not looking at me. He clears his throat.

  “Looks like they found that Lynde girl, too,” he says. “The cranes are in the river.”

  Thea

  The day they pull her out of the river is sunny and clear. Police boats have been searching since last night, looking for the dark blue car in the dark blue water, and they’ve finally found something. Something hidden down there in the currents and the long-sunk trees and the shadows cast by the big blue bridge.

  It’s nearly three o’clock when they drive the crane over the bank. The dive teams are working. White boats bob nearby. Traffic on the bridge slows.

  Everyone watches. Everyone stares down into that deep, quick water.

  Word spreads. Cars gather on the shoulders. Once school lets out, there are more. Clusters of people hurry out on foot, with cameras, with phones. News crews screech up in their painted vans.

  Sun sparkles on the water.

  I’m watching from the bank on the far side of the bridge. It took me just a few minutes to get from Anders’s place to the river, riding straight through the woods. It’s grassy here on the bank, and shaded, with clusters of birch and box elder and oak. Lots of people have collected here. Kids from school. TV reporters. We have a clear view.

  Uniformed people on the boats point and gesture. Divers go under. The hook on the crane goes down. Down. Down.

  Of course they’d find the car eventually. It was only a matter of time.

  Rivers keep moving. Things lost in them move, too.

  The divers surface. A huge motor revs.

  The car rises slowly, like a sliver pulled out of thick skin. Waves boil around it. It’s upside down, so the tires come first, then the black undercarriage, and then, slowly, its body, dark and dripping.

  The car isn’t deep blue. It’s black.

  I can hear the gasps around me.

  They know it isn’t Frankie’s car. That’s not Frankie inside of it.

  It takes ages for the river water to drain away. The black Audi with the Illinois plates dangles there, swaying very slightly on the crane’s thick cable.

  The windows slosh. They’re tinted anyway. Nothing to see inside. Not yet.

  The headlights are dead now.

  They were burning on Friday night. Just the low beams, not the brights. The rain was too thick. On the bridge, where mist gathers over the water, the air was like gray gauze.

  She’d taken her time leaving the Underground Music Studios. Maybe she’d stopped to reapply her red lipstick or to comb her sleek dark hair. And I’m fast. Faster than any car. I had plenty of time, even after the talk at Anders’s window, to make it to the bridge. To be standing there. Ready.

  She didn’t see me until it was too late.

  The roads were slick. The pavement on the road that leads out of town is old, worn into soft divots that trap the rain. Her tires were already skidding.

  As the Audi streaked closer, she met my eyes through the windshield. She saw me standing there. At the entry to the bridge. Waiting for her.

  I could see her face. I could see her eyes. I could see the instant when she recognized me.

  Then she hit the accelerator.

  I watched her through the wet glass—sleek hair, spread red mouth, glittering teeth. Then I took a step forward, as fast as I can move.

  Fast.

  My hands hit the black hood so hard they left twin dents. I shoved the car to the side. It skidded off the road, away from the bridge, down a slope of scrub grass and gravel. I watched it veer straight over the bank and into the river.

  There was barely a splash. Just a rushing sound, lost in the roar of the rain. The gold puddle of the headlights fading to black.

  The car disappeared fast.

  I waited for a while, past the foot of the bridge. Making sure nothing came back up.

  Now it has.

  But it’s been long enough. My heart is calm.


  Everyone else is pushing closer to the water. Craning. Lifting up their phones. They want a glimpse of what’s stuck inside those draining windows.

  I don’t need to know.

  All I wonder is whether she stayed belted to her seat. If she was knocked out on impact. If she tried, too late, to shove the door open against the steel-hard pressure of the water.

  I hope the end was quick.

  I walk away.

  It will be all over the news in less than an hour. The police need help identifying a woman: late twenties or early thirties, dark hair, alone in an expensive black car.

  I know who she was. I know what she was. But no one else needs to know.

  I get my bike from the bridge railing, climb on, and pedal slowly toward home. Toward the shed. Toward the root cellar.

  But no one needs to know that, either.

  Anders

  Wednesday is another sunny day. It feels like an insult.

