Notes from Ghost Town (22 page)

It’s then that I notice a folded piece of paper scotch-taped to the dark gray ear of the carousel’s only unicorn.

Sponge still clenched in my fist, water sliding down my arm, I look around to see if anyone’s watching before I pull it off the unicorn’s ear and unfold it.

Like mother like daughter

I blink at it, like I might be able to burn it up with my eyes.

No punctuation
—stupidly, it’s the first thing that occurs to me.

The sound of kids approaching shoots me out of my trance and into action. I rip the note from the unicorn’s ear and crumple it in my hand, drop the sponge back into the bucket, walk to the nearest trash can, and rip the horrible little piece of paper into confetti-small pieces. I look around—feeling those eyes on me again. Those invisible eyes that never connect to anything but air, space, ether. Nothing.

It’s still three hours from the end of my shift, and George said he would come back to check on me. But I don’t care. I lock the gate over the carousel, retrieve my bike from the grass, and ride to Rotisserie Chicken Outpost No. 5, the sweaty little hut in the middle of Wynnwood strip mall # 3 where Raina cashiers on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays until seven-thirty.

Four days
. Not enough time. Not nearly enough time.

The cold hard truth is: I can’t do this without her. I need to sink into her shoulder and bawl my eyes out. I need her to let me. I need to let myself.

But when I arrive, some rail-thin blond chick is flipping the pages of an
Us Weekly
behind the counter. Not Raina. I struggle not to break down in front of a girl I don’t even
know—Rain’s absence alone makes everything I need to cry about right now well up fresh. I wheel my bike to the entranceway and peek my head inside.

“Hey,” the girl quickly shuts the mag, gives me a once-over, then re-slops her spine back into the lazy c-curve of
I-don’t-give-a-shit
.

“You need somethin’?”

The chicken smell is overpowering. “Do you know where Raina is?”

“Oh. Um …” I watch her chew her thin lower lip in thought. “She’s at some—revealing?”

I shake my head, confused. “Revealing?”

She opens her mouth and runs her tongue back and forth behind her upper teeth. “Yeah. Some thing for a friend who bit it.”

I feel my whole body go cold.
The unveiling
. It’s today.

I check the time on my cell phone, murmur a quick “Thanks.” I hop on my bike again, pushing off, pedaling fast. They were supposed to be at the cemetery at ten-thirty, but it’s almost one o’clock now. I wasn’t even planning to go, so why am I so angry with myself for missing it?

Maybe it’s because I’ve missed the best, and most obvious, opportunity to finally see Stern’s parents—practically my second family—after so long.

Or maybe it’s that she’s there and not me. That she knew, and I didn’t.

I ride to Stern’s house very slowly. A big part of me is hoping that I’ll arrive too late—or even too early, so I
won’t have to see his relatives, and Raina, gathered in their living room along the yellow U-shaped couch Stern and I used to love to play on.

Seeing his parents again for the first time since his funeral will only cement the fact that he is gone—the solid part of him, at least. If I stretch out the space between here and there, maybe I can withhold, even for a few more minutes, that part of my brain that has not yet accommodated the loss of not only Stern, but also of his family, and of his rancher-style house in the thick of the woods, and of all the trees we used to climb, and all the mud pies we’d challenge each other to eat before we chickened out at the last moment and threw them in each other’s faces instead, wet mud caking our skin, dripping from our eyelashes.

Stern: the first boy to whom I showed signs of my slow-growing boobs in a game of truth or dare. Stern: the boy who taught me how to eat a whole hunk of sea-foam green wasabi without choking to death; who taught me that the femoral artery was one of the best places to stab a person to death, if it ever came down to it; who spat on a horse once, between the eyes, after it bucked me to the dirt for no good reason and I broke my wrist in three places.

And then, somehow, weaving between the stacks of my memories, I find that I have arrived in front of Stern’s brick-front house with the yellow U-shaped couch and towering army of trees and rusty basketball hoop bent just slightly to the left in the driveway.

Also in the driveway: Raina’s muddy-bottomed Toyota. Deep green. I know its color from memory, but it’s more than that. I can’t see it, but I can sense it. I’m getting better at this game.

