Catherine

by April Lindner

  The very next day, I stopped at a kiosk, bought myself a phone card, and called The Underground from a pay phone beside a seaside taverna. When Hence picked up the phone, the sound of his voice made me sad and happy all at once.

  “It’s Catherine.” Should I pretend I was checking up on the club? No, that would be ridiculous. Why hadn’t I planned this better?

  Finally, I thought of something to say: “What’s new?” It wasn’t exactly snappy repartee, but it was better than nothing.

  “You won’t believe this,” Hence said, excitement in his voice, almost like he’d been waiting for me to call, storing up some important piece of information. “I have an audition lined up with Riptide. You know who they are, right?”

  “Of course I do.” Riptide had played The Underground a few months earlier—A white-hot band on the verge of a breakthrough, Dad had called them. “They’re hiring a guitarist?”

  “Bill Dierks quit. Out of the blue. He had a nervous breakdown, or at least that’s what people are saying. The crazy thing is, they were about to get signed. So they’re desperate for a front man.”

  “Wow.” There had been a few other auditions since the one with The Pickup Sticks, but so far nothing had clicked. “Riptide. They’re brilliant.”

  “I’m worried they’ll think I’m too inexperienced.”

  “What does it matter, if you can play?”

  “They need a lead singer, too. Dierks was their vocalist. Stan—the drummer—says none of the rest of them has a strong enough voice to carry the lead.”

  “You can sing,” I told him. “I’ve heard you. And you’ve got range.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I know so.”

  There was a long, awkward pause.

  “I had this feeling I should call you today,” I added.

  He laughed. “I’m glad you did.”

  Before long we said our good-byes. In Hence’s presence, the silences that sometimes fell between us never felt uncomfortable, but over the phone was another story. The minute I hung up, I wished I hadn’t, but calling back would have been even weirder than having phoned in the first place, so I made myself trudge uphill to Vernon’s villa. Four and a half days until our flight home. How would I stand the wait?

  The trip home from Greece felt like it took a million years. When we finally pulled up beside the club, I burst out of the car and let myself in the front door. Hence was exactly where we’d left him, strumming his guitar at the edge of the stage and scribbling lyrics in a nearby notebook. He jumped to his feet as if I’d caught him slacking off. Dad was still outside, trying to find a better parking spot for the Jeep, but Q was right behind me, so I didn’t dare greet Hence the way I wanted to, by throwing my arms around him.

  Q dumped his duffel bag at Hence’s feet. “This goes upstairs,” he said, then turned away, headed for the elevator up to our apartment.

  Hence’s eyes met mine, and instead of the happiness I expected to see in them, I saw anger. Before I could do or say anything, Hence bent to hoist my brother’s duffel and reach for my suitcase.

  “I’ll carry mine,” I said, feeling my cheeks grow hot. This wasn’t how I’d imagined our reunion. We lugged the bags to the elevator and waited for it to return to the first floor. “I’m sorry my brother’s such a jerk.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Hence said, not meeting my eyes. We rode up to the second floor, and I held the door while he deposited Q’s dusty duffel bag in the vestibule. Only after the door slid shut again did he venture a look at me, and I saw that his expression had softened.

  “So, what happened with the audition?” It had been killing me, not knowing how things had gone with Riptide. Though I’d known there was no way Hence would contact me at Sebastian’s villa, every time the phone rang I jumped, hoping it might be him, calling with good news.

  He allowed himself a small smile. “I’m in,” he said. “We had our first rehearsal—”

  But I cut off his air supply with an enormous hug of congratulations. “I knew it! I knew they’d pick you!” Hence was stiff at first. We’d never hugged before, and I’m sure he wasn’t expecting it. But then he hugged me back, and electricity crackled between us again. For once, the stupid elevator moved too quickly, lurching to a halt at my floor, and Hence released me.

