by Jade McCahon
I reached out and caught his arm. Our eyes locked for a moment, and he seemed to be trying to convey something to me that I could not read. He leaned toward me, against me, using me for support. His scruffy cheek brushed mine softly, his hand on my elbow, drawing me close.
“I did what I promised her I’d do,” he whispered, his breath warm on my ear but freezing me in place. “And I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for everything.” He pulled back and looked in my eyes again. At that moment I tried to memorize his face: his warm emerald eyes, his red lips, the lock of auburn hair flopping over his forehead. He released me. Then he walked slowly, carefully, out the door, and it closed noiselessly behind him.
****
Seven O’Clock
I don’t know how long I stood there staring after Emmett, but another request for coffee from Ira Banks finally broke me from my stupor. I turned and went directly to the kitchen and shoved a pan of pastries in the oven, finished loading the ice machine, scrambled a giant bowl of eggs. Everything I did was an attempt to keep my mind from accepting what had just happened, and yet the weight of it began to creep in. I tossed down the whisk I was using to violently beat the hell out of some innocent yolks and collapsed against the wall, taking huge gasping breaths. If what Emmett had told me was true, if he wasn’t crazy or a seriously demented liar, Ead had definitely killed Jenny Allison. He’d murdered her. And Tommy.
And Emmett had proof.
I tried to concentrate on what I was doing. Instead I kept staring off into space. The resounding mantra my mind was endlessly repeating was one of disbelief: How could I have let him go? Seriously. How could I have let him go?
The asylum was scheduled to be torn down this morning…and the proof Emmett claimed was there would be gone. And he would be too, if I didn’t help him.
I didn’t know how I would find him, but I had to try. He was still out there somewhere, in danger. Dying.
“Sara? What’s wrong?”
It was my father. How long had I been standing here burning these eggs?
My spatula went flying through the air, landing on the floor with a clatter. “I have to go take care of something,” I called, headed toward the door. Daylight was in full bloom on the other side of the windows, the sky and the street blue-gray and cold. I pulled on my messenger bag. My dad stood with his hands in the air in bewilderment, and though I felt an enormous amount of guilt leaving him like this, it was time.
It was time to grow up.
“Sara, where are you going?” he called after me in exasperation.
I turned around long enough to fill a Styrofoam cup with soda and give him a hug. I just had this weird feeling both were necessary. “Love you, Dad,” I said, and went out the door without another word.
My thoughts were racing about leaving more than the restaurant. I wanted to be free of this town. Now more than ever, I wished I had never left my house last night, but I felt I could never go back. I saw in my mind’s eye a strip of dominoes crashing into one another in a sequence that once started, couldn’t be stopped.
I bent my head to pull my car keys out of my bag.
When I looked up, there was a tall, dark-haired guy standing in front of me on the sidewalk. He was very handsome, like someone out of a Bollywood movie. His blue t-shirt was stretched across a lean but muscular frame, and if I hadn’t known what a big teddy bear he was, I might have been a bit frightened. “Jon. What are you doing here?” Under normal circumstances I liked Raymond’s brother, was even happy to see he was okay, but I was very possibly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I took a wobbly step backward. He was carrying my jacket in his hands, and there was a bandage across his knuckles, undoubtedly a badge of his confrontation with Ead.
As we stood there staring at each other, a girl climbed out of a black car next to mine. She walked up behind him and it took me only a second to recognize her, though she looked very different from what I remembered. She was thin and beautiful, her round black eyes matching her hair, a lovely contrast to her pale, perfect skin. She was dressed almost conservatively, in dark blue jeans and a red sweater that was the same shade as her lipstick.
Bonita Taylor.
“What do you want?” I asked sharply. Why hadn’t I left just two minutes earlier?
“We’ve been up all night…hope your dad’s got the coffee going. Jamie wanted me to bring this to you,” Jon said, handing me my jacket. “I saw her at the hospital, and Cole said you guys happened to be there when Sutter and I got into our little…scuffle…last night. Is that true?”
