Elixir

by Hilary Duff

  Or maybe he’d been more careful than the others because he wasn’t there to guard me. Maybe instead of protecting me from a threat … he was the threat.

  I quickly enlarged the other thumbnails, one at a time. I ran my eyes over the backgrounds, the corners, the most seemingly inconsequential parts of each photo, enlarging and enlarging until every time … I saw him. He was always there. Though the pictures were all from different parts of our trip, different parts of Europe, he was there. Always obscured, in the background, so small you would never notice him unless you were specifically looking, but always there.

  I was shaking now, positive this man had wanted to harm me and possibly Rayna (kidnap us? kill us?) during our trip, and it was only by chance that he hadn’t found the perfect opportunity to do it. I was about to make an emergency call to my mother when I opened the final thumbnail: a gargoyle high on the walls of Prague’s St. Vitus’s Cathedral. I had taken the shot with a zoom lens: just the gargoyle leaping off the balcony, with only a window and the cathedral’s facade behind it.

  I zoomed in on the window, assuming I’d find the man peering out of it.

  He wasn’t there, which meant he couldn’t possibly be in the shot. There was nowhere else for a person to hide.

  Still, I couldn’t help but search the enlarged photo, studying it edge to edge.

  I finally found a shadow high in the corner of the frame, and fresh goose bumps danced up my arms.

  I didn’t want to enlarge it. I didn’t want to look any closer … but I had to.

  I zoomed in on the image one more time and focused on the shadow.

  It was him.

  He stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He lounged back on the wall of the cathedral, gazing thoughtfully off into the distance without a bit of tension in his body. Like he was waiting for a bus.

  Except he was over a hundred feet in the air, and he stood on nothing.

  Nothing.

  The mouse rattled in my shaking hand and I let it go, but I couldn’t stop staring at the picture. Who was this man? What was he? Ideas bolted through my brain, but every one of them was impossible.

  But so was standing in midair.

  In a flash of wild inspiration, I grabbed my camera and snapped ten pictures, spinning around in my chair to get the bookcase, the closet, the bed …every section of the room. I frantically uploaded them onto the computer and started poring over them one at a time, enlarging them and straining my eyes to find any unusual shadow, any half-blurred image.

  There was nothing.

  My heart slowed as I kept scanning. Despite my crazy thoughts, it seemed like the man really was just a flesh-and-blood stalker. I was actually relieved.

  Then I opened up the tenth photo and screamed out loud.

  It was my darkened closet … with the man inside the door.

  three

  I STARED AT THE SCREEN, FROZEN.

  Inwardly I chastised myself. I had expected to see him, right? It was what I imagined might happen. It was why I took the pictures of my room in the first place.

  But imagining it and seeing it were two very different things. The theory I could chalk up to lack of sleep, but this …

  I still hadn’t turned away from the computer screen to look at the closet. I couldn’t. I was fairly certain he wasn’t really there, but I couldn’t shake the idea that he was. And I knew that if I turned and saw him, I’d come completely unhinged.

  I heard footsteps and felt the rush of air as a hand reached out, grabbing at my throat.…

  I screamed and wheeled to my right. There was nothing there.

  But I could see the closet now. It was right in front of me, door ajar, same way it was two minutes ago when I’d taken its picture.

  Still, I had to know for sure. My heart thudding in my ears, I walked to the closet door, reached for the knob, and flung it all the way open, half expecting the man to leap out at me.

  But of course he didn’t. The closet was empty.

  Which brought me back to the impossible: that the man with the clenched jaw hadn’t been in any of those places with Rayna and me … but had still appeared in my pictures.

  But how?

  I ripped the camera from my computer and clicked off the monitor. I needed to sleep. This would all make more sense after I slept. I staggered into my bed, pretending that it was perfectly normal for me to flick on every single light first. But when I lay down under the full blaze of every lamp in the room, my comforter wrapped tightly around me like a protective cocoon, I couldn’t do it. Every time I closed my eyes, the man’s face burned in my mind, and my eyes snapped open again.

