Lost Cause

by Callie Sparks

  Maybe he doesn’t understand. If I lost him again, I’d be destroyed. It’s not just about saving him. He has to save us both.

  “You have me,” I tell him, softly stroking his hair as he starts to sob. I lean in to kiss the top of his head. “You always have me.”

  #

  That spring, the police stopped looking at Mr. Templeton as a person of interest in the disappearance of his family. Supposedly, they’d performed interviews and searches of his home and when they couldn’t get anywhere, they all but closed the case.

  Well, they said they would actively follow any leads, but since there were no leads anymore, that meant they were doing nothing.

  Mr. Templeton was tried for embezzlement and sentenced to a year in prison, so even he could no longer hold their noses to the grindstone.

  Meanwhile, my life went on, with one big hole in the very center of it.

  Claire was right about one thing. Once summer ended and Hildi went back to Sweden, it was business as usual. Or, as usual as business could be without Noah there.

  Gabe went right back to taking everything with me at a snail’s pace, blowing hot and cold and making me feel insane. I spent the summer going to parties where he’d talk my ear off one moment, only to ignore me the next. At Claire’s end-of-summer-bash, I sat there, realizing it had been a year since I’d last seen Noah. I spent much of the time sitting by myself, thinking of that night. I already felt bad because of that, but felt even worse when Gabe came up to me, tickled me on the ribs, and then disappeared.

  “What the hell?” I mumbled to Claire. She was wearing another boobalicious bikini. She’d grown quite comfortable with the so many pin-up curves she’d sprouted years ago, and meanwhile, I still looked like an eight-year old.

  She looked at me and smiled warily. “He does like you. Really.”

  I huffed out a breath as Jacy came in and squeezed between us on the lounge. “Well, why does he act like that, then?”

  Claire and Jacy exchanged looks. Those looks scared me. Those looks said they knew something I didn’t.

  “What?” I said.

  Jacy bit her lip and looked away. Claire opened her mouth. Mari came and, sensing something big was going down, sat on the coffee table across from us. Mari adjusted her boobs in her bikini and said, “Oh, my God, Claire, you’re not going to tell her!”

  Claire shrugged.

  “What?” I said, embarrassed. Did everyone know something I didn’t? “Tell me what?”

  Claire leaned forward as if she was going to tell the biggest secret, and I looked around. We weren’t exactly in private. There were a lot of people in earshot. I braced myself.

  “Well, Gabe told Russ, and Russ told Evan, and Evan told Jacy . . .” I looked up at Jacy. Evan was Jacy’s boyfriend. So they all knew this something. This something, judging from the way they were looking at me, that was obviously bad. I cringed. I did not want to hear this.

  But there was no turning back.

  “He said he really likes you,” Claire continued, drawing it out painfully long. “But . . .”

  They all looked at me with pitying, puppy dog eyes.

  “He says you’re built like his little brother. In the body department,” Claire finished.

  “Oh, my God.” My cheeks flamed. I hugged my arms over my chest.

  “He said you’d be a fox, though, if you weren’t, like . . . flat,” Claire added, as if that would make me feel better.

  Jacy said, “He said he thinks you’d be one of the hottest girls in school, if you’d just . . . fill out.”

  “Oh,” I said numbly. “Okay.”

  I waved it off, like it didn’t matter, and even managed to laugh with them when the conversation swerved to the topic of whether our biology teacher for next year, Mr. Potemkin, had a toupee. I kept my arms fastened tightly over my chest, though. And whenever Gabe came by, I made an excuse to turn around and walk in the other direction.

  I’d never felt so unwanted. And so that’s probably why the whole time, all I was thinking was how only a year ago, in that very yard, I’d shared my first kiss with Noah.

  He’d wanted me. Maybe he’d just been saying it. But at that moment, I knew I wanted him, too. I’d never wanted anything more. And stupid, stupid me. Now it was too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  So you went with him.

