by Linda Gerber
She pushed past me and rushed off toward the food-court bathrooms, one hand cupping her mouth. Jake was wrong if he thought Gina was an open book. Everyone has secrets they hold inside. Some people are just better at it than others.
After work I was supposed to meet Michelle by the Nordstrom entrance so we could go to Wal-Mart and look at running bras together. That was not something I was going to do with my dad. She wasn’t waiting when I got there, but that didn’t worry me much; Michelle had never been uptight about being on time. She’d just shrug and say that time was relative.
Fifteen minutes later, though, I was starting to wonder where she was. Relative is one thing, but eventually late is late. Besides, it was getting cold outside now that the sun had gone down. At least my shivering gave me something to worry about instead of the trances. Since we had been so busy at the kiosk, I had made it through the afternoon without fixating on it too much, but all this standing around and waiting was like an open invitation to obsess.
I clamped my hands under my armpits and paced up and down the sidewalk in front of the entrance, worrying. Maybe I should skip Wal-Mart and get home before it happened again. Maybe I should call Michelle. I must have looked like a crazy person, stomping back and forth, muttering. At least, that was my thought when I noticed Jake at the door, watching me as he pushed his way outside.
“Ashlyn?”
I stopped pacing and let my hands drop to my side. “Hi.”
He took a step toward me, tentatively, warily, as if I was a patient in an asylum and he was afraid I might snap if he got too close. “Everything all right?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m just wait—”
My cell phone rang.
“I can let that go,” I said at the same time as he said, “Go ahead, take it.”
I hesitated and he repeated, “Go ahead.”
I grabbed the phone from my pocket. Michelle’s picture flashed on my screen. I pressed the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Oh, Lynnie, I’m so sorry!” she gushed. “I just now realized what time it was. Trey came over and I lost track of—”
“Wait. Trey is with you?”
She was silent for a moment and then finally admitted, “Yes.”
“Ha! I knew it. You guys are an item.”
“We are not!” She was half-whispering now and I could imagine her cupping her hand over the phone and turning her back so Trey couldn’t hear the conversation. “He came over to study and now we’re just hanging out.”
“Sure you are.”
“Look, do want me to come meet you or not? I can be there in ten.”
I laughed. “Are you kidding? Don’t you dare leave him. I’ll take the bus home.”
“But I feel so bad,” she said, even though I could hear the relief in her voice. “Are you sure? How are you doing? If you’re not feeling well . . .”
It was my turn to lower my voice. “I told you. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” She demurred a little bit more, but I assured her it was no problem and she finally hung up.
“Your ride?” Jake asked.
I shrugged and gave him a wouldn’t-you-know-it smile as I tucked my phone away. “Hot study date.”
“Where do you live? I can take you.”
I took a step back. “Oh, no. That’s okay. My house is right on the bus line, so . . .”
“I don’t mind.”
I hesitated. It was just a ride, so why did the thought of it put me so on edge? It’s not that I didn’t trust Jake or anything. I know I had barely met him, but in a weird way, I felt like I knew him better than half the guys at my school. Watching him play the piano was like peeking into his soul. There was anger—I saw that the first night before Uptight Guy made him play a different song—but there was also beauty. And honesty. That was the constant. Even when he was playing the elevator music, you knew exactly how he felt about it. I gave in. “Thanks. If it’s no problem, that would be great.”
“No problem at all.” He started off across the parking lot and I hurried to keep up with him. “As long as you don’t mind helmet hair.”
“Helmet?”
He stopped next to a beat-up motorcycle and jangled his keys. “I’m a safety-first kind of guy.”
It took a moment to register. I recognized this motorcycle. I’d seen it before, when Michelle was bringing me to Westfield that first night. My mouth dropped open. The work-of-art motorcycle. Which meant that Jake was the guy Michelle and I had been panting over.
Sure enough, he pulled the bowl helmet from the cargo space and handed it to me. I couldn’t even look at him as I took it, remembering him riding alongside the car—how I had admired the lines of his body, the way his muscles had moved, the perfect rear view we’d had when he pulled in front of us. My face must have been Day-Glo pink, it was burning so hot.
Fortunately, Jake didn’t seem to notice. He pulled out another helmet—this one black with a scratched-up skull emblem on the back. He smashed it down over his hair and fastened the strap.
“So this is your motorcycle,” I said stupidly.
“Not just a ‘motorcycle,’” he corrected. “An Indian Trailblazer. Vintage.”
“I see. Vintage. Isn’t that just a polite way of saying old?”
He ran his hand over the gas tank, where the word Indian was painted in script letters on the side. “You say that now, but just wait until she’s restored.”
I stuck the helmet on my head and Jake laughed.
“You’ve got it backward,” he said. “Here.” Before I could react, he reached up and turned the helmet around. Then adjusted the chin strap and fastened it. His fingers brushed my cheek and I was sure he must have felt the heat of my blush.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was completely dry. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.” He straddled the bike and patted the space behind him. “Climb on.”
