The Mark

by Jen Nadol

  “That’s awesome, Jack. I’m so happy for you.” We stood there, smiling at each other stupidly. If Lucas hadn’t been listening to every word, there were a million things I’d have asked Jack. It was so good to see someone from home. To see him.

  “So.” Jack looked a little more serious, oblivious to the awkwardness of Lucas being so close. “Is this where you came when you disappeared?”

  I nodded, surprised he would put it like that. Surprised he’d noticed, really. I mean, school had been almost over. I was sure Jack would have been wrapped up in exams, State finals, that kind of stuff.

  “I wondered about you. I was kind of worried, to tell you the truth.”

  I smiled, but felt a pinprick of tears. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I just remember the last time we talked. After Nan. I could tell how hard it was for you …”

  I remembered too. The warmth of Jack’s sweatshirt. The clean, earthy smell. “Yeah, well, it’s better now.”

  He smiled. “I guess. You look great.”

  Lucas stood then. “We should get going, Cassandra. It’s a long drive back.”

  “Right.” I glanced at him, could tell he was pissed. I didn’t know whether it was about Jack or the day or what. I turned back to Jack, wanting to stay, wondering about seeing him here, about fate dealing me this rather than what I’d come looking for. “It was great to see you,” I told him.

  “You too, Cassie. When’re you coming back? I mean …” He glanced at Lucas. “You are coming back, right?”

  “Sure,” I said, not at all feeling so.

  “Good.” Jack smiled, pulling out a scrap of paper, a receipt from a sports shop, I saw later, and jotting some notes on it. “Here.” He passed it to me. “That’s my cell and e-mail. Call me or something.” He glanced at Lucas, looking away, arms folded. “When you’ve got more time.”

  I tucked it away. “I will.” And then, because I had to know, I asked, “So, how’s everyone at home?”

  “Great,” he said. “Been hanging out a lot with the guys from the team. We won States, you know.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Congrats.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And how’s Val?” I tried for casual but could tell he saw through me right away. He looked me straight in the eye when he answered.

  “We broke up. That wasn’t meant for the long haul.” He leaned over for a hug. “Be good, Cassie,” he whispered.

  The warmth of Jack close to me, his tickle of breath on my neck, still made me a little weak, though it shouldn’t have. “You too, Jack.”

  Lucas and I walked back to the car. “A friend from home?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.” I replayed the conversation in my mind, wondering if there’d been anything incriminating that Lucas could be angry about. I didn’t think so.

  He was silent for a few minutes, walking fast, gaining nearly two strides on me. I finally caught up to him near the corner. “This was a bad idea, Cassandra,” he said sternly, teacher to student. “It was a mistake for me to encourage it.”

  Lucas was right about one thing: it was a long drive back to Bering.

  chapter 21

  There was distance between us after that. A permanent cold front that blew in on our hot summer ride from Wichita. Lucas dropped me off at Drea’s, claiming a headache, lots of work to catch up on, plans with friends the next day.

  “Where were you?” Drea said before the door even closed behind me. She was sitting at the dining table, papers spread around her open laptop as if she’d been working from home all day. Waiting for me.

  I laid my keys on the table by the door. “I went to Wichita with a friend.”

  “Who?”

  “His name’s Lucas.”

  “Well, who is he?’ Drea stood, taking a few steps closer and leaning against the wall. “I hope this isn’t where you’ve been spending the night.” Her arms were folded across her chest. Nan used to say people did that when they were nervous, protecting themselves. But Drea didn’t look nervous.

  “Why do you care?”

  She frowned. “Because, Cassie, I’m your guardian, remember? It’s my right.”

  “No it isn’t, Drea. If you wanted to act like a guardian, you should have started about six weeks ago.” Now I was angry. “You’ve barely talked to me since I’ve been here, much less asked how I’m spending my time, whether I’m making friends, how I’m feeling about being away from home.” I knew my voice had gotten too loud, but at least it kept me from crying. After the day I’d had with Lucas, this was the last thing I needed. “You told me my first day that I’d be on my own. Fine. I’ve been managing without your help or interest. That’s the way you wanted it. You can’t change the rules now.”

