What the hell was she talking about?
I’d spent practically every waking moment since I’d gotten the watch trying to decipher Amanda’s message, but it was completely meaningless to me. She was trying to tell me something. Something she thought I’d understand. Something she needed me to understand. When I wasn’t staring at the watch, I was holding it, eyes closed, practically chanting the mysterious words and numbers on the back. Maybe the x2 was meaningless, a red herring. Maybe the message was really straightforward—I know you, Hal Bennett. You know me.
You know me, too?
To you—know me!
Grr.
Amanda thought you could help her. She relied on you. But she was wrong, wasn’t she? You don’t know anything, do you, Hal?
I didn’t have any feeling when I looked at the watch and its engraving. Didn’t “know” she was telling me she knew me or I knew her. I tried to convince myself that was because the engraving probably wasn’t even from Amanda—maybe she’d just gotten the watch for me because she liked it, because she knew I’d appreciate the beautiful spindly lines of the hands, the metronome-like tick of the seconds passing. She’d seen it in some thrift store and hadn’t noticed (or had ignored) the message on the back, a message that some weird, alternative poet had written for her fiancé fifty years ago and that I was now misreading as a message from my friend.
Sure, Hal, sure. Running (possibly for her life), Amanda took the time to break into your house to drop off a gift with an engraved message you were meant to ignore. Like Hallmark, she simply cared to send the very best.
My daydreaming had caused me to fall behind Callie. I’m no Lance Armstrong, and as I pushed hard against the pedals in an attempt to catch up to her, I was glad for the ache the exertion caused in my calves. It helped dim the thought running like a chorus through my brain:
If I couldn’t understand a straightforward message Amanda had left for me, how could I believe I’d know for sure if something really bad had happened to her?
We made a couple of wrong turns on the way to Play It Again, Sam, and when we finally leaned our bikes against the brightly painted porch and sprinted up the steps, it was getting dark. I knew I only had a little while before I had to be home—the school had sent out an email after Thornhill’s attack saying all nonessential after-school activities were canceled pending further announcement. I’d noticed Endeavor’s idea of essential (play rehearsal, basketball practice) and my idea of essential (time alone in the art studio, long-distance runs) proved just how different my priorities were from my school’s, but Mom hadn’t been interested in that point yesterday, and there was no reason to think she’d find it compelling now.
If I weren’t home soon, there’d be hell to pay.
Last time we’d been here, I vaguely remembered the door had stuck and I’d had to push really hard against it, but Callie nudged it open easily, and the tiny bell above it tinkled into the silence of the seemingly empty room.
A disembodied voice called from the back, “Sorry, we’re closed for inventory,” and I recognized it as belonging to the owner, Louise. She’d told us she was closed for inventory Friday, too, and as I looked at the tons of clothes, scarves, earrings, shoes, boas, hats, and bags stacked on and hanging from every available surface, I realized the only surprising thing wasn’t that she was closed for inventory but that she wasn’t closed down for it.
“Hello?” Callie called.
“Callie? Hal?” It was Nia, her voice muffled by the vast quantities of stuff in the store.
“It’s us,” Callie responded.
Louise emerged from behind a mannequin, wearing a big faux-fur vest and vintage bell-bottoms, like some kind of urban hippie, her skin so black she could have been carved from a block of onyx. I’d forgotten how tall she was—I’m almost six feet, and she towered above me, her bright pink platform shoes no doubt adding a couple of inches to her height, but still. Her tank top revealed arms that could have given Officer Marciano’s a run for his money, and I made a mental note never to piss off Louise.
“Well,” Louise said when she saw us, crossing her arms over her chest and looking us up and down.
“Hi,” Callie said.
“Hi,” I echoed lamely.
“I’m in the back,” Nia called out.
Louise didn’t indicate that it was okay for us to move farther into the store, but she didn’t try to stop us, either. Callie took a hesitant step forward and I did the same, and then we were snaking our way through caverns of precariously piled boxes as we headed in the direction of Nia’s voice.
