Towering (8 page)

But when I asked her, she said, “Oh, no. You get to a point, at my age, where one year seems pretty much like any other. I’ll probably just go to bed early.”

For some reason, rather than making me feel better about ditching her, I felt worse, like I should be the thing that made this year different. She’d been alone so long. Of course, I wasn’t her kid anyway. I said, “You know, I was thinking, if you wanted to get a dog, I could walk it or something.”

“Oh, you’ll only be here a bit longer.”

“I guess. I don’t know. I sort of like it. Maybe I’d go to college up here.” It was the first time I’d thought about it. A lot of my friends would go to the same college, room together, make college more like thirteenth grade. I wasn’t sure I’d want that.

The old woman smiled. “You must miss your mother, or maybe your friends.” She stopped. She knew about Tyler.

I shook my head no. The only friend I missed was Tyler, and he wasn’t on Long Island. I wondered if she felt that way about Danielle. “Sometimes, it’s good to make a fresh start.”

Josh picked me up around ten. I was the eighth person in a car that would have been crowded with seven. “I don’t see how we’re going to get up the hill with all these people,” one of his friends, a guy named Brendan, griped.

“Some of us will have to get out and walk,” Josh said. “Or you could walk now. It’s my car.”

That shut him up. I squeezed in, trying not to sit on anyone’s lap.

“Everyone, this is Wyatt,” Josh said. “He’s from Long Island.”

“You’re staying with Old Lady Greenwood?” said a girl I could barely see under her scarf and hat. “Creepy.”

“What’s creepy about her?”

“Oh, I don’t know. That old house. We used to dare each other to ring her doorbell on Halloween night, then run away.”

That was sweet of you
. But I said, “She’s okay.”

“So you’ve actually been inside the house?” Brendan said. “Are there any secret passages? Jars marked
Eye of Newt
, stuff like that?”

“Well, I did find this one closet she wouldn’t let me into. I think it’s where she stores the skin of her victims before she uses it.” I noticed the car had gone sort of silent. “Hey, she made me an apple cake.”

“You shouldn’t eat it,” the girl said. “Haven’t you seen Snow White?”

“I heard she killed her daughter,” Brendan said.

“That’s not true.” I remembered how she’d screamed into the night for Danielle. “And I was kidding about the closet,” I added, in case they were too stupid to get that.

“I knew that,” the girl said. But then, she turned away, talking to the girl beside her—at least, I think it was a girl. Hard to tell with all the coats. Everyone else went back to what they were doing and saying, and I was left wondering about people back home, if they’d noticed I was gone. We were driving through town now, and by instinct, I checked my phone for texts even though it meant jostling three people. One bar. No messages.

We drove in silence, finally making a sharp turn off the main road onto a side road. Then, there was a dirt path that disappeared down a hill. I wouldn’t even have noticed the path if we hadn’t been on it. I wondered if it was safe. I decided I didn’t care. The trees on both sides of the car came up like cave walls, and ahead, there was nothing, nothing I could see anyway. Finally, the car would go no farther. Josh said, “We’ll have to walk from here.”

I was glad too. It was hot, and a car feels even more crowded when it’s full of people you don’t know. Their voices drummed in my ears. I pushed the door open and, feeling the rush of cold air, realized I’d been holding my breath. Everyone else clambered out behind me, and we began the work of trudging through the snow toward a house I still couldn’t see. I noticed some people had six-packs or bags of chips. “Was I supposed to bring something?” I asked Josh.

“Nah, I knew you wouldn’t get out much, with Old Lady Greenwood. I brought some chips on your behalf.”

One of the guys had a glass bottle of something. “I don’t really drink,” I said. “I mean, I’m not a jerk about it, but I don’t really drink.”

“It’s okay. You can be the designated driver.”

“You better designate someone else to pull this car onto the main road too.”

“Don’t have that on Long Island, huh?” The guy laughed.

“Nope.”

We all stopped talking then, concentrating on walking. A lot of the snow had melted, but it was still hard going, and I realized Josh was right. This wasn’t what I was used to. I was a city kid, meant for paved streets and shoveled sidewalks, and the hick kids with their stronger muscles were leaving me in the dust.

I was at least ten feet behind the last of them, even the girls, when I heard a sound too human to be wind.

