There’s a pen hanging from poster board, and sheets of paper stapled to it. It’s a petition, I see. A petition to rename Coats Memorial Bridge to Evers-Coats Memorial Bridge. There are at least a hundred names. There’s a photo of Caleb at the top, the same one from his school ID, and beside that, mounted to the wall in a glass frame, is his gray athletic T-shirt, folded into a square, so his name is visible under the logo for our school.
“Where did they get this?” I ask.
“His locker,” Hailey answers. “Come on.” She pulls me by the arm, but I don’t budge.
“When?” I ask.
“His mom came, that first week, when you were…” She trails off. She doesn’t need to say it. When I was in my room, in the dark, not answering my phone or texts or the doorbell. When she showed up and I wouldn’t see her, and I went running late at night, by myself, after everyone was sleeping—sure, at times, that I could hear the rumble of a river in the distance.
“Then why is it here?” I ask. I know Caleb always kept a change of clothes in his locker, the Caleb he would become at three p.m. But something about this piece of him out on display, not in his house with his mother, doesn’t sit right.
She shrugs. “She showed up and wanted to cut the lock, but Max knew the combo, so he was with her when it opened.” She points to the wall. “That’s all that was in there.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah, other than pencils.”
It’s a T-shirt from a fundraiser for the new athletic center, from the year before. I have the same one. Only mine says Whitworth on the front left corner, under our school name. His says Evers. We all bought them and wore them on game days, and other times as well.
“She gave it to the school?”
“She gave it to Max. Apparently she changed her mind, and didn’t want the things inside his locker. And Max didn’t know what to do with it, so he gave it to Caleb’s coach, like a tribute or something.”
“And now, here it is,” I say.
“Here it is.”
Here it is, staring me in the face, like the last time I went to his house. The last time I saw his room, until this week.
That day on the hill after cross-country practice was not the last time we spoke. I had showed up at Caleb’s house the next day, after the breakup, hating how we left things—the anger in his expression, the nonchalance of his cutting words. Everything we had been, reduced to this.
Mia had let me in, and I climbed the flight of stairs alone.
“What are you doing here, Jessa?” Caleb’s arm blocked the doorway to his room. There was a mess behind him, items scattered across the floor, the room in disarray. Music was playing, something loud and grating, uncharacteristic of the Caleb I thought I knew. And it turned out I did have something to say.
But standing in the stairway, it was impossible to force out the words. It was too dark, and he was too angry. The state of his room seemed to signify that. “I left my project.” It was a report that I’d been working on for the last week, articles cited, all stuffed into a folder and left at the foot of Caleb’s desk the week before. I’d avoided asking for it back, like that alone would be the final break. But I needed it. I needed to turn it in.
He shut the door in my face, but I heard his footsteps moving across the carpet on the other side. He opened the door with the folder in his hand, pushing it toward me.
“Caleb,” I said. A year, just gone. His face impassive. A segment of my life that was forever over, and permanently closed.
“Hey, Mia,” he called, his voice booming off the walls. “Come say goodbye to Jessa.”
I clenched my teeth together, and gave him a look I hoped he would remember, and regret.
So we would not be like him and that girl on the ski slopes, meeting up, kissing cheeks, laughing at time gone by.
I turned around, keeping my eyes on the steps, so sure this would be the last time I descended this stairway.
“By the way, Jessa,” he said, his voice falling in an unfamiliar cadence. “I know.”
I paused, my steps faltering. And then I kept moving. I kept going.
The memory has me on a mission. Because I realize there are parts to Caleb’s life I didn’t know at all.
After an awkwardly silent lunch, where Hailey talked about classes, and I nodded in reply, both of us pretending I was okay, I take a detour, swinging by the school library and logging onto a computer before heading back to class. I think about that town name in Pennsylvania, the tickets behind Caleb’s clock, and I remember the girl in the ski gear. Caleb didn’t believe in social media accounts. (Lame, he said, for people who don’t have better things to do.) I cringed when he said that, because he was of course implying that I did not have better things to do. Still, I’m glad I have accounts set up now. It makes the search easier. I type in Ashlyn Patterson, and there are suddenly more Ashlyn Pattersons than I thought possible.
Scanning through the images and locations, I see one that could possibly be her. Her profile is set to private, but her school is listed. She’s a senior at a big public high school in northern New Jersey. It doesn’t account for the ticket to Pennsylvania, but it’s possible, I think, that they were using this location as a common meeting spot for some reason. Though it’s not exactly the most central location.
I send her a message. I cut right to the point: When was the last time you saw Caleb Evers?