M.I.N.D. (19 page)

***

We stop outside the solarium. Through the glass I can see his parents on the couch. They look two-dimensional, like a photograph. They're not even talking, just staring into space.

“Keep your eyes on my parents,” Ethan says, standing behind me. “I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to keep looking.” He places his hands on my shoulders. His skin feels warm, right through my shirt. “It was the Saturday of the carnival. Amanda came home around seven. She was upset and went straight to her room. A couple of hours later, she came downstairs all happy, and I knew she'd made up with Brendan. Then when I was in the kitchen, I heard the front door slam. She didn't tell my parents she was going out again. They were pretty mad.”

I nod. “No matter how much she and Brendan fought, she always went back.”

“She got home around eleven,” Ethan continues in a dull voice. “She was totally freaked. And her arms…they were all cut up and bleeding. She said she fell. But I didn't believe her.”

“She was wearing a sweater,” I say. “The day of the bus crash. It was blistering outside and she was wearing a sweater.”

“The Sunday after the hit-and-run, she had on that locket. She was playing with it with her fingers, like she was nervous or something. At dinner, when my father mentioned the accident on Canton Hill Road, she bolted from the table. That's what started me thinking. Then you mentioned the locket in the MRI room, and I got scared. The night I drove you home from the river, you brought up the hit-and-run, and I just couldn't deal.”

Mrs. Lockhart picks up a magazine. She flips through a few pages, then lets the magazine fall in her lap. She leans into her husband, and I turn my head. You don't have to attach yourself to someone else's mind to feel intrusive.

I face Ethan. “You knew. That's why you lashed out at me. You didn't want to believe it.”

“I suspected. It's not the same as knowing.” He looks back at his parents. “Did you ever hear of Erwin Schrodinger?”

“Does he go to our school?”

“He was an Austrian physicist. He put a cat in a box with a vial of hydrocyanic acid and a small amount of a radioactive substance. He said that as long as we didn't know what happened to the cat, then the cat was both alive and dead at the same time. According to quantum law, the outcome doesn't exist until it's observed.”

“Tell that to the poor cat,” I say, picturing Oreo's pouting face.

“The point is, as long as I don't know for sure, then it might not be true. Maybe Amanda is in that place you described, maybe she's not. But even if she is, you said it yourself, it was like a dream. How do you know you're interpreting it right? How do you know she won't come back?”

“It's what I feel,” I answer. “If I can't trust how I feel, how can I trust anything?”

“Feelings can be ambivalent. Believe me, I know. Don't you think I'm going crazy with this? If I knew for sure that Brendan was driving in that hit-and-run, that he implicated Amanda, nothing on earth could keep me from ripping him to pieces. But what if I'm wrong? What if they had nothing to do with it?” His chin quivers. “Look at my parents, Cass. Take another good, long look.”

Reluctantly, I look through the glass. Mrs. Lockhart has her arms around her husband. He's weeping openly, his shoulders heaving. I've never see a grown man cry before, and I'm afraid that if I speak, I'll start crying too.

“They might lose their daughter,” Ethan says, his voice breaking. “How much more can they take? There's no proof, not one shred of evidence, and I won't chance hurting them on mere speculation.”

I nod wordlessly, choking back tears.

Sensing he needs some private time with his parents, I wait outside the solarium while he says good-bye. A few minutes later, as we're walking down the corridor, he reaches for my hand. We've made a pact, I think. A silent one. But then I think about those three little birds. Remembering Amanda's anguish, I wonder if it's a pact I can keep.

“I want to stop at my house,” he says as we wait for the elevator. “That phone you envisioned gave me an idea. I want you to have Amanda's cell.”

“What's wrong with the phone I have?” Besides the fact that it has no GPS or data, and texting is a nightmare. It's one of those ancient flip things, but it still works. My mom will only spring for what she deems absolutely necessary; it was hard enough convincing her I need a laptop for school.

“I want you to take it,” he insists. “It has an enhanced 9-1-1 and a great GPS. Accurate within thirty feet. Not that I think you're in any danger,” he quickly adds. “It's just a precaution.”