  “Yes, Cassie,” she said evenly. “I can. This is my apartment, not some hotel.”

  “Funny, because it kind of seemed like one when you pointed to the keys my first day here and said to do ‘whatever.’ ”

  Drea just stared at me, then exhaled a long, frustrated sigh. “Okay,” she said, and I could tell she was trying hard to stay calm. “Maybe I haven’t been as … involved as I should have been. I’ve had a lot going on at work and I wasn’t anticipating … all this.” She waved her hand in my direction. “But we are family, Cassie. I need to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I can’t let you spend the night with some guy. Especially one I don’t even know. For God’s sake, Cassie, you’re only sixteen.”

  I thought about mentioning that my mother had been living with a guy—Drea’s beloved brother—at my age, but I could see that would just make her angrier and bring us to dangerous ground: her threatening to talk to Lucas or forbid me to see him. It was time to cut this off. “I’m not,” I said. “Lucas is just a friend from school.”

  Drea’s eyes narrowed. Not buying it.

  “Really.” I rolled my eyes, trying for exasperation. “A philosophy major? So not my type. He was going to the city today and asked some of us if we wanted to come along.” I shrugged. “I hadn’t really seen Wichita and I thought it would be a good chance to check it out.”

  “Then where have you been spending the night?” Unconvinced, but getting there.

  “At my friend Becca’s. She’s in my class too and has a great place near U Park. We study and she’s fun to hang out with. Plus, it’s easy to get to campus from there.” It sounded pretty good and I could see I was making headway. I threw in a guilt trip for good measure. “It’s nice to have the company.”

  Drea smiled a little, her relief visible. Parental duties executed? Check. Okay to get back to my own life? Sure. “Well, okay, Cassie. I’m glad you’ve found someone you like hanging out with,” she said. “I know I’m not around much, but you know if you need me for anything, I’ll be there, right?”

  “Of course, Drea. Thanks.”

  “And be careful with this Lucas. Don’t forget he’s a college guy—they’re a lot different from high school boys.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  I ducked into my room as quickly as I could, telling her it had been a long day. That, at least, was the truth.

  I lay on my bed, staring at the unmoving hands of the oversized wall clock, thinking about Lucas, wishing I knew how to fix things. I checked my phone in case I’d missed a call or text from him, though I knew I hadn’t.

  My philosophy books sat neatly on the nightstand and I reached for one. I couldn’t keep my mind on the assignment, though, the sentences blurring together so that I had to read them over and over. I gave up, flipping through the pages and thinking about the class where Lucas had first talked to me, invited me for coffee. My notes from that day littered the margins.

  “Who am I?” Professor McMillan had asked. “Defined by values, talents, beliefs,” I’d written. Well, I was getting to be a pretty talented liar. First Lucas, now Drea. Of course, if I hadn’t told Lucas I was eighteen, we might not be together. I might never have seen the mark on him. Did the end justify the
means? I closed my eyes and let the book fall to the side. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. None of it. The mark. Lucas. Most of all, me.

  I didn’t hear from him at all on Friday. Thankfully, I had to work, so I didn’t sit home brooding, though every time the door at Cuppa jangled, I glanced up, hopeful. Midway through Saturday I knew I was in that awful limbo where I tried to believe it was classes or friends or absentmindedness that kept him from calling or stopping in at the coffee shop. Since the night we’d gone to dinner, there had rarely been twelve hours we’d been fully apart, not speaking or seeing each other, if even just in class or across the floor of Cuppa. I felt as if I’d done something unspeakably shameful to drive him away so quickly and leave me with so little clue how to reclaim what I needed.

  I probably should have let it drop, pretended I’d been joking about the mark or even just let him walk away as he had already started to do, but I couldn’t. It was so important to me that Lucas believe. Because if he believed, then he’d know I wasn’t crazy and it would all be okay.

