Silence (15 page)

“If he’s lucky,” her father replied. He shoved his hands into his pockets. But he looked at the curtains, and after a moment, Emma crossed the room to open them herself. To let the light in.

“It’s not that we’re not drawn,” he told her. “It’s not that we don’t know where to go when we die. There is a place for us.

We can’t get there, but we’re always aware of it.”

“Can’t get there?”

He nodded. “It’s like looking through glass. But it’s not glass; we can’t shatter it. We can’t pass through it.”

Emma folded her arms tightly across her chest. “Where is it?”

“It’s not a geographical location, Em. I can’t pul up Google Maps and point it out.”

“But you could find it?”

“I could find it now. I could find it now without moving.” He rose and made his way to the window that Emma had revealed.

“But it’s painful. To see it, to see what I can only describe as light, and to be shut out forever. The dead, especialy the newly dead, wil often gather there, wailing.”

She didn’t ask her father if that’s what he’d done because she didn’t want to know. Her father had been the pilar of the world with his patience, his quirky humor, his ability to override anger.

“If you free your four-year-old, that wil be where he’s drawn, if he’s lucky. He won’t see the others,” her father added. “Not immediately. But he’l linger, for a year or two.”

“It’s got to be better than burning,” she whispered.

“It’s better,” he agreed. But his tone said it’s the same.

“What’s on the other side of the glass?”

“Home,” he replied softly. “Peace. Warmth. I would say love, but I don’t think any one of us can say for certain because we can’t reach it. We’re like moths, Em,” he added.

“And this is lucky?”

He glanced at her, then, and she knew he had come to the He glanced at her, then, and she knew he had come to the end of the words he was wiling to share. But she’d lived with him for years. “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“When I touched you in the hospital, Mom could see you.”

He closed his eyes.

“Why?”

“I won’t answer that either, Em. Don’t ask.”

“Why?”

“Because Eric, if I’m not mistaken, is already having some difficulty with you, and I would like very much that it not get harder for him.”

“For him. Why?”

“Because,” her father said, “he’l have to kil you, or try, and while I want to see you, I want you to have a life. You’ve only just started,” he added softly.

“But why wil he have to kil me?”

“Because he’l see only what he fears in you. He won’t see what he admires.” Her father lifted one hand. “I can’t judge him,”

he added softly. “I can hate him, but I can’t judge him. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch any of the dead.”

“If I don’t touch the child, his mother won’t be able to see him.”

His father looked at her, his expression darkening. But he knew her, knew her far better than Eric did; he said nothing.

Instead, he began to fade.

Conversation over.

When Eric came to the door, Petal was already there, barking his lungs out. The Hal household didn’t need an alarm system; they had Petal. On the other hand, alarm systems didn’t require feeding, watering, walking, and endless cleanup.

Emma opened the door and let herself out, locking the door while Petal’s barking deteriorated into a steady, guilt-inducing whine.

“Michael?” Eric asked, and she smiled. He was wearing a gray colared shirt and dark jeans but otherwise looked entirely like himself.

“Alison’s got that taken care of.”

Chase, on the other hand, had decided to go insane. His red hair was a mass of gel, he wore incredibly angular sunglasses, and he wore a tank under a black leather jacket that looked more like studs than coat.

“You,” she told him, “don’t get to tel Eric how to dress.”

He lowered the rim of said glasses. “Thank you. You don’t clean up badly yourself. Are we ready to go?”

“One of us was ready half an hour ago,” Eric told him.

“Two of us,” Emma said helpfuly. They headed down the walk to Eric’s car. She stood by the back passenger door, and when the locks clicked, she got in. Chase took the front passenger seat, and Eric got behind the wheel of the car.

“I should warn you,” Eric told Emma, “that I wil kil Chase if he divulges any personal information of an embarrassing nature.

So if you like him at al, don’t ask.”

Emma laughed.

Emma laughed.

“Easy for you,” Chase muttered, “since he’s not going to kil you for asking.”