  Yeah. His name was Ernie Rodriguez, and he was a good guy. I was worried because John had the local police force in his pocket. I didn’t trust a soul. But Ernie told me he’d look after me, and he did. He took me straight to the Border Patrol headquarters in Calexico, who in turn notified the FBI.

  What happened then?

  Well, they told me they couldn’t, uh, notify anyone that I’d been found until they confirmed it was me. So they did a DNA test and you know, asked me a shitload of questions about where I was born and what had happened. Kind of like you’re doing now.

  It must’ve been exciting when your family learned you were alive.

  Honestly, that was the scariest part. I was afraid my dad was . . . Annie’d said my dad . . . well, I thought he hated me. They asked me why I never tried to get home before, and I told them I didn’t really think I had a home to go to.

  When you learned the truth, how did you feel?

  . . .

  Noah.

  Not good.

  What did they tell you?

  Well, they kept saying over and over again that they’d inform my next of kin. They got me cleaned up and fed me, tested me for STDs and whatever. I stayed in a place in L.A. while the lawyers were preparing the case against Annie, and no one ever came. I told them it was not surprising. I told them he hated me and wouldn’t come for me. And then they told me he’d spent all that time looking for me. That he was accused of my murder. That . . . that he’d hung himself in his house a year after his name was cleared. That was really hard . . . I feel . . . responsible. Like if I had just, in some way, gotten free and let him know I was all right, he’d be alive today.

  #

  There is a guest room in the attic of my house, which we use for visiting clergy or whenever a family needs a place to stay for the night. It’s unbearably hot up there sometimes in the summer, but right now, it’s pleasantly cool.

  I brought Noah up there in the early hours of the morning, while the remains of his home still smoldered. My parents watched wordlessly as I walked him up the staircase, and this time, he stumbled up nearly all the steps, because he was such a wreck. When I pulled back the comforter and laid him down on the bed, he rolled into fetal position and sobbed hard into the pillow. I stroked his back like my mom used to do whenever I had nightmares, and after a while, he fell asleep.

  He’s still sleeping nearly fourteen hours later, when it’s dark and I peek in to look at him. The room smells thick with gasoline and ash. I change into my pajamas and after I brush my teeth, I meet my father downstairs for a good night kiss. “Good night, Dad.”

  He smiles at me benevolently. “What’s wrong? You look guilty.”

  “No, I just—“

  “Your mother and I talked about it, and just know,” he says softly, “He can stay here as long as he has to. It’s okay.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course, sweetheart. He’s like a son to us, too. We can’t turn our back on him now. But . . .”

  I brace myself for the but.

  “I’m going to have to have a long talk with him, when he’s ready. He can’t continue the lifestyle he had over there, under this roof. Under our roof, he lives by our rules. He needs to understand that.”

  I nod. “He will.” I hope. “I’ll talk to him. About therapy. About . . . whatever he needs to do to get his life together. And Dad?”

  He nods.

  “Is he going to get arrested? For what he did?”

  He shakes his head. “I doubt they’ll do anything like that. They know the kind of life he’s had.”

  Relieved, I start to go back upstairs, when he calls m
y name again. I turn to him, already knowing what he’s going to say.

  But he doesn’t say anything I expected. “Good night, sweetheart,” he says.

  When I turn out the light, I have a hard time falling asleep, knowing he’s a floor above me. I listen for creaking floorboards, the sign of movement. It’s so odd; for so long, I’d look out the window and see his window, but now, there’s this big, gaping hole where his house used to be, tufts of rising smoke surrounded by scorched pines. When reality feels like a nightmare, it’s hard to summon the courage to sleep.

  So instead, I climb the staircase and stand near his bed. He’s on his side, facing the window. When I approach, though, he rolls over, blinking at me in the moonlight. “Hey,” he says, his head falling back on the pillow.

  “Hey yourself.” I sit on the edge of the bed.

  His voice is scratchy. “You want to know what happened?”

  I shake my head. “I think I can guess.”

  “I guess you could say my failure is complete, huh?” he mumbles.