  Giving in to the sleepless night, I snaked my hand out of the covers to grab the remote, and searched for something innocuous.

  The Food Network. Perfect.

  I turned the volume all the way up to drown out my thoughts, propped myself up with a sea of pillows, and let myself zone out into a trancelike oblivion.

  Somehow I fell asleep, but for the first time in ages, my dreams weren’t tortured. Quite the opposite.

  I stood by the piano in a small, crowded speakeasy, my fringed dress and iris-charm necklace shimmying along with me as I belted out an impossibly high final note. The room burst into whistles and applause when I finished, and I ate it up.

  “Delia Rivers!” Eddie hollered proudly around the cigar in his mouth. His suit strained over his gut as he rose to put his arm around my shoulders.

  Eddie owned the speakeasy. He owned most of Chicago, actually. He certainly owned me. He wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to cross—not if you valued your life. But even as he planted a sloppy kiss on my cheek, I couldn’t resist glancing at the piano player. He bent low over his keyboard, but he peered up to meet my eyes and gave me a bittersweet smile that reached out and grabbed me by the heart.

  Just then Eddie’s boy Richie burst in. “Boss!” he cried, but before he could finish, he caught the look between the piano player and me. Richie raised his eyebrows at me imploringly. He didn’t want me to get in trouble. He was a good friend, and he was right, but I was too far gone for that to matter.

  “What is it?” Eddie roared.

  “Sorry, Boss,” Richie said. “It’s a raid!”

  Immediately the whole mess of us poured out the back of the speakeasy. We weren’t in any real danger: Eddie owned the cops, too. But part of the deal was we made it look good by skipping out at raid time. Only Eddie and his core crew stayed to make the place look like the respectable, alcohol-free establishment it was supposed to be.

  Freedom. A whole hour, at least. I clicked down the streets until I knew I was alone, then made a beeline for the alley behind the closed-down theater. My piano player was already there, and the knots in my stomach grew and then disappeared as I ran the rest of the way and launched myself into his arms, kissing him like my life depended on it.

  “It kills me to see you with him, Delia,” he said, pulling away just enough to pierce me with his soulful eyes. “Run away with me. We’ll go to Hollywood. You’ve always wanted to get into movies.”

  I blushed and looked away. “Everyone wants to get into movies.”

  “You’re not everyone. You’re talented. But it’s more than that. People can’t take their eyes off you when you perform.”

  “I perform in a bar the size of a closet. There’s nowhere else to look.”

  He gently lifted my chin so our eyes met. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you. You have no idea how special you are. You can have everything you ever dreamed of. We both can.”

  His words gave me goose bumps, and for a second I believed it. I could even see it: the two of us running off, getting a little place together, singing and playing in little dives while we worked our way toward that big break …

  But I didn’t have that kind of charmed life. There was only one path for me.

  “I could never leave,” I said. “Eddie’d kill me if I did.”

  “You don’t think
I’d protect you? I’d die for you, Olivia.”

  It was a slap, and I backed away. “Olivia?”

  “Delia,” he backpedaled. He reached for me, but I shook away.

  “It’s not the first time that’s happened. What is she, your wife?”

  A shadow crossed the angles of his face before he answered. “No, she’s not. I told you, what happened with her … it was just …” His thick eyebrows furrowed as he tried to find the words, but he couldn’t. “It was a long time ago. I’m so sorry, Delia. Please … just look at me.”

  I knew I’d be done for if I did, but I couldn’t help it. His eyes drew me in, and what I saw there was raw and scarred … but it didn’t lie. He was telling the truth, and the truth was more awful than he could say.

  “I don’t know what she did to you.” I sighed, letting him fold me back into his arms. “But if I ever see that girl, I’ll kill her.”

  He didn’t answer. He just gave me that melancholy smile, then placed his hand on my cheek and looked at me like he was memorizing my face. I got chills as he leaned in close and kissed me.…

  I sat up, dazed and disoriented. The television screamed turkey-basting directions at me, and reality settled in: my room. My bed. The Food Network.

