by Megan Crewe
“So will you come?” Tim asked. “I promise I won’t ask again.”
Until he started feeling like she was gone again. I thought of Paige, moping in the corner as she waited for Mom to return, just so she could hover nearby without touching, without talking.
“Look,” I said, lowering my voice. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea. You know, your mom wasn’t happy about it even the first time.”
“Well, we could try. I mean, I’m sure she’d want to—”
“Tim,” I said, firmly, “she doesn’t want you doing this. And I don’t want to be doing it, either, knowing that. All right?”
His voice took on a raw edge. “She’ll talk to me. She just doesn’t—Look, what do you want? That’s what this is about, right? You wouldn’t just help me because . . . I told you what I knew about Paul, I took you to the party—I even told Matti off like you asked me to. What else is there? What’ll it take?”
There was a catch in my throat, and for a few seconds I couldn’t speak. Could he even hear me? I was trying to help him, trying to stop him from . . . from whatever his mom had seen that scared her, and he thought I just needed to be paid off. Well, screw him.
“How about leaving me alone?” I snapped.
Tim’s side went quiet for a moment. “Okay,” he said, slowly. “If that’s what you want, I can do that. Five more minutes of your time, and I will not come near you again. I will not talk to you, I won’t even look at you if you’re walking past me in the hall. How’s that?”
“That’s not—” I caught myself before I could blunder any further. There was a pang in my chest at the thought of Tim passing me without so much as a glance of acknowledgment, but it wasn’t as if he would have glanced at me before all this. Things would go back to the way they’d been before, when the worst thing I’d had to worry about was getting Norris and Bitzy back on speaking terms. He was offering me an out. Why the hell wouldn’t I take it? Five more minutes couldn’t hurt that much.
I remembered the distress on his mom’s face and bit my lip. As long as it really was only this one more time.
“All right,” I said. “But you have to mean that. This is the last time. You bug me about it again and I’ll . . . I’ll tell your dad how you’ve been skipping, and everything.”
“Fine,” he said. Relief smoothed the anger out of his voice. “You want me to come pick you up?”
Wouldn’t that send Mom to cloud nine. “No thanks,” I said. “I’ll walk. Give me half an hour.”
I hung up the phone and leaned back in the chair, listening. Sure enough, there was a creak and the swish of Mom’s socks slipping over the carpet as she snuck back down the hall. I walked to the door and peered out. The bathroom door was closing. Good. She mustn’t have expected me to make a break for it so quickly.
Sidestepping the creaky spots, I hurried across the hall and down the stairs. To save time, I tugged on my old sneakers with the permanently knotted laces. If I could just get out of here and get this over with, I’d talk to her for an hour when I got home.
The pipes in the wall gurgled. I speed-walked through the living room, tossed a “Going out. I’ll be home for dinner,” at Dad, and dashed out the back.
“Cassie?”
She was calling from the top of the stairs, but outside I could pretend I couldn’t hear. I jogged up the driveway and onto the sidewalk. Home free. I might get an earful when I got home, but at least then I’d have a suitable story. “Just some guy who needed help with the geography homework.” Except I’d just used geography yesterday, and that was one course no one would ever ask my help in. “We got assigned to a project together. For, uh, English.” That’d do. As long as I wasn’t telling her I’d gone off to talk to a dead person, anything would do.
When I reached Tim’s house, he opened the door before I had a chance to ring the doorbell. We stared at each other, and my stomach turned over. He looked different, vaguely, like he’d wilted around the edges. His hair lay limp on his forehead with a couple of tufts veering out near the back. If the spiderweb of wrinkles on his T-shirt was anything to go by, he’d slept in those clothes. I could see why his mom was concerned.
It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to be here, doing this, helping this happen. If he hadn’t—
“You’re here,” he said.
I inhaled and pulled myself together. “You were expecting someone else?”
“I wasn’t really sure,” Tim said. “That you were coming, I mean.”
“Have I lied to you yet?”
“Well, no, not that I know of.”
He moved over and I stepped inside, scanning the hallway. No dead people there, but the smell of powdered sugar laced the air. I stalked into the living room, and Tim trailed behind me.
“Is she here?” he asked. His hands twitched.
“Somewhere.” I turned away. “Mrs. Reed!” I called. “Mrs.—”
She dropped through the ceiling like an autumn leaf and drifted to a stop in front of me, the hem of her dress rippling around her ankles. When our eyes met, and she realized I could see her, her glow flickered in surprise. It’d been three days—no way she’d remember me. Her lips pursed.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “And why are you bothering Tim?”
Great. Yet another person who had this the wrong way around.
“He asked me to come,” I said.
“Well, he shouldn’t have.” She whirled around, her shoulders tensed, like she was about to march out of the room, but she just stood there trembling.
“It’s not good for him,” she murmured. “I wish I knew how to show him—”
“It’s just this once,” I said. She was even more upset than last time. I hadn’t expected that. “Trust me, I’m not coming again.”
“What’s going on?” Tim broke in. “She doesn’t want to talk?” He stared at the walls, trying to follow my gaze.
