Cryer's Cross (11 page)

Kendall doesn’t know what to say.

Jacián shoves one hand in his pocket and rakes through his hair with the other, leaving it standing up wildly. “I just figured you were hurting. I mean, after the way you’ve been acting the last few weeks. And thought . . . well. Fuck it. Never mind. It was a stupid thing to do.” He sighs. “I’m sorry, Kendall. Okay? I didn’t mean to scare you. Hell.”

Kendall looks at the dirt. Shocked. Embarrassed, a little, but angry, too. And there’s something sad about it all . . . sad that it wasn’t Nico out there, even after her nightmare. But still, she doesn’t explode like she thought she would when he first started talking. She just turns away. “Okay.” She shrugs and walks back into school, leaving him standing there.

A minute later he slides into the desk next to her and stares straight ahead.

They don’t talk all day.

Kendall just stares at Nico’s desk, thinking. Thinking about how Tiffany Quinn sat there and disappeared. And
how Nico sat there and disappeared. And now it’s all she can think about. What would happen if she sat there? Maybe disappearing would be better than all this. And at the very least, sitting there would be like wearing one of Nico’s shirts. A comfort, being where he was. Maybe it could help her get over him.

Maybe tomorrow she’ll sit there.

Things are tense in the truck on the way home. Unaware, Marlena chatters about how she can’t wait until she gets her cast off, and Jacián and Kendall stare straight ahead until they’re all sitting in front of Kendall’s house.

“Thanks,” Kendall mumbles as usual. As she slams the truck door shut, she catches Jacián’s eye and sees the fear in it. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and then he glances away as Marlena says goodbye through the window in the midst of her babbling. Kendall stands there for a minute, puzzled, and then turns toward the house. It’s not until she’s outside harvesting potatoes that it dawns on her why he had such a scared look in his eyes.

He’s from a big city. A place where people steal cars if you don’t make it too difficult for them not to. He really thinks she and her family are going to press charges against him for trespassing.

Kendall stops what she’s doing for a moment, and she
nearly laughs out loud for the first time in weeks. Poor Jacián. He’s probably been worried sick about it all day.

She thinks about what he said. How he thought maybe she was hurting, and tears start leaking from her eyes. She didn’t know the guy actually had a heart underneath all that anger. But the only person she can talk to who would fix her pain is Nico.

On their way back to the house from the fields, Kendall tells her mother what happened the night before.

“You should have woken me up,” Mrs. Fletcher says with a frown.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” Kendall says, and today, during daylight, and knowing the truth, it really doesn’t feel like a big deal. “And you guys are working so hard, I didn’t want to wake you up. So, do you want to press charges against Jacián?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What would people think of us? What a terrible thing to do to that poor boy. After all he’s done for you, driving you around.”

Kendall shrugs. But it’s comforting to know her mother thinks he’s not a bad guy.

When Sheriff Greenwood calls, he tells the same story as Jacián told, in lesser detail. “Your parents want to press charges for trespassing? If so, I need to talk to them,” he says. “I can’t see you all doing it, but it’s your right.”

“No, I talked with my mother. We don’t want to do that.”

“Good. I’ll let him know. He’ll be happy to hear it. I’ll tell him to stay out of people’s driveways at night.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

They hang up.

Mrs. Fletcher smiles at Kendall from the kitchen, where she warms up leftover beef stew in the microwave. “So, Kendall.”

Kendall sighs. “Yes?”

“Have you been thinking about other colleges?”

She flops her head in her hands. “I’m too tired and starving to have this conversation. Can we talk about it some other time?”

Mrs. Fletcher stirs the stew. “I’m a little worried about you.”

“I’m fine. I’m just . . . trying to work through it.”

Mrs. Fletcher gives Kendall a long look. “Okay. Life will be back to normal in a couple weeks, when harvest is done. Then we’ll talk about the future.”

Kendall doesn’t respond. Back to normal? Without Nico, life will never be normal again.

With time, We grow strong. We savor the strength. Taste the nearness of life.

The time will come. Soon. We strain to reach Our invisible grasp beyond the grainy surface, holding in fifty years’ worth of screams.

