She thinks it was two days after the night the police came, but she’s not sure. That’s what Mia kept saying. But she believed it enough to come straight up here, to the closet, expecting to find someone else.
There was a hanger. A bare piece of wood. His house key.
Mia’s words become a life raft. They become something tangible, with weight. Even if they are a lie, they are something to cling to.
She heard footsteps in the attic two nights after Caleb was swept out to sea. When the police were still searching the river. When the shock waves were still rippling through school, and the rumors were laced with my name. When the looks were not apathetic, but cutting.
But. His key is there. His key.
Maybe she didn’t hear anything. Maybe she wanted to. Or maybe she did, and it was someone else. But Caleb had been in there at some point, because his house key had fallen.
I imagine him taking something from the hanger. Dragging something across the floor. Dropping his key, and not realizing it.
There are too many unknowns: the money he supposedly took from Max, that we cannot find; the unused bus ticket; the story Terrance Bilson told me about his college visit, and the man who showed up looking for him. As if Caleb had this whole other life, hidden underneath.
And I’m back where I started, the very first day I began, as if I’ve been running in place all along: Where were you going, Caleb? Why?
By the time I leave—grabbing my purse from the foot of the bed, escorting Mia to her room, descending the rest of the steps on my own—my feelings shift until I’m angry. Angry at Caleb, and angry at myself.
This is all so Caleb, honestly. Every bit of it. Everything that keeps me tethered to that room, even now.
It was the secrets that hooked me from the very start, the things that he doled out to me, in pieces. Letting me believe I was always getting closer, seeing more of him. But now I’m realizing how much of it was only granted to me because his hand had been forced. Three months before he said a word about his father, and only then because I didn’t understand his family’s money situation; a chance encounter with an ex-girlfriend before I even knew she existed.
I’d believed myself worthy not only of his affection, but of his trust. Except I’d misread the signs. Everything had been situational, a reaction, an answer to a question I had to first ask.
There was always something just under the surface, that I was trying to reach. He kept things just hidden enough to keep me hooked on the intrigue. Doling out the secrets—I don’t like my best friend’s girlfriend—to mask the ones he kept.
The way his eyes turned slightly downward at the edges, pulling me closer, so I could decipher him. The physical differences from his mother, a window to the father he must’ve once known, but whose picture I’d never seen.
The history of the marks on his body: lower stomach, appendectomy; outside of the knee, skiing accident; between the thumb and forefinger, a kitchen knife.
But he’d never let me all the way in. Kept that box of photos for him and him alone, now hidden underneath his bed.
Meanwhile, I gave him everything. What it was like living with Julian (like a shadow), exactly what I had done, and not done, with my last boyfriend (it wasn’t much), a trail of names, an open book. What I wanted to be (a pediatrician), where I wanted to be (somewhere warm all year round), what I wanted to do (Doctors Without Borders, see the world).
He answered by telling me what he wanted to be (happy), where he wanted to be (here, with me), what he wanted to do (not answering, instead giving me a smile that cracked my heart wide open).
I thought because he told me where he was born, brought me to see that old house, told me about his father and the trust fund, that he was letting me further in. That he was giving me everything.
But all I’m left with are these pieces of our lives, sharp-edged fragments that don’t fit the picture of the Caleb I thought I knew.
I’m shaking by the time I make it home, everything on autopilot. Running through the last day again in my mind: Caleb showing up at my race; seeing him while I stood at the starting line, and handing him my necklace. Please hold this for me. Please be careful.
What had he come back for? Where was he heading?
I see glimpses: The rain. Caleb launching himself down the steps. The bridge. The phone call. The police. Driving around with Max. The moment we heard.
Pieces of his car. Pieces of his life.
My phone dings in the cup holder, and I jump, too accustomed to the silence, to being alone. The message is from Hailey. It’s a time and location: The pizza place on South Ave. Six p.m. Be there!
It feels a little like neutral ground, like a baby step before we hang out at one of our homes again. Like we’re starting over. The clock in the car ticks forward. I can make it if I leave now. And I have nowhere else to be, no one else to talk to, just my own memories—and even those begin to feel like lies.
I can talk to Hailey, work it all through. She will calmly tell me that I’m not being myself, that I need to get out of that room, that it’s getting to my head.
But when I get there, I realize that’s not what this is at all. The pizza place is busy, full of people I know.
It’s a cross-country team get-together. Hailey waves me over. The coach places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. There’s no animosity. I wonder if I’ve manufactured it. Or if it’s just time, dulling the sting for them.
Life goes on, and these things are the same: Hailey will make the decisions, and others will follow; Oliver will take out a pack of playing cards at some point; Vivian will sit beside Brandon, in a well-timed maneuver; Brandon will pretend not to notice, but he does, everybody does; and nobody can put away as much pizza as a cross-country team.
I am the only element not the same, who seems to have forgotten her role, and her lines.
Max is there. Sitting in a booth across from Brandon and Vivian. He freezes for a moment when he sees me, then raises his hand and gives me a small smile. I’m a mirror image, doing the same, confused as to why I’m here at all.
Hailey makes room for me in the booth across the aisle, and I slide in beside her. She doesn’t even break conversation as she sets a paper plate in front of me. “Well, whatever, Brandon’s way hotter.”
