Wake Up

by Brooke De Lira

  It was nearly noon already. My heart sank further into my chest with every hour. Alice’s hollow voice and mangled wrists never left my thoughts. Right there next to memories of Aiden writing new songs and scaling the cliffs in the early morning light. I had to do this—for both of them.

  I hadn’t even talked to C when we had gone back to get the pickup, afraid to see her fading form. But I knew she would understand.

  I dug into my jacket pocket for my cell phone. Damn, I’d left it at C’s. Taking my hand out of my pocket, I imagined its presence. I put my hand into my pocket again, this time pulling out my cracked smartphone.

  I found Kath in my contacts and pressed Call, holding the phone to my ear. It rang. No answer. When her voicemail recording sounded, I cleared my throat and feigned a carefree voice. “Hey Kath, it’s Madelyn. I just wanted to touch base and, um, was wondering if you knew a guy named Jimmy Olson. Give me a call when you can.”

  Luke sighed, loosening his grip on the wheel. “There’s something about the woods around here. I’ve never really been a nature guy, never went camping or anything. But these woods.” He chuckled. “I guess they feel like home.”

  I glanced his way, smiling at the look of nostalgia in his eyes. He belonged here. Not in Minnesota, not in Florida. Right here in Shy Harbor.

  I kept reminding myself he was no more than an imaginary friend, but the safeness I felt when he wrapped an arm around me, the admiration when he stood against the Intruders, the warmth when he brushed my hair from my face. It all felt so… real.

  Luke turned onto the broken asphalt leading to Shoreview, shaking me from my reverie. Overgrown bushes and crumbling landscaping statues guided us through the forest to the old main lodge, its roof collapsing and windows shattered from stones thrown by kids with nothing better to do.

  Luke parked on the yellow weeds along the asphalt, eyes fixed on the lodge. “Man, this place gives me the creeps.”

  The gray sky and darkening horizon cast strange shadows on the lodge and surrounding pines, which swayed in the gusty winds. We stepped out of the truck, and I sheltered my eyes from the light rain. As I scanned the area, a blue object caught my eye. It was an old bike leaning against the lodge’s siding. Jimmy was still here.

  Luke walked toward the lodge, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Hey, Jimmy! Jimmy Olson!”

  I scurried up behind him, grabbing his sleeve. “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  He smiled. “Come on, Mads. He’s got no reason to hide from us.”

  With that, he called Jimmy’s name again, going silent only to listen for an answer.

  “Don’t be so sure,” I murmured under my breath.

  Luke tried the door of the lodge, but it was bolted shut. I peered through the windows. Peeled wallpaper, exposed framework, and piles of pink insulation lay in the shadows. Nothing to photograph in there.

  Stepping over layers of soggy brown leaves, we made our way toward the shore where at least a dozen deteriorating cabins faced the frothing lake. The waves here made those of the harbor look like ripples, their angry crests leaving trails of foam in their wake.

  I stayed close to Luke as he continued to call for Jimmy, but there was no movement aside from a few blackbirds. Wait.

  I peered into the wild rose bushes behind one of the cabins, but all was still. I could have sworn I’d seen something. A little further, there. I saw it again. The creature stepped out of the woods, turning to stare at me. A white stag with skull-hole eyes and blood-painted antlers let out a huff before bowing its head to eat grass. My scalp prickled. An Intruder. I should have known.

  Ignoring the ghostly apparition, I continued scanning the cabins and the ruins of a dock. “This place sure went downhill fast, huh? I can still remember how it looked when it was open.”

  My musings were met by silence. I turned to face Luke. But he was gone.

  “Luke?”

  I spun around to spot him, catching his tall figure stepping toward the open door of the lakeside chapel, its stained-glass windows somehow still intact. A white light flashed from inside the chapel.

  I hurried to Luke’s side, peering through the arched doorway. Between several rows of pine benches, a teenage boy in a gray denim jacket crouched with his back to us, hiding behind an old film camera that was balanced on a tripod. Carefully tinkering with the lenses and peering through the viewer, he took one last shot, this time with no flash.