I sidestepped him, grabbing the car key on my mother’s overpopulated key ring. I’d forgotten about the lightning-fast information chain in this town. But I couldn’t be angry with Cole; I’d never told him it was a secret that Ead had been after us in his car. I took a deep breath, forced myself to speak normally, in spite of the fact that my brain was screaming for me to get the hell out of this parking lot. “It is true. But I can’t talk about that now. I’m really in a hurry.”
“Well – wait,” Jon called. I stopped in front of the car door, quivering with impatience. “Bonita’s dad has some contacts here. He’s trying to build a case against Ead.” He smiled ruefully. “I’ve been waiting for that son of a bitch to make a wrong move for a long time, just to get him on something.” His eyes flashed. He’d suspected Ead was responsible for Jenny’s disappearance just like everyone else, and just like everyone else, he had never found proof.
Just like everyone else…except my brother. But what good was proof if no one believed it?
For one second I considered telling him about Emmett. A memory came back to me then, playing out in my head a conversation I hadn’t realized the meaning of before. Now, in the proper context, it all seemed very clear.
It was a Sunday, a few weeks after Jenny had disappeared, and several weeks before Tommy died. We’d just gotten home from church, one of the last times I went with my parents. Of course Tommy had stayed home. My mother and father had long since given up the fight with their stubborn son who seemed determined to find his own way.
I’d walked down the hall, shedding my binding church clothing, and as I changed into shorts, I heard an argument coming from the other side of my brother’s bedroom door.
The person I heard in Tommy’s room was Jon, and they were talking about Jenny. I closed my door just enough so that I could listen and hide behind it at the same time.
“Just shut up about Jenny,” Jon was growling, in an angry voice I didn’t recognize. “I know you believe in this bullshit, but that is so wrong. I’m not kidding.”
“It’s not bullshit, Jon. It’s proof!”
“It’s a fucking board game, dude. Get it out of my face before I smash it.”
“You don’t understand…there’s more to it than that! It’s not just the board! Listen!”
There was a loud clatter and Jon had walked out of the room and out of our house. It had been the last time I’d seen him before Tommy’s funeral.
No. I would not tell Jon. Not until I had what I needed to convince even myself.
I looked at Bonita, staring at me warily, her red lips pressed into a grim line. Had she known? Is that why she left? If they were so close…had Tommy confided in her? Is that what she wanted with my family after all this time?
“So will you talk to him…tell him what you saw?” Jon asked.
I was momentarily confused. “Who?”
“Bonita’s father.”
I shook my head. “Tell him to check the dash cam. It incriminated me well enough.”
“Already did. Ead’s is broken. Of course.”
“I’ll answer his questions, Jon, but not now. I’ve gotta go.”
“You know, he came after the Mustang thinking Bonita was driving alone,” Jon growled, referring to Ead. “Like he’s been waiting all this time to see her in town again. You can bet he didn’t bank on me being there to kick his ass.”
Bonita suddenly pushed past Jon, inhaling loudly. “Sara…
I need to talk to you about something too. Is your mother here?”
“My mother?” I echoed questioningly. What the hell did she want with my mother? “She never comes up here during the day.” My voice was sour and sharp. “In fact, she’s rarely awake during the day anymore. What’s it to you?”
“I really need to talk to you about something…all of you. I’ve been trying to call, but…” Jon gave her a look that seemed to suggest she zip it, and she pressed her lips into a line again.
I couldn’t even croak out a response. The keys slipped out of my fumbling fingers, landing with a clatter on the pavement. When I bent to pick them up my eyes fell on the backseat of Bonita’s black Mustang. There was a sunshade in the window, a scattering of toys…and a baby seat.
She read the question on my face. “It belongs to my son,” she said quietly.
I couldn’t take one more dramatic irony today.
“Screw. You,” I swore at her, my anger slow and emphatic. I climbed into my mother’s car, peeling out like a bat out of hell. Not my most mature moment, but all I could think of under the circumstances.