At the back, the space opened up a little and there, sitting on the floor next to a coatrack, was Nia, holding a pair of sparkly red shoes. She looked up at us, her face tight with sadness and fear.
“It’s all here. All her stuff.”
Callie and I looked at the rack of coats, dresses, suits, and shawls packed together so tightly it was hard to see where one item of clothing ended and another began. The top was piled high with hats and wigs.
“My god,” Callie whispered. She stepped forward and touched the sleeve of a black jacket so gently it was as if she thought it might be a mirage.
I cleared my throat. There was a pale green dress at the end of the rack closest to me that looked a lot like the one Amanda had worn that morning when she’d met me in the woods. “Um, are you . . . I mean, I know you know more about this kind of thing than I do, but are you guys sure this is her stuff?” It wasn’t that the dress wasn’t the one Amanda had been wearing that day, but that didn’t mean it was.
Maybe emboldened by the fact that the sleeve hadn’t dissolved into thin air when she touched it, Callie reached more surely into the rack, pulling out a plain gray dress. As soon as she saw it, Nia gasped. Callie turned to me, holding the dress against her.
“Even you must recognize this one, Hal. It’s what she wore her first day of school.”
“Hal Bennett, Amanda Valentino. Amanda Valentino, Hal Bennett.”
It was the end of English class; Mrs. Kimble gestured from me to Amanda and back again, and Amanda extended her hand in my direction. I wasn’t used to shaking hands with people who weren’t friends of my parents, but I took hers. Her handshake was firm and confident, and I found myself hoping mine was, too.
“How do you do?” asked Amanda.
“Um, I do fine?” I’d meant to be funny, but I realized too late that my answer made me sound like either a loser or an ass.
Or, conveniently, both.
“How do you do?” I asked quickly.
My question was a throwaway line, but Amanda paused, seeming to consider it. “I’d have to say sunny, but with a chance of showers.”
Mrs. Kimble giggled nervously. Under the best of circumstances she was hardly an island of calm, but Amanda’s arrival had made her even more fidgety than usual. After Amanda pointed out that a quote Mrs. Kimble attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald was actually something Ernest Hemingway had said about Fitzgerald, Mrs. Kimble never recovered. Twice she’d confused literal and figurative, and each time she vaguely maniacally laughed. I had the feeling she was running the words leave of absence through her otherwise empty head.
“Well, Amelia . . .”
“Amanda,” Amanda corrected her.
Giggle. “Didn’t I say that?” Giggle. There was a long pause as Mrs. Kimble’s gaze darted nervously from Amanda to the hallway.
Her anxiety was contagious, so I wanted to flee the area quickly. “You wanted me for something?” I prompted her.
“Oh, yes, of course.” She’d been focused on Amanda, a confused look on her face, but now she turned to me and her expression grew more sure. “Yes, I was going to ask that you escort”—she paused before speaking the name, afraid to get it incorrect again—”Amanda to her next class.”
“Sure,” I said. I turned to look at Amanda. She reminded me somehow of a painting, maybe a van Eyck or a Michelangelo. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, exactly (though I guess she
was), it was more that she was . . . timeless, like the Mona Lisa or Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. I felt both that I’d seen her face before—that I recognized it—and also that there was no one like her in the entire universe.
I realized I’d been staring, and I got embarrassed, but Amanda seemed not to mind. Or maybe not to notice.
Mrs. Kimble, on the other hand, appeared ready to pass out from anxiety. “Very well!” she screeched, and she gave a nervous clap of her hands. “Well, that’s settled. And I’m sure you’ll find Hal makes a lovely guide.”
And suddenly I wasn’t the only one who was staring. Amanda looked at me so intensely I had the sensation I’d never been looked at before.
Or maybe it was that I’d never been seen before.
It couldn’t have been more than a moment that passed, but somehow it seemed we’d been standing there forever.
“Yes,” she said finally. “I’m sure he will make a lovely guide.”
Callie was shaking her head in mock despair. “Hal, you can’t seriously tell me you don’t remember her wearing this dress.”