  He stood up straight, folding the tripod legs with the camera still attached. When he turned toward us, he jumped at our presence, nearly dropping his equipment on the stone floor.

  Luke lifted his hands. “Sorry buddy, didn’t mean to freak you out. Your mom said we’d find you here, so we stopped by.”

  Jimmy stood frozen with clumsy hands gripping his tripod, mouth clamped shut. As Luke spoke, Jimmy impaled me with glare after glare, his near-black eyes barely visible under locks of dark hair.

  Luke whistled. “This place sure is something, huh? I mean, wow. This ain’t Notre Dame or anything, but the way the light from that stained glass colors the walls is something else.”

  Still unable to get a reply from the stubborn kid, Luke sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Luke, and this here is Madelyn. We thought maybe we could chat-”

  “About what?” Jimmy snapped.

  Luke lowered his voice. “About Aiden.”

  Jimmy’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he regained his composure, turning to me. “I have nothing to say to you,” he spat.

  “Chill out, man,” Luke replied.

  The teen ignored him, packing his camera and latching the tripod to his backpack.

  I stepped forward, trying to suppress my rage. “I really think you do.”

  He shook his head, no longer willing to meet my gaze. I took another step toward him, and the chapel darkened. Luke glanced around, oblivious to how close I was coming to sending Jimmy flying into the wall. “Woah, did it ever get dark. Looks like maybe that storm’s finally coming in. We should all probably get going, have this conversation somewhere else.”

  “Were you the one who painted my garage door?” I demanded.

  Jimmy swung the backpack strap over his shoulder, turning his back to me and sauntering toward the back entrance of the chapel.

  “Answer me!”

  A roar of thunder rumbled over my voice. Both Luke and Jimmy stopped, staring.

  “Mads, calm down,” Luke whispered.

  Jimmy scoffed. “Why don’t you just mind your own business, Madelyn. Go back to your big house in the city and leave Shy Harbor alone.”

  Jimmy continued walking casually toward the doorway.

  It was him. I didn’t know how—or why—but he was part of this dark mystery that took my brother. Figment of my imagination or not, he wasn’t going to walk away from this.

  I lifted my palm, hot energy coursing to my fingertips. Then, the gentle touch of a cool hand on my arm drained away the anger.

  “Madelyn,” Luke whispered, voice soft and caring. “No.”

  I dropped my hand, letting Jimmy walk right out of the chapel. Just like that, he was gone. Rage gave way to frustration, confusion, and a sadness so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. Tears filled my eyes. “It’s him, Luke.”

  He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, pulling me toward him until my head rested on his chest. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. And if he won’t help us out, we’ll find another way to get answers.”

  I sighed, wiping hot tears from my cheeks. “Yeah, sure we will.”

  My mind reeled with possibilities. Luke was right. I couldn’t force the truth out of Jimmy. If I’d learned anything in my countless nights searching for the Key to my unconscious, it was that leaving my role as observer only pushed the hidden planes of my mind deeper.

  Luke rubbed my shoulder, and suddenly, I was filled with gratitude. “All of this drama just for a place to crash. Guess you got the short end of the st
ick, huh?”

  He laughed, loosening his embrace enough to look into my eyes. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Our faces were so close I felt the warmth of his breath. But before I could study the mix of emotions rising to my head, the Ramones blasted from my jacket pocket. Letting myself smile, I checked the screen and put the phone to my ear.

  “Hey, Kath. You got my message about that Jimmy kid, right? What have you got?”

  Static on the other line. After a few seconds, I heard Kath’s voice. “Yeah, but that’s not why I’m calling.” Her tone, normally bubbly, was quiet and hesitant.

  “Kath? What is it?” My smile fell, and Luke’s look of comfort turned to worry.

  “It’s about Luke.”

  My heart dropped. “What about Luke?”