“I’m sitting right here, Hailey,” Brandon said.
“I know,” she says. And she smiles while she takes a bite, leaning around me to look him in the eye. Only Hailey can make eating pizza look good. “I’m explaining why we have the better team. Obviously. I mean, so what if you can’t beat him in a race. Ever.”
He throws a balled-up napkin at her, but he’s laughing.
“Next year, fellas,” she says.
“Too bad I won’t be here to help you out,” Max says, and the table laughs. Max never got much faster than that day on the beach. He’s not slow by any means, but he’s a solid middle-of-the-pack cross-country runner, same as me. He picks up points for the team, but he doesn’t win. He’s essentially the male counterpart of my role.
I was a solidly above-average runner, but I wouldn’t be recruited for it. I had to work twice as hard as Hailey, just to be half as good. I didn’t even want my parents to come to my races most times, because it made me feel like they could only see the things I lacked—in comparison to their other child, one of the best pitchers in the state; a skill that had come so naturally for him.
If my coach has missed me, it’s only in that I’m a body that picks up the number five spot. But my replacement isn’t much slower. My presence isn’t critical to anyone but myself. If I were to quit (as I sort of did), not much would change.
The soda feels too carbonated, and the pizza too hot, and I’m all jittery energy until Hailey places a hand gently on my arm. “You okay?” she asks, when no one else is paying attention.
Everything in the now feels so far away, as if filtered through a thick layer of plastic. Hailey dulls. Her voice fades. The scenes from earlier today sharpen into focus instead, and I keep replaying moments: Mia in Caleb’s room, Mia’s words, her memories. She’s nine. Still, that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.
“Caleb’s mom has me cleaning out his room,” I say, as a way to explain my current demeanor.
But she frowns, and cuts her eyes to the rest of the table. “Stop doing that,” she says, nearly whispering. “It’s not healthy, Jessa.”
I think back to what Hailey said, about his mother cleaning out his locker at school. “When did his mom clean his locker?”
“What? I told you. That first week.”
“No, when? Which day?”
She shakes her head quickly, like this is both pointless and also an impossible memory to recover. “I don’t know…it was the same day as the school-wide meeting. Someone came to get Max after that. So, the Friday, I guess? Does it really matter?”
The meet was Tuesday, the day Caleb drove over the bridge. Two days later was Thursday, when Mia said she heard Caleb upstairs, and told their mom. Eve was at the school the very next day. Could it be coincidence? Did his mother wonder what Caleb was up to, as well?
Hailey sees me thinking, and places a hand gently on my wrist.
“Listen, a bunch of the girls are coming over to my place after this. Why don’t you come? It will be good for you. Get you out of that place.”
I feel sick. Like I either ate too much or not enough, and I’m not sure if there’s room inside me for anything other than my own thoughts. “Next time?” I ask. I give her a smile so she knows I’m grateful. Because I am. But I also need to get answers, and I can’t do that with five other girls in Hailey’s basement, streaming HBO Go.
“Do you need a ride tomorrow?” I ask, because Hailey doesn’t turn seventeen until later in the year, though she already has a car waiting for her, for when she does.
She wrinkles her nose. “Craig Keegan is picking me up.”
“Craig?” I ask, as she tips her head back and laughs.
“I know, I know. Attempt number two went much better than the first date.” That first date, Craig had gotten lost in a side conversation with Stan from the city, asking what other tickets he could hook us up with, effectively ignoring Hailey. She was not one to be ignored.
Hailey slides out of her seat, and the stream of girls trails after her, calling their goodbyes back to me. Vivian pauses beside my seat, says, “We’ve missed you, Jessa,” before heading out.
Hailey silently mouths Bye while waving her fingers, and I feel like I’m making my way back to my old life, just slightly out of sync. But I can almost touch it as I watch it go—my shadow beside Hailey as she piles into a car at the curb with our friends.
When everyone’s leaving, I catch Max in the hall leading to the bathrooms, or Max catches me. Either way, we’re standing in the hall, inches apart, the rest of the sound dulled and far away.
“I need to talk to you,” I say.
Max leans against the opposite wall. The light’s too bright, and it makes us look sick, blue-tinted.
“I talked to Mia, and…” I let the thought trail. Then I close my eyes, forcing the words out. “She heard something. Two nights after.” I don’t need to specify after what. We’ve set our calendars to the same weighted moments.
Max is holding his breath. “Heard something where?”
“There’s this hidden attic space, the door was behind a bookcase in his closet. I was up there, and I found something. His house key was there.”
He narrows his eyes, just slightly.
“He took your money,” I add, begging him to line up the pieces in the same way. To hear the same ghost story, imagine the same moments, see the same outcome.
And so I say the thing I’ve not given voice to, but the thing that’s been whispering in my head. That terrible hope. “Max, what if he’s not dead?” I whisper through my fingers.
But he shakes his head, eyes closed. “Don’t do this, Jessa.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Make it harder. Make it worse.”
“How is him being not dead making it any worse?”
He looks over my shoulder, at the lights on the wall. His face changes as his eyes water from the glare. “I want to believe you, that’s why.”
I was Caleb’s girlfriend, but that’s not the hardest. Max was his best friend. How many years of his life were mixed up with Caleb’s? And now I was feeding him this hope, from nowhere, when he had already grieved for all we had lost.