“Geez,” said Christian. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, bending down for her notebook, gathering herself, pressing her hands to her flaming cheeks. “I didn’t see anyone. Did you?” She couldn’t reach the notebook.
He scanned the hallway quickly. “Nope.” She could see after that that his attention was gone: it was too late to have the conversation, too late to tell him about Bridget and the lost notebook. Better to say good-bye and slip away with what remained of her dignity. Which was minimal.
Just seconds later she felt her phone buzzing. U R SUCH A LOSER DIDNT I TELL U 2 STAY AWAY????
Did they? Had they? She didn’t remember anything about that. She was playing a game where the rules were constantly shifting.
Then, a few seconds later, WHY R U TALKING 2 HIM??
HE DOESNT LIKE U WHY WOULD HE
And one more: U BETTER WATCH OUT!!
Later, toward the end of the day, when she was gathering her things at her locker, Taylor Grant approached. Hannah was with her, and, watching them draw near, Natalie was reminded of a diorama she’d made once at Sunday school, back when she went to Sunday school at the Universalist church, where the kids got to go down to the basement during the service, to the ammonia-scented common room, and work on some sort of craft among the kind, gray-haired, paisley-attired church volunteers. One week they received a shoebox and a bunch of small plastic animals that they were to line up by twos, the shoebox acting as a stand-in for Noah’s Ark. She thought of that now, Hannah and Taylor, two by two, two by two, into the ark, in perfect unison, two by two.
“Hey, Natalie,” said Taylor. She spoke quietly: she might have been whispering a secret to Natalie, she might have been soothing a baby to sleep. Then, even more softly: “Did you see your Web page?”
“My what?”
“Your Web page. Did you see it yet?”
What Web page?
Hannah said to Taylor, “I thought you took that down.”
Took what down?
Taylor ignored Hannah and stepped closer to Natalie. Natalie thought she was going to reach out and strike her, but instead she lifted a section of Natalie’s hair and inspected it. She said, “Is there something in your hair? Is that peanut butter?” Natalie said nothing: she had gone mute. She was shaking, but she had gone mute.
Taylor continued to study the hair, as though she were a scientist and the hair a microscope slide. “Natalie,” she said, as softly as a spring wind, as sweetly as a mother, “When was the last time you washed your hair?”
“Taylor,” said Hannah. “Come on, let’s go.”
“God, dark out already,” said Neil. “Unbelievable. Geez. Newburyport! What a haul. What are we going up there for, again?”
“Errand,” said Kathleen, and Neil, bless his heart, didn’t demand more than that.
They settled into a comfortable silence. As they crossed the Zakim Bridge, Kathleen, thinking of Natalie, and allowing herself, for a moment, to imagine herself as a savior, experienced a sensation of optimism and serenity. This feeling remained with her all the way up Route 1, past the strangely defunct motels with their wrecked signs, hanging like untended broken limbs.
“I guarantee you someone’s been murdered in each one of those motels,” Neil said.
“Neil! What a thing to say.” Kathleen signaled and moved into the left lane.
“What? Look at them, and try to tell me it’s not true.”
“Okay,” conceded Kathleen. “Okay, maybe you’re right.” FREE HBO, said the sign outside one motel. TRACTOR TRAILER PARKING, said another. WEEKLY RATES.
“Who stays in these?” asked Neil. “I mean, really.”
A woman in a gold-flecked Sienna cut off Kathleen’s car; they were so close that for an instant Kathleen could see, inside, three unoccupied car seats.
“Happy holidays, lady,” said Kathleen.
“Merry merry,” Neil agreed. They passed the Prince Pizzeria. “The leaning tower of pizza,” said Neil. “God, I love Route One. Don’t you just love Route One, Kathleen? Did you ever get called Katie?”
“No,” she said. “Never.” This was a lie: Gregory used to call her Katie, but thinking about that made her stomach twist.
