Notes from Ghost Town (18 page)

A pause. “What do you mean, you’ve
seen
him?”

“I’ve seen him a few times. His ghost.”

“What?”
She’s driving more slowly now, like she’s forgetting she needs to press the gas to make the car move.

“I did
not
believe it at first—I thought I was hallucinating—but now … he showed me some box Mom had that I never knew about. Full of caramels. He says Mom didn’t kill him, and—and so we were playing the piano to help jog his memory about what really happened that night. That’s why I was in Pork and Beans today—it’s where Dad’s been storing Mom’s piano—and then some shithead slashed my tires. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do from here, or how I’m supposed to help. They both need my help. But—but I don’t know if I can, Rain.”

“Liv,” she says, very gently. Familiar streets wind around us now. The sky’s beginning to calm, rain sucked back into the upper atmosphere. Her hands are pale angles against the dark round of the steering wheel. The trees cut the sky into segments, disordered lines and shapes. “You’re driving yourself crazy. Okay?
You
are not crazy, but you’re grieving, hard, and—and that can make you … see things. I remember after my grandma died—and, you know, she lived with us for like ten years, so we were really, really close—I thought I used to see her sometimes, standing in my doorway, or hiding in my closet.” She laughs a little. “I was so sure she was just hiding in my closet.”

“Well, maybe she
was—
”

“No, just listen, Liv. She wasn’t. But I wanted so badly for her to be there that I
invented
her. It’s not that unusual. I saw this grief counselor, you know, my mom sent us all to this lady, and at the time of course I fought against it, but, girl, it helped.”

I fix my eyes on the blur of passing trees. On the cut-up sky. “I don’t need to see a grief counselor, Raina. I need to help my mom, and I need to help Stern.”

“It’s not up to you—what happens to your mom—it’s not something you can change. As much as you want to, you can’t. And Stern is
dead
,” she says, like I’m stupid, like I just really
don’t get it
. “He’s not coming back. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I think, maybe you need to just … let it go.”

“Let it go? How am I supposed to let it go? My mom wouldn’t let it go if
I
was in there. She’d fight until she fixed it.”

Raina has pulled the car over onto the side of the road at some point, but I’ve only just realized that we’re not moving. “But you can’t fix it, Liv. That’s what I’m saying. You can’t
solve
all of this shit for everyone. It’s not your job.”

I shake my head, anger surging in my chest. “See? I didn’t say anything because I knew you wouldn’t get it.”

“I
do
get it, Liv. I
know
Miriam, and there’s no way in hell she’d be okay with what you’re going through right now. If she knew you were suffering this much for her sake,
that’s
what would kill her. And you know I’m right.”

There’s no more use in trying to convince her of something she’s not ready to believe—I’d probably have the same reaction if she told me what I told her. Ghosts.
Right
. I
did
have the same reaction. I release a weird, choked, sob-laugh. “I know. She’d hate it. She’d be so sad.” I stare at my hands. “I don’t know what else to do. No one teaches you this.”

“Let it go, Liv. Let it go. Your mom’s a really strong lady, like you said. She’s going to be okay, whatever happens. She’ll pull through. She’ll fight.”

We’re silent for the next few minutes as we drive through a Miami whose grayness feels unbearably heavy right now, to Coconut Grove, to Dad’s too-smooth concrete driveway. I still can’t see this house as
my
home. My home includes Mom and is full of African masks and ceramic dishes and sheet music and instruments and poetry and mismatched glass jars full of handpicked flowers. And I would do anything to have that back again. Anything.

Raina unbuckles her seat belt and turns to me, her eyes watery and warm, some distant part of my brain still vaguely registering their cinnamon color, or the absence of their cinnamon color, at least. She leans over and wraps her arms around me in a tight hug. “I miss you, Liv. And I want everything to be okay. I want
you
to be okay. God, I really do.”

I hug her back.

“You should come over tonight,” she says, wiping her
eyes with the back of a hand. “We can watch old
True Blood
episodes! And make appletinis!”

I try and gulp down my doubt, the permanent choke that’s been lodged in my throat since I came back to Miami. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I should go to her house and watch TV and drink some sweet liquory thing and forget about everything else. It’s the kind of thing other girls do, girls with regular mothers and regular families and regular brains.

