I listened on, stunned.
“I should be pissed at you,” he continued, “but more than anything, I didn’t want to be the one who lost you. And my damn letter. Turns out I didn’t really lose either one, but I wasn’t the one to find them either.”
I wanted so much to sit and cry with him. To thank him for his honesty. To live in this world where sight didn’t matter and secrets were commonplace.
“Listen, everyone’s aboveground waiting for you, so let’s get going. We’re doing this thing,” I said, stifling myself, trying not to lose the bigger picture.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I started pulling on what felt like his collar. As hard as I tugged, I couldn’t get him to move.
“Ruby tried this too. I sent her away.”
“I’m more stubborn.”
“I know.” He sighed as I continued tugging anyway. “I don’t think you understand how embarrassing this is. I told everyone to go into these tunnels, and it turned into a huge mess. I’m not going up there and seeing all of them.”
“Harrison, you have no idea how much I get it. I’m the one who started this all, and look at me, I’m still going.” I lowered myself down in front of the black mass that I’d come to understand was his body and probed around for his armpits.
“What in the hell?”
The darkness amplified all sounds. Two wet pops of air released out of the corners of his mouth. I could hear him smiling. It was a reluctant smile, but a smile nonetheless. He didn’t seem to be ticklish, or I was doing a terrible job at trying, but the motion had the appropriate effect either way. He started jerking left to right until he shot upward. “Fine! Fine! Enough of that! Let’s go!” he said, faint amusement in his words.
He placed a hand on my shoulder, letting me lead him out. As I began my climb up the ladder, Aidy and Bigs and Teeny and Nick nearly blocked out the light with their heads staring down at me.
No. There was one more person.
“You’re back,” I said to Ruby as she offered a hand to pull me out. The sight of her was such a relief that I couldn’t hold on to my earlier frustration. I understood exactly how Harrison felt. I didn’t want to be the one who lost her, but it hurt not to be the one who found her.
“Harrison kicked me out of there a while ago, so I was out in the desert, digging around to find more stuff for you,” she told me. “You know, just trying to know all the secrets I’m supposed to know.”
The tears I had suppressed earlier sprang up to my eyes.
I accidentally stepped back onto Harrison’s hand. “You’re already failing to make life aboveground seem better!” he yelled as he winced, which made me even more emotional. His fake irritation was another relief.
“He looks worse than you,” Teeny told me once Harrison fully resurfaced.
It was true, but only because I’d showered and changed. Harrison had to crouch to readjust to the sunlight. “How do humans do this?” he cursed as he rubbed his eyes. “It’s so bright!”
Ruby hugged me. After Harrison had properly recovered, she hugged him too. “I didn’t know what to think after I left you.”
“Yep,” was all he said back, directed at Ruby but meant for me, a tiny incision of a word, small and painful as a paper cut.
“If you’re really okay, then let’s get on with it,” I said, absorbing the pain. This was how we behaved on land. Our camaraderie was another secret we’d keep underneath.
Suddenly, Aidy leapt forward to kiss Harrison. It was hard to say who was more surprised: her, him, or the rest of us. Ruby coughed, making sure all eyes were averted, letting them have their strange moment in peace.
“The second Bigs spotted me, he told me Emery was really scared,” Ruby said. “I wasn’t getting any reception farther out.” She turned to catch my dodgy gaze. “I know, I know. I promise I’ll tell you all about her soon.”
Truces were being dealt out left and right. Maybe everything really was okay again, I convinced myself.
It was a beautiful ten seconds of ignorance.
Aidy stepped away from Harrison. “I’ve already discussed this with most of you one-on-one, but it’s time we talked about it as a group.” She looked me square in the face. “I think Marley knew the gun was loaded.”
My stomach roiled. It was happening, and I couldn’t stop it. I had nothing but a third of a journal that seemed to further her theory. Anything I told them would turn this into more of a disaster, so I bit back tears instead, doing my best to keep my expression steady.
“I do too,” Harrison added, backing her up. “That message spray-painted on the wall really made me believe. With the school picture and the trophy head. It was like she was saying we didn’t see her right, or something.”
“I agree,” Teeny said.
Ruby pulled her head back until her vertebrae stacked up into a neat column. “I’d never considered it until Olivia said it the other night. Now I can’t let it go.”
“Aidy said it, actually. I repeated it,” I muttered, not wanting my name to be tied to any of this.
The ground gave out beneath me. I plunged down, lower than the sewers, past the center of the earth, out the other side. I floated through imaginary stars, waiting for gravity. Where was my anchor?
Where was my Marley?
“Her letters might be her way of saying goodbye,” Ruby said. “One last adventure. The map you guys found is probably all the places she left the clues, in case we couldn’t find everything without it. If she knew she wouldn’t be with us, she probably wanted to make sure we actually figured it all out this time. Don’t you think?” Ruby walked over to Nick, who’d been holding the blueprint paper since we got to the desert. “Look. We’ve already found stuff here, here, and here.” She left her finger on the POINT OF NO RETURN spot on the map and gestured to Marley’s journal poking out of the bag I’d brought with me. I couldn’t believe I’d let it out of my sight. “We should start looking at the places on the map we haven’t been to yet. See what else we can find.”
