Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series) (28 page)

96. Something Else for the Scrapbook

I’m persistent. I might not be a lot of things, but I am persistent.

More like stubborn and hardheaded like a mule.

I keep going to the Corner Nook even though nothing happens, but today for some reason it seems that my perseverance has paid off.

I’m doing what I always do, looking around at the books and buying an iced tea and sitting around waiting for something to happen. Waiting to see something that doesn’t belong. But up until now, nothing has happened. I haven’t seen a magical door open, letting in a bunch of bright and glowing angels.

Today, however, something does show up.

I’m near the back of the store where photographs and paintings by local artists are for sale. Some are leaning against the wall, stacked on top of each other. Others are framed and hanging up.

There’s a black-and-white shot of what looks like Indian Bridge, and all I can say is that it looks intense. Like everything is heightened. The shadows and the white and the blacks all feel etched with chalk or in stone. It’s a perfect photo because it fits the mood of this bridge.

Wonder if the photographer knew it’s haunted.

As I study the picture, I notice a necklace dangling off the ledge the photo is resting on.

I lean in, wondering if it’s part of the photo. When I see what’s written on the heart locket, I quickly reach out and grab it. I stick it in my pocket and then take a few minutes to calm down. My heart is racing and I’m trying—hoping—to make sure nobody saw me snatch the piece of jewelry.

I have a good feeling the owners have no idea about this.

In fact, I’d bet my life on it.

Later on at home, I examine the locket. It’s heavy. The thick round piece held up by the necklace may be gold, but it’s dull and faded. It takes me a while of playing around with it before I manage to open the locket, revealing a picture of a baby on one side and a date etched on the other.

I hold it up close and look at the name on the outside again:
Indigo Jadan Kinner.

And on the inside:
May 28, 1963.

I try to remember anybody mentioning this name. I’m not even sure if it’s a boy or a girl. This baby is older than Mom and Uncle Robert.

A sibling they might not know about?

I decide to ask Mom. I’ve spent enough time keeping secrets from her. Maybe everything would have been better from the start if I had told her about all that was happening.

Or maybe that would have made things even worse.

I sit on the couch as she’s watching a cable show on cooking.

“What’s up?” she asks.

“Does the name Indigo Kinner mean anything to you?”

She shakes her head and looks puzzled. “No. Where’d that come from?”

I show her the necklace. She asks me where I found it, and I tell her the Corner Nook. I don’t say how it was just hanging there in plain daylight as if a ghost put it there.

Nor do I tell her about the picture it was hanging from.

“This looks real,” Mom says.

“I know.”

She says the name over and over. “I never heard of an Indigo Kinner. There weren’t too many Kinners around.”

“Maybe an older brother or sister you didn’t know about?”

“I don’t think so. Mom would have been—let’s see.” She does the numbers in her head. “She would have been eighteen when this baby was born.”

“She left home and got knocked up.”

Mom shakes her head and gives me a
Yeah right
look. “There’s no way. We would have heard.”

“Think Aunt Alice knows?” I ask.

“Last time I visited her, I don’t think she knew what planet she was on.”

I can’t help but laugh as I recall the first time I met Aunt Alice. Mom and I are both laughing, which is pretty nice and pretty rare in this little cabin.

“Can I keep it?” I ask Mom.

“If you want. Why?”

“I have a little collection of random things I’ve found around Solitary. I’m going to create a scrapbook.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yeah, sure. It’s going to be like red and have animal fur covering the outside and—”

“Stop.” Mom hands me the piece of jewelry. “What a strange name,” she says.

“Maybe it’s some kind of Indian name.”

I slip the piece into my pocket and decide to ask Aunt Alice myself. Sometime.

I have to be in the right mood to go visit the crazy house that belongs to my great-aunt.

Then again, maybe Walter Kinner knows this baby. Maybe it’s his.

Maybe it’s one that ran away but in the end is going to come out of the woods riding a white horse and save us all from something.

I doubt it. The white horse and saving part.

The something happening, however … I still know that’s going to occur.

97. Getting Out

I see Poe standing and waiting for me by my locker, and I know that it’s just a mirage. She doesn’t look all Goth Girl anymore. In fact, she looks quite stunning without all the makeup and layers of clothing and black on.

I can still picture that kiss in the stands of the football stadium. That unexpected kiss after I set the track record.

I blink and still see her. Then I stop. But she’s still there.