The moment, the meeting—it was all burned into my memory. But whether she’d been wearing a pair of jeans or a ball gown, no way could I have said.
I shook my head. “Sorry,” I admitted. “I’m drawing a blank.”
“Hal,” Callie sighed. “Sometimes you’re such a guy.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said, mock defensively.
“No,” Callie said quickly. “I just meant . . . I just meant, yes, I’m sure it’s the same dress.” Our eyes met for a second and then she looked away and brushed something off her shoulder. The red of her hair shone against the dress she was holding, and I made a mental note to someday paint her wearing a gray dress.
“Hal, Callie.” Nia’s voice was a whisper, and when we looked her way, she gestured for us to come closer. We went over to where she was sitting and kneeled beside her. “Louise texted me. She said she had Amanda’s stuff. But when I got here, she wouldn’t tell me how she got it.”
As if drawn over by our discussion of her, Louise suddenly appeared between two towers of boxes. “So, you found it.”
Nia stood up, still holding the sparkly red shoes. “You knew we would. That’s why you texted me to come.”
Louise shrugged. “Oh, I texted you?”
“You know you did. How did you get my number?” Nia folded her arms across her chest in a position I’d come to recognize as her don’t-try-and-put-one-over-on-me-mister stance.
“Maybe a little bird gave it to—” Louise broke off; the sound of a car pulling into the empty parking lot her customers used made us all turn our heads toward the door.
“Why are you—” Nia began, but Louise put a hand up to silence her. I don’t know if it was Louise’s impressive bicep or her own confusion, but Nia shut her mouth. A moment later, we heard the car pull away.
“Lotta strange people been coming by here lately,” Louise said, either to explain her response to the car in the parking lot or as an answer to Nia’s question about why she’d contacted her.
But subtlety wasn’t exactly Nia Rivera’s middle name. “And how, exactly, did you get Amanda’s stuff?” she demanded.
Louise looked down the length of the coatrack. “Is this hers?” she asked.
“What are you talking about?” Nia demanded. Callie put her hand on Nia’s arm, but Nia turned to her and angrily shook it off. “She texted me!” she snapped at Callie. “And now she’s acting like I’m crazy or something.”
Louise ran her hand over her nearly shaven head and looked at Nia like she wouldn’t have minded eating her for lunch.
Before Nia could say anything else, I stepped between the two of them. “Do you mind if we look through this stuff? I mean, will we interrupt your inventory?”
Louise turned her head slowly and squinted toward me. I realized I was holding my breath as I waited for her to decide.
When she walked away, I felt my heart sinking with a sense of having failed, but then, without turning around, she said, “Speaking of inventory, I wonder what’s in all those pockets.” And then, she disappeared from view.
Nia was fuming. “That woman is so totally—”
Callie still had her hand on Nia’s arm, but it didn’t look like they were about to come to blows anymore. “Look, obviously she doesn’t want to tell us anything directly,” Callie said quietly. “But she has Amanda’s stuff and, like you said, she did contact us. So she is telling us something.”
“What do people have against just communicating things directly lately?” Nia asked from between gritted teeth, and without her saying it, we all knew she wasn’t just talking about Louise.
I’d never realized how many places girls have pockets. Amanda’s skirts had side pockets and front pockets, decorative pockets that didn’t open, decorative pockets that did. Some of the pockets had pockets, and at one point I put my hand in the pocket of a blazer and pulled out a small purse that was attached to the lining of the blazer by a long string.
Inside the purse was a pocket.
I don’t know what we expected to find in the pockets, exactly, but the more mundane pocket-y things we pulled out of them, the more depressed we got. Here and there—between the pennies and the forgotten vocabulary sheets, the gum wrappers, and the used-up ChapSticks—we found the occasional thing that could only have come out of a pocket that Amanda had owned. A delicate handkerchief with a border of flowers embroidered into the shape of a graceful A; a quill with a thick blue feather atop it; a small book with pieces of paper that Callie and Nia explained were covered in something called dusting powder.