The red letters on the white sign outside the pizzeria read, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SUSAN MCDONALD. They passed the Hilltop Steak House. “They go through forty-five thousand pounds of beef in a single week there,” said Neil.
“How do you know that?”
“I read it somewhere. I know lots of really useless information.”
In the backseat, Lucy, coiled into a semicircle, slept.
Closer to Newburyport, Kathleen’s serenity and optimism turned to trepidation. She had a task of great import ahead of her: to convince Natalie’s father that Natalie was in trouble. Who was she to think she could butt in where she didn’t belong? “Jesus, sweetheart,” Carol had said to her when Kathleen told her about Susannah all those years ago. “You got the double whammy: husband and daughter. How is it that you seem so normal?”
“That’s only on the outside.”
“Yeah,” said Carol, uncharacteristically speechless. Then, after a moment, “How could it be anything else?”
Who did Kathleen think she was, to think that she could get involved in this mess with Natalie?
Then again, who was she to think she couldn’t?
She swung off the highway and followed the street signs to downtown. But she lost her bearings and turned left onto a wide street with a Catholic church, a funeral home, and a building that must have been a church in a past life but now appeared to be a trendy restaurant. She drove past a glittering Christmas tree in the center of a square and oodles of little shops, similarly bedecked.
“Cool,” said Neil. “These little towns do it up right at Christmas, all class.”
In her head, Kathleen practiced. Hello. Mr. Gallagher? Hello. My name is Kathleen Lynch. You don’t know me but…
She regained her bearings and retraced the route she’d taken when she’d come here with Natalie, her sense of direction kicking in at just the right time. Gregory had no sense of direction, he always said he could get lost going straight on a one-way street, and he could, but she was better.
A couple more turns, and she pulled over. “There it is,” she said. “Natalie’s house.”
“Ooooooh,” said Neil. “So that’s what we’re doing here. What, just dropping by?”
“I have her notebook, Bridget’s notebook.”
“You do? All this time? You little sneak! Where’s her house?”
Kathleen pointed: the injured shutter and the pitiable mailbox, the rusted red flag halfway raised. She turned off the ignition. Neil unbuckled his seat belt, and Kathleen gathered herself and said, “Neil? You know what?”
“What?” He had opened his door, was on his way out.
“This might sound strange to you, but I think… I think I want to go in first. Alone.”
“Yeah? Why?” He sat back down.
“Well.” Kathleen couldn’t really put it in plain words. “It’s hard to explain,” she said finally. “I don’t want to freak anyone out, you know?”
“Okay,” he said. “No biggie.” He was so amenable. Neil: guileless and innocent, like a little boy with a cowlick. “I’ll poke around town, come back in a bit.”
“Want to walk Lucy?”
“Sure. Come on, girl.” She handed him a plastic bag from the stash inside her glove compartment.
“She won’t go here,” said Kathleen. “She’s particular, likes her own spots. But just in case. Do you know where you’re going?”
“Sure I do,” he said. “I’ve been here before, remember? The downtown is”—he pointed—“that way. And I know there’s a bookstore on that street we drove down, near the big Christmas tree. I’ll check out the bookstore.”
“You sure?” Suddenly, despite what she’d said, she didn’t want to go to Natalie’s door alone.
“Positiv
e. You go ahead. Do your thing. Deliver your notebook, make the world right.”
Kathleen stood for a moment outside the house, gathering herself. Practicing.
Mr. Gallagher? I’m here because I believe your daughter is in trouble.
I want to help.
I want—
“Oh, hell,” she said finally. She tried an old trick from her childhood, something you did to make yourself go under the water in the pool or a lake when you were reluctant. You said, One, two, three, and then you jumped. You just plain didn’t let yourself not jump. You didn’t give yourself another option.
She remembered the quick inhalation of breath, the shock of the cold water, and then the feeling of emerging, triumphant, shivering.
She said, One, two, three.
She approached the house.
I am here to help you save your daughter, Mr. Gallagher. She’s in trouble.