I took a deep breath and swung my leg over the bike, settling awkwardly onto the seat. Every point of contact between my legs and his burned like fanned embers. I was grateful he was in front of me so he couldn’t see the blush I could feel spreading across my face.
It took him three kicks before the engine roared to life. He gripped the throttle, revved it a couple of times, and yelled, “Hold on!”
I could barely hear him, but I tentatively snaked one arm around his waist, hoping that was what he had suggested. He said something else that sounded like “no backrests” and grabbed my other hand, bringing it around his middle, where he laid it atop the first.
At first, I sat straight-backed and stiff, barely daring to move. I’d never held on to a guy like that before. His muscles beneath my hands felt unyielding and unfamiliar, but at the same time solid and comforting. I had to make myself relax and lean into him to keep my balance. When I did, the thrill I felt in the pit of my stomach was strange and exciting.
I shouted directions to Jake as we rumbled down the streets, but he couldn’t hear me over the wind and the engine. Our conversation sounded something like, “Turn left here!” “What?” “Go straight at the light!” “What?” “I really could have taken the bus.” “What?”
Finally, we both gave up and I just pointed as we neared each intersection so he would know which way to go.
I got so I could anticipate the tilt of the motorcycle whenever we turned. After a while, I didn’t even have to think about it, but just moved with the bike. I closed my eyes, wanting nothing more than to let the wind wash over my face, my skin, my hair.
In that moment, I almost believed I belonged to the world where such simple joys were accepted without question. I felt like I could let down my guard and be myself. I felt free.
But the moment ended as soon as I remembered the last time I let my guard down. That was with Nick. It hadn’t turned out so well.
Suddenly, I felt very conspicuous, like anyone looking on would know I didn’t belong with a normal guy like Jake. All it would take was another trance in front of him and he would know it, too
.
By the time we reached my street, I just wanted to slink off and hide. I pointed out my house and he pulled over to the curb, engine idling as he rested one foot on the ground. Across the street, Mrs. Briggs took up her position in front of her window. I scrambled off the bike.
“Thanks for the ride!” I said.
He just sat there looking at me. I stepped back and consciously made my mouth curve up into a smile. Still, he didn’t leave.
“I appreciate it,” I added.
He nodded, but he kept watching me.
“What?” I demanded.
“The helmet.” He gestured to my head.
“Oh.” I unfastened the chin strap and I handed it to him. His fingers brushed mine as he took it from me, and I jerked my hand away.
He gave me a strange look and drew in a breath like he was about to say something.
I beat him to it. “Thanks again,” I said, then I spun around and ran.
8
That night I sat at my desk with my homework spread in front of me, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I kept replaying my ride home with Jake, reliving the part where I ran away. He must have thought I was such an idiot.
If only I could be sure I had everything under control. If I knew I wouldn’t suddenly get sucked into a trance in front of him, I wouldn’t be so nervous.
I still didn’t understand how the trance at track practice could have come so quickly after the one that happened at work, or why the vision I saw seemed to be an exact rerun of the one I’d seen the day before, but something was definitely different about those trances. I was afraid I knew what it was.
I glanced over at Kyra’s side of the room. It made sense in a twisted sort of way. It had always taken both of us to piece the pictures together, but I hadn’t done my part the night before my mom died, so the picture was never completed. The visions I was being shown were the images I should have seen with her.
Maybe there was something I was still missing, something that would complete the picture. But to figure it out, I needed Kyra, and I didn’t know where she was. The trance could keep coming back to me again and again and again. The thought made my stomach twist. I had to find Kyra if I had any chance of making it stop.
The problem was, I had no idea where to begin. Dad never spoke about Kyra leaving. The one time he even mentioned it, he said only that she didn’t leave a forwarding address. She just moved out. No good-byes, no anything. She didn’t even take her cell phone so that I could call and talk to her. She could be anywhere. Where was I supposed to look?
I crossed to her dresser and pulled out the drawers one by one. She hadn’t left much behind—I already knew that, but I hoped there would be something that would spark an idea. I didn’t find a thing. Same with the boxes under her bed. All that was left were a couple of old yearbooks and some folded sweaters.
I searched the bathroom. The desk. The bookshelves. Finally, the only place left to look was our closet. I crossed to the door slowly, pulled it open. Please, I thought. Please, please, please . . .
Another school year has begun. Kyra’s in seventh grade, I’m in sixth. I’m sitting at the desk doing my homework when I hear a noise in our closet. I open the door to find Kyra huddled in the corner, knees pulled up tight against her chest. Something is wrong but she won’t talk about it.
“Please,” I beg. “Tell me what happened.”
She only stares into the shadows. Her face is pale and her eyes swollen and red from crying.
“What happened?” I ask again.
“I told,” she whispers.
I crawl into the tiny space beside her and close the door behind me. “You what?”
“I told Janelle.”
Two days before, we had seen her friend Janelle’s dad in a vision. We didn’t see what was coming, but we knew something was going to happen to him. Something bad. Kyra desperately tried to make sense of the numbers we’d written so we could warn him. Did they represent a date? A location? We didn’t figure it out in time.