I couldn’t dwell on it or even consider it. What I could consider was all the searching I would soon be doing followed by all the leaving I’d be doing after that, forgetting this town once and for all. I had money – not a lot, but enough for a bus ticket to somewhere that wasn’t here. It’d be good to be on my own.
With one hand on the wheel and one free, I finagled my phone out of my bag and flipped it open. Who even had a flip phone anymore? The stupid thing was ancient. I dialed Jamie’s number, trying to ignore the beeping of the battery. I still hadn’t had time to charge it.
Jamie answered immediately. “We’re already at the asylum, Sara, can you meet us here?” she barked in that same tone she’d had in her message. “Some really crazy things have happened, and we need to talk.”
“You’ve got that right,” I said scornfully. “Emmett found me. And I have to tell you what he told me. Unless you already know,” I said accusatorily.
“What?” Her voice cut out. She hadn’t heard me. “We’re in the Men’s Ward. Hurry. Call me when you get here…” She was garbled again. All I caught was “pockets”.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” I clapped the phone shut.
Hysteria welled inside me. Where would I even begin to look for Emmett now?
I had gone only a few miles, my mind whirring with plans, actions, when I caught a movement in the rearview mirror. I cried out and turned to the back seat.
Emmett was there, lying in the floorboard. My heart thumped in pure panic. He didn't look like he was breathing. I shouted at him and reached back to shake him, frantic. “Emmett! Please answer me!”
He made a low moaning sound. He was alive, but he wasn’t waking up.
I continued to talk to him, to fill his silence with my desperation. “Please, Emmett, you have to be okay. You are the only one who can help me. You've got to wake up!” I felt like sobbing. He and I – we just couldn’t catch a break.
“Come on, Emmett, stay with me!” I called back to him. My skin melted into his when I touched his face. I felt the rough stubble on his cheek, then moved my hand down and placed it on his chest. Even through his thick sweatshirt his heart was beating, fast and hard.
The town flew by me on either side until finally it was in the rearview mirror. I was on the long empty stretch of highway that would bring me out to that decaying, hulking building that I was sure only hours before had been calling to me. I pulled over to the side of the road, leaving the engine running, to find out for sure if Emmett was alright. Just because I could still feel his hummingbird-fast heartbeat under my hand didn’t mean he was going to make it much longer.
I slammed the car into park and scrambled out the door, throwing myself into the backseat. “Emmett, you have to talk to me.” I tried to pull him up off the floorboard, but he was dead weight. He needed sugar again, that had to be it. I leapt forward and started pilfering through all the crap in the console like a madwoman. I tossed myself into the front seat and emptied the glove compartment. There had to be something in this car – candy, gum, something – and I had to find it. My mother was hoarding ketchup packets but there wasn’t much more than that. What good would it have done anyway? I couldn’t very well poke candy into an unconscious person’s mouth. I had the soda but I couldn’t expect him to drink it now. In a last ditch frenzy I reached into the pockets of my jacket and furiously turned them wrong side out.
What had Jamie been saying about pockets?
I gasped. Someone – it had to have been her – had packed my jacket full of little boxes that read glucagon on the side. They contained a vial and a syringe, wrapped in plastic. “For use in the emergency counteraction of hypoglycemia” the insert read. I cried out in relief, holding them up like I’d just stumbled upon the Holy Grail.
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, I prayed. Thank you Spirit Guides, or Satan, or whoever it was that allowed Jamie to have the wonderful foresight she so obviously had. The foresight to illegally snatch these little boxes off the shelf at the pharmacy and later stuff them into my jacket pockets before making sure it was returned to me. Creepy, dark, amazing, whatever it was…I was grateful to the ends of the earth for what my best friend knew.
I scanned the leaflet that came with the vial, double checking the symptoms. Sweating. Tremor. Unsteady movement. Disorientation. “If left untreated, can lead to unconsciousness, seizures, and death.” Emmett was already a third of the way there. I triple checked where I needed to inject the stuff: arm, buttock, or thigh. Of course.
