Unforgettable

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Scrunched in his corner, he planned and considered.

  He did not plan to feel a cold small circle pressed against the nape of his neck.

  Billy’s revolver.

  Chapter 13

  “SUSAN?” REPEATED MITCH. “SUSAN Nevilleson?” They had forced him to lie on the floor face down, the way they did in cop shows, when they’ve caught the guy running through the woods. There was no tape left to bind him, and the little plastic handcuffs were too small to go around wrists the size of Mitch’s.

  Billy’s gun, however, was not too small to keep Mitch lying down.

  Mitch could not believe he had endangered Susan like that. Please God, don’t let it be true! he thought. I just used her name to impress Mr. Senneth. Please don’t let Susan be dead. Please don’t let me be the reason Susan died.

  “Susan,” he whispered.

  The white carpet in the master stateroom was so nubbly, he could feel the separate bumps of it against his cheek.

  Susan, who had wanted success as much as anybody he’d ever met, who had a map of her life, all the roads and rivers of hope. Susan, who had dreamed of true love and lockets. Susan, who had wanted her own stage, her own theater, her own television show. Susan, so exhausted by her job, but never pitying herself, always charging on, always fun … Susan.

  Everything Mitch had chosen not to think about in his friendship with Susan pressed into his mind the way the carpet pressed into his cheek. Susan had loved him.

  And how had he repaid her?

  By using her—even less than that! By using her name—in such a way that she died from it.

  Susan, he thought, as if repeating her name would somehow turn the tide and bring her home safely.

  Hope was in the room with him; they were all there—Hope, Kaytha, Mr. Senneth, Edie, and Billy—but he could not think of Hope. For her—for her beauty, which had overpowered him; for her mystery, which had so appealed to him—for her he had done this ridiculous small thing which had had such a terrible ending.

  Why? he thought. Was I really trying to rescue a girl in trouble, a damsel in distress? Or was I just trying to prove I could act? Just using the stage set of The Jayquith, and the lines that Hope handed me?

  Using.

  I did nothing for Susan at all, in the end, except to use her.

  Oh, Susan!

  Kaytha watched his face with interest. She couldn’t identify with emotions. Kaytha had never felt guilt or grief. Kaytha felt other people existed in order for her to use them, and could not have followed Mitch’s reasoning: that using Susan had led to her demise.

  So what?

  It happens.

  Meanwhile, Mitch had a good run for his money.

  Kaytha debated the best way to get Hope to tell them where the necklace was. Of course, if Hope really didn’t remember, it was a moot point.

  Hope was so proud of her looks. So Kaytha would begin by removing those good looks. She would start easy, with the hair. That gorgeous incredible bronze-brown hair. Kaytha would cut it all off. Then she would shave a matching asp, curling around and around Hope’s naked skull. Hair grows back, Hope would tell herself, I’ll be okay, it’s just hair … but Hope would be wrong.

  Kaytha was also tempted by Mitch.

  How wonderful that this T-shirt god, this big, muscular blond piece of perfection, had ended up helpless on the floor.

  Kaytha walked around Mitch’s prone body and knelt on the carpet. The nubbly white wool joined them, as if they were swimming in the same pool. How funny he looked, flattened out. Now he could see two things: Billy’s gun and Kaytha’s knife.

  Kaytha smiled.

  Hope was sitting cross-legged on the immense bed. Its headboard was slanted padded mahogany, so that readers or television watchers need not even stack pillows to be in the perfect position, but merely recline. Mr. Senneth had simply used two bathrobe sashes to fasten Hope to the headboard. She could not believe that it had been so easy for him, nor that it was so impossible for her to free herself.

  She preferred thinking about physical things: her wrists, whose strength from tennis no longer mattered; her back, which far from being at a comfy angle, was awkwardly, and by now very painfully, arched because of the tying up.

  But if her time on earth was running out, she could not allow herself the luxury of pretending this was only a physical problem. She had to face what she had done.

  For kicks—like a person joyriding, and accidentally taking an innocent bystander over the cliff with him—for kicks she had embarked on this. For no reason except to see what would happen. Not a single thought for what might happen to other people, helplessly drawn in. Just the desire to act it out.