She could’ve kept going, but no one was listening to her anymore.
As children, our scavenger hunts and adventures, both official and spontaneous, were always fun. Harmless. We were young and unaware of how the little things we found were part of a bigger life. We’d gather around the love letter for Harrison’s mom and giggle for hours. Someone had a crush on Ms. Shin! We’d dance in Ms. DeVeau’s shoes. We’d ruffle through Mr. Campbell’s paperwork and hold fake court cases. We’d smoke a few of my mom’s old cigarettes and flush the remaining ones down the toilet. We’d chase Marley’s clues into our houses and other buildings in Cadence.
We blew through our town like tornadoes, trying to find something interesting to sweep up.
With this, we weren’t peeking into the world of our paper-doll parents. We were cracking open a life we never dressed up with cutouts. A life that existed inside every wide shot of our childhood. Every close-up. Never in the background. Never out of focus. Tattooed onto our every early memory was Marley Bricket.
Despite my wishes, we were no longer having one last adventure.
We were examining why she left us.
The idea stirred around, dissolving into the individual memories of our collective whole, tainting their color and weight. Marley meant to do this? And she made Nick do it for her? And she tried to tell us like this, but we didn’t notice? We didn’t know? How did we not know?
Nick crumpled down. He stared into the earth with a glazed expression, bewildered and wounded, the very idea so inconceivable he could nothing but let it envelop him. Everyone else cast sideways glances, knowing he had the right to be the most upset and wanting to watch the way he took it in, but knowing it was inappropriate.
To pull the focus off Nick, Bigs said, “If this is true, then I’m so mad at myself.” Tears trickled down his cheeks. “I helped
her draw some of that map.” He tried to stop himself from continuing, but a quiet fury blazed off him, pushing against the steel trap of his mouth, forcing him to follow through. “If it was all to tell me she wanted to die, and she never gave me a chance to stop her, then I’m so mad I could scream. Why do I have to say the things no one knows, if she never did? I don’t want any of this. It hurts too much.” He pulled his typed letter out of his pocket and tossed it to the ground.
Teeny saved her brother with a hug. They clicked into position, two people forever capable of completing one another.
“You can’t stop halfway,” I begged him. “No one can.” On sheer instinct, no Marley guiding me, I prepared myself to attempt a rescue mission. I didn’t know how to steer us through something so insurmountable, couldn’t see any way back to solid ground as I listlessly floated, but trying was the only option. If this was truly what was meant to happen, I had to find a finish line. “We’re in the middle of where we were and where we’re going. Each way seems too far. Going back means forgetting everything we’ve already done. We have to go forward.”
Ruby grabbed my hand. “No stops,” she whispered in solidarity.
Teeny pulled herself away from her brother. “You know what, Olivia? You’re right. We go out every year and throw a party for her. And it might need to be a whole other thing. We might be needing to say something different. Something that some other kid in Cadence might need to hear. I can’t sit on a maybe for the rest of my life. Not when it comes to saving someone else’s life.”
Nick and I locked in on each other. He knew, as I did, that the true decision fell in his hands. He stood to change the most from seeing this through. “I’m with you, whatever we do,” he told me.
New tears formed, the kind that never fell, just hovered around my eyelids. They were made of fear. And sorrow. Regret. Relief. Reluctance and apprehension and eagerness. It was a volatile combination of contrasts. I wanted to keep going as much as I knew it would be even more painful than I ever anticipated. A pain I couldn’t pretend I washed off in the shower.
I almost said, “I’m sorry,” right then and there, as a precursor for what was to come, but Judge Aidy interrupted to bring her gavel down on the matter. “No sense in guessing about it anymore,” she said. “Let’s open the box and see what we actually have.”
A solemn Ruby slid her backpack from her shoulders to remove the box. The lifting of the lid was a sacred job I assumed had no clear successor until everyone looked to me. Chose me. In spite of everything, they still treated me as the leader.
I took a deep breath and pulled the wooden lid up, slowly and delicately. I was never the type to rip off a bandage. Inside, there was bagged confetti and rolled-up streamers. Several boxed string lights. And tiny flashlights.
“I don’t get it,” Teeny whispered, speaking the thought on most everyone’s mind. “But it’s also giving me chills. Didn’t I just say something about throwing her a party? I mean, I know I meant it differently, but still, this is too much.”
“This is all for me,” Aidy said. Her face had a greenish tint.
“How do you know that?”
“My letter asked me to throw a party. A sleepover.”
Sleepovers didn’t mean what they did when we were younger. Even though we still had the same age difference between us, both Aidy and Harrison were going to be twenty in less than a year. Teeny and Bigs were headed to college. Ruby was about to be a senior. Nick and I were going to be juniors. It was a whole different game.
“Why does she want you to throw a sleepover?” Harrison asked Aidy.
