Adam shrugged. “Sounds questionable. But I trust you.”
After the waitress retreated to the kitchen, I told Adam I wished he didn’t have to go at all.
Folding a corner of his paper place mat, he said, “Me, too.”
“When are you coming back?” I asked.
“That’s the good news,” he said. “I’ll only be gone a week. Chris convinced my mom that I’ll be miserable without you, and I’ll just make everyone else miserable, too. We owe him. When he comes for Christmas, we should bring him here.”
My heart did a little dance, but a deeper part of me—the part that had been blindly grasping at something that wasn’t there yet—relaxed. We had a future—the two of us. Adam said so. December was a long way off. And because December was a long way off, I had nothing but time. Plenty for me to sort out my feelings, that chaotic snarl that was as unreadable as some of the messages on the diner’s walls. We weren’t The Perfect Couple—not yet—but we could be. In my head, I chalked up the last month to a false start. This was my do-over. There was time to make things right.
As I was searching my bag for a pen, our omelets arrived. My mother always says you can dress me up but you can’t take me out. I frowned at the dribble of jelly I almost immediately got down my front. Luckily it was the black half of the dress and not the white. But the bathroom had air dryers instead of paper towels. Wetting toilet paper was a mistake. I was still brushing little gray spitballs from my chest when I returned to the table.
“Don’t forget to write something,” I said.
“I did,” Adam said. “Find it.”
My eyes swept the busy wall, searching for his block print.
“Give me a hint,” I said. “Or we’ll be here all night.”
I followed Adam’s finger to my name and traced a black thread channeling through a maze of doodles and autographs. Up, up, up. I had to stand on the bench to see. There, between “Noel” and “Suck it,” an eyeball beside a heart beside a puffy animal with stick legs and a tiny tail.
I scrunched my face. “I love sheep?”
“It’s a ewe,” he said.
Groaning, I plunked down on the bench. “You’re such a cornball,” I said, grinning. “I love ewe, too.”
Some people are addicted to drama, to pain and fear and sadness. Not me. I’m all about lip-syncing to cheesy songs and writing silly messages and acting like an idiot. That’s who I am—the real Tracy Kolcun. Adam kissed me and my heart felt light. I don’t know why I did what I did with Foley, but I would not be dragged down by some freak that lived in the woods. Who did he think he was? Watching me, judging me with those eyes. I made a mistake. People do. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means you’re human.
After dinner, Adam walked me home, but I didn’t go in. I waited until he turned the corner, then ran to the garage and raided my dad’s workbench, digging through coffee cans of nails and screws and bolts. In the bottom of his tool bucket I found what I was looking for: his old jackknife, rusted shut and smelling like pennies.
It was almost dark when I got to the edge of the woods. Rage marched me through the brush. I got into a slapping match with the branches, but the stinging scratches only made me angrier. I will bury you, I thought, but then thunder rumbled overhead. The clouds curdled green and yellow. The dying light ground the edges off everything, smudging the pines and rocks and mossy logs. I stood at the top of the stairs and watched the black tarp bleed into night. The ropes I could see, white webs between the trees. Clutching the jackknife, I imagined sawing the lines, watching the house deflate like a black balloon, listening to him struggle under the weight of all that plastic.
A cold wind raised the hair on my neck, stippling my skin. The tarp rippled like an oily wave. I stood there, my courage shrinking, wishing for Lisa, while the sky above me twisted purple and green. A wicked storm brewing. Worse than the one that night at Foley’s. A putrid light ringed in darkness. A vortex forming. A booming crack sent my hands to my ears, and the knife went skittering down the stairs. The only thing to do was hike up my dress and run.
Hands trembling, I fumbled my new key in the new bolt. My mother was in her bedroom watching TV. I ran from room to room, pulling the fans, closing the windows, screwing down the locks.
“What are you doing?” my mother demanded, shuffling into the kitchen with an empty glass and a Popsicle stick. “It’s a thousand degrees in here.”
“There’s a storm coming,” I said. “Huge. Check the Weather Channel.”