Singing.

There was no TV showing
Star Trek
here, and I could almost make out words. I wanted to tell everyone to stop, stop stepping, stop crunching snow, so I could hear. But that would look crazy, so I said, “What’s that?”

“What?” the girl in front of me said, and they all stopped walking so, for a moment, it was silent, and I could have heard it. But, of course, like all weird sounds, it ceased to exist when pointed out to someone else.

“It stopped,” I said. “But it sounded like someone singing. I’ve heard it at the house too, but this seemed closer.”

“Probably a loon,” the girl said.

“Are there loons in the middle of winter?” Everyone started walking again, driven on by the cold as much as their boredom with the conversation. At least I hoped so. “I mean, don’t they fly south? Besides, this sounded human.”

“So do loons.”

I knew what I had heard, but I didn’t pursue it. It wasn’t worth it. Obviously, there was no legendary local ghost everyone had heard of. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe I was crazy. We kept walking, and a minute later, I heard another sound, an actual bird or animal. Maybe it was a real loon.

The girl turned back to me. “Was that it?”

“Probably,” I said, even though it wasn’t.

“I’m Astrid, by the way.”

“Wyatt.”

“I know. You must be pretty bored at Old Lady Greenwood’s. Because, if you are, you should get a lift ticket for Gore Mountain. It’s not too far. We go all season.”

“I ski a little, but probably not as well as you. I’d drag you down.”

“Doesn’t matter. You could take lessons. My older sister goes to UAlbany, and she’s a ski instructor. We’ve got extra skis. How tall are you?”

“About six feet.”

And then, I heard it again, not the bird or the wolf or the loon or whatever, the other thing, off in the distance.

“There! Did you hear that?”

She shook her head. Maybe I was going nuts. Thankfully, we had reached the house. It wasn’t a whole lot warmer than outside, but there was wood by the fireplace. “Know how to make a fire, City Boy?” Josh asked.

I nodded. I’d been in Boy Scouts. This, too, reminded me of Tyler. He wanted to get his Eagle Scout and had pressured me to stick with it, to do it together. “Got a lighter? Or do I need to rub two sticks together?”

Josh handed me a long, blue lighter, and I busied myself, breaking off smaller splinters to use as kindling and arranging the logs just right while, around me, people I didn’t know talked about other people I didn’t know. But I kept listening for the sound from before, which had sounded closer, so much closer, than at Mrs. Greenwood’s house, but now, all I heard was the chattering of strangers and the howling of the wind.

But it was a voice. A girl’s voice. And somehow, I knew that whoever she was, she was beautiful and also lonely, like I was. I told myself I didn’t want to be around anyone, but that wasn’t true. I only didn’t want to be around people who knew me.

“Need any help?” Astrid asked. She’d taken off her hood, and I could see she was pretty, auburn hair and cheeks flushed pink from the cold.

I didn’t really need help, but it was probably better not to be a recluse. Someone had turned on music, loud stuff like Nikki used to like, gothic metal, and someone else was complaining about the music choice, trying to push their own stuff. So I couldn’t have heard an outside noise, even if it did exist.

Which it probably didn’t.

But Astrid was hot, so I handed her Josh’s lighter. “Can you hold this, maybe? And could you see if there are newspapers or anything.”

“You mean like these?” She pointed to a pile underneath all the logs.

“Oh, exactly like that. Sorry.”

She reached for the papers. “Any particular section you like? Local? Sports? Looks like the Adirondack Phantoms were having a good season in 2011. Sorry, they’re a little old.”

“That’s okay.” I took the paper and started rolling it up.

“What I said before, I’d be perfectly happy to ski with you even if you completely suck at it.”

“I wouldn’t say suck.”

“In fact, if I can be totally honest here, there are, like, seventy-five people in my class at school, and we’ve all been together since kindergarten. It’s nice to have a new face in town. We get so few.”

“I’ll bet.”

“So, basically.” She put her hand on her hip. “Any guy shows up with all his limbs or maybe even missing one or two, and he doesn’t actually pick his nose in public, he’s going to get a lot of attention.”

“That’s flattering.” I laughed and stuffed the rolled-up newspaper between the logs. “How do you know I don’t pick my nose in public?” I held out my hand for the lighter.

