“Do you? She’s been like this all weekend. I’m so stressed. What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.” He turned her around and hugged her. “We’ll get through it. It’ll get better.”
“How? When?” She pulled away from him. He wasn’t around enough to get the full impact of Sophie’s highs and lows. Jesse couldn’t help but resent him for it. “It was so nice for a minute. One little minute, it was normal. She was sweet and funny. She was telling me one of her wild bird stories.”
Cooper shook his head. “Maybe we should try a new medication.”
“You know she hates how they make her feel. She won’t swallow it.”
“You don’t know. A different pill may help. A different dosage.”
“They never work for her. And if it is Asperger's, you know there are no meds for that,” she said. “Those doctors are idiots grasping for answers, and we’ll go broke bouncing from one to the other while they use our daughter as a guinea pig.”
“We have to stick with the routine she needs. Learn how to deal with it.”
Easy for you to say. You’re never here. She’d read so many books on different techniques: look for Sophie’s cues, give her the space and private time she needs, help her to use her words to express her feelings, stay in the calm green zone, and make sure she gets plenty of exercise and sleep. But Jesse just looked at Cooper and held her tongue. She shook her head then whispered, “I like the last shrink’s diagnosis.”
That therapist, probably the eighth or ninth one they’d taken Sophie to, had said, “I’ve seen this before. Exceptionally spirited. I think she’ll outgrow it.”
About twenty minutes later, Jesse went upstairs. She found Sophie deep in her closet, wearing her headlight lamp, holding Mr. Bear.
“I can’t help it, Mommy,” she whimpered.
Jesse sat on the floor next to her. “I know, honey. I know,” she said, stroking Sophie’s hair. It was as if her daughter lived in a different weather pattern than everyone else, as though she were always fighting a terrible storm that was coming at her, being pelted by atmospheric disturbances.
“I wish I were normal,” she moaned.
Jesse kissed the top of her head. “You feel a little ouchy?”
Sophie nodded. “Don’t hate me.”
Jesse smiled and hugged her. “I don’t hate you, my chickadee.”
“I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you too, sweetie.”
Sophie reached up and held the silver locket that was around Jesse’s neck. She slid it on its chain back and forth, back and forth. She opened the locket and looked at the two photos, one on each half of the necklace. On the right side was a photo of Sophie with her binoculars around her neck, looking serious, taken the summer before on the Cape. The other was one of Jesse and Cooper, their arms around each other, both tanned and happy, smiling widely. Sophie closed the locket with a click and lightly touched the engraved inscription on the front. “With eternal love,” she read aloud. “Forever, right?”
“Forever, right.” Jesse kissed her index finger and placed it on Sophie’s lips.
For Jesse, it was these moments after a tantrum when things felt most ordinary, literally a calm after the storm. Is this the kind of moment most parents enjoy every day? She pushed down the rumbling feeling of envy.
She picked up Sophie’s well-worn copy of Madeline and began to read.
WHEN JESSE CAME OUT of her reverie, she looked down at her paper and saw the beginning of a drawing of Sophie. Her long hair. Her thick worried eyebrows. Her round face. But the rest of her features were not there. Jesse had drawn a blank face, as if the real Sophie were fading away.
Although Sophie’s tantrums mostly took place at home, now and then, she would act out in public, and Jesse could never predict when it might happen or what would set her off. She would get “the look” from strangers that meant “You’re a bad mother who can’t control your child.” She would say, “She can’t help it” or “She has a condition.” But usually, she said, “Sorry. I’m sorry” before slinking away. Jesse never knew exactly what she was sorry about. Sorry her kid had disturbed them or made a scene? Sorry she felt embarrassed? Sorry her daughter wasn’t like theirs? Easy? Normal? Just plain sorry.
She turned to a new page of her sketchpad and started drawing fast. What came out this time was an image of Barnes. She remembered him precisely. The close-cropped fleecy hair. The sweet grin. A knowing glint in his dark eyes. She thought of how he’d said goodbye to her when he left the fire scene. How he had said, “Remember, I see you.”
Just last night, she’d danced and laughed with him. Just this morning, they were drawn together in that intense kiss. At first, a smile formed on her lips, but then words she’d read in that survival guide came back to haunt her. There is no such thing as “normal” life as you once knew it. Everything has changed and has changed forever. And whatever the outcome, you will be dealing with this nightmare in some way for the rest of your life.
As guilt and ambivalence swelled in her chest, she grasped her charcoal and scrawled harsh, dark lines over and over, covering up the drawing. She shoved the pad onto the ground and shot up from her chair. Walking over to the edge of the creek, she grasped her silver locket and, with one firm tug, yanked it from her neck. For the rest of your life.
She closed her hand into a fist. Holding the locket tightly, she swung her arm over her shoulder then let it fly out toward the creek. Saint Anthony barked and ran into the water as if it were a game. Jesse watched as the locket landed in the water with a plop. It glistened for a moment as it seemed to float away but was quickly gone from her sight.
“Forever, right,” she mumbled and turned back toward the house, the dog following at her heels.