My mother went out on the porch and came back shaking her head.
“Are you high?” she asked, and I think she meant it, because she examined my eyes before she marched me outside and showed me the stars.
fifteen
Sometimes I wish Lisa came equipped with a sensor so I’d know the kind of mood she was in before I agreed to hang out with her. It sounded like fun—roller-skating. We used to go all the time when we were kids. Just because it was a birthday party for Katie’s friend didn’t mean we couldn’t skate, too. I hate the word turd, but that’s what Lisa was being, parked at the snack bar with a popcorn and soda, paying more attention to her phone than to me.
“C’mon,” I said, tugging on her wrist. “This is your favorite song.”
“No it’s not.”
“Well … it’s somebody’s favorite,” I said.
I swiped some of her popcorn and watched Katie twirl around under the disco ball and fought the fidgety feeling surging in my chest—the kind I used to get when my mother kept me out of the pool while I digested my lunch. I waited two full songs before asking, “Why aren’t you talking?”
Lisa raised her face. Her eyes were blank and cheerless. “I don’t have anything to say.”
She had to be punishing me for Foley. For being a hypocrite. I sighed. “Fine. I’m going for a spin.”
Nothing drives home the absurdity of roller-skating like being out on the floor without a friend. Now I know why nobody goes alone—it’s boring. Going round and round with no one to pull or push or bump. No one to tell you how awesome your shirt looks under the black light. No one to whisper in your ear about that cute guy or that mean girl.
Katie glided by, wheels weaving a double helix as she crouched into the turn. “Show-off!” I shouted, struggling to stay upright. Her friends blew past me, too, shouting the words to the song that had become their summer anthem. I suddenly felt old and out of place, trying to keep up with the sixth graders. But it was either that or the moms over in the party room, fussing with the birthday girl’s cake and presents. I waved at Lisa every time I passed the snack bar window, but she just sat there, her head on her fist, looking bitchy. Maybe she was mad because I’d ditched her for Adam two days in a row. But how many times had she bailed on me to be with Gabe?
I passed a girl crying under the disco ball and moved aside for the boys gliding to her rescue. Boys were everywhere throwing signs. I tensed. The rink had suddenly grown hot and uncomfortable, infused with the electricity of a fight brewing.
As I skated toward Katie and her pack of friends, someone grabbed my butt. I stiffened. Wheeling around I came nose to forehead with a little Romeo in a basketball jersey and gold chains. My brain crackled and popped like an amp with too much distortion. I wanted to embarrass him the way Lisa had embarrassed the kid at the pool that day, but I knew I’d only end up embarrassing myself.
“Sorry,” the kid mumbled, stumbling along, his arms stretched out before him. It was an accident. He could barely stay upright. My stupid radar was malfunctioning again. I palmed the rail to the exit, my legs vibrating when the floor changed from wood to carpet.
“You know Adam’s leaving in a week,” I said, winging up to the counter where Lisa was chewing her straw. “We should do something. Go to the city. Just you and me. We can look for Scott.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know.”
I checked my phone for messages, then scrolled through the Ms in an online dream dictiona
ry—macaroni, manatees, milk, moccasins. I wanted to read her what I’d found about monsters.
“Sometimes I hate my life,” she said.
“What part?”
“All of it.” She glanced at me before turning away again. “I can’t wait to graduate and get the hell out of here. Maybe I won’t wait to graduate. Maybe I’ll just go. I’ll be like Scott. One day I’ll just disappear. Move to the city so no one can find me.”
Katie and her friends flew past the window with their eyes crossed and their tongues hanging out. Lisa shook the ice in her cup and said, “You ever just wake up one morning and wonder how your life got so effed up?”
Right then I wanted to tell her. About what really happened that night in Troy. How ashamed I felt. How stupid I felt for being ashamed of something that wasn’t my fault. I’d been treating that day like a snag in my tights. Like I could dab it with nail polish and forget about it. But the hole kept growing. Part of me wondered if that was the cause of my nightmares. Maybe telling Foley wasn’t enough.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. I can’t leave Katie. You either, dummy.” She shoved me lightly before glancing around the snack bar furtively. “I have to ask you something,” she whispered. “Have you been back in the woods?”