“What about a passcode?” I ask. “How can I use her phone if I can't log on?”

“Not a problem. Sure, it has fingerprint recognition and all that other fun stuff, but she never bothered with any of that. I was always yelling at her to lock it, her laptop too, but as usual, she didn't listen. You should set up your own passcode anyway.”

“Does it have a breathalyzer too? What's next, DNA scanning? Holographic screens?” Something occurs to me, and my heart skips. “Can it remember? Can you find out where she was at the time of the hit-and-run?”

He frowns. “It's a moot point. At around ten, my parents tried to track her online, but she'd turned off her phone. I heard there's a phone that can track all the time, even when it's not on. Now that's something my parents could have used.”

My mom would probably love that. A long-distance, on-demand Cassie-tracker. “You don't think that's a little much?” I ask.

He flushes. “Don't judge them, Cassie. They weren't always so…vigilant.”

He doesn't elaborate. He doesn't have to. We both know how much Amanda had changed. “So what are you saying? You want to start tracking me?” Talk about Big Brother. Well, he might be Amanda's big brother, but he's not mine.

He cups my chin with his hand. “I don't know who you saw in the corridor, but until we know for sure, we have to be careful. Schrodinger's cat, remember?” His eyes sadden. “I don't want to lose you too.”

***

We talk a little on the drive home, reminiscing about when we were kids. Then we fall silent. He's lost in his world, me in mine, and I have to wonder, will anything ever be normal again? There's that word again,
normal
. It's been a foreign word for a very long time.

Back at his house, the first thing we do is check the garage, and whaddaya know, there's his jacket, at the back of the cupboard, behind a mothballed wedding gown.

“It still doesn't mean anything,” he says, but it's obvious he's mystified.

We enter the house through the mudroom, and I feel a pang. The kitchen was like my second home. I recall a big, wide place that was always full of light; now the room feels gloomy. Somehow, too, it seems smaller, as if all the life has been sucked right out.

I follow Ethan into the hallway. “That's new,” I observe as he punches in the code to disable the alarm.

“We had a break-in. He got in through a window in the family room. A neighbor saw something and called the police. He must have run off when he saw them coming. Nothing was stolen, but it sure freaked us out.”

I shudder. “That's terrible. This neighborhood has always been so safe.”

But I'm not thinking about the neighborhood. I'm picturing Brendan throwing down the picture of Zack, then climbing out through Amanda's window. A theory is brewing in my head, but I keep it to myself. There's something I'm missing, but I can't put my finger on it…

“A sign of the times,” Ethan says grimly. “It happened a couple of days after the bus crash. I figure someone knew our routine. We spend a lot of time at the hospital.”

Upstairs in Amanda's room, I feel her presence everywhere. Her room is exactly as I remember: the white rattan furniture, the queen-size bed with the pastel comforter, her night table stacked with magazines. I look over at the brass photograph tree on her dresser, its branches overflowing with scenes from her life. I picture her mother tidying up, getting the room ready for when Amanda comes home, and once again I fight back tears.

“It's not here,” Ethan says, rummaging through her desk. He slaps his forehead, then slams the drawer shut. “I forgot. I was charging it. It's in my room.” He breaks into an unexpected grin. “You're in luck. You get to see the quintessential male boudoir.”

Strewn across the pillows on his bed is a blue-striped bathrobe. A tan comforter matches the curtains. I don't know about the boudoir part, but it's definitely a guy's room, with old model airplanes from when he was a kid, lots of electronics, wires and cables everywhere. On his desk, next to a
Star Wars
mug and a miniature screwdriver, is a book with the title,
Mechanics & Magic
. My eyes flit to the busy i-accessory station, and it's like I've been hit with lightning. Why didn't I realize this earlier?

“Don't you think it's strange?” I ask, my heart pounding in my ears.

“What?” he asks, fiddling with something on Amanda's phone.

“The break-in. You said nothing was taken. I can understand the intruder not hauling away the huge flat-screen TV, but what about the Blu-ray player? What about your mother's imitation Ming statue? Wouldn't he at least snatch a movie or two on his way out?”