  “Madelyn, the police are looking for him.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When the shock passed, I put my phone away and sprinted after Luke, who was already hurrying toward the truck, both hands grasping his skull in desperation.

  “No. No. This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening, man.”

  I caught up to him just as he grappled for the handle of the driver’s door. “Luke, just wait.”

  “No, I won’t wait. You don’t get it. If they find me, they’re sending me back. I don’t know how they found out I’m in Shy Harbor, and to be honest, I don’t care. I just know I have to get out of here.” His voice trembled, words spilling out in a nearly incomprehensible torrent.

  I held his face firmly between my hands, forcing him to look at me.

  “Just talk to me. Why are the police looking for you?”

  My hands fell to his shoulders. My touch seemed to quell his anxiety. He heaved a deep breath through pursed lips.

  “You sure you want me to tell you?”

  I nodded.

  “Well then, I guess it’s about time you knew the truth.”

  He stared at his dark reflection in the window. “I can’t quite say when it all started, but I was young. My dad wasn’t the good kind with the smile and the office job and the dumb jokes, not like those sitcom dads who I watched every night, wishing I was there instead of in my own home.”

  His face hardened. “Nah, my pops wasn’t one of those dads. Sure, we had a nice house in South Florida that he inherited from my granddad, with palm trees and weeping willows all around. But inside, that house was ugly. My dad didn’t work, just drank and used, and got angry. So angry, for no reason at all. One day, I ended up in the emergency room after a bad night. It was the last straw. So that’s when my uncle started planning.”

  “Planning what?”

  He tensed his jaw, eyes finally meeting mine. “My escape.”

  “See, my dad was really possessive of me. No matter how many times my uncle offered to take me, he’d refuse. My uncle could have called social services, but he was soft, didn’t want to risk my dad going to jail. So what does he do instead? He buys me a bus ticket to Wisconsin, says he has a friend there who’ll look after me, and takes me out of that place for good.”

  “The innkeeper was that friend, wasn’t she?”

  He nodded. “He saved up some money to get me started, said all I had to do was tell anyone who asked that I was eighteen. He figured no one would question it since I looked a lot older than fourteen at the time.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Three years now, that’s when I made it out. Traded the warm ocean breezes for this cold-ass lake. But it was so much better than what I left behind. I always knew it wouldn’t last forever, but I just hoped I would be eighteen by the time I got kicked to the curb. My uncle called a few weeks later and said my dad had put out a missing person’s report. Told me to lay low.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Okay. But what’s the big deal? You’re not a kid anymore. Even if you get sent back, you can bring him to court or whatever, stand up for yourself.”

  He ground his teeth, eyes aflame. “You don’t get it, Mads. I ain’t never going back. I never want to see that man’s face again.”

  I let the subject slide, watching the seagulls dart over the water. It was so strange. Luke was just a figment of the over-firing neurons of my obsessive brain. But he talked about the past as if it was so vividly real. Maybe there was more to him than met the mind’s eye.

  “I get it. I really do.” I zipped up my jacket. “But running away to the next town is only going to pull you deeper, until you can’t find your way out of the dark.” I forced a smile despite the sadness that gripped my heart. “Believe me, I know.”

  I bit my cheek, fighting back tears, like I so often did.

  “You see, I ran too. I thought maybe if I changed everything. My goals, my hobbies, even my looks. Maybe I could start over and just leave it all behind. But I couldn’t. That lost memory, it kept scratching at the back of my brain, and it wouldn’t stop no matter what I did. So I… started searching for it.”

  Emotions threatened to spill over, but I suppressed them. I wanted to tell Luke about the lucid dreaming, about C, about the Key in my pocket to the hidden unconscious that I hoped this hunt would bring to the surface, but I didn’t. How could I? He would never believe this was all a complex dreamscape I had created more than a year ago, that he himself was just a dream figure.

  He let out a deep sigh, his back sliding down the side of the truck until he crouched on the grassy floor.

  “I can’t let them find me, Mads. I can’t.”

