Jasper Jones (37 page)

Something had burst in her, leaving a black hole that sucked and swallowed everything into nothingness. She wanted to dive into the water. To sink, swim, be stolen away by the weak current, she didn’t care. But she stayed where she was, curled and furled, until the first light bled through the canopy. Then she scrapped on. She followed the river, hoping that it might lead her to town. It did. By the time she reached the old traffic bridge, her nightdress was torn by blackberry bushes and bracken, her legs were etched with red lines. Her feet were sodden. But she made it home before Corrigan awoke, without her sister. Eliza crossed the lawn. Their car was still gone. The lights were out. Birds were trilling a chorus for the sun. And she crawled wearily through her bedroom window, which she’d left open. And she read on her bed with the cat on her lap. She read a letter which was never meant for her. It was for Jasper Jones. It was a messy scrawl, spidery and fast. Small and scratchy. Which broke her heart because Laura had such beautiful, careful handwriting. And it destroyed her, this letter. It finished her off. It was the saddest, angriest constellation of words she’d ever traced with her eyes. Thisiswhathappened. They were planning to leave together, Laura and Jasper. They were going to run away to the city. To start a new life. And they weren’t going to tell anybody. And they would never come back. Despite everything, Eliza couldn’t help but feel a cold spike of betrayal. This whole other life that she wasn’t privy to. This whole other world, this bubble she wasn’t allowed inside. But then Jasper Jones vanished. Laura was confused and upset; she thought Jasper had left her behind. While I knew that Jasper had been working the orchards for those two weeks, Laura suspected the worst. That he had abandoned her and fled to the city on his own. That he didn’t love her at all. That he’d broken his promise. And all this had been confirmed for her when there were no fresh signs of him in his glade. The fireplace had healed over. The ground in the tree hollow where they slept was undisturbed. Laura had been waiting to see him that night. Had Jasper shown up, she was going to tell him things. Everything. And she was going to beg him to leave with her before dawn. Because
she was in Trouble. She had to go. Now. Urgently. She needed him. Because he was the strongest thing in this town. Because she couldn’t go alone. Because they were supposed to go together. Because there was something insidious growing inside her. Do you understand? Something was very wrong. A measure of milky poison had caught hold and infected her, and now she was in trouble. She was rotten inside. Something worse than disease. And she had to leave. She didn’t know what else to do. She was afraid. And disgraced. Because she’d come out and said it, she finally pointed her finger, all too late, all too late. This was the night she stood up. It was in the letter. She swallowed her shame and she told her mother what had been happening, all this time, under her roof, what it had left her with, the trouble she was in. She told her why she had to steal out as often as she did to see Jasper Jones, even after she was caught and cautioned. Told her why it was she couldn’t stand to stay in that house anymore. What evil befell her during the night. What grim and sinister things her room had accommodated. Why it was she had to steal away to where it was safe, more and more, whenever she could. And her mother didn’t believe her, can you imagine? Not a word of it. She defended him. She stood there and called Laura a liar. Her own daughter. And him? He sat at the table, quiet and calm. The shire president. And when he burst into her room later, he hissed and he leered and he threatened her. He wasn’t even sorry. He had no love in him. And she spat and yelled and flailed her thin arms with all the courage she had left, and he raised his hand and hit her, hard, in the face, which he’d never done. He knocked her down to shut her up. And he swung again, twice, right at the core of her, right where the trouble was. And as she struggled to suck in air, he squeezed her jaw and he warned her, his ugly red face, his rancid medicine breath, he warned her not to say another word. To anybody. He turned to go. As her single last act of defiance, Laura threw her glass paperweight at his back. She missed. It hit the wall and smashed. He slammed the door. That’swhathappened. And she complied. She never did say another word. Her courage was spent. It gave way to
dismay. She wrote, though. She wrote plenty. She poured it out for Jasper Jones. She felt abandoned and heartbroken and bitter and ruined. It was as though she wanted him to hurt like she was hurting. There was nothing left in this world for her. And then she fell back from the bough, like a diver on the edge of a boat, paper in her fist. She killed two birds with one stone. When she left her room, she knew it was for the last time, one way or another. That’swhathappened. It’s out. It’s out.

