by Blake Nelson
“And that’s all it was?” I said. “Just that one moment?”
“That’s what summer is for. To do things you might not normally do.”
That was it. The answer to all my questions. I looked down at my feet.
Antoinette didn’t say anything for a long time. I kept my face down. Tears came into my eyes, which I tried to wipe away without her seeing.
Antoinette handled the situation perfectly. She said nothing. She let more time pass. She let me sink down into the depths of despair. And then waited for me to float back up.
Eventually I did. I lifted my head. I stared across the street.
“Kai said you guys hung out a lot,” she said.
“Yeah, we did.”
“And you read some of her writing?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
“About her writing? I dunno. It was good, I guess.”
Antoinette smiled at that. Eventually we talked about other stuff. The conversation petered out.
Back in my car I cried a little more. None of this was a surprise. Never once had I believed, in my realistic mind, that Antoinette and I could be together. It was just a dream that followed me around, like a ghost, the ghost of Antoinette loving me, or rather, the ghost of Antoinette letting me love her.
47
I hadn’t taken my photo editor job very seriously, but when our first issue came out and the photographs were terrible, I started to pay closer attention. I began stopping in at the Owl office after last period, partly for quality control and partly because I didn’t have anything better to do.
One day, after school, I was there with Emma Van Buskirk. We were putting the final touches on the next issue. We didn’t really know each other, but that night we talked for hours. We talked about the magazine, college, what kind of jobs we hoped to have someday. Eventually the janitor came and kicked us out. So then we went across the street to Wendy’s.
At Wendy’s we talked about less lofty things.
“You know what I heard?” Emma said, munching on her Wendy’s Caesar salad. “I heard Bennett and Hanna had a thing over the summer.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, playing dumb.
“You know those people. Is it true?”
“It could be.” I shrugged. “They seem pretty different though. On a social level.”
“Really?” said Emma. “I think they’re perfect. She’s a coke whore. And he’s got the coke.”
I looked at Emma. “Hanna’s not a coke whore,” I said.
She scoffed. “That’s not what I heard.”
“Who did you hear it from?”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “Everyone. She’s always done coke. Her and Claude used to do it every day in the parking lot.”
This wasn’t even remotely true. But I wasn’t going to argue with Emma Van Buskirk. One thing about a big public high school, the people who weren’t popular, who’d never gone to a real party, who’d never had a girl or boyfriend: They had some pretty weird ideas about the people who did.
• • •
In October, my mother came to my room one night and asked if we could talk. I was like uh-oh. She sat on my bed in this certain way, like she had a big announcement. I thought: We’re going to have to move. That seemed inevitable. The two of us in that huge house, it didn’t make sense. But that wasn’t it. It was my father’s new girlfriend. She was pregnant. I was going to have a baby sister, or a half sister, or a stepsister, or whatever the proper terminology was.
Alexis Colby was the name of my father’s girlfriend. I found this out two weeks later when I met the two of them at one of my father’s downtown restaurants. That was where my dad lived now, in one of the brand-new high-rise apartment buildings in the center of downtown.
“It’s very convenient,” he was saying, while we waited for Alexis. “I can walk to the courthouse from my front door. It takes five minutes. And if it’s raining, the streetcar is right there.”
I nodded and studied my menu. It was hard to stay focused. Alexis Colby was twenty-eight. I hadn’t heard this detail before. My dad was fifty-one.
“The parking is not the best,” my father continued. “The spaces are quite small. Mine is marked compact, and though the Mercedes Coupe might technically be considered a compact . . .” He was babbling. He was nervous too, more nervous than I was. Which I found alarming. I wanted the waiter to come talk to us.
• • •
Alexis finally appeared. She had light brown hair, a pretty face. She was slim, athletic looking. Her pregnancy was not visible, not that I could see. She was dressed up, with makeup and lipstick—not slutty, just like you would be if you worked in a lawyer’s office.
My father stood up when she arrived. I had never seen him stand up for my mother. The situation was so strange, so surreal, I did nothing. I sat there. I watched my father kiss her cheek. He held her wrist for a moment. He was in love with her, I could see. Which was so weird.
Alexis took her seat. I averted my eyes. My father continued to smile and gush. When I dared to look up, Alexis smiled at me. It was a complicated smile. Shy, but also a little bit superior, I thought.
Alexis had attended the University of Arizona. That’s where she was from: Scottsdale, Arizona. It was very hot there. There were scorpions in her backyard, growing up. Once she graduated from college, she had trained briefly in homeopathic medicine. Then she was going to be a lifestyle counselor. Eventually she began working in her uncle’s law offices part-time. She liked the law. That’s how she ended up in my dad’s office. Now, though, she wasn’t so worried about work. She was thinking more about the pregnancy. She was overwhelmed by it. She was not like some of her friends, who had planned their entire lives around motherhood. She wasn’t sure she was ready for it. But she would manage. She was thinking of it as a journey, as one of life’s great adventures. When she said that, she reached over and held my father’s hand, which made me almost spit out the food in my mouth.