She stares at Nico’s desk all morning, butterflies in her stomach. Afraid to sit there. Compelled to try. She tries to laugh off her fear. It was just a ridiculous coincidence. If she says it out loud, it’s laughable. Nobody would believe that a desk has anything to do with the disappearances. It’s absurd.

Still, the thought whirrs through her brain. She should sit there to prove it isn’t the desk.

Next to her, Jacián is pointedly not looking at her, though this morning on the way in to school he managed a gruff “Thank you” for not pressing charges. But Kendall takes no notice of him. She rests her head on her desk as usual, knowing Ms. Hinkler won’t call on
her. The teacher hasn’t asked Kendall a direct question since Nico disappeared.

When everyone leaves to eat lunch outside on this cool fall day, Kendall stays inside. Slowly she stands, heart pounding. She steps over to Nico’s desk and then she slides into it. She closes her eyes and holds her breath. And then she moves her arms around the desktop to embrace it.
Nico
, she thinks,
are you here?

She rests her head on the desk and lets out her breath, then tries to relax and think about him. Think about all their good times. Lets the memories flood her brain.

It’s harmless. She is still in the room, sitting in Nico’s desk. Still here, not disappeared. After a while Kendall sits up and runs her fingers over the desktop. She reads each line of graffiti as she often does, but it feels different from this angle. She gets lost in the words as they swirl around in her mind, and she tries to make them sound right, like a poem would sound. A jumble of words, written over the course of fifty years by dozens of authors.

She lands on the plea. Probably some bored student watching the clock tick away slowly, waiting for something awesome that won’t come until the end of the day.

Please.
Save me
.

She traces the letters and wonders again why she hadn’t seen them before.

And then she hears a whisper.
Please. Save me
. Like wind in leaves, so faint that Kendall is sure she made a mistake.

Her body tingles, and she feels the back of her neck prickle. She jerks her hand away and looks around the room. “Who’s there?”

Her heart pumps at top speed. Tentatively she reaches toward the words again and slides her forefinger across them. Her whole body floods with adrenaline, like being high on some crazy drug, and she closes her eyes. In her ear the delicious whisper comes again, more urgent this time.
Please, save me!

Kendall is drawn in. The euphoric feeling is almost overwhelming, like running too far too fast, but she craves more. She leans over the words, her finger tracing the letters, and in her ears the whisper, over and over.

When she pulls her fingers away, the buzz of the high slowly ebbs. She sits for a moment as the whispers grow too soft to hear, and then she opens her eyes and realizes why the whispers were so beautiful.

The voice was Nico’s.

Immediately Kendall’s OCD kicks in. Fear grips her and she can’t seem to get out of the desk fast enough. She nearly
tips it over in her haste to get away, knocking the books from her own desk just as the lunching students return.

“What the heck was that?” she mutters under her breath, scrambling to pick up her books. Her brain is screaming at her to get away. Get away from the wonderful evil.

She knows that whatever it was, it wasn’t real. It can’t be real. It must be some weird grief thing, where you hear the voice of someone who has passed and really think it’s him. But it was just so strong. She catches her breath as Jacián comes in and sits down. Kendall slides back into her desk, heart still racing, trying to make sense of what just happened. Knowing it was all just emotion, grief. Feelings taking over, teasing her. Reminding her of how good it felt to be with Nico.

“It was never
that
good,” she mutters. Her temples pound.

“What?” Jacián says.

Kendall startles and turns to look at him. His brown eyes are flecked with yellow, and his eyebrows knit together, concerned. “Nothing,” she says. “Just . . . mumbling.”

Jacián keeps looking at her. “Just mumbling,” he says.

“That’s what I said.”

He shrugs and pulls his notebook out of his backpack. “Look,” he says, “whenever you’re done with those potatoes, I could really use a soccer partner. If you’re not still mad. I mean, you can just come home with us whenever.”

Kendall’s brain is still buzzing. She edges away from Nico’s desk, toward Jacián. “I’m too tired to even think of playing.”

“That’s because you’re not playing.”

“What do I have to play for?”

Jacián stares at her for a long moment. Then he just shakes his head lightly and turns to face the front of the classroom.

