Chaos

by Lanie Bross

  When the bus stopped at the Richmond playground, Jas disembarked. She was still wondering about the woman, trying to place her. She turned left and started across the street. She’d stop at home. Maybe Luc had finished his mysterious business and decided to crash.

  The noise of the city closed in around her: construction trucks lifting and moving big chunks of fallen buildings, jackhammers, sirens wailing in the distance. She turned up her old MP3 player, despite the fact that she hadn’t used it since a horrible pop phase when she was twelve. Since then, she’d gotten into live music and old records. But the music drowned out the noise, and her sunglasses helped with the glare.

  Too bad there was nothing she could do about the smells. She’d never noticed how much the city reeked: scorched wires from a partially burnt storefront, the sharp bite of gasoline, and fresh-baked bread. At least it felt good to be walking. Her body felt lighter, full of energy, like she’d gulped down multiple cups of coffee.

  She turned up Lake Street and climbed the steep hill, practically without feeling it. Luc left in pursuit of her attackers. That meant he knew them, or at least why they’d gone after Jasmine.

  We’re only doing what we must.

  Haven’t they taken enough already?

  The exchange made no sense to her. Okay, so if they were doing what they must, it meant they were acting on someone’s orders. Had someone set up a hit or something on her?

  She shook her head reflexively. That kind of thing happened in Mafia movies, not in real life. Besides, she hadn’t hurt anyone and didn’t owe anyone money.

  Then she thought of T.J., but she quickly dismissed that thought. Yeah, he’d been a little pissed when she dumped him. But he wasn’t dangerous, even if he was kind of a dick.

  There was something she was missing. And she was sure it had to do with what had happened over the weekend, the huge black fog in her memory.

  She jogged up the stairs to their apartment building and looked around once before she slipped inside, in case she was being followed. Then she scolded herself for being melodramatic. There had to be a rational explanation for everything that had happened. The holes in her memory. Luc’s urgent mission. The change in her mind, the sharpness of her hearing.

  Because if there wasn’t a rational explanation, it probably meant she was going crazy.

  “Luc?” Inside the apartment, she took out her earbuds. It was very quiet. She could tell immediately he wasn’t home.

  But someone had been here. The certainty swept over her like a wave. Things looked out of place, rearranged. But maybe that was another aftereffect of the earthquake? She hadn’t paid too much attention yesterday.

  Still, she double-checked that the door was locked behind her and all the windows were secured. The door to her room was open, and she peeked her head in before pushing it all the way open, as though she expected someone to jump out at her.

  On the floor next to her bed was a picture frame. When she picked it up, she saw that the glass had been shattered. This, surely, had not been on the ground yesterday. It was a picture of her, Luc, Mom, and Dad in front of a mountain. One of the few family pictures she had. Her mom was giving a thumbs-up to the camera. Luc had Jasmine hefted in his arms. And their father was wearing a floppy hat so big it shaded his face.

  Carefully, she took the picture out of the frame and flipped it over.

  On the back, in her mother’s neat handwriting, read: Luc, 5, Jasmine, 3. Yosemite National Park.

  Her throat squeezed and she felt a sudden ache in her chest. They’d been happy then. She didn’t remember much about their mother, or about the years before she relapsed and disappeared. But her dad had told her they’d been happy, and she believed him.

  A tiny flickering noise by the window caught her attention and her body reacted instantly. She tensed up. Had the attackers returned? She grabbed a Disneyland snow globe, one of the last things her mom ever gave her, and crept closer to the window.

  But instead of someone trying to get in, she saw a small firefly batting against the window, trying to get out.

  “Where did you come from?” she said, setting the snow globe on the floor.

  It was dim in the bedroom and the firefly flickered in the half dark. Jasmine couldn’t help but laugh. It pinged against the window and went dark, then lit up and tried again to escape.