One, two, three. And under.
She knocked.
Natalie couldn’t bear the thought of doing this in her little bedroom, in her cold little house, so she had grabbed her laptop and headed right to the library. The first floor seemed too public—preschoolers wandering in and out of the children’s room, must be some sort of story hour, she almost tripped over a snowsuited toddler sucking on a pacifier. In the ominously named Teen Loft, a Twilight poster urged teens to read (thing number sixteen on the list of things that made Natalie sick: Twilight posters. And why did they use a poster from the movie to get you to read a book, it didn’t make sense, nothing made sense, and that was number seventeen on the list of things that made her sick). Chairs set up in a way that was meant to allow for quiet conversation—that was too, well, too teenage, too obvious, so she headed to the carrels on the third floor, which were deserted.
She opened her laptop. There was a ringing in her ears, and she felt warm under her arms, in the crooks of her elbows, behind her knees. Maybe she was getting sick—maybe she was getting the swine flu, although you weren’t supposed to call it that anymore. It had some formal name with letters and numbers that Natalie could never remember.
She’d start with the basics: Google, her name, her town.
And there it was: too easy.
There was a photograph, a close-up of Natalie’s face, as unflattering as you could get, taken from above. Her eyes were closed and her face was slack. There was a little stripe of sweater showing, and she recognized it from the day she’d been to Hannah’s house.
On the top, in glaring red letters, were the words: WELCOME TO THE WE HATE NATALIE GALLAGHER PAGE! Then a smiley face that flashed off and on.
The photo wasn’t the worst of it. It was the comments that appeared below. U suck, said one.
What a loser!
U will never get a boyfriend, said another.
I am LMAO at this, said one.
None of the comments had real names attached to them, just screen names and numbers (like the swine flu), so it was impossible for Natalie to know who had seen this, who had commented, who was involved.
She saw, in the picture, a string of drool in the corner of her mouth. Only a matter of time before somebody seized on that, enlarged it or altered it, made it into something worse than it was.
I don’t know her, said another comment, but I am LMAO anyway.
LMAO. Laughing my ass off.
We hate Natalie Gallagher.
Welcome to the.
She closed the laptop and looked around the library. The third floor was an open setup, and from her vantage point she could see the tops of the librarians’ heads, the people in the second-floor carrels. A twenty-something, male, was engaged in some sort of elaborate game with flying creatures whizzing through a tunnel. An older woman gazed at a bunch of pictures of babies on her screen: grandchildren, probably. Outside the window Natalie could see the tops of a few bare trees and, beyond that, a giant lighted wreath on the outside of the bank.
She looked at the sign in front of her:
THANK YOU FOR NOT
EATING
DRINKING
USING YOUR CELL PHONE
What about dying? Could you die, here in the carrel?
She was getting warmer and warmer; she had to get out of there, into the fresh air. Maybe she really was coming down with the swine flu. She sort of hoped she was. Maybe it would get really bad, maybe she’d have to go to the hospital, stay there for a while, maybe she’d lose consciousness. That seemed preferable. Anything seemed preferable to this.
The woman who answered the door had coloring that was different from Natalie’s—darker eyes, darker skin—but there was something of Natalie in the shape of her eyes and her mouth. She was young—under thirty, or right around. She was unsmiling, and she fixed Kathleen with a cloudy gaze.
Wait, thought Kathleen.
Kathleen cleared her throat. “Hello,” she said. “My name is Kathleen Lynch. I’m looking for Natalie Gallagher. Do I have the right house?” She drew her shoulder bag closer to her body. She had the notebook in there, she had a legitimate reason to be here, standing on this doorstep, in this neighborhood, in this town, talking to this woman who, despite her coloring, looked enough like Natalie to be her—
“Mother,” said the woman. “I’m her mother. Who are you?”
“Oh,” said Kathleen. “Her mother. I thought you were dead.”