“She’s worried about you. Like I told you.” I jerked my hand toward the sofa. “Sit down. Relax. With you fidgeting like that, it’s no wonder she’s nervous.”
Mrs. Reed raised her voice. “Maybe you can help. Tell him to stop. You have to tell him . . . he has to stop it.”
“Stop what?” I said.
She turned her profile to me, gazing across the hall to the staircase. “He has to stop holding on. Stop waiting. I can’t come back. He never calls his friends, never talks to anyone. If you saw him. . . . He’s not sleeping. All night, he just sits there and looks and waits, and gets up, and wanders, but he doesn’t sleep. I can’t remember the last time I saw him eat anything. He keeps going to the liquor cabinet, and I know he’s drinking. He’s making himself sick. I’m his mother, I can tell. He’s hurting himself. And there’s nothing I can do.”
If she’d yanked open Tim’s chest and started pointing out his guts to me, I don’t think I’d have felt more uncomfortable. Don’t tell me this, I wanted to say. It’s his business, not mine. He wouldn’t want me to know. . . .
Tim stirred, poised on the edge of the sofa, watching me. I had to struggle to swallow.
“What do you want me to do?” I managed.
“I don’t know,” she said. “If I knew there was someone who could help him—if he could talk to someone, his father, or Nancy—”
I grasped on to the last name like a life preserver. “Nancy’s your aunt, right?” I asked Tim.
He frowned. “Yeah. Why? What about her?”
“Your mom thinks you should talk to her. To Nancy.”
“What good’s that going to do? Aunt Nancy’s three hours away—she’s got her own kids. Anyway, this has nothing to do with her.”
I tried to straighten out everything his mom had said into a coherent explanation. “You know I told you your mom was all concerned about you last time. Well, she still is. More, even. She thinks you’re not sleeping and eating enough, that you’re looking for her instead of . . . anything else. I guess she figures if you talked to your aunt, you’d feel better, be abl
e to . . . get past this.”
“So what—I’m supposed to just forget? Like everyone else wants me to?”
It works for the dead, I thought. “Well, she seems to think you’re wearing yourself out. I’m just telling you what she’s saying.”
Tim slumped, lowering his head into his hands. “Mom, I’m trying, I just can’t—” He broke off, his voice ragged. His whole body had gone rigid as if he was trying as hard as he could to hold in tears. A lump rose in my throat.
Instinct told me to turn around, walk away. This wasn’t my place. I shifted my weight, then stopped.
I’d stood up to Danielle, to Matti, to a hundred other people over the last few years. Why couldn’t I stand up to myself? I didn’t like seeing Tim like this. He wasn’t a bad guy. In four years, he was the only person who’d bothered to find out what had really happened with Danielle and me. And no matter how many times I’d told him off or shoved him away, he’d taken it and kept coming back. If there was something I could do that would stop him from hurting—
Maybe, this once, I ought to go to him.
I took a step forward, reaching toward him. “Tim,” I said.
He exhaled shakily. “What?”
“I—” What could I say? Are you okay? I could see for myself he wasn’t. It’ll be all right? But it wouldn’t be, probably not for a long time.
It wasn’t like with Paige or Norris or Bitzy. If I said the wrong thing to them, they’d forget it in a day or two. With Tim, I had to get it right the first time. And I had no idea what right was.
Maybe it was better not to say anything. I uncurled my fingers and rested them on his shoulder with what I hoped was a comforting amount of pressure, watching him, ready to back off if it looked like I was pushing more than helping. He didn’t pull away. My mouth opened, and I found myself blurting out the first stupid thing that popped into my head.
“Things are always changing, right? So, even if they really suck right now, eventually they’ve got to suck less.”
Tim let out something almost like a chuckle and started to raise his head. In the same moment, something flickered across the room. My hand slipped from his shoulder as I turned.
Tim’s mom was gazing at him, at us, her hair and dress drifting around her, her lips parting and then, ever so slightly, forming something like a smile. I saw it for only a second before she disappeared.
She didn’t dart away or fade out of sight. It was as if her image turned to mist, a million tiny particles suddenly scattered by a breeze. A feeling like static electricity rippled through the air and over my skin. I blinked, and when I looked again, there was nothing left of her at all.
My mouth was hanging open. I couldn’t find the wherewithal to close it. Tim stirred beside me.
“What?” he said. “What happened?”
“I . . . don’t know.” I walked, slowly, to the place I’d last seen her. The room looked no different, felt no different—The smell. I inhaled deeply. My nose confirmed it. Dust, stale coffee, leather—not one speck of sugar.
If she’d only wafted off for a moment, it should still have been strong. The house had been filled with it before, however faint. My room never stopped smelling like Paige’s candied apples, even when she’d wandered off for hours.
Mrs. Reed was gone.
“She left already?” Tim was saying. “I thought I still had a little more time. If this is the last—”
“Hold on,” I said. I strode into the dining room, the kitchen, the hall, breathing in, breathing in again. More dust, a hint of mildew. Nothing sweet. Without asking Tim if he minded, I bounded up the stairs.
“What is it?” he called after me, panic threading into his voice. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer, not until I knew for sure.