48
A couple nights later, I was in my room when I got a call from Claude. “Is this for real?” he blurted. “Hanna was with Bennett Schmidt? Is this a joke?”
I was surprised it had taken him so long to hear about it.
“How did I not know about this?” he said.
It made sense. Petra wasn’t going to tell him. And none of his friends were going to tell him. I hadn’t told him.
“And who does this dick-weed think he is? He’s a frickin’ dope dealer!”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s weird how he’s risen up.”
“What?” said Claude. “Are you friends with him now too?”
“No. No. But I’ve noticed how he’s changed.”
“People are like, ‘Oh, Bennett’s cool now,’ ” sputtered Claude. “How do they figure that? And that stupid piece-of-shit car he drives!?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty weird.”
“I’m gonna kill that freak!”
“What for?” I said.
“For fucking with Hanna! For making her look bad. This is bad for a million reasons. Why would she even do that?”
“Girls think he’s cute. He’s got the bad-boy thing.”
“He’s a fucking fence post! Bennett Schmidt? Has everyone gone insane? What girl wants to be associated with a guy like that?”
“Yeah, well . . . ,” I said.
“This is Hanna we’re talking about,” said Claude. “This isn’t some parking-lot chick. This is Hanna Sloan! And Bennett Schmidt thinks he can put his hands on her!?”
• • •
And where was Hanna during this period when she was being attacked and slagged and insulted?
She was at school. She came every morning and left every afternoon. I sometimes saw her after third period when our paths crossed outside history class. I would smile. She would smile back. But something was definitely up. I mean, physically she still looked okay. Any objective person would consider her an extremely attractive high school sen
ior. But there was a worn quality to her face. She looked tired. And unfocused. She just seemed off somehow. Nobody said anything. It was possible nobody noticed. But I noticed.
One night I was driving home from the Owl office after dark, and I saw this girl or woman walking along Harper’s Ferry Road, pretty far away from school. I watched this person as I came up behind her. It looked like Hanna, about the same height, the same length hair. But it couldn’t be her. For one thing, Harper’s Ferry was not a road anyone would choose to walk on. There were no streetlights and the shoulder was loose gravel sloping down to a mud ditch. After I passed, I looked in my rearview mirror to see the person’s face. But I couldn’t see it. I decided it couldn’t be Hanna. She wouldn’t be walking alone like that. At night. On the side of the road.
• • •
I told Kai and Antoinette about this incident the next day. We were driving downtown in Kai’s Subaru.
“That sounds like a ghost story someone would tell around a campfire,” said Antoinette.
“The ghost of the mean girl walking along the road at night!” said Kai.
“She’s hitchhiking,” said Antoinette. “And when you pick her up, she criticizes your clothes and your friends.”
“Ha-ha.” Kai laughed. “And then when you tell the old guy at the gas station, he’s like, sometimes when the wind blows just right you can hear a voice saying, Ah ma gawd, you guys!”
“Very funny,” I said, frowning at the two of them.
“Oh, come on,” said Kai. “What do you care what happens to Hanna Sloan? Do you think she cares what happens to you?”
I didn’t answer.
“No,” said Antoinette. “She doesn’t care at all. Look what she did to you last summer.”
“That wasn’t personal. She wasn’t doing that to me.”
“Oh my God, look how you defend her!” said Kai. “The woman who used you to get revenge on her boyfriend!”
“She didn’t use me,” I insisted.
“Well, what did she do, then?” said Kai.
“You are in serious denial about certain things,” said Antoinette.
“Hey,” I said. “You don’t think I know her? Trust me, I know her. If anyone knows her, it’s me.”
“Well,” admitted Kai. “That might be true. Unfortunately for you.”
49
Senior year continued. There were lots of parties. Even people who never had parties had parties. I went to an Owl party one Friday night with Emma Van Buskirk. It was magazine and yearbook people mostly. I had grown to like this crowd. And they liked me. I was a bit of a celebrity, having been beaten up by the Seattle police in the line of journalistic duty.
Grace was there too. She was one of the main people on yearbook. I hadn’t seen her at all over the summer. I went over to her.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said back. She smiled. She drank some of her beer.
“So how’s things?” I said. “How’s Austin?”
“He’s great. He’s coming down tomorrow.”
“Down from where?”
“University of Puget Sound.”
“So you guys are still together?”
She grinned that they were.
“Cool,” I said.
“It’s been really hard,” she explained. “Being apart. I’m going to apply there for next year. I’ll have to live in a dorm, though. But then after that we can live together off campus.”
“How’s he like it up there?”
“Well, he’s not playing football. Which is hard for him. He’s played football every fall since he was twelve. He’s afraid he’s getting fat. But he’s not.”
“You’ve been up there?”
“Twice. And I wanted to go up this weekend but I couldn’t.”
“Wow, so you guys are really . . .”
“We are,” she said.
“I hope you’re still going to enjoy being a senior.”
“I could care less about that. So we’re seniors? So what?”
“But what about your friends?”