“We said we’d never tell anyone,” I hiss. “We said we’d keep the trances a secret.”
“She was my best friend. I had to tell her what I saw.”
My heart drops when I realize she just spoke of her friend in past tense. I can’t see her in the dark of the closet, but I find her hand and hold it. “What happened?” I whisper.
“She laughed.” Kyra sniffles softly. “She didn’t believe me. So I tried to tell her again and she got mad.”
“She’s just stupid,” I say. I’m trying to make Kyra feel better, but it only makes her cry harder.
“She didn’t understand.”
“Yeah? Well, how will she like it when—”
“Ashlyn,” Kyra says softly, “Janelle’s dad had a heart attack. He’s dead.”
My mouth goes dry and I feel a cold chill snake down my back. “What? When?”
“L-l-last night.” Kyra is full on sobbing now. “They found him this morning.”
The air in the closet feels stale and thin. “We didn’t know,” I say, as much to myself as to her. “There’s nothing we—”
“Sh-she said I was a witch,” Kyra cries.
“Who?”
“Janelle’s mom. Janelle told h-her what I said and her mom s-s-said I was the spawn of Satan. She called Mom and said I’m not allowed in their house anymore.”
Burning shame and anger fight inside me, but I try to laugh it off. “She actually said that? ‘Spawn of Satan’? What does that make me, Sister of Spawn?”
My sad attempt at humor is lost on Kyra.
“It hurts,” she says.
“I know,” I say softly. “I know.”
That summer was the last time I remember Kyra ever having a close friend. She started pulling away after that, folding in on herself smaller and smaller until she could have disappeared altogether. She kept to herself at school, never went out, even when I tried to get her to do things with me.
Sometimes I would see her watching other people—friends laughing, couples holding hands—and her eyes would go dead. To her, relationships were something to be avoided. To me, they were something to achieve. She wanted to be left alone. I wanted to belong.
We couldn’t have known it then, but that moment in the closet set about a series of changes in us both that ended with her hiding away in some apartment somewhere and me, desperate to find her, rummaging through her things.
On the closet shelf were three plastic boxes of Kyra’s stuff and I yanked them out onto the floor one by one so I could go through them. As far as I could tell, they were nothing but junk—an old iPod, some books Kyra had to read for Honors English, a couple of notebooks, old school papers. That’s probably why she left it behind.
I flipped through all the pages just to be sure, desperate for a mention, a clue, anything that would tell me where she had gone. There was nothing.
When I tried to push the last box back up onto the shelf, it wouldn’t slide into place. Something was in the way. I dropped the box and stood on my tiptoes to feel for whatever it was, excited and hopeful that I had finally found something of use.
What I found instead was my old journal, covered in a fine layer of dust. My breath caught when I turned it over in my hands. I hadn’t even thought about it since before the accident. I hadn’t wanted to.
My journal was a record of happy times and there hadn’t been many of those since my mom died. I wiped the dust off with my sleeve and carried the book to my bed. For a long time, I just sat and looked at the cover. In a way, I was afraid to look through the pages, afraid that the memories would be too painful.
Just then, I heard my dad’s office door open. Finally! I jumped off the bed and hurried to ask him about Kyra.
When I reached the kitchen, he was standing by the open fridge, pouring himself a glass of juice.
“Dad?” I said. “Where did—”
But he held a finger to his lips and then pointed to the Bluetooth, still attached to his hea
d. He closed the fridge and walked back to the office, shutting his door behind him.
I stared after him. Fine. If I had to camp outside his office door I would. Sooner or later he would have to get off of the phone and when he did, I’d be there.
I dropped onto the couch facing his door to watch and wait. And wait. The journal fell open on my lap and I allowed myself to thumb through some of the pages while I waited. I remembered the day I found my dad’s old Nikon 35mm camera and convinced him to let me learn to use it. Naturally, I shied away from writing, so I taught myself to take pictures to help me record my life instead.
I didn’t take pictures of people. No landscapes, no whole objects. What I looked for were the small parts of the whole that made a thing special. The pictures in my book were all about textures. Each one of the textures reminded me of a happy time or place.
As I thumbed through the pages, the memories came back like crocuses in the spring, popping up here and there, unexpected. On one page was the ice from the pond where we went skating. I had loved the way the sunlight caught the bubbles and stress cracks under the surface, as if to show that it was the imperfections that made the ice beautiful. On another page, splotches of rust on the metal sliding door in the shed looked to me like a map of miniature continents. Mom used to let us help her pot flowers back there. I even had a photo of the drops of water on the leaves of one of her transplanted perennials.
Small thumbnail glimpses were all I could afford growing up. The bigger picture often wasn’t as attractive. I used to believe I had tiny glimpses of beauty inside of me as well, that if someone ever cared enough to look closely, they would be able to see beyond the weird moments and strange behavior and just see me.
“Hey, Ash?”
My head jerked up and I slapped the book closed. Here I’d been waiting for my dad to surface and I hadn’t even heard the office door. He stood by the kitchen table, prying the back off his BlackBerry. I covered my journal with my arm. “Yeah?”