***

Eliza reads me the letter in that curious accent, without flinching. As though the story isn’t hers and the words have no meaning. As though it concerns people she doesn’t care about, fictional people she’s never met. Like it’s a dream she’s just woken from. The missing pages are in place. Eliza Wishart has cleaned this mess with one swipe, but there’s no joy in what’s left. Just the sadness of knowing.

It’s awful. It’s mystifying and it’s tragic, but it makes more sense to me than condemning Jack Lionel or some other shifty figure. It feels like truth. Laura really could make her own way here, she really could climb that tree. Her father put those marks on her face; he put the fear and the poison in her belly. Despair had her clad in nightclothes and no footwear. And everything else conspired to make her fall.

Her father started it, Laura ended it, and now Eliza is fielding the blame because she saw it happen. I feel so bad for her. I can’t imagine what it has been like, holding it in all this time.

Laura Wishart wasn’t kidnapped by Mad Jack Lionel. But it seems she was snatched away by something infinitely more sinister and terrifying. By the same thing that had us pursuing Lionel in the first place. The same thing that’s thieved my appetite and kept me awake and has me shying away from dragonflies. The thing that makes this town so quick to close in on itself and point its finger, that had it closing its doors and calling its children inside. She just couldn’t hold on anymore. She had no one to shield her from it.

I sit and look up at the bough where Laura sat. And a cold part of
me is suddenly furious at Eliza for taking that letter. I think about how different everything would have been if it had found Jasper’s hands that night. I would have been free of all this. I would have stayed safe in my room. I might have read for a little longer. Then I would have slept like I used to. I would have woken as I normally would have. None the wiser. Much the lighter. I’d never have known Jasper Jones, I’d never have shared his story, I’d never have known this awful brick in my stomach. Misery and melancholy and terror would just be words I knew, like all those gemstones I collected in my suitcase that I never knew a thing about. I’d never have been haunted by Laura Wishart. I’d never have helped shackle her body to a stone, and I’d never have swallowed that rock’s weight in sadness. I’d never have had such a secret to guard. I’d never have been burdened with all this stupid guilt.
Sorry sorry sorry
. We wouldn’t have accused a lonely old man of murder. I’d never have read those horrible things that people do to each other. I’d never have caught my mother out, I’d never have
known
. And I’d be free to hold the hand of Eliza Wishart without fearing that it might be the last time.

Still, perhaps it was best the letter didn’t reach Jasper Jones. I don’t know what he would have done, but I doubt it would have been
my
window he visited. My guess is that he’d have marched straight to her old man. And there’s no telling what he might have done once he got there. Maybe that’s what Laura wanted. To her mind, they’d both betrayed her terribly.

It’s futile anyway, that kind of thinking. I can’t blame Eliza for picking up that packet of answers any more than I can rebuke Jasper Jones for arriving a few minutes too late. If Jasper had been there that night, Laura would still be here today. She’d still be alive.

But I am afraid of what Jasper’s response will be when he learns this. That he really
could
have stopped her. He’ll never forgive himself now. It makes me want to conceal the truth from him. To bury it, drown it; to let him believe some other history.

Eliza leans forward.

“Now it’s your turn. You have to tell me things, Charlie.”

“Like what?”

“Like how you know Jasper Jones. How come you were here with him.”

“How did you know I’ve been here?”

“Because I was leaving here one night and I heard someone coming just as I made it to the road. And it was the both of you. You were on your way here with Jasper.”

“You came back here?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you find it again, this place?”

“I just remembered somehow. I couldn’t forget it. And it’s straightforward enough, if you follow the path and don’t panic.”

I’m silent for a moment, then I look past her to the tree.

“It was you who carved that word,” I say.

She looks behind her, and nods.

