I’m leaving straight from school. I just have to get through the day. I’m safe here, surrounded by people. Though everything sets me on edge. A door slamming down the hall. A person walking too closely behind me. The sound of the bell, signaling the end of class. I’m grateful for lunchtime, the halfway point, knowing that I only have to get through three more classes and then I’m off. Hailey sits beside me, grabs a fry from my plate since it’s obvious I’m not eating mine.
Hailey taps my tray, to get my attention. “So? Are you finished? Packing that room?”
“Yes, I’m done,” I say. I remember that Hailey’s address was written on Eve’s papers, and I want to cut the conversation short, keep her safe and at a distance.
And then Brandon from the cross-country team leans over and says, “Are they having a garage sale or something?”
I’m not sure whether they’re having a garage sale, or selling things online or through a secondhand store. But his interest, the way he’s practically salivating, is off-putting.
“I assume she’s selling some stuff. I don’t know how, though.”
“Do you think you could put something on hold for me?” he asks. People are jerks, I decide. Or their memories are short-lived.
“No,” I say, the venom rising in my voice. Apparently his good looks have kept him relatively protected from any requirement of manners. He bats his eyelashes once, pouts.
He pouts.
Ugh. I don’t understand his appeal at all.
Then he puts his hands up toward me, palms out, as if I am an animal about to pounce, and maybe I am. I certainly feel like I am. “Okay, okay,” he says. “I’d pay good money for the camping gear, is all I’m saying.”
I go through the contents of his room in my mind once more. “His boots?” I ask. I knew they were expensive, but I doubted Brandon couldn’t have just bought himself a pair if he wanted.
“No, the sleeping bag. It’s pretty sick, all-weather. They cost a fortune, though, and my parents think it’s unnecessary.”
I think again, shake my head. I run through the list of things found in his closet. Under his bed. “There’s no bag,” I say.
“Check the closet,” he says with a shrug. “It’s the type you’d want to keep hanging up. All-down filling, you know? Like I said, pretty sick.”
Something hanging. Something large.
The sound of the hanger swinging in the attic makes me sit straighter.
“How do you know he has this?” I ask.
He takes a bite of his food, talks around it. God, how does anyone find him attractive, honestly? “Ran into him at the outdoors store,” he says. “My dad and I were getting some fishing poles. He was in the camping section checkout line. Had that sleeping bag, one of those waterproof duffel bags, too. Shame if he never got to use them.”
The spot on the attic floor, empty of dust.
I grab his wrist, and he looks startled. “When?” I say.
Brandon shakes free of my grip, makes his eyes go wide and looks around the table to see if anyone else is watching. There’s no need. Everyone else is watching. Jessa Whitworth is losing her mind. But I don’t care. I prefer this Jessa to the one who disappeared along with Caleb.
He rubs his wrist, making a big show of it. “I don’t know. End of the summer sometime? Geez, Jessa. Sorry. It was just an idea.”
I push back from the table in a rush, off to find Max. But he’s nowhere to be found. He has class this period. Lab, I think. But I’m not sure of his schedule, and as I race through the halls, peering in the class windows, I don’t see him anywhere.
I send him a text: I know what was in the attic.
I get no response.
Instead, I race for my car, alone. Bailing on my afternoon classes. I picture Caleb again that day at my race. Standing there, watching us. The rain coming down, faster, heavier. Now, he thinks.
How long had Caleb waited, before seizing the perfect opportunity? What was he waiting for?
The flood, yes. But if he wanted to run, he could’ve just run.
All these memories, slowly taking shape.
And I remember that there’s one more place I might find answers left behind.
I drive straight to the library. He was the only kid I knew who spent time working there. Between the library at school and the Internet at home, I didn’t see the need. I liked bringing my research back home to work on. My house was quiet. My room was my own.
But he loved working here. He knew it so well. He took me here, even, on Valentine’s Day. Told Sean he’d rather study here than at home. Hid snacks in the drawer that no one else checked, left homework there and trusted it would still remain when he went back for it.
The room smells of books, of carpet, and the air hums from the heating vents. There are people scattered in a few of the cushioned chairs throughout the space, some roaming the aisles; I hear typing coming from behind a cubicle.
I walk with purpose, like I belong here, cutting through the aisles, to the desk where Caleb always sat.
The chair squeaks gently as I sit, rocking back. The wheels catch on the plastic underneath. I place my feet in a slight indentation, and imagine Caleb in this spot instead.
The computer boots up to the main page, with the library catalog. I pull up the Internet instead, looking through the search history. Here, there’s a little more information. Not like his computer at home, which has been wiped clean. Except there’s too much. Other people have used this computer, and even going back to the summer dates, it’s impossible to tell what’s from Caleb and what’s from someone else.
I hear a printer start up at the circulation desk across the room, and a woman crosses the space to retrieve her papers, handing the man behind the desk a few coins in return. I make my way over to the desk, hoping he can help. “Hi,” I say.