Ethan looks up. “What's strange about it? He got scared and took off.”

“It was Brendan,” I say with certainty. “He was looking for something.”

“Now there's a stretch,” Ethan says, and goes back to his tinkering.

“Why is it a stretch?” I ask. “I saw what Amanda saw. There was a fire, and Brendan was searching through the flames. I even saw him escaping through her window.”

“It wasn't real, Cassie. Do you see any fire damage? Besides, the prowler wasn't even in her room.”

“Exactly. It's symbolic. Amanda has something he wants, and the smoke was obscuring his vision.” My hand flies to my throat. “Oh my God. The locket.”

Ethan shakes his head. “Why would he be worried about something that can't prove a thing? The locket isn't unique, Cassie. Those trinkets are a dime a dozen. Who's to say he didn't win it for her at the carnival?”

I hate to admit it, but he has a point. I still believe it came from the crime scene, but there are probably hundreds just like it, rose and all. “Fine,” I say. “But we still have to tell the police. He was looking for something, that I'm sure of. It's newly discovered evidence.” At least it will be, once it's discovered.

“And tell them what?” Ethan says, sounding tired. “How can I tell them that you suspect Brendan without telling them why? They'd lock you in the psych ward and throw away the key.”

“What about the cuts on his girlfriend's arms? What about the way she was acting? Tell them about that. That's pretty suspicious, if you ask me.”

“It's just speculation. I told you, I'm not doing anything unless I have proof. Absolute, concrete proof.”

Speculation or denial? The last thing I want to do is to hurt him or his parents, but I just can't leave Amanda floating around in some mystical halfway house forever. I felt her pain, and it was as real as it gets. That's all the proof
I
need.

And what about Rose's parents? Not knowing the truth can be as much a prison as keeping it concealed. I picture them in the hospital lobby, struggling with their grief. Don't they have a right to know what happened?

Now what? Hack into Brendan? But what good is my ability if I can't read minds? Do I do what Leanne suggested and hang around till Doomsday, waiting for him to make a mistake?

Somewhere in his mind is a map to the evidence. But to get there, I'd probably have to kill him.

***

“It's going to be awesome,” Vardina chirps an hour later. “I'll pick you up at six.”

I'm sitting in bed, talking on Amanda's cell phone. My laptop is balancing perilously on my pillow. I punch in the password Ethan gave me and a window pops up on the screen, showing me exactly where I am. Well, not
exactly
. It can't show me sitting in bed or taking a bath. But on Westwood, the street where I live, there's a bright red star instead of my house.

“See you tomorrow,” I say. I hang up, and lo and behold, the star is still there. I turn off the phone and the star disappears. I turn it back on and voilà, there's that star again, winking at me from my pillow. Cool, yes, though a tad invasive. I know all about invasive.

Yes, I confess. I went through Amanda's messages. Chalk it up to my new snoopy nature. But the only text even remotely incriminating was the one Brendan sent from the back of the bus:

dont cut off ur nose 2 spit on ur face

It proved how moronic he is. I also looked through her photos, which made me sad. She used to love taking pictures of everything and anyone—the sky, the river, and especially little kids. Now they were all of Brendan and his loser friends. Nothing that even hinted at who she once was.

I try not to think about that. Instead, I focus on tomorrow. I'm going to that dinner at the country club. Well, why not? I'm no longer grounded (though I promised I'd be home by eleven), and I really like Vardina, even if she does have problems. Like I don't?

Plus, I have an ulterior motive.

After showing me how to navigate the phone—it's supposed to be user-friendly, but compared to my flip phone, it's like deciphering
The Da Vinci Code
—Ethan drove me home so he could return to the hospital. The moment I got up to my room, the Da Vinci phone rang. I recognized the tune to “He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother.” It had taken Amanda weeks to find that ringtone; she must have listened to a thousand classics, searching for the perfect song.

Smiling, I looked out my window, and there was Ethan, leaning against his car. “I wanted to say good night again,” he said. “But first, I need you to promise you won't do anything crazy.”