Towering (20 page)

I drove faster. I’d call Astrid too when I got back. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings. I just didn’t want to be her boyfriend.

When I reached the house, everything seemed normal. The driveway was cleared, as I had left it, but the front path, which I hadn’t shoveled, showed no footprints but mine. Mrs. Greenwood hadn’t gone out, and no one else had gone in. She’d obviously spent the day with William Shatner.

I exhaled. I wouldn’t have to add endangering a sweet old lady to my list of crimes.

I parked the car and went inside. “Mrs. G?”

Sure enough, I heard the weird singsong of the
Star Trek
theme. I’d been right about Shatner. I went into the living room.

“You know,” I said, “some channels show reruns of
Boston Legal
. He’s on that too.”

“Oh, hello, Wyatt.” She turned away from the commercial to look at me. “I like my William better young. How was skiing? You know, Danielle used to frequent a ski store that rented equipment by the month. It’s probably a lot cheaper than renting at the slopes.”

For a second, I forgot I’d allegedly gone skiing. Reminded, I said, “Yeah, Josh was telling me about that.”

I felt guilty about lying to her, especially when she asked, “Did you see anything interesting?” It was almost like she knew.

“Anything interesting? Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Birds, animals. You city types seem to find that kind of thing fascinating, no?”

She didn’t suspect. She was just making small talk. But maybe I should tell her anyway. She could help Rachel. Rachel could live with us—if I could talk Rachel into it. After all, Mrs. Greenwood had already taken me in.

But something held me back. Rachel had been adamant about not telling anyone.

I said, “Nothing really. Do you want me to get dinner? I make a pretty mean spaghetti with cut-up hot dogs.” I’d bought hot dogs on one of my trips into town.

“I have a chicken in the oven. It will be ready soon. Come watch
Star Trek
.”

But suddenly, I wanted to be alone for a while. The events of the day had been pretty amazing. Pretty weird. From being chased in the morning to falling in love in the afternoon to confessing everything about Tyler. I felt empty. I glanced at the screen. “I’ve seen this one. I think I’ll go upstairs and change. My socks got wet.”

She nodded, not taking her eyes off Captain Kirk. “Okay, about six o’clock, all right?”

I glanced at my watch. The episode would end at six. I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. “Okay, I’ll be back.”

I trudged to the stairs and started up. The house was already dark, so I flipped the switch to turn on the stairway light. As I walked up, I noticed the photos, as I had the first day I was there. The woman in the wedding dress, I now knew, was Mrs. Greenwood. Like her daughter, she had been beautiful once. The photos reminded me of something, I wasn’t sure what.

Then, I remembered.

I could still hear
Star Trek
in the background. I had close to an hour when she’d be concentrating only on that.

Instead of turning into my own room, I looked behind me. Nothing. I touched the doorknob on my left. No one sprung out at me. With one more glance over my shoulder, one last listen for footsteps, I turned the knob. I stepped inside. I closed Danielle’s door behind me.

Danielle’s room looked the same as that first night. No broken glass on the floor. I hadn’t expected it. The broken window had been a dream, a figment of my imagination.

And yet, I expected the room to look somehow different. I expected it to be different now that I knew Danielle was dead.

After Tyler died, his mother had come to stay with us for a while. When the crime scene people finally cleared out of their house, my mother and I had offered to go over and clean out Tyler and Nikki’s rooms. The house was being sold to whoever would buy it. Mom suggested that I, as Tyler’s best friend, would know what was most important to save and what he might have wanted given to friends. I didn’t know, though. Tyler hadn’t thought about what he wanted to leave people. He hadn’t planned to die. He wouldn’t have. You don’t consider your own mortality at sixteen. He wasn’t like my grandfather, who had talked about what he’d leave me for years before he had. Death in the elderly seemed inevitable. Death at sixteen is usually sudden and seems escapable, as if you should simply be able to rewind, turn the page back, and get on with the course that had already been charted. I should have told a guidance counselor or someone about Tyler’s stepdad. Then, Tyler would have lived, played football, taken the SAT. He’d have gone to prom, then college, done all the things he was supposed to do. Death, in Tyler’s case, wasn’t an ending. It was like one of those books where they don’t tell you what happens to the characters because there’s a sequel. Only, in Tyler’s case, the sequel had never been written. Instead, I was in Tyler’s room, looking at each binder in a backpack he’d never use, thinking I couldn’t just throw them away, that he’d need them. Then, realizing he wouldn’t. He never would. So I separated out the textbooks to give back to the school (trying not to think of the kid next year being assigned a dead guy’s American History text) and stuffed the rest of his backpack into a black forty-gallon trash bag. I did that with every drawer in his desk. Yet, I felt like I was looking for something, a note maybe, a sign, some sort of last words of wisdom for me. Of course, there was nothing.

That was how Danielle’s room was too, now that I knew she was dead. It seemed unfinished, its contents pointless, worthless. I looked around for the photo, the one that made me sure she’d never come back.

It had been in the yearbook. The shot had been taken on a winter day. Danielle wore a coat—the same coat, I now realized, I’d taken from the closet to bring to Rachel. She held her arm up, threatening someone, the cameraman, with a snowball. Her hood was up, covering her dark hair, which made it easier to recognize her face.

It was Rachel’s face.

Danielle had been Rachel’s mother, not the old man’s long-lost daughter. I remembered Rachel saying her mother had been killed, and how Josh’s friends had joked about Mrs. Greenwood killing Danielle.

Maybe it wasn’t a bad joke. Obviously, Danielle had gotten pregnant, had a baby. Maybe Mrs. Greenwood had found out about it, had killed her. Or maybe just sent her away?

Or maybe she really didn’t know anything about it.

But who had taken Rachel? Who was protecting her now? Was it Mrs. Greenwood? Or someone else?