“I used a church key from inside the hollow of the tree. I came back here to see Laura. After all the patrols and the searches had died down a bit, and after my mother stopped checking my room every half hour, I snuck out. I
had
to come see her again. I had to say some things to her. I don’t know what I was expecting, Charlie, but I didn’t think she’d be missing.”

I feel her looking at me. I can’t meet her eye.

“What did Jasper do with her?” she asks. “Do you know? Where is she?”

I look at my feet and bite my lip. The creeping curse. It’s tempting to absolve myself entirely. I could drop Jasper right in it and run away, make him the scapegoat again. I could erase myself from the whole story, free myself from involvement and wrongdoing. Wash my hands of the whole thing. She would never have to know; she’d have no reason to hate me.

But I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t keep it in. And I know I’m breaking a promise by talking about it, but it’s swelled and welled in me for so long. It’s out. It’s out. I point at the dam.

“She’s in there. She’s at the bottom.”

“In
there
?”

“Yeah.”

“He threw her in the
water
?”

I almost bite my lip clean through.

“We both did. We both did it. I was here too. He brought me back here that same night. The night that Laura … I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

“You came here that
night
? Charlie, you
knew
? And you did that?” She points at the dam.

I nod. “Jasper came to my window after he left here. I’d never even spoken to him before. He said he needed my help. I didn’t know a thing, honest. I just followed him here. And then I saw her. I saw Laura. The same way you saw her.”

“You
knew
? You knew this whole time?”

I nod again. I feel like shit, but the sickness is shifting.

“I saw her up there, and it was horrible. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And Jasper didn’t know what to do. He wouldn’t believe for a moment that she might have done it herself. He was convinced it was someone else, because of Laura’s face and how her dress was torn and how she had scratches and no shoes. And he didn’t think that she could climb that high to get the rope, or even make her own way here. I don’t know. It seems so
stupid
now. But we really believed, you know, that someone had brought her here and done this to her. And Jasper was scared because this is
his
place, and if they found her here as she was, they’d say it was him. They’d lock him up for it without asking questions. And so he said we had to hide her. To give us enough time to work out what happened. And so he climbed up there and cut her down. And we tied her to a stone. And …”

I shake my head. Eliza doesn’t speak.

“Please don’t hate me,” I say quietly. I’m contorting my hands, like I’m trying to twist them off my wrists.

“Why didn’t you say anything to me? That
really
hurts, Charlie.”

I hold out my hands.

“I couldn’t. I wanted to, I really did. But I made a promise to Jasper.
And I didn’t know what you knew. I didn’t know what you would do if I told you. If you’d have told me all this weeks ago …” I trail off.

The silence settles again. I pick at the grass, keep my head down. Eliza remains level and calm. I feel so tired.

“Why did Jasper stop seeing my sister? Did he not love her anymore?”

“No. No, it wasn’t that. He still loved her. Very much. Jasper was down south. Picking peaches. He was getting some money together for when they left, enough to get them started. That’s what he told me. He got back that night with all his savings. He went straight to your house, but Laura wasn’t in her room,” I tell her.

“And then he came here. Too late.”

I nod.

Shit luck and chance. It doesn’t seem fair. Laura Wishart did nothing wrong. She didn’t do a thing to deserve this. And the two people who loved her the most are hurting the worst and harboring the most blame, for something they could never have known. And the monster who put the flint and force to this tinder just reels in the pity of this whole town. It’s not right.

“Why did you scratch that word into the tree?” I ask Eliza.

“Because it’s my fault, Charlie.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is. I could have stopped her. I should have said something, I should have jumped out and told her to get down. But I didn’t
do
anything. I sat and just watched it happen because I was scared. I killed her, Charlie. It’s like if you just watch someone drown from the shore without swimming out to help them. That’s what I did. It’s my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It
was
. You weren’t here. I had all this time to say something, and I didn’t. I just sat here. And then it happened. And she was gone. Just like that. And I didn’t do anything.”

“But you didn’t
know
what would happen. You didn’t know anybody was drowning. You couldn’t have known.”