I lock my bike to a skinny tree in the neighbor’s lawn and walk to the front door—already feeling myself go to goo in my center, light-headed. My palms are sweating and my forehead is sweating and I am definitely going to cry, any minute now.

The front door is already cracked open, and I slip in very quietly, putting my finger at the spine of the door so it won’t make a noise when I re-shut the screen. I hear muffled conversation coming from a part of the living room that’s out of view. I stand in the foyer for a moment and take it all in: the same family-photo-glutted walls, the quaint little kitchen with its hand-painted tiles and spoons and cast-irons hanging on hooks from the walls. A table at the entrance full of tiny, sparkle-eyed ceramic border collies. The bathroom in the foyer—door flung open—the overstuffed magazine rack and gleaming full-length mirror over the back of the door and framed Far Side cartoons. I always loved that bathroom.

Stern’s mom’s voice rings softly from a few feet away, and it soothes me. It calms me. This is right. I should be here. These are my people. These are my family. I take a step forward, and catch the tail end of a hushed sentence: “… said that to you? And you really think Olivia believes it?”

My whole body goes cold. Blood thrums between my ears.

“I can’t tell if she does, honestly, Mrs. Stern.” Raina’s voice.

Impossible. She couldn’t possibly be telling them …

“And she really said she
saw
him?” Stern’s dad.

My heart stops. She is. My private confession: my grief.

“I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up or not, especially right now,” Raina says, voice full of faux-grief that I’m sure she’s using to just
melt
their hearts right now, to poison them to me even further. “I really think she needs help, and I honestly didn’t know who else to tell. Her dad’s stressed out enough as it is, with the sentencing, and his wedding …”

Stern’s mom starts crying softly—little back of the throat sobs I can tell she’s trying to stave off. “She must miss him so much. She must just …” She trails off.

“I guess so,” Raina says. “I really think she needs help. But she gets so angry if I even suggest it, you know? She won’t listen.”

“They really did love each other, those two,” Mark says, voice low and creaky. “All three of you. Such an amazing friendship you had.”

“We did. And now, I just … I feel like I’m losing her, too, you know?” Raina says, choked up. I adjust my footing slightly just then and a floorboard creeks.
Shit. Shit. Shit
. Raina stops mid-sentence. They all go silent. “Hello?” Beth calls out. “Is someone there?”

I stand stock-still. I’ve been caught.

The three of them move into the foyer, and come into sight.

They see me standing there, frozen, horrified.

Beth’s hands flutter to her chest, her face going pale like
I’m
a ghost. Her tiny frame is even tinier than I remember it—deeper bags under her eyes. Dark, dark gray. Mark, too, looks gaunt and sad, so many shadows dug into his skin. And Raina just looks stunned. Or maybe I’m just seeing myself again, reflected in all of their faces.

“Olivia! Oh, honey—” Beth puts her hand to her mouth and starts to cry. Mark takes her shoulders. Raina takes her hand.

“I shouldn’t have come,” I choke out. “I’m sorry. For everything.” And just before everything bursts right out of me—all my anger, all my grief, all my missing—I rush back out the door and onto my bike.

I’m struggling to unlock it when Raina bursts through the Stern’s door and runs, panting, to stop me. “Liv. I didn’t know you were coming. I … I didn’t know you were there.”

“That’s why you don’t talk about someone behind her back,” I growl. “You never know when she might show up.”

She tries to push the little bike-lock key out of my hands and take it but I push away from her, keep working the key in the lock. Her lip quivers as she watches me struggle, folding her arms around her chest.

“I only want to help you,” she sobs. “That’s all anyone wants. We love you.”

“If you
loved
me,” I shout, “you wouldn’t go behind my back, to Stern’s parents’ house, and tell them you think I’m
crazy
. And you wouldn’t repeat something I told you in confidence. But you just can’t
stand
not being the center of attention, can you? You know what, Rain? If you really want to help me, then you’ll just back the fuck off, okay?”

She shakes her head, tears running down her cheeks. But she doesn’t try and defend herself. She turns on a heel—that long, stupid braid clapping against her back as she runs back inside. I notice Stern’s parents have been standing there the whole time. Watching us. Judging me.