IT WAS TWO IN THE MORNING, and Jesse couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of Barnes’s kisses kept creeping into her brain. She slipped downstairs, thinking she would get a drink, but something pushed her on. She walked through the kitchen, where she grabbed a set of keys off a hook on the wall. Then it pushed her into the dining room, onto the screened porch, and out the back door. Outside, she looked up at the sky. It was a clear night, full of bright stars.
She walked along a bluestone path Cooper had made to the old chicken coop out back. He’d worked so hard to restore it, to make the near-crumbling structure habitable. She unlocked the door and entered her studio for the first time in years. She flipped the switch next to the door. The lights flickered on. It was stuffy, with cobwebs hanging in corners, but otherwise, the studio was as she’d left it all those years ago. Coffee cans stuffed with paintbrushes, rolls of papers, and canvases were stashed in a corner, a set of flat files in another. A film of dust coated the tabletops. But unlike the inside of her chaotic house, she could actually breathe in the studio. It was all neatly organized. In the daytime, the space was full of light shining through the bank of windows and the two skylights Cooper had installed. Jesse had loved working there. It had been the perfect space for making art.
She walked around, looking at the pieces she had been working on right before That Day. They were left untouched. One rested on an easel, and another was tacked to the wall—the Thorntons’ gray listing barn and the Fitzpatricks’ stone house, both in thickly painted oils. There was also work on the floor, leaning up against the wall. She let her hands glide over the pieces, touching them as if she’d never seen them before. There were local Canaan landscapes alongside an even earlier series of vast New Mexican skies and mesas from her time spent at an art colony in Taos before Sophie was born, before she and Cooper had even moved to Canaan. The paintings were bold and desolate. They brought back memories of one of her best days ever. She had gone with a group of artists from the colony to see Georgia O’Keefe’s home in Abiquiu. The stark vistas and O’Keefe’s warm but spare home with rows of smooth river rocks that lined the window ledges had inspired Jesse. She’d felt an ease and contentment in New Mexico: her true self. She didn’t know whether it was the
glistening light so ideal for painters or the clean, clear air. She’d loved it all.
She sat in an oversized upholstered chair that had been her meditating, thinking spot, pulling her knees up to her chest. The place where she would sit to mull over her work, to see if she was finished with a painting. She stared at all the pieces, taking them in. She picked up a paintbrush—one of her favorites, a Winsor and Newton hog hair—and held it. Feeling the thick wood handle stained with numerous colors, she turned it over in her hands. Looking at the canvases, she realized she didn’t miss painting mountain landscapes or farmhouses and barns. She didn’t know if she could ever go back to all that. Yet holding the brush in her hand felt good, like greeting an old friend.
After sitting in her chair for a long time, absorbing her old work, letting the peace and familiarity of the place sink in and surround her, she realized she had missed this part of her that she’d shut off, and this space, her sanctuary where she could let her creativity flow whether she was successful at it or not. She stood up, set the paintbrush down, turned out the light, and headed back to bed.
Chapter Sixteen
About three minutes before the bell, Star was standing at her locker, looking at herself in the little round mirror taped to the inside of the door. She looked like hell—pale, with ghastly dark rings under her eyes. She’d gotten no sleep last night and little the nights before that.
Someone said, “How do you spell ‘No Smoking,’ dorko?” And when Star looked in the mirror again, Sophie’s reflection stood behind her.
Star whirled around, shouting, “Fuck you, Soph...” But it was Ruby standing there, looking totally confused. “Oh. Sorry, Rube,” Star said, glancing around. “I thought you were somebody else.”
Sophie had conveniently disappeared.
“Star, are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost.” Ruby hugged her books to her chest. “I was texting and calling you all day yesterday. Why didn’t you get back to me?”
“Hello? I was a little preoccupied.”
“I know. I’m so sorry about your dad’s bookstore. I went to the Barn looking for you, but I guess you’d left. It’s so awful.”
“Yeah, it sucks.”
Their home phone hadn’t stopped ringing—everyone calling to check up on them. Neighbors kept bringing food over as if someone had died. Like tuna casserole was going to save the day. People kept asking stupid questions.
“What’ll Blue do now?”
“Why can’t they save the Barn?”
“Will you rebuild?”
“Any books left?”
What they should have been asking was: what did Star do with that fucking cigarette? She must have flicked it away after burning herself. But where did it land? Or did I stamp it out with my foot? She just didn’t remember. The insurance people were investigating the cause of the fire, and they were going to figure it out. Star could hear the news report: “Psychotic Self-Mutilating Teen Sets Fire to Father’s Bookstore.” She was so screwed. And to make things worse, Sophie had decided to show up at school, where Star had been safe from her so far.
“What’s going to happen?” Ruby asked. “About the Barn, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows yet. My parents are kind of in shock.”
“But are they going to be okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, wasn’t that your dad’s only job?”
“Oh. Yeah. But it was a used bookstore. Like who even buys books anymore, let alone old, moldy ones? I don’t think it’ll make that much of a difference. My dad made money with computers and shit years ago. I don’t think we’ll starve.” At least, she hoped they wouldn’t. She was never exactly sure what her dad had done all those years ago. He was no Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, but she knew he had been a big shot at a tech company that invented some chip or app or code or something having to do with wireless networks. And when they went public, the executives all made a bundle. It seemed funny to think her dad was a techie nerd who actually loved paper.