They sit there in silence and wait for Ms. Hinkler to start the afternoon work. For the next three hours Kendall can’t stop thinking about what happened with the desk.

And about hearing Nico’s voice.

By evening Kendall has reasoned away what happened. Her grief is playing tricks with her brain. Sure, her connection with Nico was strong—they were like twins in a way, the way they grew up and were always together. Of course she’s going to think she hears his voice now and then. It’s spooky, but it’s completely natural. And totally explainable. And completely sad.

It just makes her feel so lonely.

She lies in bed, window checked six times, moonlight streaming in through the soft white curtains. So lonely her arms ache with no one to hold.

Too much!

We pull back, suck in Our hypnotic venom, but it’s too late. The heat, the life is gone. Too strong, too desperate. And you . . . unwilling? Nonmalleable? We curse now in the dark, quiet room. Our only option is to move.

We groan and creak, inching along, Our built-up strength leaking out with each motion.

There is no other choice for Us.

He’s alone in the morning in the pouring rain.

“Where’s Marlena?” Kendall asks, climbing into the truck.

Jacián chews on a toothpick, his dark eyes squinting through the sheets of water as his wipers fly from side to side. He flips the gearshift into drive. “Bozeman, getting a checkup at the doctor’s today. They’re taking the cast off.”

“Oh, that’s right. Cool.”

“She’ll still have to wear one of those boot things for a couple weeks.”

“Ew. Hideous. Serious fashion emergency.”

Jacián laughs and glances at her. “My parents and grandfather would like you and your family to come for
dinner Sunday to celebrate. It’s Marlena’s sixteenth birthday. Can your family get away?”

“Just us?”

“No. Greenwoods too, and Marlena’s new sophomore friends. And maybe some others. I don’t know. My grandfather is going to call your parents but I thought I’d mention it.” He slows at the four-way stop in town and peers through the weather. “Maybe we can scrimmage with Eli and a few of the others if they come.” He looks at her again, and his eyes are so earnest.

Kendall half smiles. “I brought my clothes today,” she says. She pats her backpack. “Mom told me I’m too mopey and she’s giving me the day off. I packed them up before I looked outside and saw this mess.”

“You did?” He sounds shocked. Pleased. “A little rain is nothing,” he says, a smile playing on his lips. He pulls into the parking lot. “Let me know about Sunday. Two o’clock. Or, you know—tell Marlena, or whatever.”

“I will.”

He turns the truck off, and their collective breath steams up the windows. They sit for a minute, timing the rain, but it’s not letting up. Kendall looks over at Jacián. “Ready?”

He nods, and they make a mad dash for the school, splashing through the muddy parking lot to the doorway.

“Ever hear of concrete around here?” Jacián asks,
looking at his jeans in disgust. They stomp their feet and go inside the school. “Or tar. Tar works too. They make roads out of it, and parking lots. . . .”

“Shut it.”

He goes into the classroom first and stops short. “Do you, like, need to be the first to enter the room too?”

“No.” She eyes him suspiciously to see if he’s mocking her, but he appears serious.

“Just wondering. I knew a kid at camp who always needed to be in the front. He’d go around getting all upset and saying ‘I’m the front! I’m the front!’ and everybody was mean to him, thinking he was just trying to be first in line all the time. They didn’t understand.”

“It’s different for everybody.” Kendall shakes the rain out of her hair and starts on her rituals.

A moment later Jacián says, “Hey, Kendall?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not positive, but I think Nico’s desk is switched again.”

Kendall’s stomach twists. “Seriously?” She finishes up the curtains and walks over to Jacián. “You’re right.”

She looks around to see which one it’s switched with. “What the hell,” she whispers. “This is so not normal.” She looks at Jacián. “I know you probably think this is dumb that I’m all hung up over this, but this never happens. The desks only get moved out of the room for major
cleaning during the summer, so they’re all scrambled in the fall. But they never get moved out of sequence the rest of the year. Never.” Kendall drops her backpack and wildly searches the room for Nico’s desk. She finds it in the sophomore section and wrenches it back as Jacián moves the other one out of the way.