Heaving, belly twisted in a tight, terrible knot, I finally get the lock from the tree and hightail it out of there. I speed like crazy—everything a blur.

Mom’s sentencing is in four days, and, I realize, the only person still on my side, still willing to help, is the person, two months ago, whose guts I hated. Austin Morse. The only friend I’ve got left.

I
call Austin as soon as I get home and realize it’s the last place I want to be: alone, in my bed, thinking of Stern. Not wanting him to come, and desperate for him at the same time. Instead, I get up and walk to the end of the block, out of sight of my house; text Dad before he gets hysterical:
phone about to die. hanging out w/ Raina until late
.

Then I turn off my phone. I’ve been doing that a lot lately.

I leap up from the concrete soon as Austin arrives. I fling open the car door, fall into the soft leather seat. I suck that sob that has been lodged in my chest way down deep.

“So, Red, where do you want to go?”

“Just drive,” I answer, looking away, drawing my knees into my chest and resting my cheek against the cold of the window. “I don’t care where.”
I needed him, and he came
. My body registers this in some grateful, hungry, exhausted way.

Streetlights blur past in wide streaks and I trace them with the tip of my finger along the glass. Austin moves his right hand from the gearshift to my thigh. He holds it tight, like he’s worried I might float away—and his fingers there, warm, tracing along the inseam of my cutoffs, makes me tingle all over.

It’s exactly the distraction I need. With Austin next to me, I don’t have to think about Stern. Raina. My dad. Heather.

I don’t have to think of my mom, and how there’s hardly any time left at all.

He moves his hand back to the wheel to turn a hard right. I notice the thick clump of landmarks—cluster of copper palm trees in the middle of Arthur Square, the dug-out construction plots, waiting to be laid with concrete and limestone and shale and built up into other big-time high-rises, how close we are to the beach, to Oh Susannah.

“What are we doing at Ghost Town?” I ask him.

He turns just slightly to flash me a slow smile. “I have keys to an empty condo,” he says. “And I thought we could check out the facilities. Make sure they’re up to par before the residents move in. I mean, don’t get any ideas, Tithe,” he says, grinning, showing off his dimples, “I just want to talk.”

We hang another right into the long, winding driveway that leads to the manicured front of the complex. I go stiff and knotty all over, the way I always do when I’m near
Ghost Town, until he runs the fingers of his right hand back through the palm of my left, and small parts of me begin, slowly, to soften.

He parks the car in the cul-de-sac in front of the visitor parking lot and we get out. My shorts cling to my thighs. It’s hot, as always. The crickets are already singing out of tune in the tall grass, but everything else is dead quiet. I feel like I’m floating outside of my own body, like I’m watching from above as we walk to the front entrance. Austin turns the key gently into the big, curtain-darkened glass doors and we step inside, to the AC blasted lobby that leads, straight ahead, to elevators, stairs, the baby grand I try to ignore for the instant lump it brings to my throat, the Oceanus Ballroom; left to mail and laundry, garage and side entrances; right to the admin offices.

I’m not used to the lobby’s huge glass windows being curtained-off, but they are—they were the only thing that made this whole place inviting in the least, even though they face the parking lot. It’s dead-dark inside, and the elevators aren’t running yet, so we use the light of his cell phone to find our way to the stairs. Our hands brush together as we climb. “Hey,” he whispers, playfully. “No funny business, Tithe.”

“Well, if they didn’t make this staircase so
narrow
,” I answer, pressing into the side of his body like we’ve got no choice but to squeeze together, “maybe I wouldn’t have to.”

“Yeah, it’s really too bad about how little space we’ve
got to walk,” Austin says, pressing back into me. “I’m definitely going to have to bring this to Ted’s attention.”

Something in me is beginning to loosen. Images of Stern’s ghost on the beach, and in my room, and at the piano in my mom’s studio float through my mind as we make our way through the darkness. I try to banish each one.

We climb, pressed together, for what feels like a long time. Our hands brush again and he interlaces his fingers with mine. My skin goes hot. His palm feels clammy. The staircase smells like the inside of an old wine cellar, maybe—vaguely sweet and raw and very cold. When we reach the door that says
Floor 6
, he pulls his hand from mine to open it.