“That sounds good.” But then Stern’s face flickers through my mind, and I know that I can’t. I shake my head. “But I’m sorry, Rain. I have work to do.”

“Work?” she asks, incredulous. “What kind of
work
do you have to do? Why can’t you just
hang out
with me, instead of driving yourself—”

“Crazy! I get it!” I burst out, chest burning hot, heart beating madly. “You think I’m crazy. You know what? You’re right. I’m
not
normal. I can’t just do
normal
things like sit around drinking apple-fucking-tinis and watching
True Blood
while my mother rots in a cell. And if that’s what you need from a friend”—I grip the handle of the car door—“then maybe you should just call somebody else. Like Tif. Or
Hilary
.”

“Are you seriously going to give me shit for making new—”

It’s too late. I leap out of the car, slam the door shut. A wave of anger takes over my body and I ride it, not thinking, not caring.

Raina puts the window down, calls out to me: “Liv—stop. Talk to me. Liv!” Her voice sounds stung, split-apart and separated into strands of bewilderment. “I never said I thought you were
crazy
.”

I keep marching toward the front door. Don’t turn around. Don’t give in.

“You can’t ignore me forever!” Raina calls out. “I’m not going to let you. I just hope you know that.”

I shut the front door behind me and press my back against it. I hear Raina’s car pull away, tires squealing down the street. I feel my heart shrink up even smaller. I try to steady my breath. Dad and Heather and Wynn aren’t home. Stern’s in his thick black hole of nothingness.

And I’m alone.

P
lease enjoy this Verizon ringback tone while your party is reached
. A Lupe Fiasco song; only half a verse plays until he answers. “Well, well, well.” Austin pauses briefly—a muffled cough, the sound of a door being shut. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” I say, clutching my phone tightly, suddenly a little nervous.

“I thought maybe you’d died of seasickness last night and no one’d bothered to tell me. Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t get to take you out on a date that didn’t end in you vomiting.”

“I take it that’s not how your date’s usually end up?”

“Not exactly.” He clears his throat. “Are you okay though, for real?”

I pause, sucking in a deep breath. “Austin—I—” and then it breaks open, spills out. “No. Not really.”

“What’s wrong?” He sounds surprised, and genuinely concerned. “Do I hear crying over there, Tithe?”

“I’m not crying,” I say quickly, swiping a hand across
my nose. Then I tell him about the slashed tires and he listens patiently, in silence.

“Holy shit. That’s messed up. Why would someone do that? You don’t seem like the type to get into a lot of cat-fights.”

“I don’t. Maybe it was a prank, but …” I squeeze my cell phone extra hard. “It could have been something personal, too.”

“I’m not really following you.”

“It’s this piano thing—has to do with Mom, and this competition—I—I can’t really get into it right now.”

Can’t get into the ghost-Stern of it. The Gray Space of it. The crazy
.

“Wanna come here?” he asks. I hear someone calling for him from another room. “Hold on a second.” His palm muffles the receiver, but I make out my name, and Ted’s voice, though the rest is indecipherable. “Ted just asked if you wanted to come for dinner. It must be some kind of occasion, if he’s eating at home.”

My breath catches in my throat. “Oh. Um. I don’t—I don’t know if I can.” I pause, inhale a thick gulp of air-conditioned air. “Can you—do you think you can just come over here?”

A brief pause. “I was supposed to hang with the boys in a few, but I can hang with them any time. And you’re a slippery little sucker.” I can hear the little smile spreading across his face. The stupidly adorable, smug little smile.

“Good,” I say. The resolve tightens inside of me. I’ve
started this and I won’t stop. I won’t let it go, no matter what Raina says. “I have a favor to ask you.”

Marietta Jones’s address is listed in her info section on Facebook. Over a thousand articles pop up when I google her name:
Marietta Jones earns Golden Ticket to Juilliard; Jones Beats out Best-of-the-best for Admission Into Top-Tier Music School; Pianist Perseveres Despite Lifelong Battle with Anxiety and Depression
—all from
The Sun Sentinel
and the
Palm Beach Post
in West Palm Beach, where her family lives.

Thankfully, Austin doesn’t ask too many questions, other than to say, “I didn’t know you were into threesomes, Liv,” when I pass him her address.