The man looks up, smiles with his lips still pressed together, and waits.
“I was working on a project,” I begin. I give him a sad story. Except it’s not a story. It’s true. The details are the only thing changed. “With a boy from my school. And he died.” My voice wavers, on its own. These things I’ve never said aloud, instead shutting myself off from the rest of the world. Disappearing into myself.
The smile withers, the man leans back. “I heard about it,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, feeling like a traitor to Caleb. To everyone. And I press on. “I know he used to work here. I was wondering if you had any information for me about what he might’ve been working on?”
He leans forward again. Shakes his head. “I’m sorry. Yes, I do recall him working on something. He asked for my help once, about accessing public court records, and I pointed him toward a website. But that’s all. We don’t keep records of the material printed off. I’m sorry.”
“Can you tell me the website?” I ask.
“Sure.” He pulls off a yellow sheet of paper from his pad, writes down a web address, and I hold it tight in my hand as I walk back to the computer.
Typing in the address, I see it’s a link for a government site, where it looks like you can make an account and access court transcripts.
Caleb, what were you looking for?
I wish the username information were automatically filled in from when Caleb was here, but it’s blank.
I feel Caleb again, like I’m getting closer, and then he’s slipping away.
This was where he worked when he didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing, then. This was where he felt safe.
Opening the cabinet door, I hear him in my memory, unwrapping the candy—I can almost taste the butterscotch flavor, from when we were here on Valentine’s Day. I slide open the smaller drawer inside, expecting to find an assortment of Caleb’s uneaten candy, but there’s nothing here but a paper clip, and a pencil that rolls forward with the momentum of the drawer.
I reach my hand farther, leaning down to peer inside, and instead of candy I see a stack of papers, folded in half, pushed up against the back of the drawer. They blend in with the white base. There’s another pencil wedged against the papers, and some sort of energy bar that I’ve seen before in Caleb’s room, in the bunker. My heart’s in my throat when I pull out the papers, hoping they aren’t blank. Hoping he took some notes.
But they’re more. Oh, they’re more.
I see, on the top, the court heading. I see the details. This is the judgment from his father’s trial. A summary of events, and the sentencing.
My hands shake as I skim the printout. It’s not all of it. It’s a random few pages, not in order. The second page, I see, contains a reference to his mother. The shock of seeing her name, of realizing his mother had testified, and for the prosecution. Her account is brief, stilted, and I can hear her quoted words as if she were whispering them into my ear. And as I do, the scene comes alive:
We had been fighting. He said I needed to get a job, that we couldn’t cover the mortgage. We had a big fight, and I told him I was taking our son to my mother’s. But I changed my mind, came back, and he wasn’t home. I woke up to the smell of smoke. It was everywhere. I grabbed my son across the hall. The smoke was already so thick I couldn’t see, but he was screaming, and I found him. He had burned his hand, between his thumb and index finger, on the door handle. I covered us with a blanket. And then we ran.
That raised scar between his thumb and pointer finger, that I’ve rubbed my fingers across, listened as he spun me some tale about a knife, a child wanting an apple. An imaginary story, a sweet scene—being kind to his memories. When really, his father put his life at risk. He had long believed it. His mother testified against him. He was sentenced to arson, insurance fraud, endangering the welfare of a child.
The page cuts off at the next witness. An arson investigator. It picks up in the middle of another account, from another witness.
A witness who saw a man running from the house, late at night. A man who fits the description of his father. He points him out in court.
I go back to the first page, search for the name of the witness, and it stops me cold.
Sean Larson.
I picture Caleb in this seat, reading these pages—what does he see? He had been to that house, to look for something. The scene of the crime. Something, maybe, his father had tried to tell him. Something he was now discovering for himself. A reminder, every time he glanced down at the patch of raised, discolored skin on his hand.
Him, ticking them off, lifting his shirt, “Appendectomy,” tilting his neck, “dog scratch,” raising his pant leg, “dislocated knee from skiing, needed surgery.”
And me, doing the same, running my finger over my forehead, “Chicken pox, caught them from Julian,” the white line on my chin, fading over time, “sledding accident, a dare, a tree.” I was ten, and everyone had left, and it had just been me. I’d been scared to do it, and so I didn’t. But I went back, on my own, because it ate at me, that moment, why I couldn’t just let go. I didn’t tell Caleb this. The shorter version was better. The one I saw him imagining to himself.
Then, pointing out the one on his hand, I said, “What about this one?” And I watched as his face shuttered for a moment.
“I forgot about that,” he said. “It was so long ago.” A pause, and then, “A knife. I wanted an apple.” And I had smiled.
So many more, from the both of us, and we shadowed them away. Hid them under the obvious and trusted that no one would look any deeper.
Finally, I see him. I know what he was looking for, and what he found.
Caleb had discovered that both his mother and Sean testified against his father. Back when Sean was a stranger. Was supposed to be a stranger.
And now, so have I.