Natalie sat on a bench in Market Square, near the giant Christmas tree. It was cold, but she had her heavy ski jacket on, not that she’d ever skied, not that she had plans to ski, but in this town it was a necessity: the uniform of the New England teenager. She didn’t mind the cold, not really, she minded the heat more. That probably had something to do with her stupid pale skin. (Thing number eighteen.)
“Hey,” said a voice belonging to someone who was walking toward her from Inn Street. “Hey, Natalie. Natalie Gallagher.”
She recognized the voice, she recognized the posture, wasn’t that—
Christian Chapman!
“Hey,” she said, sitting up straighter.
He moved closer and said, in that casual, slouchy, wonderful way he had, “Whatcha doing?” Without asking he sat down next to her. He might have been out for a run or going to the gym; he smelled like sweat, like clean, wintertime boy sweat.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just out for a walk. Thought I’d look at the tree.”
He said, “So, hey, we never finished talking about this. What’s going on with your independent-study project?”
“Oh,” she said. “That. Yeah, I don’t know. I might start mine all over.” She thought of the notebook, thought of Bridget, thought of Kathleen and the bad advice that had led to the Web page she’d just seen. She felt sick to her stomach.
“I haven’t started mine,” said Christian. “But hey, I’ll just do it over vacation, right?”
“Right,” she said. Christian obviously hadn’t seen the Web page. But it was only a matter of time. How long? She said, “You aren’t going away, over break?”
“Naw,” said Christian. “I wish. I’d love to go out west with my board.”
She said, “Hannah Morgan and Taylor Grant are going to Vail. But you know that, right?”
“Nope,” he said. “Why would I?”
“Aren’t you… aren’t you and Taylor sort of, together?” She thought that’s what the texts had been about: she thought she was supposed to stay away from Christian because he’d been claimed already.
“Together? Me and Taylor? No way.”
The smile that Natalie hid as she turned to the side could have lit up the Market Square Christmas tree, could have lit up the entire town.
Christian said, “What are you doing now?”
“I don’t know. This.”
“I’m going to get a piece of pizza. You hungry? Want to come?”
Of course she wanted to come! She was starving.
They walked to the Upper Crust, their breath making dragon smoke in the air, and sat across from each other at one of the little squa
re tables. Was this a date? Natalie wasn’t sure. Maybe not, but still it was something. He definitely hadn’t seen the Web page. What would happen when he did?
“Those dogs are great,” said Christian, looking out the window. “Border collies.” Natalie was rooting in her bag to see if she had enough money to pay for her pizza; by the time she turned around she didn’t see anything.
“Where?” she said.
“Oh, a guy just walked past with one. He’s gone now.”
Funny coincidence, thought Natalie. “Yeah,” she said, “those dogs are great. I know one.”
“I’m Kathleen Lynch.”
“I heard you say that,” said the woman, Natalie’s mother; she seemed to Kathleen, who was struggling to reorder her thinking, to be part ghost, risen, Christ-like, from the dead. “But who are you? How do you know my daughter?”
“That,” said Kathleen. “Well. I work at the Massachusetts Archives. I’ve been helping your daughter with a school project.” Here she gestured at her shoulder bag, as though it were a clear plastic Ziploc, as though the woman could see the notebook inside. “I have something that belongs to her, something she left behind.”
“Hang on,” said the woman. She turned into the house and called out, “Natalie! Nat!” They both waited and then she said, “She’s not here. I’m not sure where she is, but she’s not here.”
“Oh…”
“I can give her whatever it is you have.”
Kathleen shifted on the stoop. She cleared her throat again. One, two, three: jump. “Actually, I’m here for another reason too. I was hoping I could come in and talk to you for a few minutes. About Natalie.”
They got two cheese slices, one each, though Natalie could have eaten more. She concentrated on folding the piece in two to keep the cheese from dripping out.
Apropos of nothing, Christian Chapman said, “I’m staying at my dad’s tonight.”
So Far Away (9780316202466) Page 19