  I didn’t set my alarm last night, and nobody wakes me up. By the time I shove the covers off my head, Goblin is rrruckk-ing at the closed door, begging to be let out, and flickering sun is streaming through my bedroom window.

  I check the clock. It’s 12:38, which means I’ve already missed more than half the school day. Apparently Mom and Dad have decided to let me skip again.

  Last night, as soon as the pictures of that black Audi hanging over the river started to appear on the news, I think part of my brain came unplugged.

  It wasn’t Frankie.

  That’s all I could think, over and over. I couldn’t even move.

  Dad kept trying not to look at me, like he was too afraid he might find me crying with relief, and Mom kept putting her arm around me and squeezing me and rubbing the back of my neck, and I could barely even feel it happening.

  But then, when the news cameras zoomed in on the car—a glossy black Audi with Illinois plates—I started to think something else. Something that just went ohmygod ohmygodohmygod over and over. And when they posted the police description of the body found inside the car—a woman, around thirty, short hair, black clothes—my brain shorted out entirely.

  It was the music executive. It had to be. And now she was dead.

  I didn’t know what to feel, or what to do, and fear and relief and silence and guilt were all wadded together in my gut like a meal I wished I hadn’t eaten. And on top of all that, Frankie was still missing.

  Sometime after midnight I finally staggered into bed. I dreamed about water and about being onstage at the Crow’s Nest, and I woke up so desperate to be up there that the memory of Last Things breaking up landed like a cinder block on my rib cage.

  Now I open my bedroom door. Goblin darts out ahead of me, streaking toward the kitchen. I follow him.

  A note in Mom’s cursive is taped to the fridge.

  Hope you got some rest. We thought you needed it. I called the school and spoke to the secretary already. We’ll be home late (Frank Rohmer’s retirement party, remember?), but your dinner is in the freezer.

  Love, Mom

  There’s an open two-liter of flat Coke in the fridge, next to the half-empty can of cheap tuna for Goblin. I scoop some tuna onto his dish of dry cat food. Then I take the bottle of Coke back to my room.

  I don’t even want to turn on my computer. In a town this size, everybody will be talking about the same thing: the mysterious car in the river. Everyone’s feeds will be full of pictures of the black Audi dangling on its rope over the water like some giant mutant fish. Everyone will be spreading rumors, pasting made-up theories of serial killers and underground drug rings onto the few actual facts. Everyone will be saying that they think they recognize the woman or the car just so they can feel like they’re part of this.

  If I can’t turn on my computer, I can’t listen to music. But I need some other sound to erase the awful echoes in my head.

  For the first time in three days, I grab Yvonne. This is the longest I’ve gone without playing ever since I first picked up a guitar. Ever since our last show—our last show—I haven’t even been able to think about playing. It’s dragged too much bad stuff along with it. The withdrawal hits me all at once. A sick emptiness runs through my whole body.

  But Yvonne feels different in my hands now. Resistant. Awkward.

  I strum a simple G chord. My left hand is clumsy. It’s almost like the fingers are asleep, except there are no pins and needles. I shift chords. D minor. C minor. The slide of the strings under my fingers is familiar, but distant now, like a word you’ve used a million times but suddenly can’t remember. And my right hand won’t do what I want it to.

  It reminds me of middle-school dances, when a slow song would come on and you’d rock stiffly back and forth with your hands on some girl’s shoulders, if you were lucky enough to be dancing with a girl at all. I spent most of those nights with Jezz and Patrick hanging around near the DJ’s table. We’d watch him press buttons and cue songs, begging for Metallica or Black Sabbath or at least “Free Bird.” I was a skinny kid with knobby shoulders and big feet. I didn’t know how to use my own body. I don’t think I figured out what my body was for until I learned to play guitar.

  I play the melody line from “Deep Water.”

  The timing is off. My touch is heavy. My third and fourth fingers won’t lift.

  Maybe I’m just rusty, I tell myself, trying not to panic. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe I’m just preoccupied. But underneath, I know it’s something else.