“Do you?” She shrugged. “You haven’t so far.”

Instead of handing me the lighter, she leaned down across me and lit the paper herself. Her hair, brushing against my nose, smelled familiar, and I remembered last year at midnight. Even though I hadn’t told anyone, Nikki and I had kissed at midnight. Would I be kissing this girl tonight? Would something bad happen to her?

Stupid thought. She was hot. She was coming on to me, and I was choosing to be in bed every night, reading a dead girl’s diary all alone.

The paper caught, and the flames warmed my face, and she was still there, standing there beside me, warming the other side. “Um, can you hand me the poker?”

When she did, our hands brushed for an instant. I didn’t feel the spark I wanted. She was pretty and she was nice, but she wasn’t Nikki. I didn’t even know what I wanted, maybe Nikki, maybe no one. But I didn’t want to live with my ghosts forever.

“Hey, City Boy.” Josh threw a corn chip at me. “I don’t know how you make a fire on Lawn Guyland where you’re from, but here in the freezing north, we do it a little faster.”

“Yes, sir.” I seized the poker and began moving the logs around until something caught and suddenly there was a good blaze going.

Now, people were splitting off into couples. Astrid and I moved to a chair by the window, far from the fire and everyone, where she said we could talk. But in ten minutes, we were making out, and I had my tongue in her mouth, my hand up her shirt, and she was pressing against me in a way that could have felt really good if there weren’t all these people here. And if I didn’t feel so dead inside.

I kissed her again. Around me, everyone else was making out too, like it was required. I kissed her, long and hard to get all the voices in my head to stop. I fumbled with her clothes and tried to just go with it. Be normal. Maybe if you acted normal, if you pretended everything was normal, it would be again.

Soon, Josh announced that it was almost midnight. We stood to do the countdown, and I kissed Astrid’s bruised lips even though at that point, it was a little redundant. Then, a little while later, someone said we should get going.

I agreed and put on my coat, then helped Astrid with hers.

Then, as the door opened, I heard it again. The voice. A girl’s voice. I didn’t say anything, though. I knew not to, in case I was crazy. But I glanced in the direction it had come from, and I saw something high among the trees. A light.

Probably just the moon. Or a planet
.

I knew it wasn’t a planet, though. It was bigger than a planet, and lower. But, obviously, I was hallucinating.

Astrid took my hand and pulled me down the path, but I knew I had to come back. Tomorrow. I had to find out what it was.

When we got to the car, Astrid tried to get me to sit in the back, with her on my lap, but I offered to drive. “I think we’re the only ones that aren’t wasted, right?” I said to Josh.

Astrid pouted, but Josh handed me his keys.

“Are you sure?” she said, taking the seat behind me.

“Lot of crazy people out on New Year’s. Kids get killed all the time.” I also wanted to make sure I knew the way back here. “Besides, I’d rather be alone with you, not in a car full of people.”

“I understand.” But then, she leaned forward and kissed my ear.

“I have to turn this thing around. It’s hard with the trees.”

I somehow managed to do a three-point turn in the middle of a forest, and drove a long way toward the road. When I finally reached the main route, I looked at the name of the street I’d turned off of. Dickinson. I wondered who Dickinson was, some founding father of this crap town, or was it someone loftier, like the poet? Josh said to turn right, which was south, so I knew the cabin was even farther north. Then, I saw a sign that said Grouse Lake, and I remembered that was what Josh had said the name of the lake was.

Astrid lived closest to town, so I dropped her off last, except for Josh. She made me get out of the car. “So, are we going skiing tomorrow?” She giggled. “I mean, today?”

I thought fast. “I might be a little, um, tired.”

“But we’re going, right?” Her voice had an edge like an ice-skate blade.

“Oh, absolutely. Just, maybe, tomorrow.”

“You’ll call me? Or I could call you?”

“My cell doesn’t work up here. Let me get your number. I’ll call you from Mrs. G’s landline.”

We exchanged numbers, and Astrid went inside. I dropped Josh off next, promising to bring the car back the next day. “Hey, your hinges are in too,” he said.

When I got to the house, the path was covered with a fresh dusting of snow. I’d have to shovel it again. I fumbled for the key, and as I did, I heard a sound in the distant north. Singing. But that was impossible.