  Despite my protests, he lugged my suitcase to my room. I fumbled with the keys. “I want to hear all about how it went, and what the band is like,” I said as soon as we were through the door.

  “They just signed a contract with Plasma Records. I mean we did. We’re going to be recording.” He said that last part quietly, as if he hardly dared believe his good luck.

  “Don’t forget me when you’re famous, okay?” I let myself give his arm a playful squeeze.

  “Like I could forget you,” he said, looking into my eyes, then away. We stood awhile in the middle of my bedroom, not saying anything. “I’d better get downstairs,” he finally said.

  “We’ll talk soon, okay?” I gave a casual little wave, trying to look like my heart wasn’t pounding a thousand times a second. As soon as he shut the door behind him, I dropped down to my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Had Hence really said Like I could forget you? Could I have imagined those words? And what did they mean, exactly? That hug, though. I knew that part had really happened. The scent of him—green-apple shampoo and a faint whiff of baking bread—clung to me, and I could still feel the hug itself, warm and lingering, like neither of us wanted it to end.

  Chelsea

  Despite the noise and my fury at Hence, I managed to fall asleep, but my dreams were anything but restful. I tossed and turned in the brass bed that used to be my mother’s, until a sound startled me awake—the scratch of branches against the window. Eyes shut, I pulled the covers tighter around me, trying to get back to sleep, until I remembered: There were no branches outside my mother’s window.

  I bolted upright, surprised to find the room bright with moonlight—or maybe light from the street. I turned to the window to find out where the scratching sound was coming from. Even as I moved I knew I didn’t really want to know, that the sound could only mean bad news. What I saw at the window chilled me all the way through. White twigs. No, not twigs at all. Fingers—long and thin, with stubby fingernails like mine, clawing at the window. Just then a face pressed itself to the glass, so close that its features were distorted and its breath began to form a cloud.

  I started, the sound of my own screaming filling my head. I wanted to leap out of bed and run from the room, but I was frozen in place, too shocked to move, even as the fingers clawed at the pane, trying to part the glass like water.

  This has to be a dream, I told myself. It can’t be real. But knowing that didn’t make me feel any less petrified. She wanted something—the girl at the window. Somehow I knew it was a she. The face drew back so that I could see her large desperate eyes, her untamed hair, and her moving lips, enunciating three syllables I couldn’t make out at first. But she repeated them over and over until I got it and said them along with her: Let. Me. In.

  Just then, I heard the elevator outside the door creaking to a stop. A second later, the apartment door opened, and a man strode into the room—a half-familiar, black-haired, glowering man jangling a key ring. I had that densely foggy confusion that comes with being woken up in the middle of a dream, and for a moment I couldn’t remember his name. I turned back to the window—only a second or two had passed since I’d looked away—and the face was gone.

  “What’s going on up here?” the man demanded. “You woke me out of a sound sleep. Didn’t I tell you I’d kick you out if you caused me any more trouble?”

  Hence. Slowly the night before came back to me. I nodded.

  “Why were you screaming?”

  “I had a dream,” I said. “A nightmare. I couldn’t help it.”

  He exhaled as though he was completely exasperated. “A nightmare? I’m an idiot for letting you stay here. Do you always scream in your sl
eep?”

  “I’ve never done it before,” I said. “There was a face outside the window.”

  “What do you mean, a face?”

  I struggled for words to convey what I had seen. “A girl. In my dream. With sad eyes and long hair.”

  Hence said nothing, but his eyes widened.

  “She scratched at the window and told me to let her in. It felt so real.” Come to think of it, I didn’t remember waking up, exactly. Could I still be dreaming? Or had it not been a dream at all? I gestured at the window. “Could somebody have climbed the fire escape?”