  I knelt down beside him. “We won’t. I promise. I’m going to help you stay off their radar until they get tired of looking, even if that means locking you in my bedroom so you can live off cheese puffs, Pepsi and my parents’ collection of Bram Stoker novels.”

  He cracked a smile. After a long pause, he sighed in defeat. “All right, you got me. I won’t run, but only if we stay a mile away from the guys in blue.”

  “Deal.”

  A ray of sun shone through dark clouds, casting the resort in a golden hue. It would have been beautiful, if not for the Intruders that had begun wandering the grounds like white phantoms in broad daylight.

  The urgency crept back into my mind. “You’re going to think I’m crazy for this, but I need one last favor before you get started on your cheese puff diet.”

  “And what’s that?” His expression betrayed the fact that he clearly knew the answer, though maybe he wished he didn’t.

  “Help me break into Jimmy’s house.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Luke and I both stared in thoughtful silence at the three frosted cakes on the bakery table before us, two with white butter cream and colorful roses made from frosting tips, the other with chocolate frosting and a colorful Happy Birthday scrawled at the center.

  The market bakery had never been the kind of place that a rave reviewer would praise on one of those hipster travel websites. But despite it boasting a pitiful selection of breads and pastries—half of which had already expired—it looked like we were in luck today. Whether or not my subconscious wishes had anything to do with that, it was hard to say.

  “I’d roll with chocolate. The others seem a little too generic,” Luke mumbled.

  I tilted my head back with a groan. “Is this really the best plan we could come up with? My God.”

  “Come one, cut me some slack. It’s a good plan. Have you ever seen someone break into a house with a cake? No, you haven’t. You know why? Burglars don’t bring cakes to a break-in to say ‘sorry for the forced entry, here’s a mountain of sweet, creamy trans fats to make you feel better.’”

  I shot him a confused glance. “What the hell are trans fats?”

  He rolled his eyes, carefully picking up the chocolate cake. “Never mind. You’re sure you can open the front door without giving those nosy neighbors a reason to call the police? Lord knows that’s all we need right now.”

  I popped a strip of gum into my mouth, digging out my phone to check the time. One o’clock. We still had a few hours left before nighttime. My stomach ch
urned with anxiety, but I tried to suppress it. This would work. It had to.

  When we reached the register, Luke slid the cake to the heavyset woman who sat behind the counter. She scanned the bar code and studied us over the rims of her red cat-eye glasses. She didn’t seem to recognize me, even though Aiden and I used to stock up on candy from her nearly every summer.

  She glanced down at the cake. “Who’s getting old today, then?”

  “My dad,” I blurted out while Luke simultaneously replied, “My sister.”

  I bit my tongue, smiling and shrugging while the woman gave us that look that said ‘You’re crazy, but my minimum wage job doesn’t pay me enough to care.’

  Clearing my throat, I handed the woman the cash, and we hustled out of the market with cake in hand. We hopped back into the truck, and I held the cake in my lap as Luke drove toward Oak Street.

  We rolled past the park with the swings where Aiden and I used to hang out at night, past the gas station where we once stole a few cans of soda. I smiled at that memory. We’d felt so bad, we snuck them right back into the fridge, and then bought them as if nothing had happened.

  I sighed as my heartstrings went taut, whispering under my breath, “What happened to you, Aiden?”

  Luke pulled the truck up along the curb at the entrance of the Oak Street cul-de-sac. Jimmy’s picture-perfect house was just barely visible from where we parked. The family car still sat in the driveway.

  I cursed, glancing at the hour on my phone again. We didn’t have time for Ruth to curl her hair, or for that smug little jackass Jimmy to find his matching sock. “Are they leaving sometime today?”

  It was like C said—time wasn’t on our side. I fiddled with my jacket sleeve, wondering how much of her was left… how much of me was left. Part of me hoped she was just being over-dramatic about the whole thing.

  “Chill out. I swear just before we left for the resort, Ruth mentioned they were going to a Bible study after lunch. There’s no reason to think she was pulling a fast one on us.”