  I let out a short laugh. “No, Obi Wan,” I tell him. “Not even close. You’re okay.”

  “I don’t know about that. Last night it was dark, and I started walking from room to room, and I could swear the walls were talking to me. And I just wanted it gone.” His voice is louder, the words more pronounced. “I hated that fucking house, hated living there. Every time I went inside, I felt like it was swallowing me up. I was tolerating it, though. To be near you.”

  “Oh, Noah.” He sounds so sincere, so scared. My heart is breaking for him. “You didn’t have to. You could’ve stayed with us any time you wanted.”

  His hand crawls across the comforter, seeking mine. “You know what I was wondering?”

  I shake my head. “No, what?”

  “If I’d asked you to the prom, instead of the douchebag, what would you have said?”

  “Yes,” I say immediately. I can imagine it well, since I’d thought about it, even then, when he’d asked me. I didn’t have a terrible time with Gabe, but he’d brought along a flask of vodka and I’d been wasted the whole time. If I’d been with Noah, I had no doubt he’d have made it romantic, so much so that I’d likely remember every last moment.

  Noah falls back on his pillow, thinking. “Do you know how many times I’d lie in bed, in California, and think of you?”

  I shake my head. It can’t be nearly as many times as I thought of him.

  “A billion,” he says, stroking my fingers. “At least, it felt that way. I had so many nightmares. Thinking of you, I didn’t.”

  I smile a little. “You told me you needed me. Well, guess what? I need you, too, just as much. And I need you to get better. I will help you all I can. It’s my pleasure to do that because I care about you, too. Okay?”

  He tucks his arm under his head. “Yeah.”

  “There are going to be rules. You know that, right? But you can do this.”

  “Like what sort of rules?” he asks, his voice still hoarse.

  “Like . . . no women. “

  He thinks for a long time. “I figured that.”

  “I’m included in that,” I say softly.

  His face falls. “Did your father say that?”

  I shake my head. “I’m saying that. I will do everything I can to help you, but I can’t. Not if —“

  “Well, it makes sense. I don’t deserve you,” He acknowledges. “Still, I can’t ignore you and make what I feel go away. I know that now, and I know the last thing I want to do is hurt you. You’re in my veins, Ari.”

  My face flames. “Still. After last night, I realized the most important thing is you getting better. You need to concentrate on yourself. And I’m going off to college in a few weeks . . . I love you, but it wouldn’t work.”

  His face hardens. He nods his acceptance. Then he says, rather gruffly, “That’s okay. Like I said, I’ve . . . never had a girlfriend before. I used to dream about that kind of stuff. But now, here I am, twenty years old, and . . . I don’t really know how to do that.”

  “Twenty is really not all that old,” I tell him. “You have a lot of life left in you, dude.”

  He rolls over on his side. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Totally.” I smile at him. “You should go back to sleep.”

  He looks around the room, taking in the foreign surroundings. “Would you stay with me?” He must see the fear in my eyes, because he says, “Just for a little while. The nightmares . . . ”

  I pull up the comforter and slide into the bed, next to him. It’s so warm next to his body, so comfortable. He still smells like gasoline, a little, but mostly that comforting Noah smell of my childhood. I roll onto my side, so we’re facing each other. He puts a hand over mine. “Making sure you’re real.”

  I burst out laughing. “What?”

  He just shrugs.

  I gently trace a finger over the yellowing bruise over his eye. When we used to sleep in the treehouse together, we’d curl our bodies around each other and it was all so natural, so comfortable. Everywhere I moved, he immediately knew how to fill in the cold spots, mold his body to the places I needed to be touched. I know that I can’t get too comfortable here, because morning is coming, and how will I explain this to my dad? Still, I lift up his arm and roll over, settling my back up against his chest, drawing his arms around me. Our bodies melt together, our breathing slows, and it isn’t long until we’re both asleep.

  #

  It was obvious to anyone with eyes that I was built like a little boy. But now, the entire school knew Gabe Hill’d rejected me because of it.