  To my surprise and amazement, Hence took a single long stride—a leap, really—and, leaning over me, tore the window open in one swift motion. He threw a leg over the sill, climbed outside, and started down the fire escape, its metal groaning under his weight. Still shaky, I drew my legs to my chest and hugged them. Minutes passed. A cool wind blew in through the open window; the temperature must have dropped outside. I wrapped the blanket around myself and got out of bed to pace awhile, wondering where on earth Hence had gone and if he was coming back. I was fairly certain I wasn’t dreaming anymore. No, I was positive. This was real. And the girl scratching at my window… could she have been real, too? Hence must think so, or else why would he be running around barefoot on the street below?

  Just as I’d started to consider closing the window, the fire escape creaked and I heard him climbing back up. He clambered over the sill, his hair crazy and his eyes wide.

  “What was that all about?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. He stood there a moment, looking at me as though I were a figment of his imagination. “Did you find her?”

  His face crumpled. For a moment, he looked like he was about to cry. “I thought she’d come home.” His voice was softer than I’d ever heard it, wondering and sad. “I thought maybe…”

  He didn’t have to say any more. I knew right away who he meant.

  “That couldn’t have been my mother,” I told him. “I told you, it was a girl… she was around my age.”

  He didn’t answer, but I could read what he was thinking on his face.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts.” Just saying the words freaked me out. “You don’t—do you?” He didn’t seem like someone who believed in much of anything.

  He stood there awhile longer, staring wild-eyed at the window, making no move to shut it, as though he hoped my mother’s ghost would fly in.

  “She’s not dead,” I told him. “I know she isn’t.” I closed the window myself, snapping the lock shut. “That couldn’t have been her. It was just a dream.”

  We stared at each other for a long moment.

  “If she comes back, scream your lungs out,” he said. He left, locking the apartment door behind him.

  After that, I tried getting into bed, but my pulse was pounding, and I knew there was no way I could sleep. If only I had someone to talk to, I thought. According to the clock radio, it was 3:12. It was going to be a long night. When I shut my eyes, I could still see that frantic face, white as the moon and weirdly familiar, pressing up against the glass.

  Maybe I would never sleep again. Hence’s parting words stuck with me: What if the girl came back? What if Hence was right and she hadn’t been a figment of my imagination? What I’d said was true: I didn’t believe in ghosts. Still, the girl’s fingers clawing at the glass had seemed every bit as real as the hand I now held up to my face.

  Finally, I switched on the bedside light. Maybe a book would settle my nerves. I would find a boring one to help me fall asleep. I assessed the collection, looking among the ones I hadn’t gotten to yet. On the bottom shelf, near the corner of the room, I noticed a volume I hadn’t seen before. Twice as thick as any of the others, it bore an unlikely title: A Compendium of Anatomy and Physiology. All of the other books in the room were novels. Why had my mom kept such a thick, dull-looking textbook? I knelt on the floor for a closer look. It was heavy in my hands, old-looking and -smelling.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, opened the cover, and almost shrieked again. What I held in my hand was no ordinary book. Someone had hollowed out the pages, making it into a secret hiding place. Inside was a second, smaller book, its cream cover peppered with little pink flowers. A journal.

  Fingers trembling, I dug it out. I had to work to pry it loose; the journal fit snugly into its carved-out hole, like she’d measured the size of the space she’d need before cutting. I opened the cover, and what I found was better than anything I could have hoped for—page after page of journal entries written in my mother’s loopy, extravagant handwriting. I riffled through, then pressed the open book to my chest, hugging it as if it were her. Once I’d blinked back my tears of happiness, I opened to the first page and saw the date. She would have been seventeen when she began the journal—the same age I was now.

  Book in hand, I slipped under the covers. Reading my mother’s words—hearing her voice—was exciting but painful. She wrote about school, about her dad and her brother, Quentin, about her friend Jackie and a trip she’d taken to Greece, but most of all she wrote about Hence—pages and pages about how intriguing he was and how much she hoped he liked her back. As I read, I was torn between feelings of love for her (right away, she seemed like somebody I would like) and sadness that I never really got to know her. I even felt jealous of her, growing up in a nightclub, getting to watch all the shows and hang around with famous and soon-to-be-famous rockers. Plus, she seemed every bit as smart, focused, and talented as my dad had always said she was. Mixed in with her journal entries were poems she had written, and more of her elaborate doodles—faces, birds, a tiara, flowers; all sorts of ordinary things made beautiful by her pen.