  “Okay, hold on.” She flipped the window lock and raised the window to let the bug escape. As she stepped back, her shoe kicked something and it hit the wall with a clunk.

  She stooped down. A marble. Why the hell was there a marble in her room? It was beautifully colored and reminded her of the handblown Venetian glass her friend Susan’s parents had in their dining room.

  No. Not colors. Pictures. Moving images, swirling and dissipating and re-forming. What kind of marble was this? She saw a long, dark tunnel, then when she turned the marble a little, shadowy figures appeared, and then it changed yet again, into a structure that looked exactly like the rotunda at the Palace of Fine Arts.

  The rotunda. Luc had said he found her at the rotunda Sunday night.

  An idea struck her: if she wanted to remember what had happened this weekend, she had to retrace her steps. She’d start at the Palace of Fine Arts. Maybe something would click.

  She didn’t know where the marble had come from, but she knew it was a sign. She slipped it in her pocket, scribbled a quick note to Luc in case he came looking for her, then left the apartment for the bus stop. This time, she didn’t bother with the earbuds.

  By the time the bus stopped near the Palace of Fine Arts, an undercurrent of excitement ran through Jasmine. She felt sure she would remember something here, and could start stitching together the hole in her memory.

  The smells coming off the bay were sharp: salt and algae, dried seaweed, old driftwood. She’d never noticed how heavy the air was this close to the ocean. Thick with energy and life. She had to push down the urge to change direction and walk toward the shoreline. It was cooler here. A fine mist covered her skin, and when she looked up, she noticed that the sky had turned gray and gloomy. She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts, she’d missed the rain clouds moving in.

  She moved faster, jogging across the nearly empty street to the entrance of the Palace of Fine Arts.

  The area had been badly damaged in the earthquake. Yellow police tape hung across the pathway, presumably to keep people away from the debris. Jas looked around. When she saw no one, she slipped under the tape and hurried down the path—now fissured with cracks, some as wide as her finger—toward the rotunda. Awareness sizzled along her spine. There was something here, she could feel it, dancing just out of her consciousness.

  Familiar.

  Instinctively, she reached to twirl her ring, a nervous habit. Of course, it wasn’t there. She’d gone to look for it at the marina on Friday night …

  In a flash, a memory resurfaced:

  She knew Luc would kill her for going out again, but she needed that ring. Luc had won it for her at a carnival. One of the best nights of her life. So she’d retraced her steps, ending up back at the place where she and T.J. had argued. She scoured the boardwalk on her hands and knees, hoping more than anything the ring hadn’t fallen through the planks into the water.

  Then: footsteps behind her.

  A woman appeared where moments earlier there were only shadows. She looked vaguely familiar, like maybe someone Jas had seen in a magazine. She was beautiful enough to be a model, with long black hair and dark eyes. But the way she watched Jas put Jas on edge. No one came to the marina at night except to party or score or use or hook up.

  “Well, it looks like fate does exist,” was what the woman said.

  Jas remembered that she had one strange-looking tooth, almost like a fang. The woman held something out, and Jasmine remembered feeling so relieved, so happy that the woman had found her ring, but before Jasmine could ask how the woman had known what she was looking for, there was a brilliant flash of light.…

>   Jasmine came out of the memory like a swimmer coughed up from a riptide. She gulped in air, suddenly aware that she was standing, motionless, halfway down the path. The memory had hit her forcefully and just as forcefully faded once again into the mist of her mind. What had happened after that? Who the hell was that woman? Had she drugged Jas or something? You read about that sort of thing all the time. Crazy people. Like women who stole people’s babies.

  Pain pounded in Jas’s head. Each new thought, every unanswered question and doubt was like a spike in her brain. The only thing she could do was to keep going forward. Maybe seeing the rotunda would unlock another memory.

  The rotunda had suffered massive damage; almost the entire top had collapsed. Three columns on the far side had crumbled completely. It was just a pile of broken concrete now.