It had been such a long week. It felt as though Tuesday night had happened months ago. Emma stared out the window as the streets moved past, thinking about her father. Thinking, as wel, about Nathan, and where Nathan might be. It was hard. She worked not to think about him, but she wasn’t used to it; there had been no reason not to think of him before.

A year, her father had said. Maybe two. Two years, and then he’d drift back, either to his home or to hers.

“Emma?”

“Hmmm?” She looked up. “Oh, sorry. I forgot.” She started to give him the directions he needed to get them to Amy’s.

If there had been any question about which house the party was at, it was answered definitively the minute the car doors were opened: You could hear the music from the street. Emma listened for a few tense minutes and then relaxed.

“DJ?”

“Yeah. Last time she did this, she hired a band.”

Eric laughed.

“I’m not kidding. The band was louder,” she added, “and they kind of had to be escorted out of the house when one of them got dead drunk and started hitting on anything that moved. And I mean anything.”

“Escorted how?”

“Escorted how?”

“Oh, the usual. Someone caled the police before things got realy ugly.” She shrugged and added, “Not that it wasn’t ugly afterward. Mr. Drunk and Amorous realy didn’t appreciate the shabby treatment and he broke a few things to make his point.”

“She does this often?”

“Not too often. Depends on what her parents have been doing—or not doing, in this case.”

“Not doing?”

“Not taking her to New York City, for a start.”

Eric glanced at Chase, and Chase shrugged. “What’s so great about New York City?” he asked.

“Everything, basicaly. Look, if you can avoid saying that anywhere where Amy can actualy hear you, things wil go a lot smoother.”

“What?” Chase shouted, as they approached the front door.

“Good point,” Emma grinned, shouting back.

Amy’s house was huge. If palaces had been built in a modern style, they would probably have been only slightly larger; Emma’s whole house, from top to bottom, would fil only two of the rooms. The grounds—and realy, only Amy’s house had grounds, everyone else being stuck with simple lawns—extended back into a forested ravine, and the front was only disturbed by a circular road that was too wide to be caled a driveway. There was, of course, a sidewalk beside the road.

Chase whistled.

“Amy’s family is pretty wel off,” Emma admitted.

Chase knocked on the door, and Emma hit the doorbel Chase knocked on the door, and Emma hit the doorbel instead. Had Alison been standing beside her, they would now be betting on how many times she would have to hit the doorbel before someone actualy heard it. But Eric and Chase were not Alison.

And the answer was five.

Amy’s brother answered the door, which surprised Emma enough that her smile froze on her face.

“Hey,” he shouted.

“Skip?” This was not actualy his name, but for some reason, it was what al of Amy’s friends caled him. Emma suspected that this was a leftover artifact from elementary school excursions through the mansion that was Amy’s house, but she couldn’t remember for certain. “Aren’t you on the east coast?”

“Something came up,” he replied. “I had to come home for a few days. Good damn thing I did,” he added, although she saw the beer in his hand. “Someone needs to keep an eye out. If the neighbors cal the police again, Amy’l be homeless. These friends of yours?”

She nodded. “Eric’s in our year, but he’s new to the school.

Chase is his cousin.”

“Chase? What kind of a name is that?”

“Skip?”

He laughed. “Good point. Amy! The last member of the Emery mafia is here!”

Eric looked at Emma, who reddened slightly.

“Mafia?”

“Mafia?”

“Don’t ask. Skip has no sense of humor. Unfortunately, he stil tries.”

Eric laughed, and they entered the house as Skip left the door and wandered away. Emma caught up with him before he got too far. “Skip, do you know where Alison is?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

Amy’s house was huge. It had five bathrooms, not including the powder room in the main foyer—a powder room that even without shower or bath was stil bigger than the main bathroom in the Hal household. The foyer itself was larger than the living room and dining room in the Hal house combined, but at the moment, the rows upon rows of shoes and fal boots that lined the wals near the door made it look slightly less palatial.