I put the syringe into the vial, drawing out the liquid. Please just let me not kill him. I reached under his sweatshirt, feeling like Chester the Molester, and pulled his arm out of his sleeve. Forgive me for this, Emmett, I thought. His skin was too warm. I was surprised to see that from his shoulder to his elbow, his arm was covered in black tattoos that he kept well-hidden under his clothes. Perhaps he preferred self-mutilation over violence? This guy really was a mystery.
Focus, I swore at myself. He moaned a little and tried to sit up, but collapsed against the passenger side door. It was almost inevitable I was going to mess this up, but unless I tried, he didn’t have a chance. I had to pay attention.
Clamping my eyes shut, I gritted my teeth and stuck him with the needle.
He awoke with a twitch, and I screamed and dropped the syringe. His eyes were wild, full of terror. He clutched my arm, dragging me closer to him. “What did you do to me?” he whispered.
“It’s glucagon, Emmett. It will help you. You have to go to the hospital. You have to –”
“No!” he gasped. “You can’t take me back there. Please, Sara.”
“Emmett, you’re going to die if you don’t get help.” I was half-crying, half-pleading. My nerves were completely fried. “You can’t help me if you aren’t here with me.” Did that mean anything to him? But it wasn’t the only reason I refused to let him just lie here and die.
He was breathing hard now, barely awake. He pulled me so close to him that his breath was warm on my lips, his emerald eyes forcing me into submission. “Please promise me you won’t let them…” his voice became a soft sigh for a moment, and he started again. “Please promise me you won’t do that to me."
My heart was cracking in two. “I promise, Emmett.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. He released my arm, slipping quietly back into unconsciousness. I stifled a sob, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
The anticlimactic moments that followed consisted of me pulling his arm back through his sleeve and climbing into the front seat again, only to stare numbly out the windshield. The leaflet had said to give him another injection in 15 minutes if he wasn’t awake. I looked down at the dashboard clock to start the countdown. There was this quiet moment that passed in that space, where the sun was shining through the windshield from a morning in full swing, the muddy grass glistening at the side of the road. There was
a storm inching forward on the horizon. I put my head in my hands. There was just too much to try to understand, too much to deal with.
Everything that had happened over the last seven hours had scarred me, had me questioning every single thing I believed in. My brother had contacted Jenny. Was he trying to contact me? And Jamie was some sort of psychic. It had to be true. What else could explain everything she knew? And Emmett…had she appeared to him in his dreams? Had she appeared to me? How could I wrap my head around all of this?
There was a passage Tommy had written in his notebook about consciousness being the greatest reality, though not perceived by the senses. It said that people think of themselves as bodies possessing a temporary mind, but the true reality is that people are spirits, possessing a temporary body.
What if the only explanation was that everything I thought I never believed in was real?
I reached for Emmett, still crumpled on the back floorboard of the car. I tried to keep my thoughts positive. He did not want to die at the hands of his father and brother. Instead he was here with me. That had to mean something. His heartbeat was steadier now. I closed my eyes then and prayed, harder and more sincerely than I had prayed in a long time. All I asked was for him to be safe, and that I could see the truth – no intermediaries, no more dreams. Just to see it with my own eyes. What had Jamie said in my dream? “Emmett knows the truth.”
My cell phone rang again, interrupting itself with the “low battery” chime. I flipped it open. “My battery’s about to die, Jamie, but you may have just saved Emmett’s life. Again. How the hell did you—”
“It’s not Jamie, Sara, this is Cole.”
“Oh.” He sounded weird, too quiet. “What’s up?”
“Something’s wrong with Jamie,” he said, and there were strange noises in the background, shuffling, garbled voices. “Is she epileptic or something?” he asked. I realized he was speaking softly to keep someone near him from hearing his conversation. “You’ve got to get here right away.”