  Police tape was strung along the entire outside of the rotunda, and a No Trespassing sign was attached to one of the fallen columns. Jas ignored it and ducked under the bright yellow ribbon.

  She hadn’t taken two steps when a boy stepped out from behind a half-collapsed column on the left.

  They both froze. He wasn’t much older than she was, but he was almost a whole foot taller, with unruly dark hair and a pale face that looked like it belonged in an old painting. His eyes were such a bright shade of blue they almost looked fake. She could smell leather and pine and something else, something wild that she couldn’t put her finger on. Like the air before a huge storm. It made her pulse race faster. Heat crept into her cheeks.

  “What are you doing here?” the boy asked.

  “I’m looking for something.” It was the first thing she thought to say. The way he was staring made her instantly aware of the fact that she’d barely brushed her hair this morning and had not bothered with a speck of makeup.

  “Aren’t you just full of demands,” he said. He casually slipped something into his pocket. The yellow T-shirt he was wearing said CATHEDRAL STREET, and she couldn’t help but notice how well it fit him. She looked away.

  “I don’t know why you’re here. Like I said, we’re on different sides—”

  “We’ve never met,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Last night. You followed me.…”

  “You’re getting me mixed up with someone else.” Despite herself, the thought made Jas angry. What did she care? “Who are you, anyway? What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you,” he said. “Looking for something.”

  He was still staring at her, almost into her, in a way no guy ever had before. She felt exposed and excited all at once. Her breath hitched in her throat. Normally, guys talked to her chest. This guy made her feel like they were alone in the world.

  “Then we’re both looking for something,” she said, deliberately breaking eye contact. She picked her way over one of the collapsed columns, and the buzzing sense that she was close, that she had been here, grew stronger. There was something here—something that would unlock the mystery of the past few days. All of this seemed so familiar, but why? Of course she’d been to the rotunda before, but this was different; something had happened to Jasmine here. Something important. The certainty was like an itch just under the skin that got worse the more you ignored it.

  She started moving pieces of concrete almost automatically, digging through the debris from the base of the toppled column with the toe of her shoe. Then she bent down and pushed aside a large chunk of plaster.

  “Really—what are you doing?” the boy asked. He had come up right behind her.

  “I said I lost something here,” she insisted. “Right before the earthquake. It’s kind of important—like a family heirloom.” It wasn’t a total lie. She had lost her ring, which felt like a family heirloom, even if it was worth two bucks.

  He squatted and began to help her clear away large chunks of plaster.

  She spotted it after only a minute: a dark hole, and a set of crumbling stairs. Her heart leapt, and the sense that she was on the verge of a great discovery—on the verge of piecing it all together—intensified.

  “Whoa,” the boy said. “Is that like a secret entrance or something?”

  “Or something,” Jasmine said. She hopped onto the fallen column, then carefully lowered her legs into darkness until her feet touched the stairs. Inside, the air felt thick and damp. The sense of déjà vu grew stronger. Had she been here this weekend? At the bottom of the stairs, dull light was shining from some invisible source.

  “This is definitely not safe,” the boy said. But he lowered himself after her, through the opening.

  “Who’s following who now?” she said. “Shouldn’t you be out, you know, helping people and saving puppies?”

  To her surprise, he grinned. God, he was hot when he smiled.

  “I am helping people. I’m helping you.” He was looking at her again, the same way as before, like it was just the two of them in the world.

  She cleared her throat. “Look … about the thing I lost.”

  “The heirloom.” He kept a straight face, but she had a feeling he was making fun of her. She glared at him.

  “It was a ring,” she said haughtily. “But I didn’t lose it. It was … stolen. And I got a tip that it might be stashed around here.”

  “A tip?” he repeated.

  “Yeah.” She forced herself not to blink. She had a feeling, though, that he could read the lie on her face.

  “We’ve met.”

  “I’m positive we haven’t.” And she was. She would remember someone like him.