“It’s so you can powder your nose,” Callie said. Laughing, she ripped a piece out and touched it gently to the tip of Nia’s nose. “There. Much better.”
“Oh thank god—I was feeling soooo shiny.”
Callie ripped off a second sheet and reached toward me. The paper felt smooth against my skin, and I closed my eyes slightly at the gentle pressure of Callie’s fingers.
“Hey!” Nia’s voice was excited, and Callie and I looked to see what earned a “hey” from unflappable Nia. She was pulling something out of the pocket of a hot pink raincoat.
“Movie tickets,” I said, recognizing the familiar shape. I read the name and address of the theater off them. “They’re from Los Angeles.” I looked from Nia to Callie. “Did you guys know she’d lived in Los Angeles?”
They both shook their heads as Callie read the title off the ticket in Nia’s hand. “The Rudolph Valentino Film Festival.” She looked up, startled and pleased. “Rudolph Valentino. Amanda Valentino. I wonder if that’s a relative of hers. Maybe we can track him down.”
Nia snorted. “Tell me you’re joking.”
Callie shook her head, bewildered at Nia’s mocking her.
Still wearing her familiar expression of total disdain, Nia continued. “Did you, like, take a course in cultural illiteracy?”
I was starting to get a bad feeling about this conversation. “Um, guys, I think—”
Callie waved her hand in a way that indicated she wasn’t interested in my playing sheriff at this showdown. “Don’t start with me, okay, Nia? Whatever ‘crime’ you feel I’ve committed, just give me a break.”
But either because she was still angry at Louise or Amanda, or because she was just such a big Rudolph Valentino fan that she couldn’t bear the idea that someone somewhere in the world didn’t know who he was, Nia wasn’t about to let Callie’s comment go. “You’ll be happy to know, Callie, that we actually could track him down. In the cemetery where he’s been buried for the past eighty years.”
There was a pause and I thought for sure Callie was going to lay into Nia. Instead, she cocked her head to the side, like she was considering something. “So you’re saying he’s probably not, like, her dad, aren’t you?”
I don’t know if it was the averted fight or the tension of the whole day, but suddenly the three of us jus
t cracked up. We laughed so hard I literally fell down, which made Callie and Nia pretty much completely hysterical. Every time I tried to get up, one of them would say the words “Rudolph Valentino” and we’d all start howling all over again. Finally I just gave up trying to get off the floor.
Eventually Nia took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and said, “Okay, guys, we have to focus here.”
“Yes.” Callie gave a final giggle and looked at the tickets one last time. Then she shrugged. “Rudolph Valentino. Amando Valentino. Well, Valentino’s a good name anyway.”
“Yeah, too bad he wasn’t born with it. His real name was . . .” She squinted with the effort of recalling it, then snapped her fingers. “Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi.”
“That’s a name?” Callie shook her head. “Sounds more like a class list from a school in Milan.”
Nia nodded her agreement and went to put the tickets in our “Amanda” pile (as opposed to our “gum-wrapper-loose-change-and-random-homework” pile). “You can see why he made up Valentino.”
And suddenly it hit me so hard I almost toppled over from my kneeling position. Callie must have noticed me catch myself. “Hal? What’s up?”
At the sound of Callie’s voice, Nia looked over at me, too.
I looked at both of them without seeing either. “So did Amanda.”
“What?” they asked together.
I waited a minute, but the feeling didn’t go away. “So did Amanda,” I repeated. And in answer to their increasingly bewildered stares, I explained myself. “She made it up, too. Her last name? It isn’t Valentino.”
Chapter 5
“What are you talking about?” Nia demanded.
“Look,” I said, and I was about to explain how it’s no big deal but sometimes I just, you know, “see things,” ha ha, nothing strange about that, is there? When I realized I hadn’t told them about the list I’d seen in Thornhill’s office.
Kind of a big omission.
I took a deep breath. “Look, you’re just going to have to believe me about her name and put it aside for a second because I have to tell you about something else right now and I need you to pay attention and not be distracted by whether or not I’m crazy.”
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