“Hi,” I hear her say.

For a second I really think I’m dreaming. I take another step, and she starts to walk toward me.

Before I can say anything, Poe gives me a big hug.

“What are you—”

She won’t let me go, so I just hold her there for a long time. When she does finally open her arms and look at me, I still can’t believe it. Those blue eyes still sparkle like they always did, but they appear different. Stronger. Older, maybe.

“You look great,” I say.

“You don’t.”

Same Poe, telling me like it is.

“What are you doing here?”

“Making sure you don’t ignore another email or phone call.”

I shake my head and start to say something, but she silences me with a
Shhh
.

“Listen, I’m in town visiting relatives.” Her eyes widen to acknowledge the lie. I know she doesn’t have any other relatives in town. “I’ll only be here for a couple of days.”

“You going to classes?” I ask, since it’s Monday morning.

“No. You think I’d do that if I didn’t have to?”

“Then what—”

She hands me a note and smiles. “Read it later. I wanted to make sure it actually reached your hands.”

“Okay.”

She glances at me with what appears to be a fond look. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“Yeah, I’ve been worried about me too.”

She laughs, not out of amusement but almost out of pity. “See you later.”

Her eyes widen again as she says that. I’m sure the note will tell me where and when.

I hug Poe again and then look at her. “I was always right about you.”

“What?”

“That underneath all that stuff there was a really gorgeous girl waiting to be found.”

“Yeah? Well, tell me when you find her,” Poe says. “Bye.”

She walks back down the hallway, and I go to open my locker door. Then out of the corner of my eye I see someone watching me.

Kelsey.

Oh, come on.

“Hey,” I say.

She turns and walks away.

Seriously?

Sometimes I really think I can’t get a break.

“Why’d you want to meet here?”

We’re at a Starbucks in Greer, South Carolina, not too far from the city of Greenville. It took about forty minutes to drive here.

“Did you want to meet in Solitary?” Poe asks. She appears to be very comfortable in her chair, sipping her drink. “I wanted to get far away from there.”

“Sorry I’m a little late. Took a wrong turn. Can’t do GPS on my phone while riding the bike.”

“You look like you drove through a tornado.”

I pat my hair down as I get something to drink. I come back and sit across from her.

“I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“Did you drive from New York?” I ask her.

“We’re not in New York. We’re living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”

All this time I’ve assumed that her family went back to New York, where she said she was from. She moved right around the time Pastor Marsh popped up again, after I’d stabbed him in the stomach. So yeah, maybe I wasn’t paying that much attention.

“It took about thirteen hours to get down here,” she said.

I’m drinking a warm chocolate coffee drink just to give me some caffeine and to heat up my chilled body. Just as I’m about to ask her why she’s here, Poe tells me.

“That FBI agent—the one who came down here—she’s missing.”

So I guess Sheriff Wells was right about the FBI agent being real.

“You spoke to her, right?” Poe asks.

I nod. “I didn’t know she was real. I thought …” I sigh. “I thought she was lying. A lot of people have been lying to me.”

“I think she’s—I think something happened to her.”

Poe doesn’t want to come right out and say
dead
. I understand. I’d be the same way.

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve tried contacting her. Someone who worked with her came to me. But I didn’t really say much.”

“If they did something to her, people are going to find out.”

Poe nods. “That’s what’s kind of scary. If they did do something to her, then maybe it means something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I doubt they would do anything unless they knew they could get away with it. I wanted to make sure—I had to warn you.”

For a moment I’m just studying her face, noticing her intensity.

“What?” she asks.

“It’s just—kinda surreal to see you sitting across from me.”

“Without all the makeup and the dark hair.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “It’s lighter.”

“Guys,” she says. “Always clueless.”

“Yep.”

“Chris—what’s going on? With you and Marsh?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Start with what’s happened since I left. What do they want?”

That’s a hard question, because I still don’t know exactly what they want. Marsh seems to want control, while Kinner wants me to take over for him.

I stumble in trying to tell Poe some of the facts. I mention my great-grandfather having to do with it, that he’s still alive and how he controls things, including Staunch.

“Wait a minute,” Poe says with wide eyes. “Is he demon possessed?”

“This guy named Kinner? I don’t know.”

“That’s real, you know. It really does happen.”

“Yeah, I don’t know.”