  I stopped by his apartment after work Tuesday. I still hadn’t heard from him. He’d met my eyes briefly after class on Monday, pointing to his watch as he headed for the door, gone before I made it to the front of the room.

  The uncertainty of us made me almost physically shaky.

  “I have an idea, Lucas.” I said after he let me in and I heard his perfunctory excuses about why he hadn’t called. “Let’s go away this weekend. Really away.”

  He stared at me, a sheaf of papers still in his hand, making sure I knew he was busy. “What did you have in mind?”

  “How about a weekend in the Big Apple?”

  “New York City?”

  I nodded. “You said you’ve always wanted to go and so have I. I found a good flight, reasonable too. We could go Friday after you’re done with classes, come back late Sunday.”

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  “I already talked to Doug and he said it’d be no problem.” That wasn’t exactly what he’d said, but it was my first request off since I’d started. He wasn’t happy about it being a weekend, but how could he refuse? I’d cleared it with Drea too, though she’d been hesitant, said she’d thought maybe we could go shopping or something. Another time, I told her.

  I could see Lucas trying to decide and it gave me hope.

  “C’mon, Lucas,” I said in my best carefree, fun-girl voice. “We’ll see a show, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square …” Maybe a doomed person or two.

  Finally, he relaxed. Even smiled a little. “Yeah, okay, Cassandra. You know what? That’s a great idea. Let’s do it.”

  I stayed over that night, and it was almost like it had been before. We read, we talked, we made dinner. I should have left it there, but I was so determined to prove it to him by then that there was no room for other options. Nothing else mattered.

  Friday was perfect: cloudless blue skies, Lucas and I holding hands on the airplane. As worldly as he seemed, Lucas had never been to the East Coast and, though normally a little jaded, even he couldn’t contain his excitement.

  “Look!” he said as we approached. “There’s the Statue of Liberty!”

  I could just make out a tiny figure on a dot of an island in murky waters. The city itself was like nothing I’d ever imagined, much less seen. Huge buildings rose, seemingly out of the water, impossibly anchored on a narrow strip of land. I’d read that over eight million people lived there, a hundred times the population of Bering. More than enough to find the one I was looking for.

  Our Times Square hotel was nothing special, but the surroundings more than made up for it. It was dizzying, the people and cars and lights and the sheer walls of skyscrapers rising everywhere I looked so that it seemed as if I’d fallen to the bottom of a cereal box, closed in on nearly every side. I didn’t see anyone with the mark, though if there was ever a time I might have passed one and not noticed, it was then. Lucas and I barely spoke, transfixed by everything happening on the streets outside. It wasn’t the awful silence of the prior weekend, but something comfortable, shared.

  We had a jam-packed agenda the next day: Liberty Island, Grand Central Terminal, the Empire State Building, Broadway. I don’t even remember what else. We started at the TKTS booth in Times Square, then ventured into the subway, deciphering the map and MetroCard system to get to the Empire State Building. The view from the observation deck was not unlike that which we’d had from the airplane, only this time, we were also balanced precariously on that little strip of land. On top of one of its biggest buildings, no less.

  It was hard to grasp the scope of the city—one block equal to the entire downtown of Ashville or Bering. I couldn’t imagine how people lived here. Walking the streets, I could pick out the natives by their head-down rush and the almost uniformly focused expression on their faces, everyone wrapped up in their own business, oblivious to everything else.

  After the Empire State Building, we went to Grand Central, its massive Great Hall unexpectedly hushed and soothing. Lucas was looking at constellations on the turquoise ceiling while I scanned the crowd. I almost missed her, saw just a flash as she hurried down a side corridor. I grabbed Lucas’s arm and started walking fast.

  He tried to wiggle free. “Cass! What are you doing?”

  “Hurry!” I said. “This way.”

  “Where are you going?”

  I didn’t answer, nearly dragging him around the corner where she’d gone. I did a visual sweep, seeing the glow just as she disappeared down an escalator.