The upstairs hall smelled of aftershave and toothpaste. I opened each door, one by one, and inhaled. Not even a hint of sugar, a lingering so faint I could trick myself into believing it was her. It was as if she’d never been here.
Tim was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. As I looked down at him, nausea swept over me. I could already see how his face would crumple, his jaw quiver, his eyes turn to water. I couldn’t stand that. Not here, not now. I had no file on the guy standing before me, on how to handle him or how to deal with this.
I trudged down the stairs, coming to an uncertain halt at the bottom. “She’s not here,” I said. “I don’t know where she’s gone. But I . . . I don’t think she’s coming back. I’m sorry.”
“What? What do you mean, not coming back?”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, and I really was. So sorry I felt like my insides had tied into one giant knot. “I—There’s nothing I can do.”
My feet, without consulting the rest of me, shifted toward him, but he stepped back, staring at me. “But she was just here, wasn’t she?”
“She was. But she’s not now.”
He wavered and set his hand against the wall to keep his balance. “She wouldn’t just . . . Of course she’ll come back.”
No, she won’t, I thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to lay it out so baldly. “Tim, it’s—she—”
“You should go,” he said dully. He turned toward the door. “You did what I asked you to do. Thank you.”
“But—”
“Just go, okay? Whatever you’re going to say, I don’t want to hear it right now. I have to think.” He didn’t look at me, just opened the door and stood there, frowning at his hand on the knob. When I didn’t move, his voice took on a sharper edge. “Good-bye.”
I didn’t know what else to do. So I went. I stepped out onto the porch and looked back in time to see the door closing at my heels. I hesitated there in the shadow of the house, the bright spring afternoon just beyond its steps seeming completely unreal.
He wanted to be alone. All right. If nothing else, I could give him that.
CHAPTER
13
My legs might have followed Tim’s command to leave him be, but my mind had other ideas. All through dinnertime, my stomach was uneasy, my thoughts restless. I nibbled at my pork chop and rearranged my green beans, kicking at the legs of my chair.
Of course Tim hadn’t wanted me to stay. He had to deal with losing his mom all over again—and who was I? Some girl he’d never even talked to a week ago.
I had the feeling deep in my gut that there’d been lines I should have spoken, gestures I should have made, that would have made things better. But looking back, I didn’t know what they were. As a friend, I was pretty much useless, apparently.
My throat closed up, and I couldn’t swallow the mouthful I’d been chewing.
Mom, with her impeccable timing, chose that moment to start in on me.
“You know,” she said as her knife scraped her plate, “I’d like you to be a little more conscientious when you’re going out, even if it’s for school.”
I managed to force the food down. “What?”
“You left today without telling me or your father where you were going or who you’d be with. And you should have told your father exactly where you were going on Friday, too. We need to know these things. You have to be careful.”
One second she was overjoyed that I spent two seconds outside of school with someone my age, the next she went all parole officer on me. I didn’t have the energy to argue about it. It wasn’t like I was planning on attending any more parties. And the chances of Tim inviting me over again. . . . My stomach tightened.
“Sure,” I said. “Um, I don’t feel so good. Can I be excused?”
“You’ve hardly eaten.”
“Put it in the fridge,” Dad suggested. “If you’re feeling up to it later, you can have it then.”
I thanked him with a weak smile.
Upstairs in my room, I flopped back onto the bed. Mom and her worries. She and Mrs. Reed had that much in common.
I rolled over, curling up with my head on my arm. Mrs. Reed. I’d been trying not to think about th
at part of the afternoon’s events, but there it was. She’d been in the living room, a-gust with worries, and then—what? For no reason, with no warning, gone. Like Chester last summer.
But there had to be a reason, didn’t there? Things didn’t just happen randomly—the world didn’t work that way.
I thought back to that last moment, looking at her before she’d scattered into nothingness. The way she’d smiled. Looking at me, at Tim, at the two of us standing together.
A chill settled over my heart. She’d said she just wanted to know he was okay. To know he had someone who’d be there for him. She couldn’t have thought that I would be that person for him, just me? There was no reason for her to trust that I could, or to assume that Tim would want me to—
Why would he, when I was so obviously incompetent?
Paige swooped in through the door, her hair streaming behind her. “Cassie!” she whispered, as if anyone could overhear her. “Did you hear?”
I pushed myself upright. “Hear what?”
She hovered over the desk. “Mom was talking to Dad downstairs—she said the magazine she works for the most is short of money. What if they fire her?”
An easy problem, a problem I knew how to handle. I let out a breath, shakily, and pushed the other thoughts away. “They can’t fire her,” I said. “She does freelance. I guess they could sort of lay her off, stop giving her assignments, but she’s been a regular for years now. They’d get rid of everyone else before her. You know Mom. She just likes to worry.”
“I hope so. It sounded like the magazine might just fold. If there’s no magazine, nobody’s going to be writing for it. They’re already making her pay for more of her expenses, she said.”
“Maybe she won’t be taking off so much of the time, then.”
Paige frowned. “I don’t like Mom being away, but it’s not like I want her to lose her job. She loves it, you know. Can you imagine how sad she’d be—”