  I grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. It had all been just a dream, but it felt so real. And the guy, the piano player … it was the man from my pictures. I could still feel his lips on mine as if I actually knew their touch, and part of me longed to close my eyes and slip back into the fantasy, but the sun streaming through my window wouldn’t let me fall back to sleep.

  Instead I padded to my computer and turned on the monitor. There he was, staring right at me. It was the same image that had terrified me last night, but I felt none of that now. I enlarged the picture, zooming in on his eyes.

  “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you,” he had said in my dream, and I looked deeper and deeper into those dark, magnetic pools as if I really could see myself there, just as he imagined me.…

  Until I burst out laughing. What was wrong with me? Suddenly I had become Rayna: One vivid dream and I was living a fantasy.

  Reality check: Dreams were the brain’s way of sorting out things left unsettled in our waking lives. A phantom stalker was about as unsettling as it could get, so my brain cast him as my star-crossed lover in the middle of the Roaring Twenties to make him less scary. And it worked—I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, which meant I could start approaching the pictures logically.

  For starters, I had to take anything paranormal off the table. That was the one area where I was more like my mom. Dad may have been a scientist, but he loved to contemplate things “beyond human understanding.” He funded some of the world’s most ridiculous wild-goose chases, and would rave about the game-changing potential of a real life Fountain of Youth, or Healing Caves, or undiscovered ancient creatures that still lived and could unlock the secret to long-term survival.

  Through these projects, Dad was actually responsible for some interesting archaeological finds, but when the New Age fanboys choked the Internet with chatter about their cosmic, transcendental significance, Mom and I had to tune out. We knew the truth: There was no such thing as “beyond human understanding.” With enough information, anything could be explained. The images on my camera may have seemed impossible, but that was only because I didn’t have the right information to comprehend them … yet.

  My heart jumped as I heard clanking and clanging downstairs, but I quickly relaxed. It was Piri. For years she had been like a crazy Hungarian grandmother, doting on me with equal parts rich traditional desserts (strudels and tortes), and rich traditional superstitions (always sit when you visit a baby, or you’ll take away its dreams). Mom and I rolled our eyes at those, but Dad of course ate them up, writing them down and cataloging them in his studio with all his other research on ancient and modern mythologies.

  Since Dad’s death, I’d tried not to spend a lot of time around Piri. It sounds absurd to say, but she seemed to be taking it harder than any of us. Her head bowed whenever she touched anything of his, her eyes welled up with tears, and the house reverberated with her heavy sighs. It made me angry sometimes, the way she was allowed to indulge in mourning when the rest of us had to move on. Most of the time I ignored it, though. I just kept busy and out of her way.

  Her arrival now was a great excuse to get out of the house. I also needed a break to clear my mind. Plus I was hungry. I peeked at my watch and saw it was well after noon. No wonder I was hungry—I’d slept longer than I had in ages.

  I picked up the phone and called Ben. “Dalt’s in sixty?” I asked.

  “Done,” he said. “You want to bring the board?”

  “Depends … you okay with humiliation?”

  “Bring the board.”

  “See you soon.”

  I hung up and ran to the shower. Thirty minutes later I was out the door, cribbage board in hand.

  “Bye, Piri!” I shouted. I was already in my car and pulling away when I saw Piri appear on the threshold, tossing a small cup of water out after me, “so luck would flow like water in my direction.”

  Madness.

  I turned up the radio and sang loud and off-key as I hit the highway, relishing the ride. Mom had offered to buy me a new car for my last birthday, but I wouldn’t give up my much-loved and battle-scarred Ford Bronco with the funky mint green paint job until it fell apart on me. I’d bought it myself, saving up my earnings until I could afford the ancient beauty. Every shiny rental I drove when I traveled reminded me how much I adored my own car. We knew each other, we worked well together. … Why would I mess with that?