Whatever. It was better for now to leave Rachel where she was, far out of the way in a tower in the woods, where no one could find her. No one could hurt her. I had to make sure she didn’t leave.

Carefully, carefully, I pulled the page from the yearbook. The paper was thick, sewn in, and it came out with barely a shudder. I folded the paper so the photo wasn’t creased and hid it inside my shirt. I walked to the bedroom door, opened it. The hallway was empty. Downstairs, Spock said, “Fascinating.” My watch said five thirty. I shut the door, walked to the desk, and opened each drawer, searching for something, some evidence of what happened to her, a note, a clue. As with Tyler, there was nothing.

With one final check of the hall, I shut the door and tiptoed to my own room. I hid the photo in Danielle’s diary. That, I stowed in my backpack. I’d bring it to Rachel tomorrow.

I used Mrs. Greenwood’s land line to call Astrid.

“Thanks for calling back.” Her voice was sarcastic.

“Sorry, sorry. I was in a dead zone.”

She muttered something I assumed was unflattering, then said, “So are we ever getting together?”

“Of course.” I hated lying. “Look, I’m sorry someone bugged you. Did they leave a number?”

“You think I’m an answering service?”

“No, no. I just wanted to give them this number so they wouldn’t bother you again.”

“But why did they call me in the first place? Did you give them my number?”

Her voice was shrill. I had to keep mine calm, so Mrs. Greenwood wouldn’t hear me. I waited until she was finished.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I must have told someone we were seeing each other, and they looked it up.”

“Well we’re not seeing each other, are we?”

“No,” I admitted. “Look, I’m really sorry. It’s just . . . I met someone else.”

“You are such a jerk.”

The line went dead. Terrific.

I went downstairs to have chicken with Mrs. Greenwood, but my thoughts were about Danielle and Rachel. Mrs. Greenwood said something I didn’t hear.

“What?” I asked.

She said, “I remembered the name of that ski place. Beaver Brook Outfitters. We used to buy all Danielle’s equipment there, from her first pair of skis when she was a little girl.”

“So you skied too? When you were younger?”

“Oh, yes. We loved skiing. And Danielle took to it from the first day of ski school. I used to worry because she was a bit reckless.” She laughed. “Well, not a bit.
Quite
reckless. While the other children were carefully snowplowing down the slope, Danielle was flying, flying. I always worried she would crash, that she would leave me.”

She got a faraway look on her face.

What had happened to Danielle?

I left even earlier the next morning, to avoid being followed. No one there, at least that I saw. Still, I took a winding route, just in case.

When I reached the tower, it was dawn. I could barely make out Rachel’s hair, hanging down already. Just seeing it there made me feel sort of giddy. She was waiting for me. I climbed the rope with ease, and when I reached the top, the window was open.

“You’re here!” She ran to me. “And early! I’m so glad. You have no idea how it feels, wanting to see you, wanting to say your name, yet having to hide it, having no one to talk to.”

I kissed her. “I get it. Once, when I was about twelve, I had a crush on this girl, Caroline, and all I could talk about was Caroline this, Caroline that, and do you remember when Caroline said that, until my friends wanted to kill me.”

Rachel frowned. “Were you in love with this girl, this Caroline?”

“Of course not.” I didn’t want to upset her. “It was a crush. Every guy in school had a crush on her.” I held her tighter. “The only girl I love is you.”

“I’m sorry. I haven’t—I’ve never felt this way about anyone else, never
known
anyone else, except the characters in books I read.”

The sun had almost risen. I had a fleeting thought, that maybe she just thought she loved me because she’d never known anyone else, that once she escaped her tower, she’d find someone she liked better.

But, no. She was right. I had found her for a reason. It was meant to be.

“Besides,” I said, “I barely remember anything about Caroline, except that she wasn’t as beautiful as you.”

She led me to her sofa and sat down, then kissed me. “I wasn’t worried. You are my destiny. I have seen your face in my dreams.”

“I’ve seen your face before too, but not just in a dream. Let me show you.”

I opened my backpack and removed the carefully folded yearbook page. “Here. I found this. I think . . . I’m sure this is your mother.”

She stared at it, stunned. “It is me . . . just like me.” She shook her head, then looked back at the photo. “Who is she? Where did you find it? It is me! But it cannot be me because I have never seen this place.” She pointed to the background, the school.

“Her name was Danielle Greenwood. She was the daughter of the woman I’m staying with. They say she disappeared about seventeen years ago, right around the time you were born.”

“That is so sad.” She touched the photograph with one finger, reverent as if it was one of the religious icons in the churches I’d visited on vacations. “But to have her picture, like she was a truly real person, a mother who might have given me cookies when I came home from school instead of a pretend character in a book. I can’t quite believe it.”

“She was real all right. She kept a diary—I brought that too. And I think your mama is right to protect you, to tell you to stay hidden. Okay, the tower’s a little weird, but . . .”

She tore her eyes from the photo. “I know, I know. But I wish I could be a normal girl, like everyone else. Go to school. Would your friends like me?”

It was hard to look at her without wanting to touch her, to stroke her hair. But it wasn’t like our relationship was only physical. “Of course they’d like you. You’re so sweet, and . . .” I stopped, wondering if that was true, if people would see her as I did, or if they’d just think she was odd. Sometimes, people at school wanted everyone to be the same and think the same. But she was so beautiful, and somehow, her very strangeness was what I loved about her, that she made me feel less weird.

I wondered, maybe, if everyone felt weird sometimes, if they just didn’t tell anyone.

“And what?” she asked.

“And you’d have me. I think the coolest thing about you is that you didn’t go to my school. You’re different, unspoiled.”

“Of course.” She touched my hand. “But tell me about it, your school. The books Mama brings me, they seem very old. I worry that it might not be the same.”