“I’m not taking my boots off,” Chase said loudly.

“Why? Someone’s going to steal them?”

He bent down and picked up a pair of running shoes.

“They’re better than these,” he said, with obvious disdain. “Or these,” he added, choosing a different pair. “Or these.”

Eric smacked him on the back of the head.

Unfazed, Chase pointed at Eric’s shoes. “Or those. And Eric would definitely steal these.”

Emma said, “Suit yourself. But Amy’s pretty particular about the shoes in her house, and if she sees you wearing those, you’l probably be waiting outside in the car.”

“But you can wear yours?”

“Mine,” she replied, “are part of the outfit. And I don’t wear “Mine,” she replied, “are part of the outfit. And I don’t wear them outside much.”

“So are mine, damn it. I’m wearing white socks!”

She raised her eyebrows. “What, white socks in that getup?”

“They’re al Eric had!”

“You did not get that crappy jacket out of Eric’s closet!”

“Kids,” Eric said, putting a hand on both of their shoulders.

“Could we maybe save this for Amy?”

Emma grimaced. “If you make it a fashion question, Chase might be able to get away with the boots.” She shook her head and added, “White socks.”

Finding Amy was not as easy in practice as it was in theory, which, given that she always stood out, said something. As Emma was mostly concerned with finding Alison, this didn’t bother her too much.

“You recognize al these people?” Eric shouted. Everything, at the moment, had to be shouted, but you expected that at Amy’s big parties.

Emma shook her head, because she didn’t realy enjoy shouting al that much.

“Do you recognize half of them?”

She nodded, because it was more or less true. You also expected that with any of Amy’s big parties. “Just look for Alison.”

“What?”

“Allison.”

“Allison.”

“No, but I see Michael.”

“Where?”

He pointed into a crowd so dense there seemed to be more people than floor space. Before she could tel him—loudly, because there wasn’t much choice—how helpful this wasn’t, he roled his eyes and grabbed her by the arm.

Two people trying to snake their way through a thick crowd are notably less coordinated than one. Emma, who felt she already knew this, didn’t realy appreciate the refresher course.

On the other hand, she had to admit that it would have taken twenty minutes to cut across this particular room, and Eric had just carved about fifteen minutes off that. He had also almost knocked four people over, although the sound at her back implied that almost was no longer the correct word for at least one of them.

She looked around and realized that he was actualy heading toward the large, enclosed sunroom. Or, more accurately, the sliding doors that led from the slate-floored, sparsely decorated room, with its wicker chairs and footrests, to the patio. She realized, again, that Eric was actualy taler than she thought, because he could see Michael standing outside in the floodlights.

Even in her shoes, she hadn’t.

Michael was, not surprisingly, talking to Oliver. He was also, therefore, not paying much attention to anything else that was going on around him. But Alison was standing just to one side of them, out of the worst of the lights’ glare, and Emma shook herself free of Eric and ran over to her.

herself free of Eric and ran over to her.

“Sorry,” she said. “But you and Michael are stil in one piece, so I’m assuming there was no menace to telephone poles.”

“And we didn’t run any stop signs, either. Philipa’s realy gotten a lot better behind the wheel of a car. You didn’t have any trouble?” There was a slight tinge of anxiety in the question.

“Us? No. We’re late because Chase took his time getting dressed.”

“Chase?”

Emma nodded in Chase’s general direction. “The redhead in the studs.”

“I heard that,” Chase said. In the bright lights of the patio, he looked even worse. His skin was washed out, and his hair looked like a bad edifice that might just topple if you breathed on it the wrong way.

“Alison, this is Chase. He’s a friend of Eric’s. Chase, this is Alison, my best friend.”

Chase immediately put both of his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. Alison laughed, and to Emma’s surprise, Chase—in his black leather—smiled. “I’m not stupid. Eric’s afraid of Emma,” he said to Alison.

Eric glared at him.

“I’m not technicaly alowed to embarrass him in public,”