  And because of that, I felt like I’d taken Noah’s place at the class reject.

  Not really. I was still friends with everyone. But I felt more and more like their mascot; the cute member of the team that’s always there to provide moral support, but never actually participates in the game. And as the months went on, playing the game started to become more and more of interest to me.

  So I did the only thing I could.

  I pretended, the best I could, that none of it mattered to me.

  Nothing changed when I got to high school. At fifteen, I was still ninety pounds soaking wet, still flat, still hadn’t gotten my period. Someone told me that in high school, anything went—you weren’t expected to conform as much and could pretty much let your freak flag fly, if you wanted. But I never felt truly comfortable raising mine up the mast.

  As I walked the halls, people thought I was cute. They thought I was the little sister of one of the real students. It was mortifying.

  Especially when Claire told me about the first party of the season. “It’s going to be outrageous,” she said to me as we were changing for gym. Gym, another thing I hated. Everyone seemed to be looking at me, which is why I changed in a bathroom stall. I think they may have been taking wagers on when my hooters would first appear. “A couple of seniors are throwing it. We’re going to get wasted!”

  It was no secret she’d been having sex with her boyfriend, a junior at Rutgers, since last year. She’d gone into pretty vivid detail about it last June, what parts of the anatomy looked like, what it felt like, what he’d smelled like and how he’d made her come. She gave it two thumbs up. Sex, she said, was her new favorite hobby. She recommended everyone go out and try it, immediately.

  I expected a rash of pregnancies would soon follow, because her reviews carried serious weight.

  “You’re coming, right?” Jacy asked me. She had a boyfriend, too, and they’d gotten “close but not quite”, she’d said. Mari, too, had been going out with a sophomore, and they’d both gotten detention for a pretty sloppy PDA in the science wing.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. Even as their mascot, I didn’t feel like showing up to cheer everyone on in their drunken escapades. “You know. It’s not my thing.”

  They looked at me like I had three heads. Partying was pretty much everyone’s thing. But did they not get it? If I did find a boy who wanted to put me in the game
, what would I do if he tried to feel me up? Wouldn’t he know that I’d never gotten my period? I couldn’t risk any more humiliation. “I don’t know.”

  But that night, my parents surprised me with the news that they were having Mr. Templeton over to dinner again. He’d been released from jail a few months earlier. We’d had him over for dinner twice before, and it’d been downright painful.

  Oh goody, I thought bitterly. Another ex-con for my dad to save.

  But there was more to it than that. Mr. Templeton had Noah’s dark eyes. His same quiet voice. That similar awkward, never-in-the-right place manner. He was heartbreakingly like Noah, in so many ways.

  Jacy called me that night and said, “We’re going out for pizza, too, before. You’re coming. That’s final.”

  I agreed without the fight she was expecting.

  Rah rah. Go team go.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Annie Savage Templeton was arrested and charged with kidnapping and numerous counts of rape and child endangerment. She pleaded guilty to all charges and is currently awaiting sentencing. John Housman, the owner of the Valley Commune, was charged with numerous counts of rape and child endangerment. In all, nineteen people, all residents of the community, were charged with offenses. Several of the residents of the commune had warrants out for their arrest for previous crimes, ranging from sexual battery, child molestation, and armed robbery.

  Authorities are looking into allegations that members of local law enforcement may have been aware of the situation, but were paid off by the wealthy Housman, who ran a string of successful steakhouses in Southern California before selling the business and purchasing the land to create his haven in the remote desert . The Riverside County Sherriff’s department is denying such allegations.

  #

  Dr. Vera Lindquist, one of my father’s recommended therapists, is right down the hill in the center of Lambertville. I’m the only one in the cramped waiting room situated in a century-old row-home that’s been converted to a doctor’s office. I’ve been staring at the brown water spots on the tin ceiling for about fifteen minutes because I forgot to bring a book, and the only magazines she has are Sports Illustrated and something with recipes for people who have diabetes.