My face got hot. I couldn’t tell her without telling her about the eyes he’d left for me. After the other night, I decided ignoring him might make him go away. That’s how I got Jerk Face to stop calling. I pretended he didn’t exist and eventually it was like he didn’t. Poof. Gone. Like magic.
I answered her question with a question: “Why?”
“No, it’s just … I found a jackknife with your dad’s initials. What are the chances?”
“You found it in the woods?” I said. “What were you doing there?”
Lisa shrugged.
“You’ve got to stop this,” I said. “You’re going to get hurt. Why are you stalking him?”
Lisa’s face turned stony. “He’s stalking me.”
“Then go to the police.”
“With what? I don’t have any proof. A glass eye doesn’t prove anything. It’s just a feeling. Like I’m constantly being watched. I want him to know I’m watching, too.”
I just sat there, chewing my thumbnail, rolling my feet back and forth nervously. I was as guilty as Lisa for believing in him. I told my mother I’d lost my keys so she’d change the locks. How demented is that?
“What?” Lisa huffed. “I can see you want to say something.”
“It’s a myth, Lisa. A dumb story. My mom said when she was a kid they called him the Hillhurst Demon.”
But a story can’t leave things for you to find …
“What about the eye?” Lisa challenged.
“It could be anybody,” I said. “Remember when we all watched that scary movie that pretended to be a documentary, and then we all woke up the next morning with piles of rocks on our lawns?”
“I still think it was Rachel,” Lisa said.
“Me, too.”
The punch in the back startled me. Lisa’s cup crashed to the floor, ice flying.
“Jesus, Katie!” Lisa said. “Stop much?”
Rubbing her wrist, Katie said we could have some cake if we wanted. The birthday song came on and Katie shot out of the snack bar and across the rink. Helping Lisa scoop up the ice, I longed for the days when Banana Man was just a creepy story we told at sleepovers and cake could fix anything. Maybe it still could. I grabbed Lisa’s hand and dragged her toward the birthday room, toward Katie and her goofball friends fighting over frosting flowers.
sixteen
I’d just stopped sweating when Adam met me in the hospital cafeteria. He looked paler than usual and didn’t stop to kiss me, just tossed his head for me to follow. I did—up the service stairs, down the hall with the gift shop and the pharmacy, through the lobby and the sliding glass doors, and out into the clinging humidity. A taxi coasted into the drop-off lane. An ambulance screamed across the lot. My body, loath to quit the cool and the quiet, turned instantly sluggish. Adam lowered his hair against the blistering sun and parted the heat waves rippling off the asphalt. Keeping up was an effort.
“You really need to work on a base tan,” I joked.
The muscles in his jaw pulsed like he was working a wad of gum. He unrolled his sleeves. “I wash dishes in a basement all day. I don’t have time to lounge around, catching rays.” There was an edge in his voice I had never heard. Out on the street, he lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the sky, and trudged up the hill. Watching his back, his oxford billowing behind him, I wanted to run up and throw my arms around him and beg him to tell me what was wrong.
“Where are we going?” I called.
He didn’t answer. Not his house. That was in the opposite direction. Up ahead, tree shadows darkened the sidewalk as a flock of birds swiftly scattered. We needed to cross soon. When Adam stepped off the curb, I let out the breath I’d been holding against the woods. Cars zoomed past. A helicopter shuddered overhead. Adam waited by a hydrant for me to catch up.
“What did you want?” he said. “What was so important that you had to send me sixteen texts?”
What I wanted was to see him, to know if he wanted to meet me for coffee at that little place on lower State Street. It was open mic night. Music or poetry, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.
“Yeah—no,” He squinted into the smoke swirling toward his eyes. “I’m not really up for hanging out tonight.”