“Oh, good,” Ruby said. “I was, you know, kind of worried for you.”
All the talk about the Barn was making Star even more nervous. She noticed Ruby’s new top. It was tight and pink, and Ruby loved talking clothes. “New top?”
“Yeah. The Zone.”
Star paused. Not that rat trap again. “Sweet.”
“They have a million different kinds. You’d look totally cute. I’ll go with you.” Lately, Ruby was always trying to get Star to buy new clothes and fix herself up. Put on makeup. Cut her hair. Star used to be into clothes, shopping, and all that typical teen girl stuff. But no more. She just put on whatever was handy, called little attention to herself, and covered her cuts... and that cigarette burn. Looking hot was the last thing on her mind.
Ruby was in Star’s homeroom, so they headed over to Ms. Birch’s classroom together. They passed Zack, who was walking with his two friends in the opposite direction. Ruby gave Star the eye and a little grin. She mouthed “MC” to her, and Star rolled her eyes. Right. Major Crush.
Zack nodded at the girls. “Hey, dude.”
“Dude,” Star said back at him.
“Sorry about the Barn. What a bummer.” Then he was gone.
The night before, he had been super nice to Star, hanging out with her, watching the fire, putting his arm around her comfortingly. But right then, even her MC couldn’t cheer her up. Plus she still hadn’t been able to reach Ophelia on the phone. She’d kept calling last night but got no response. On top of everything else, she was worried about the strange girl, too.
They got to homeroom, and it was all abuzz with kids gossiping about the fire. It was the biggest thing to happen in Canaan since Sophie’s disappearance. As the bell rang, Star put her head down on the desk and rested her eyes. The thing that kept bothering her, besides Sophie Albright, was what she had said to Jesse when she’d bitched at Star for smoking at the book store.
“Do you want to burn down your dad’s business?” she had said.
“I could care less,” Star had replied. But she hadn’t meant it. She would never mean that. She was being a spoiled brat. She was so fucked.
Suddenly, Ms. Birch was clapping her hands to get everyone to shut up. She was babbling announcements about SATs, college applications, and recruiters coming from some expensive private college in Boston.
Ruby tapped Star on the shoulder. “Are you all right?”
She lifted her head. “I’m just tired. I didn’t get any sleep last night.”
Next thing she knew, Ms. Birch was standing right next to her. She was a well-meaning lady who taught English, wore long flowered skirts, and always had one braid down her back. She tilted her head then shook it sadly. She put her hand on Star’s shoulder. “Star, I’m very sorry about the Book Barn. Everyone is. In fact, I want to organize a fundraiser to help rebuild.” She turned to the whole class. “Who would like to be on the committee and plan an event?”
Most kids weren’t even listening to her. They were tapping and swiping at their smartphones or talking to their neighbors. Star dropped her head back on the desk. It was so heavy, she couldn’t keep it up. It felt good to close her eyes. She heard the commotion in the room but tuned it out and just tried to listen to her own breathing.
She hadn’t told Ruby about the cigarette and burning the Barn down or about her ex-best friend’s ghost. She knew Ruby suspected something was going on. She probably thought Star was into drugs. She’d asked her these serious probing questions like “Have you ever taken Adderall?” Or “Would you ever go to a shrink?” But as much as Star would have liked to confide in her about what was going on, she knew Ruby would tell her parents or some teacher, and that would suck. They would think she was crazy and send her away—Outward Bound or some reform school where they would take away her cell phone and laptop and make her life even more miserable. No, she had to deal with it on her own. The bell rang, and like robots, the kids moved on to their first-period classes.
They were discussing global warming, when somehow the topic came around to how it affected animals.
Mr. Victor said, “By the year 2050, between fifteen and thirty-seven percent of known species will be extinct.”
“What does he know about extinction?”
Star turned to the voice, and there she was again, her ex-BFF stalker, sitting next to her, where Michael McDonnell, the class clown, had been a minute before. He always sat next to her, but he was gone. Star looked all around the room and didn’t see him. Sophie was her ten-year-old self and looked funny sitting at that desk surrounded by sixteen-year-olds, her legs dangling but not touching the floor.
“What are you doing here?” Star whispered. “What have you done with Michael?”
“This is so boring. How do you stand it?” She brought her binos up to her eyes and focused in on Mr. V.
“Shhh.” Star turned away from her and picked up her pencil. She tried to take notes on what Mr. Victor was saying, but she couldn’t concentrate. She just heard disconnected words. “Greenhouse gas... extreme weather events... climate change...”
She was pressing really hard with the pencil on her notebook, staring at the dark point of the lead.
Sophie kept whispering in her ear, distracting her. “Did you think about what I told you the other day?”
Star kept shushing her, giving her the evil eye. Other kids in the class were turning to look at her funny. She slunk down in her seat, trying to disappear.
“Miss Silverman? Is there something you’d like to share with us?” Mr. Victor said. He had stopped writing on the blackboard and was looking right at her. Of course, so was the entire class.
Sophie Last Seen Page 16