  They shared a silence; then he shook his head and said, “Let’s go look for it, then.” He moved past her and his body brushed against hers in the tight space. Tiny jolts of electricity rushed through Jasmine. That had never happened when T.J. touched her. “Careful,” he said. “Looks like part of the wall has collapsed.”

  He held out his hand and she took it reluctantly. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she was afraid of what his touch might do to her concentration. His grip was firm but gentle, and his palms were totally dry. Their hands fit together perfectly. Heat roared through her body as they moved carefully down the stairs, avoiding the places that had crumbled away.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Jasmine saw the source of the light. The ceiling had partially caved in, and light filtering in from above illuminated some kind of living space. Most if it lay in rubble, except for a claw-foot tub in one corner that looked ridiculously out of place.

  Had someone really lived here? Broken teacups were scattered on the ground near a sink that was partially detached from the wall, revealing rusted pipes. Multicolored glass crunched underfoot; Jasmine saw that a shelf with dozens of colored bottles had been upended.

  A faded rug was just barely visible under the dust, and the corner of a picture frame stuck out from beneath a pile of loose plaster. Jasmine bent and removed the frame, carefully brushing the dust from the glass. It was a painting, a boy and a girl holding hands and staring off toward mountains in the distance.

  Yearning rose out of nowhere, thick in her throat.

  She set the picture down.

  The boy craned his neck to squint up at the sky. “So what now?”

  “Look for a ring.” Jasmine needed to buy time. She kept waiting for another memory to rise like a wave. She made her way across chunks of concrete and earth to a second doorway. “I’ll check in here.”

  Inside the second room—a bedroom, she guessed—one whole wall had caved in. Behind the bed, a torn poster hung from one side, and a chest lay broken, spilling its contents like guts across the floor.

  She stooped and picked up a silk skirt. It was about her size. Maybe some runaway had squatted down here? Maybe even one of the attackers? It seemed plausible. Now if only she knew why, and how the skirt related to her and Luc. Jasmine made her way to the nightstand beside the bed, surprisingly intact given the destruction of the rest of the room.

  There was a piece of paper there, taped neatly to the wood. In handwriting
eerily similar to her own, was written:

  Find Ford.

  He’ll know what to do.

  Again, she had a wave of intuition that was almost like certainty. “Ford?” she called out, then held her breath.

  Immediately, he responded. “Yeah? Find something?” Then, a second later, he appeared in the doorway. His face was very serious. “How do you know my name?” He was looking at her, eyebrows drawn down and suspicion in his eyes.

  Jasmine’s head was spinning. She felt as if the room were getting smaller. Who had left this note? How had they known that Ford would be poking around?

  She moved to conceal the note from view. “I … I think you told me. Outside. Remember?” She swallowed. She could tell he didn’t buy it.

  He held up a hand, cutting her off. She’d been distracted by the strange note, the pounding rhythm of her heart, but then she heard it: footsteps coming down the stairs, whispered voices. She recognized the voices.

  It was the boy and girl who had attacked her.

  Panic slid down her spine. How had they found her again so quickly? Were they stalking her?

  Ford turned, as though to go investigate, but Jas grabbed his arm and pulled him behind the bed, forcing him down into a squat. She ignored the way her skin tingled when touching his.

  “What—?” Ford started to ask, but Jas shook her head.

  The voices were louder now. The boy and girl had reached the bottom of the stairs; she could hear them moving through the main room, feet crunching on the glass, breathing heavily, as though they’d been running. But she could feel them, too. Their determination. Their ruthlessness.

  Her thighs ached and her legs were shaking. She and Ford were trapped. They would find her any second now. They must have heard the frantic pounding of her heart. To Jasmine, it was as loud as a marching band.

  “We’re going to have to run.” She leaned in so close to Ford, she could practically taste him. For a second, the smell of his skin—like pine trees and fire and rain, all mixed up—made her dizzy.