  She had always despised rotten little junior high boys who, in guidance counselor terms, “acted out.” Oh, they have troubles at home, the counselors would say, alcoholic parents, so they’re “acting out.” What contempt she had for them, inflicting their personal problems on entire classes, just because they had no self-discipline to go on bravely like everybody else.

  I’m worse than anybody, she thought. Acting out in junior high just meant ruining a class here and there. Acting out my spy drama, acting out my amnesia farce … a girl named Susan has died. I don’t even know who Susan is! I don’t even know how this happened, or what she went through. But whatever hopes and dreams Susan Nevilleson had are at the bottom of Boston Harbor.

  She made herself look further at the consequences of her silliness. Silly was not the right word. She had gone way beyond silly, entertaining herself with her own stage play. Acting, she thought, has to stay on Broadway. You can’t move it into people’s lives without hurting them. Of course, I’ve learned the lesson a little late for all of us.

  She thought of her parents, who had said New York isn’t safe. You’re to go to small town New England. Drama is ridiculous. You are to interview at colleges with a math major in mind. You can be an accountant or a tax attorney; they always find work. Forget acting.

  So what had their sweet, good daughter done?

  Their daughter who never disobeyed, never rebelled?

  Picked another dangerous city; picked her own little drama; thought of nothing but acting; and then, acted out.

  Her poor real-life parents’ next act … what would that be? Choosing her coffin?

  “Susan and her boyfriend were not murdered,” said Mr. Senneth huffily, as if Kaytha were totally misrepresenting the situation. “Nobody here has ever done such a thing, and nobody here ever will. The girl and her boyfriend jumped overboard. They chose that. Nobody forced them. And the fog was rolling in. We could not possibly have found them. I’m afraid it really comes under the heading of suicide. I cannot be held responsible for this.”

  Instinctively, Mitch tried to roll over to look at the speaker, but Billy’s gun immediately made skin contact with Mitch’s nose.

  They froze in position for a moment. Mitch surrendered and flattened himself again, while Kaytha giggled.

  Mitch said, “Susan’s boyfriend?”

  His tone of voice was so confused that it confused the others. “The one who impersonates Benjamin Franklin,” said Mr. Senneth. “You’re all impersonating people, of course. I have no idea who you really are, young man. The Jayquith was not able to find records for me that a Mr. and Mrs. McKenna ever stayed there, let alone on the seventh floor!”

  “Ben was with her?” cried Mitch.

  “He’s probably still with her,” said Kaytha, still crouching, enjoying the way Mitch screwed up his eyes to keep the tears from coming. The way the tears came anyway, and sopped down into the rug. “At the bottom of the deep blue sea,” she sang.

  “You are sick,” said Hope.

  Edie floated from one side of the stateroom to the other. Edie was, like Kaytha, too thin. And she had a frizzy look to her: as if not just her hair, but also her thinking, had split ends.

  Hope couldn’t figure out why the other Senneths paid no attention to Edie. Edie had started the whole nightmare;
and free like this, she could just dash off the boat and call the police and end the whole nightmare. Why didn’t she? Edie had a part to play and she wasn’t doing it.

  She won’t save us, thought Hope. She won’t even know what’s happening. Two days tied up in the bunk with Kaytha flicking her knife had finished her off. She isn’t dead, but she is brain dead.

  Edie had run out of energy and courage. And the Senneths knew it.

  Kaytha tucked the knife blade back into its ivory sheath and then flicked it out again. She repeated this twice more. It was a good show.

  “Hope, tell them!” said Mitch. “Tell them where the necklace is.”

  I’m going to have to act again, thought Hope. Acting got me into this. Acting will have to get us out. She said, “Mitch—believe me—I …”

  “Believe you?” cried Mitch. “Give me a break. Who could believe you on anything now?” His muscles prepared again to turn, so he could face her. Billy, pressing the gun now into Mitch’s cheek, prevented him from trying. Mitch was panting, as if in the midst of a wrestling match, and perhaps he was: a wrestling match with himself, a wrestling match to keep himself down, lest the gun go off.