  When my eyes got heavy, I closed the pink-and-cream cover and tucked the book within a book into its place on the shelf, but my mind still buzzed with questions. Had my mother ever wanted my father anywhere near as much as she wanted Hence? Had her life with Dad and me been a disappointment? Was that why she ran away? Somewhere in the journal there must be a clue to where she had gone, and why, and I planned to keep reading until I found it.

  Catherine

  A few days later, to my utter surprise, Hence turned up at Idlewild Prep just as school was letting out. I was walking out the door with Jackie when I caught sight of him waiting at the front gate, looking windblown and determined. For a moment I thought he might offer to carry my books home from school, the way boys did in old movies, but instead he just stood there, looking first at me, then at Jackie, then at me again, a question mark in his dark eyes.

  “It’s okay,” Jackie said finally. “I need to hurry home, anyway. I promised my mom I would let her take me shopping this afternoon.” She shot me a funny look and raced off across the street.

  So I stood there, waiting for Hence to explain his presence, and he stared back at me, not explaining. Meanwhile, I could see Francesca Pasquale and Bonnie Day whispering to each other about this new piece of hot gossip unfolding in front of their eyes. Francesca had hated me since fourth grade, when I stopped her from picking on Jackie, who was the new girl in school, and Bonnie had the biggest mouth in the whole senior class. I knew they were looking for something about Hence they could turn into a joke at my expense: his scruffy hair, the holes in his jeans, his army surplus jacket—all the things that set him apart from the clean-cut jocks they liked so much. But Hence himself—his deep eyes, his way of standing there not even noticing that everyone around us was watching—well, there was no put-down they could manage about him.

  So I stood my ground and let them watch, waiting for Hence to say something, feeling braver by the second.

  “Hi,” he said finally.

  “You came to see me?” Of course he did. Why else would he be waiting at the gates of my school? But I wanted to hear him say it.

  “Looks that way.” And he allowed himself that cautious smile that always made me think somebody used to slap the grin right off his face. Every time I saw that smile, I wanted to throw my whole self bet
ween Hence and the memories of whatever made him afraid to cut loose and be truly happy.

  But that day, Francesca, Bonnie, and everyone else who watched us with calculating eyes were the ones I wanted to protect Hence from. Before I could think too hard about what I was doing, I stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the lips—hard at first, defiantly. Once he got over his surprise and started to respond, our kiss softened into something gentle and lingering. I heard gasps and giggles at first, but after a moment or two, I heard nothing but the blood rushing in my ears.

  When I pulled back, finally, all I saw were Hence’s startled eyes and his parted lips. The school and everyone in front of it had vanished from my mind. “Let’s go home,” I said, taking his hand. But we didn’t make it home—at least not at first. We stopped to kiss in front of Gristedes, and again by China Yearnings. By the time we started walking for real, the sky had turned a deep twilight blue and a cold wind had whipped up. My lips were chapped, and I had a crick in my neck from tilting my face up to his, but I was happier than I could ever remember being. We held hands almost all the way to The Underground, but half a block away we let go because it still felt too soon to let Dad know about any of this.

  When we got to the door, Q was there waiting for us, and from the look in his eyes, I knew Bad Quentin had come out to play.

  “Go around the back,” he snarled at Hence. “You were supposed to be on the clock over an hour ago.”

  Without a glance at me, Hence did as he’d been ordered, while I stood there fuming. Q wasn’t Hence’s boss. He didn’t even officially work at The Underground, except when Dad was short of help, and then he would stomp around looking all put out, as though it were beneath him to change lightbulbs or stock napkin holders.