“What? Are you serious? You stabbed someone and watched him die, and then he shows back up. But you don’t believe in demons?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just—the whole possession/exorcism thing. Seems a bit Hollywood to me.”

“Maybe the body doesn’t have to be spinning and vomiting pea soup in order to be possessed,” Poe says. “Have you thought of that?”

I glance around to see if anybody can hear her. There’s a guy in the corner, a college student, working on a laptop. Then there’s a man in his thirties drinking a cup of coffee and studying his phone.

“I don’t know what’s happening. Or what they have planned.”

“You have to get out.”

I shake my head, thinking about Kelsey again. I have to explain to her about Poe. I have to tell her what’s really happening.

“I can’t just leave without other people.”

There’s my uncle Robert, I explain to her. Mom, who is doing better.

“The cute blonde—what’s her name?”

I act surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Kelsey—that’s her name. Right?”

I nod.

“You guys a thing?”

I shake my head.

“Yeah, you are,” Poe says.

“No. It’s not—we are, but we aren’t. Because I don’t want something …”

Poe grows serious and nods, understanding what I’m talking about.

We will forever be connected by the death of the girl who was a friend to both of us.

We will never be able to forget Jocelyn Evans.

“I don’t want you to end up like her either,” Poe says.

“I won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just—I just know.”

“If they can—” Poe stops in midsentence and lowers her voice. “If they can kill an FBI agent, that means they can do anything.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“We still don’t know about Stuart. Or those others. Right?”

I think of the tall figure in sweats that I saw walking the halls of Harrington.

“Poe—was Stuart—was he tall?”

The question seems to come from out of the blue, and her reaction says that. “Why?”

“I just—I saw a snapshot of someone who might have been him. Tall guy. Wearing sweats.”

“He ran cross-country and was always in sweats. Yeah, he was tall.”

Well, good, because I saw him, minus some brain and skin and tissue and all that.

“Something big is going to happen on Memorial Day,” I tell her.

“What?”

“I don’t know. But—I’m going to be involved. I’m like the star of the show or something.”

“You have to get out before then,” Poe says. “Graduation is before, right?”

“The nineteenth.”

“Chris—what, are you going to spend the summer around Solitary? You need to leave.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Yes, it is. How easy was it to come here?”

“There are others.”

“So you do whatever you can to get them out too. Buy a bus and drive it out of town. I don’t know. Do anything.”

They’ll hunt me down, the same way they got me to come back after I left and went to Chicago over New Year’s Eve. If not my mom or Kelsey, they’ll find someone else or some other way.

I’m going to try and prove Poe wrong, but I’m reminded just sitting here how strong her personality can be.

Good ole Chris, always surrounded by strong-willed women.

“What are you thinking?” she asks.

“That obvious?”

“What?”

“That I’m thinking?”

She laughs. For a while we talk about lighter things, about things that don’t involve life and death and midnight sacrifices. It takes about fifteen minutes for her to reveal the real reason for her outward transformation.

“You have a boyfriend,” I say.

“No, not really. Not official.”

“Oh come on,” I say.

“Yeah, we like each other.”

“And you let him tell you what to do, huh?”

“No,” Poe says. “I did this myself. Weston was curious, that was all.”

“Weston, huh?”

“What?”

“Sounds like a made-up name.”

“What?” Poe thinks I’m being serious.

“I’m just kidding.”

The humor is certainly welcome.

We talk for a long time about school and track and jobs and licenses. It’s nice to talk about normal things.

We suddenly realize that it’s ten o’clock.

“Tell me you’re not driving home tonight,” I say to her.

“No. I’m not. I’m staying with a girlfriend I knew at Harrington. She was a senior when I was a sophomore. She goes to Furman University. I should probably get going.”

There’s so much more to say and do, but I nod and stand up.

When we go outside to the cool night, Poe looks anxious again. “You have to be careful.”

“I will,” I tell her. “You too.”

“Chris—I mean it.”

“I know. Thanks for—for coming all this way.”

“I wanted to see you. Just to make sure.”

“To make sure what?” I ask.

“That you were still really here. That it was you and not some random person emailing me. I wanted to see you face-to-face.”

“I’m glad,” I say.

And yes, I am glad.

I hug her again.

“Keep me in the loop,” Poe says. “Okay?”

“I will. I promise.”

“Get out of Solitary. Get out soon, Chris. Or you’ll end up like Jocelyn. You know it too. I know you do.”