  When you grew up in the mountains, you grew up comfortable with guns: your father and uncles and brothers and neighbors hunted. So Hope knew that Billy was not comfortable with the gun he held. He was afraid of it.

  But an enemy who can’t handle guns is even worse than an enemy who can. Anything might happen. And that gun might be pointed at Mitch, or at Hope, or Billy’s own foot, and Billy would hardly know.

  Not only was Mr. Senneth not used to violence, even Billy was no expert. She wondered if Billy, too, was an artist. Not a con artist, but a copier of necklaces. Or was he the salesman? The one who found the buyers? Because he was neither sailor, nor thug.

  “I thought you were nice people!” cried Hope to Mr. Senneth.

  “We usually are. Edie put us in a difficult position and I admit that we have responded poorly. We didn’t have time to think things through. We do not normally use violence. We just want to make a very large amount of money. You, however, have obstructed us.”

  “And we’re running out of time here,” said Billy. The hand holding the weapon trembled. “Where is the necklace, Hope?”

  It was interesting that they continued to call her Hope, and that she continued her own act, considering herself to be Hope. They were half on stage, and half off. It was like Ben Franklin, who had remained Ben Franklin to his friends after he shed the costume. He would never shed his nickname now.

  She said, “I don’t understand why you people don’t just quit. Surely so much has gone wrong now that you—”

  “Who are you to second guess us?” shrieked Kaytha, suddenly vaulting up from the floor and landing with a bounce on the bed. She stayed tucked, like a gymnast. The bed lurched when she hit the mattress and Hope knew why they had made her sit cross-legged; it would take such time to unfold herself.

  Kaytha said, “How much do you like her, Mitch?”

  There was a point beyond which acting could not go. He was being handed lines, but this was beyond improv, and Mitch McKenna did not know what to say.

  “All right,” said Hope. “I’ll explain everything.”

  Billy tilted back a little, as if he needed space in which to listen. Mr. Senneth half-sat on one of the ledges that held VCR tapes and books. Kaytha turned her face somewhat, to hear better with one ear aimed directly at the speaker. Edie curled up in the single armchair, like a child ready for a bedtime story.

  Hope began at the beginning. “I was born in Appalachia. My family is …”

  Nobody told her to cut to the chase. Nobody said: Hey, we don’t care, huh? You don’t even need to tell us your name, because you’re going to be buried at sea and we don’t need a name for that. For if they told her it didn’t matter—she and Mitch were doomed whatever she said—why tell them? They had to let her talk, in order to get to the talk they needed.

  She told them about poverty. About yearning for riches. About dreaming of a wealthy man. About coming to the city to find the gold, so to speak.

  And there it was. Gold. Handed to her. Placed right in her linen handbag, as if decreed by the gods. It was hers, gold and rubies and emeralds fit for a queen.

  As Hope described the necklace, giving the ultimate detailed proof that Yes! she remembered, and Yes! she had respected their work, their faces softened. This necklace was everything to them. It was more than life and logic.

  “I wanted the necklace,” said Hope. “Of course I wanted the necklace. But more than that, I wanted the people who had necklaces like that. I wanted your life! I wanted suites at The Jayquith and yachts that cruised the world. I wanted gowns designed for that necklace and parties to wear the necklace to.”

  She said, “I wanted you.”

  They stared at each other: the real Senneths and the false one.

  They were as spellbound as if they had never heard this story.

  The silence curled around her like a tongue of silk.

  Kaytha’s disagreeable high voice said, “Yes, but where is it?”

  “I went back to the train station,” said Hope, “where my suitcase was stashed in a locker. I left my bag, with the necklace, in the locker. Then I went to the Boston Public Library, and walked through the stacks to a dark and dusty place where the books are dull and nobody wants them. I hid the locker key in the pocket of a book that hasn’t gone out in years. As soon as the library opens, we can—”

  “You what? You idiot!” cried Kaytha. “What if somebody does take that book out?”

  “But tomorrow is Sunday,” said Mr. Senneth. “The Library does not open. We have to wait until Monday.”