  Because I haven’t written a song in days, either. Or I should say a song hasn’t come to me. This isn’t normal. Three empty days is not normal.

  I try to clear my mind, let a melody come to me, but all I can see is that woman in the basement studio, holding out her silver pen.

  I didn’t grab that pen. I didn’t sign, and now I’m being punished.

  All the things you love. One by one. Oh, Anders. . . .

  I get up so fast Yvonne thumps onto the carpet.

  I need to talk to someone. Someone who knows at least part of what I know.

  I glance at the alarm clock. I’m still more than an hour early for my four o’clock lesson with Flynn, but I latch Yvonne into her case and rush out to the car.

  I throw the Nissan into reverse. My tires squeal as I bump out of the driveway onto the road, shifting into drive.

  Flynn must have a few answers. He’s the one who set up the meeting that set off this whole goddamn chain reaction, after all. My hands clench the wheel. I’m angry at Flynn, I’m furious, even though I know this isn’t totally fair. Flynn couldn’t have known exactly how things would unfold. But he must know about the woman in the black car by now. Maybe he’ll know more than I know. He’ll do what he always does, and stay mellow, and help me step backward until everything looks smaller, more like something I can handle.

  Jesus, I hope.

  I haven’t even gone thirty feet from the drive when I see someone standing there, in the road.

  It’s stalker girl. Thea.

  She’s holding the handlebars of her old baby-blue bike. Snakes of white hair twist around her. The rest of her doesn’t move. She just stands there, in the middle of the winding country road, watching me barrel closer.

  I slam on the brakes. A car horn is wailing.

  After a second I realize the car horn isn’t mine. The sound is coming from behind me.

  I glance in the rearview. A rusty black truck is streaking toward my bumper.

  I screech to a stop.

  So does the truck, just a few inches away. Through its dirty windshield, I can see two faces—Jezz and Patrick—staring down at me.

  I roll down my window and crane out. “What the hell?” I shout. “You almost hit me! What are you trying to do?”

  Patrick raises one hand, a little motion telling me to stay still. Then he swerves into the oncoming lane, pulling up beside me.

  “Dude,” says Jezz, leaning out his own open window. “You need to back up.”

  “What?” I shout
back.

  “Back up into your driveway,” says Jezz, loud and clear. “Somebody sabotaged your car.”

  There’s a sick thump in my chest. “What?”

  “Just do it,” says Jezz so firmly that I stop asking questions. I just do it. As I put the car in reverse, I notice that the girl in the road has disappeared. She’s not on the shoulder. She’s not anywhere in sight. I blink hard. Then I focus my eyes on the rearview mirror.

  I drive backward up the slope of our driveway. Patrick and Jezz bump up after me. By the time they’re climbing down from the cab, I’m out of the car, waiting, my arms crossed tight enough across my chest that they might be able to hold down my pounding heart.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I say.

  Patrick doesn’t answer. He just walks past me and crouches next to the driver’s side wheel. He touches one of the bolts. I can see it spin in his fingers. It’s loose, almost falling off.

  “Better get a wrench,” he says, without looking at me.

  I pull a wrench down from the pegboard in the garage. I hand it to Patrick. He tightens the bolts, fast, one after the other. When he’s done, he stands up and hands the wrench back to me. He still doesn’t meet my eyes. His face is like cement.

  I don’t know what to say. Thanks is too small. And awful as I know this is, I’m still so furious at Patrick for destroying Last Things that I’m not sure I can say it even now, when he might have just saved my life.

  Instead I say, “How did you know?”

  Patrick folds his arms, too. He looks past me, toward the empty road. “Somebody left a note in my locker.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Saying somebody was going to mess with your wheel.”

  “Somebody? Who?”

  Patrick shrugs.

  We’re all quiet for a second.

  “I guess it could have been Sasha or Carson,” I say.

  Jezz gives a little nod. “Carson is a jackass, but this has to be illegal or something.”

  I turn the wrench over in my hands. “They think I did something to Frankie. I get it. I’d suspect me, too. I’ve been expecting the angry villagers to show up with their torches and pitchforks anytime now.”