  I saw Ben in the window the minute I pulled into the parking lot. Dalt’s Diner—a twenty-four-hour greasy-spoon pit stop for truckers cruising I-95, or for nearby Connecticut College students desperate for a three a.m. meal—had been around forever. Ben discovered it because the college employed him part-time as an adjunct professor. He gave a couple of lectures a semester, and lived on campus in faculty housing, so he knew all the student haunts.

  Dalt’s resembled a train car: one long row of booths pushed against the outside windows, plus a counter by the grill on which they managed to make nearly everything on the menu. I’m fairly certain even the spaghetti was tossed onto the grill before it was served. Dalt’s was pretty much the best restaurant ever.

  I yanked on my sunglasses and baseball cap before I left my car. College students loved to approach me and talk politics, medicine, or New Age insanity as if I could actually channel one of my parents for them. It was great that they were so interested, but I wasn’t my parents, and I could never handle the conversations to their satisfaction, so they always walked away disappointed.

  “Eager for defeat?” I asked, noting the paper and cards Ben had already set on the table.

  “Fascinating comment,” he said as he flipped through the yellow legal pad, “seeing as at last check, you owe me seventy-five cents.”

  “A temporary blip,” I conceded, slipping into the bench across from him and setting the cribbage board on the table.

  Ben grew up in a family that adored cribbage. I knew nothing about the game when we met, but I felt bad that the computer was his only challenger, so I asked him to teach me. Not surprisingly, Ben’s an excellent teacher, and within a few weeks we were pretty evenly matched. I knew I had arrived in the cribbage world when he proudly presented me with my own board. I was thrilled, and attached a length of braided rope to one end so I could hang the board from a hook in my room—a place of honor.

  That’s when we began our ritual marathon games for money—a quarter a game. Twice a year we paid up: once on my birthday, once on his. The most either of us ever had to pay was a dollar, but it wasn’t about the money, it was about bragging rights. It was also about tradition: We always used my board, and Ben’s cards and yellow legal pad. It was sheer blasphemy to even consider changing any of those elements.

  But cribbage was for
afterward. “What’s going on with Alissa?” I asked.

  “Alissa is a very popular woman,” Ben said, pulling a leather notebook binder from his canvas satchel.

  I laughed. Alissa was me.

  It was Rayna’s idea. Since I was a kid, I’d loved the idea of being a photojournalist. I always put aside my best pictures for my “portfolio,” which I hid under my bed. Only Rayna knew my plan; that way no one would ask me about it, and I wouldn’t have to tell anyone if I failed. I waited until I was sixteen, then sent my portfolio everyplace I admired: magazines, newspapers, e-zines, TV news … everywhere. I spent the next weeks so anxious I could barely put a sentence together. I’d agonized over every picture in the portfolio, and I thought it was really strong.

  Finally the responses poured in … every single one a rejection. A hundred different versions of Thanks, but this is a serious publication. We don’t hire celebrity children for vanity projects.

  I was completely mortified. I buried the portfolio in the attic and swore I’d never show anyone my pictures again.

  Rayna didn’t give up so easily. She exhumed the portfolio and sent it out under the pseudonym “Alissa Grande.” She later told me that the name was her inside joke: Alissa means “truth,” Grande “large,” so while the name was a lie, it was in support of a “greater truth”: an honest opinion of my skills.

  A week after she sent out the portfolios, I received my first assignment, and they haven’t stopped coming since. It’s not like I make a ton of money or anything, but I get to take pictures that matter, and share them with the world, which I love.

  While I was in Europe with Rayna, Ben had manned Alissa Grande’s e-mail, voice mail, and P.O. box for me.

  “Did I miss anything great?” I asked.

  Ben read over the options. I felt lucky that I could be picky and only take jobs that spoke to me in some way, and of course stayed in line with Mom’s “nothing too dangerous” rule. Big horse race in Maryland? Not so interested. Sixteen-year-old matador facing six bulls in one day? Very interested, but the magazine wanted a pro-bullfighting angle, and I couldn’t be part of that. Success of a once homeless woman who turned her life around by using microloans to start her own business? Loved it; big, resounding yes.