“I don’t have to explain,” Aidy scolded, her harshness a surprise to even herself. She doubled down on it. “My letter was for me. Eyes on your own paper, remember?” Reigniting her annoyance with him seemed to help her cope. She stopped holding her stomach. “Can I see the map?” she asked Nick. “Yeah, okay,” she said as she reviewed it, taking inventory of more than one thing.
My inability to read her had me self-conscious. She seemed ahead of a curve I hadn’t even seen. “What is it?” I asked.
She kept looking at the map. “The haunted house next door to us. That’s where I’ll do it. It’s marked on here.”
“Why would we want to have a party right now?” Harrison asked. “And at the haunted house?”
“It’s what’s next,” Aidy snapped.
The last time we’d been inside the haunted house was at least six years before. After many late nights pondering and mythologizing the consequence of entering the hallowed home, we’d finally worked up the courage to go inside. We’d all stood in the first room—a narrow entryway with two door frames on each side and a staircase up the center—and counted to ten. To see if we’d last.
“Come on,” Marley said by the time we’d reached the number four. “Ollie, go up the stairs.”
“No.” I steeled myself against Nick’s side. He clutched my elbow, silently agreeing I didn’t have to do it.
Marley clomped off ahead. “Ugh. Fine. Follow me.”
We did. The house had been vacant as long as I’d been alive, and though a For Sale sign remained a permanent fixture in the yard, the real estate agent didn’t put much effort into upkeep. The whole place was creaky and barren and reeking of isolation.
We’d spent years putting backstory into the house’s vacancy, imagining a place filled with ghosts of past residents, trapped by the tragedy of their death and the irresistible pull of Cadence, California. The stories kept us up in the early hours, each of us trying to one-up the other with imagined gore and despair.
But the so-called haunted house did not welcome us with a possessive hug. It did not whisper with voices long gone, desperate to be heard. And it certainly did not provoke the goose bumps such a storied place required. It just sat, a collection of windows and walls and floors and ceilings. Even my memories of that day had nothing substantial behind them. We wandered around empty rooms, desperate to find a story that didn’t want to exist.
Still, any time we pedaled by in the days that followed, someone inevitably said something like, “Whoa, I swear I saw someone in the window,” even though saying it became like chewing on stale bread.
We’d spent so much time forcing magic on that house, and we were going back to see if it had finally worked. I prayed it had.
“How are we gonna do this?” Teeny asked Aidy. “You’re grounded.” She seemed pleased to have something trivial to worry about. A question less weighted to ask.
“And why?” Harrison pleaded.
“I know,” Aidy said to Teeny. “We can make it work, though. And Harrison, stop asking that. We didn’t ask you why your letter said to go through the tunnels, we just did it. So shut up already.”
Bigs and Teeny exchanged a quick glance. Ruby pressed herself into my side.
“Uh,” I started, trying to rescue Aidy. “We should probably, well, uh, I guess we have everything we need now. Maybe we should go home for a while? Is that a bad idea? We can look at the other spots on the map too.” I wanted a chance to collect myself. I needed time to make a plan.
“A break would be good,” Aidy said. She started gathering everything up.
Bigs and Teeny said goodbye to us. Bigs didn’t bother to grab his discarded letter. He left it lying in the sand in a crumpled heap as he walked to his car. I picked it up and shoved it into my bra. If he didn’t want it anymore, I definitely did. I needed everything I could take.
“We’ll call Ruby from our house phone and have her spread the plans to everyone later,” I announced, bolstering myself up with the supply of false confidence I always kept stocked. No one could know how far this had slipped away from me.
“That’s it?” Harrison asked. “We’re gonna agree we think Marley died by suicide then head home for a bit to chill?”
Aidy started clapping. “Bravo! You got it all in one try!”
<
br /> “Can I talk to you?” he asked her, low and serious.
“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?”
“Alone,” he whispered, succeeding at pulling off a calm but sincere command.
Aidy could only push so far. “Fine. We’ll walk back together.” She picked up the box and tucked it under her arm. “Don’t get caught, Olivia. Not now.”
“I won’t,” I warned back.
Nick stepped up. “Wanna walk with me?”
Bigs and Teeny were already pulling out of the parking lot. Ruby chased them down to ask for a ride to Emery.
The choice was all but made for me. Not that I minded. I needed a good distraction. Besides, the battle between Nick and me had only been allies fighting for dominance. When he allowed everyone to continue on with this, he’d surrendered to me. In fact, he’d been trying to surrender to me every time we spoke. But a challenge was always more irresistible, and our years apart required constant affirmation that he wouldn’t leave again. I asked him, “Are you sure you want to walk with me?” needing another little boost.
He laughed the same laugh he always did. A quiet chuckle at every obstacle I gave him to climb over. “I’m sure,” he said. “How’s your nose?”
Thanks to medicine, and Marley, I’d almost forgotten about it. I covered it with the bag of no-longer-frozen peas I’d picked back up. “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore.”
“I’m sorry that happened.”
When the Light Went Out Page 14