  I yanked him that way. “C’mon!”

  He didn’t budge. “What’s going on?”

  I could tell by his expression that he knew. “I saw one, Lucas. Come with me now or we’re going to miss her.”

  “Cassie …” But I wasn’t listening. Nothing mattered but keeping up with her so I could show him.

  “Come on!” I ran toward the escalator, not turning to see if he followed.

  She was waiting on the train platform. It should have been next to impossible to find one girl among the throngs of people, but the mark made her easy to pick out. Lucas caught up to me, panting a little. “Cassandra …”

  “Shh. There she is.” I led him through the turnstile, onto the platform, keeping her close.

  She was young, somewhere around Lucas’s age, slightly overweight, and dressed in slouchy, nondescript black.

  The lights of the train crept ominously along the tunnel wall, coming into view shockingly bright and fast. I saw her inch forward and, for a second, was sure she was going to jump, but then the cars pounded into the station, stopped, and their doors slid open to dump one wave of people and usher another aboard.

  “Let’s go.” I pulled Lucas with me.

  We sat on the opposite side of the car from her. When I was sure she was fully in my sight, I turned to him. He was angry. No matter, I thought. As soon as he saw how this ended, he’d understand. Still, I didn’t want to fight him the whole way.

  “I know you’re upset, Lucas,” I said, “but this is a chance to see …” He wasn’t listening, couldn’t hear me past his anger. I tried to find something that would resonate with him. “Think of it as testing a hypothesis. Right now, you think I’m off my rocker. Humor me. Test your theory to see if you’re right or if, maybe, there’s actually something to what I’m telling you.”

  “This isn’t how I thought we were going to spend our day,” he said petulantly.

  “Me either,” I lied.

  The train swayed bumpily, jostling passengers, forcing us to dance to the same beat while it clattered through the tight dark tunnels. I studied the girl, trying to read her, to see if she had any inkling that today was somehow different. I always wonder that. Do they realize that this is the last day they will buy a newspaper at that stand, pay cab fare, kiss their wife or kids? They seem as harried and haggard and unappreciative of each action—though it will be their last—as everyone else. In contrast, I’ve started to feel everything
acutely, overaware of stepping off the curb, turning a page, drinking my coffee, savoring every sensation, not knowing whether, if it were my last day, I would see the light framing my reflected image.

  I think about death more than most people, I’m sure, the mark never letting me forget how unexpectedly it can happen. Like the girl whose day is today. Her skin is slack and pasty, so maybe she’s sick. But if she were terminal, it’s hard to imagine she could be out, walking around. Most likely, it will be an accident.

  The train rumbled into another stop and she stood.

  I nudged Lucas. “Let’s go.”

  She trudged through the dirty station, past the tiled sign that read BOWERY, and up the stairs to the dirtier street outside. The buildings were smaller here and I winced at the sunlight, sharp and startling after the subway’s dimness. I kept us about a block behind, trailing her safely across three intersections. Midway down the last block, she stopped at a door, rummaged in her bag for a key, and disappeared inside. I tried the knob when we got there, but it was locked tight.

  “Now what?” Lucas demanded, hands on his hips.

  I scanned the names by the buzzer, about ten in all, trying to figure out which might be hers and whether I could somehow get her to invite us in. Even in Bering, though, you wouldn’t spend a day with total strangers. Here, you didn’t even look at them.

  “I guess we wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For her to come back out.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Cassandra. This whole thing is ridiculous.” Lucas exhaled through pursed lips.

  “We could get some lunch, maybe,” I suggested, pointing across the street. “Look. There’s a café right there.”

  Lucas glanced over, studying the people lounging at the metal tables packed tightly on the sidewalk out front. “Listen,” he said, and I could already read his answer in that one disappointed word. “I came to New York to see the city, not to follow some hapless girl around. I’m going to the Statue of Liberty. If you want to come, I’d love to have you, but I’m tired of this, Cass. I really don’t want to hear anything else about this … whatever it is you think you can do or see …”