We plug Marietta Jones’ address into Austin’s navigation system and start to drive. He lets me fiddle with his iPod and I wrestle Bon Iver out of a whole host of rap and R&B and top-forty.

“I knew you would pick this,” he says, sounding almost triumphant as he pushes the sunglasses from the top of his head to cover his eyes from the sun’s midafternoon glare.

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He shakes his head, but I can tell he’s holding something back. He cracks a smile. “Okay. I’ll admit something—I just downloaded this guy’s music onto my ’pod because I thought you might like it.”

“You just … guessed?” I sit up straighter in my soft leather seat and examine the calm perfection of his profile—little slope of his strong-bridged nose, clear-water eyes, long-lashed, bow of his lips. “Women’s intuition?”

“Not exactly. I saw that you liked him on your Facebook page. There it is. Feel free to laugh.”

“No. I think—I think you’re sweet, Austin.”

He smiles his big, lit-up grin. Blindingly white teeth. Amazing how easily a couple of minutes in the presence of Austin Morse—his citrus-and-spice scent, the heat off his skin, the flush of his cheeks, the little freckles dotted across his nose—can suddenly mute my brain to Stern and the events of this morning.

I don’t know how that happens—how you can love one person and want another so damn bad at the exact same time.

My phone buzzes so many times with repeated texts from Raina (
Liv stop. You’re being immature; Liv. This is ridic; SERIOUSLY LIV STOP IGNORING ME
) that I eventually turn it off entirely. By this point, we’re stuck in the weird knot of three o’clock traffic, and “For Emma, Forever Ago” has ended.

Austin switches us over to the radio. “Don’t worry, Tithe,” he tells me as he fiddles with the smooth black dial, stopping when
’60s on 6
flashes across the little strip of screen. “I know what you want.”

I roll my eyes at him. I pull my sketchbook out of my purse and lay into it—into the blurs of passing cars with
wide sweeping lines, the wispy humps of stratocumulus clouds, the assaulting bright of the sun. I don’t notice that we’ve pulled off the highway and into a neighborhood—into
her
neighborhood—until Austin turns the radio off and announces: “Snap to it, Red. We’re here.”

I shut my sketchbook and sit straight up, suddenly terrified.

I plead with him silently not to turn off the car. Maybe he’ll just put it right into reverse, or try to talk me out of confronting Marietta.

“Look, I really haven’t thought this through,” I admit, my breath coming fast. “Like, at all.”

“Well, it’s a little too late for that.” He gets out of the car and opens my door for me; I watch his muscles flex beneath his soft white T-shirt. “Buck up, Tithe. We’ve got this. We’ve got this chick on lockdown.” Macho Austin Morse, at it again. Weirdly, it makes me feel better. I step out of the car with shaking legs.

We walk from the long driveway to the Jones’ large three-story, wide-windowed home, all still and silent. My heart flutters in my chest. Austin grabs my hand, suddenly, as we reach the front door. Surprised, I let him hold it.

“I’ve got your back, Olivia,” he says, kissing my knuckles with soft lips. “Seriously. You just let me know.”

I take a deep breath, ring the bell, hear the knob twist almost instantly from the inside like someone’s been planted by the door, waiting for some action. Expecting it. The door opens; a slight, dark-skinned girl with eyes that
seem to take up most of her face stands in the frame in a tutu, unscuffed toe shoes—pink I’m sure, if I could properly see—a gray that’s calmer than yellow, darker than white, creamy, somehow. “Jones residence,” she says, with such well-trained poise it comes across unnatural, slightly robotic. I hesitate, look briefly down at her—she stands in fourth position, right foot crossed and pointed out at an impossible-looking angle in front of her left foot, pointed just as uncomfortably in the other direction. Definitely a robot.

Austin speaks up first. “We’re looking for Marietta,” he says, calm, cool, smooth—the very attractive boy who
has my back
.

The girl raises her eyebrows, raises up onto the hard point of her shoes arching her whole spine back in a slight, graceful arc. “Why?” she asks, returning center, pointing her right toe left right, left right in front of her.

“We’re friends of hers,” he says without skipping a beat.

“Ummm …” The girl smirks. “I seriously doubt that.”

“And why’s that?” Austin asks.