“What friends? I hardly talk to Hanna anymore. And Petra and those guys. Yuck.”
“I was going to ask you . . .”
“About Hanna? She’s going out with Bennett Schmidt now. Can you believe that?”
“I know. It’s so weird.”
“She used to make such fun of him.”
“What’s going on with her?” I asked. “Is she okay?”
“Who knows? I guess so. I kinda have other things to think about. I’m going to apply to Puget Sound early acceptance. I shouldn’t have any problem getting in. That’s what Mrs. Fogarty said. . . .”
I nodded my encouragement. But I was worried a little. Grace seemed to have everything figured out. I hoped she knew what she was doing.
• • •
In November, when it got cold, my mother turned off the heat in certain parts of the house, since it was just the two of us. But this made the house seem drafty and never quite warm. And then you’d forget and go in one of the unheated rooms and it would be freezing all of a sudden, as if someone had died.
I spent most of my time upstairs, on my computer, working on my college essay or looking at photos. In bed I would lie awake while the rain pattered on my window. I’d think about my mother, about Alexis Colby, about my future half sibling. Would I actually know her as she grew up? Would I be expected to be an older brother in some way? Talk about “older brother.” I’d be eighteen years older than her.
The main thing was: I hoped to God I got into Cal Arts. Or any other art school that would take me. I had to get out of that house.
• • •
And then one night I got another late-night call from Claude. I was in my room. This time his voice was less angry, more scared.
“Hey,” he said. “We got a serious problem.” He was in his car. I could hear him shifting the BMW in the background.
I pushed my chair back from my desk. “What is it?”
“It’s Hanna.”
“Okay,” I said, my chest tightening.
“Can you be outside your house in about thirty seconds?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me outside. Dress warm.”
I grabbed my parka and a ski hat. My mother was upstairs somewhere. She wouldn’t notice I was gone.
I opened the front door and walked down the driveway in the rain. Claude’s BMW came tearing around the corner and stopped abruptly at the curb.
I got in.
• • •
Hanna was missing. Claude told me what he knew: She had written a strange note and left it on her parents’ kitchen island after school. Then she left and hadn’t come back. At ten thirty p.m., her car had been found in the parking lot at Silver Falls State Park, thirty-five miles south of Portland, near Silverton. Her car door was open and the lights were still on. Someone had seen it and called the cops. The cops had checked the registration and called the Sloans. The police thought the note might be a suicide note. And they couldn’t find Hanna. They assumed she was somewhere on the two-mile hiking trail that went from the parking lot to Silver Falls. They hoped she was.
I told Claude that I thought I’d seen her walking along Harper’s Ferry at night. He didn’t think it could be her. Why would she have been walking on Harper’s Ferry?
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
Claude was passing everyone on the freeway as we drove toward Silver Falls. He sped along the wet county roads and pulled into the state park, almost hitting a police car that was pulling out.
He steered deeper into the parking lot. There were three police cars bunched at the trailhead, one with its red and blue lights flashing. There was another car as well: the Sloan family’s Chevy Tahoe. Mrs. Sloan was sitting inside, with the light on, talking urgently on her phone. Hanna’s little sister was in the backseat, holding the family dog, a blank, frightened look on her face. The thought came to me: If I only had my camera.
Claud
e shut off the car and jumped out. That’s when he saw Hanna’s car, parked to one side. It hadn’t been touched. The driver’s door was open. The headlights were still on. You could see the rain falling in the beams. The car was cordoned off by yellow police tape, as if someone had been murdered in it. I could see the shock on Claude’s face at the sight of it. I felt my own heart skip a beat.
Claude hurried toward the Sloans but was intercepted by a cop and a park ranger. I was right behind Claude. More cops gathered around us.
“Who are you?” said the main cop.
“I’m Claude. I’m a friend. I went out with Hanna . . . ,” he stammered. He was looking over at the Sloans. “Mr. Sloan!” he yelled out.
Mr. Sloan looked up but continued his interview with the other cop.
The big main cop put his hand on Claude’s shoulder. “We need you to calm down, Claude. We might need your help.”
Claude was about as agitated and flustered as I’d ever seen him. He kept glancing back at Hanna’s car.
“Claude,” said the main cop. “Look at me. Look at me.”
Claude got a grip on himself. “Have you been here before? Have you been to Silver Falls?”
“Yes, yes I have.”
“Have you been here with Hanna?”
“Yes,” said Claude. He was calming down. He took a deep breath.
“What did you do here? Where did you go?”
“We walked up the trail. To the falls. We came here a couple times. In the summer.”
“We’ve got some men on the trail. They’re not seeing anything. Did you and Hanna ever go off the trail? Are there any other places she might be?”
“No. We just walked to the falls. That’s all. And waded in the pool. In the summer.”
“Did she ever talk about this place at other times? Was it a special place for her for some reason?”
“No. It was just a hangout. We’d come with other people. It wasn’t a big thing.”
“Is there anything else you know or can tell us about this situation? Is she experienced in the outdoors? Does she camp?”