  “I’m sure they have Sunday hours,” said Kaytha quickly. “I’ll call them.”

  It was two in the morning.

  The master stateroom, of course, had a telephone, and the Library’s friendly recording announced the hours it was open.

  “Two to six,” said Kaytha, breathing the words like a safe combination. “Two to six,” she repeated. She flicked her knife. “Now which book is the key in, Hopey?”

  “I’ll have to show you,” she said. The telephone was right behind her tied arms. Tucked right inside the headboard with all the other electronic equipment, the amazing selection of adult toys that the Lady Hope featured. If she could get at the phone …

  “Oh, of course. Silly me. Going to keep yourself alive, are you? Going to give yourself a few more hours, are you? Planning on screaming for help in the middle of a crowded public building, are you? Well, think again, Hopesy.” Kaytha giggled again.

  “What are you two idiots doing?” came the shout. A thick yellow glow, a muffled flashlight, zeroed in on them.

  Ben Franklin had never been so glad to be called an idiot. They could call him anything, any time, as long as they pulled him out of the water.

  He was too tired to answer, and Susan, shivering in his arms, could not even lift an arm to wave.

  It was a genuine fishing boat, and it stank. Rotted and oily, slick with fish guts. Ben Franklin could have hugged the boat itself, along with the crew.

  The crew shoved them into a very hot tiny cabin, wrapping them both in the same dirty blanket and pouring coffee out of a thermos.

  They had been in the water for hours. Ben knew there were terribly important things to tell his rescuers, terribly important … something … he had to notify … or call … or something … but … but he slept.

  In the same blanket, he and Susan fell into the same deep sleep: the comatose overwhelming sleep from exhaustion and fear.

  But not the sleep of death.

  Chapter 14

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE desecrating the Lady Hope like this!” screamed Hope. “This beautiful yacht, this lovely Lady Hope. You can’t commit murder on her!”

  “Just watch,” said Kaytha.

  Hope’s fingers, back behind the slanted headboard, tried Braille. When y
ou are accustomed to eyesight, you don’t know things by feel. You have no memory in your fingertips. She struggled and struggled, but her fingertips told her nothing. Not one bump, not one raised spot. The clues were there, but she could not read them.

  “Please, please, please,” cried Hope, “I’ll tell you anything, I promise. Don’t kill Mitch. I’ll go with you and we’ll get into the train station locker and I’ll give you the necklace.”

  Kaytha remained unimpressed. “Press that against his ear, Billy,” said Kaytha.

  Billy flinched.

  “No!” whispered Hope.

  “No,” said Mr. Senneth, even more feebly.

  Kaytha said, as if she were being extremely reasonable, “Tell me exactly what book.”

  Finally a book title entered Hope’s head, along with the Dewey Decimal number. It was from her last history project. She could picture it in her bibliography, down toward the bottom of the page. “The Robber Barons,” she said, breathing heavily.

  “It’s 973.8,” Hope added quickly. “It’s about railroad magnates and people who founded industries and things. Nobody cares anymore, you don’t have to worry that anybody touched it. It’s black and very dusty and the corners of the book are crushed in.”

  Kaytha ran the knife very gently down Mitch’s arm. Billy said, “Kaytha, don’t, she’s telling us.” Billy pressed the barrel against Mitch’s cheek.

  “Kaytha!” Hope shrieked. “I just told you where the Queen Isabella necklace is. Don’t kill him. Just because you killed Ben and Susan doesn’t mean you have to go on killing! You can stop, Kaytha. Please please don’t kill again.”

  “I don’t believe what you said,” said Kaytha.

  “What do I have to do to prove I’m telling the truth?” screamed Hope. “Don’t kill him, Kaytha Senneth!” she shouted, as if to call the girl back to sanity with her full name.

  Mr. Senneth said, “Hope. What is with this little rundown? Naming the yacht? Naming Kaytha, naming Susan and Ben, naming—” he leaned over her, yanked hard, and jerked back the tilted headboard.

  The yacht, of course, offered every twentieth century amenity. Not just individual heat and air-conditioning controls, not just remotes for VCR and radio, but also the telephone.