We were silent all the way to the middle school, two strangers who just happened to be walking in step. A crew was sandblasting graffiti off the fifth-grade wing, so we kept going, past the main entrance to the playground. A couple of boys were kicking a ball around, and Adam stopped to watch. Leaning against the chain-link fence, he lit another cigarette off the one he’d just finished.
“I’m leaving for California on Friday,” he said casually.
My shoulders fell. “I thought you weren’t going for another week?”
He shrugged. “I’m leaving early. Staying longer, too. The rest of the summer.”
“But the rest of the summer is forever,” I whined. “What happened?”
“I should be asking you that,” he said coldly. His lip curled in disgust, and suddenly I knew. He knew. I started shrinking then, my brain scrambling for excuses. Adam raised his hand. “I’ll save you the embarrassment,” he said. “I won’t ask. I’ll just tell you. I know you cheated on me with Foley.”
My stomach lurched. The weightless terror of missing a stair, when it’s too late to stop yourself from falling. I looked to the woods. No. Then who? Lisa? Her words: Wait till you slip up.
“Adam, please,” I begged, my voice breaking. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Growling, he turned and rattled the chain links. The boys froze mid-pass. “Chris was right,” Adam said, nodding slowly. Chris? He told Chris. A second wave of shame washed over me, like I’d somehow betrayed him, too. I’d earned his approval and then made him look stupid for liking me.
“Chris said some girls can’t handle being treated right,” Adam said. “They don’t know what to do with a guy like me. It’s like they enjoy being used. They want someone who makes them feel like shit about themselves.”
“That’s not fair!” I cried. “You don’t understand!”
“No!” Adam shouted, jabbing his finger at my face. The harshness in his voice made me recoil. “You don’t get to be mad. This is your fault. You did this. We were supposed to go to dinner that night and you lied. You lied so you could…” He pulled at his bangs. “I can’t even say it.”
The softness in his eyes was dying. He inhaled a shaky breath and blinked once more and it was gone, replaced by something cold and hard. Silent tears stung my face. The boys on the playground smeared. Everything went foggy. I don’t know why, but all I could see was Lisa and me on the steps at graduation, firing finger pistols into the air, like finishing middle school was some big accomplishment. I slumpe
d down on the hot sidewalk and wished for the days when the worst things possible were forgetting your lunch and being nicknamed Melon Head.
“For future reference,” Adam said, grinding his cigarette into the sidewalk. “The next time you cheat, do it with someone who’s not compelled by honesty to confess every wrong he’s ever committed.”
Watching him walk away—my heart already aching for what I’d lost, for what might’ve been—my shame turned to rage. If you could be imprisoned for murderous thoughts, that’s where I’d be for what I wanted to do to Foley. It started as a rumble in my throat, a low snarling that grew and grew, until my jaw slackened and I was howling. A woman pruning bushes across the street stopped and stared. The kickball rang against the fence. I pried myself off the sidewalk and cried all the way to Lisa’s.
“What happened to you?” Larry asked, his face knotting with concern as he let me in. “Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?”
I looked around the living room and wiped my cheeks with the palms of my hands. “Boyfriend,” I said, my voice cracking. My lips started trembling again. “Is Lisa here?”
Larry looked distressed, like my dad used to when I’d skinned a knee. I think if he’d tried to hug me, I would’ve hugged him, too, but he was holding his lower back like it pained him.
“You need anything?” he asked gently. “You look thirsty. We’ve got some juice boxes.”
Shaking my head, I flashed him the OK sign, then hurried down the hall before I lost it again.
“Lisa?” I shouted over the music behind the bedroom door. I leaned against the cool wood and knocked with my forehead. “It’s me. Can I come in?”
The bathroom door behind me popped open and Lisa stepped out.
“What the hell happened to you?” she mumbled around the toothbrush jutting from her mouth.
I pushed past her and yanked a bunch of tissues from the box on the counter, slumped down on the edge of the tub, and dried my stinging face.
“Adam,” I said. “Foley told him.”
What We Knew Page 10
