PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “I get it!” I said, much louder than I intended to. “Just let me go, okay.”

  He didn’t. Now it was me that was backing away from him, still holding hands.

  “Oh, this stupid moon!” He yelled. “It’s not what you think. My life’s not my own. Even if I wanted to-. Cresta, you’re my best friend.” He looked down; defeated. He flipped my hand over and ran his thumb across my palm. Somehow, when he did it, it didn’t seem so clunky.

  “You’ll still be my-“ His eyes got large. He pulled my hand closer, hurriedly scanning my palm. “How . . . ”

  Finally, he let go. He looked like he was going to sick all over my mother’s oriental rug.

  “I have to go,” he choked out. “Tell your mom I’m sorry.”

  He walked; almost stumbled to the doorway. His face had gone from white to red when he pulled the door open and looked back at me.

  “I-I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay, Cresta? I will see you tomorrow, won’t I”

  I didn’t answer. I wanted to. I wanted to tell him that it would be all right, that he would still have me, and we’d always be friends. But I couldn’t; not yet, not now.

  “Okay . . . ” He said, and walked away.

  Just then, Mom busted through the kitchen door, holding a package of frozen meat in one hand and a bunch of taco shells in a plastic bag.

  “How does Mexican night sound, amigos?”

  And that, that was when I started to cry.

  ***

  A couple hours, what seemed like two liters of tears and a plate of over salted beef nachos later, I found myself staring at the ceiling. Mom had finally went to sleep, satisfied that her ‘if he doesn’t see how great you are than he’s an idiot and he’ll probably end up working at a Burger King, so you’re better off without him’ rant had salved the wound a little.

  It might have been enough too, if I could just go to sleep. I’d have taken the dreams. I’d have contemplated the meaning of the sevens, the circle of blood, my father’s arms; all of it, so long as it meant I didn’t have to think about Owen.

  In the end, it seemed all the questions I had compiled in my mind; the black Sedan, the empty house, the mystery parents, didn’t mean anything. They weren’t what was keeping me up tonight. It turned out the only question I cared about was the one question he had actually answered.

  He didn’t love me. He didn’t want to be with me. A phone full of pictures of me aside, he didn’t think of me as anything but a friend. His best friend, but what good was that?

  Why was I crying though? I was stronger than this. I was the girl who climbed out of the Chicago River after her car went headlong off a bridge. I was the girl who buried her father, and started a new life in the middle of nowhere when her mother said it was what she needed. I didn’t cry over a guy. Of course, the pile of damp Kleenex on the nightstand would disagree with me.

  I thought about him standing in my doorway; his blues eyes hurt and regretful. He seemed afraid that things would change, that I wouldn’t be able to pull it together around him, and that our friendship would be over.

  Right now, with the sting of his words so fresh in my ears and the mark of his boot so evident on my heart, I couldn’t say with any certainty that he was wrong.

  It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t help the way he felt, or, more aptly, didn’t feel. And I knew he had a girlfriend. That must have been what that whole ‘My life is not my own’ diatribe was about. He was being loyal to Merrin. And who’d blame him? Immature phone decorum aside, she was probably perfect. And, come to think of it, didn’t being perfect afford you some immaturity anyway?

  Whatever the case, whatever his reasoning, I couldn’t imagine myself walking up to Owen and pretending everything was fine. I’d have to find a way though. If I couldn’t, then this really would be the end of our friendship, and that hurt in his eyes; I wouldn’t be able to make it better.

  If possible, the idea of that hurt even more than his rejection.

  ***

  By the time sleep found me; a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep, it was short lived.

  “Cress! Cress! Wake up, dude!”

  If I would have been awake, I would have recognized his voice immediately. I’d heard it every day for two years, plus he was the only person on the planet who called me dude. His hands were on my shoulders, shaking me. I jerked and instinctively pushed him away.

  “What the hell?!” I said, crawling up toward the headboard.

  “Dude, it’s just me.” Casper’s hair was in knotted red tufts on his head, giving him the look of a walking, talking, ‘waking-people-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night’ candle.

  “Casper, you moron. You’re going to give me a heart attack.” I threw my pillow at him; the one I’d had since I was three and one of the only things that survived the move to Georgia.

  “Don’t throw that bacteria trap at me,” he swatted it down. “Besides, this is important.”

  I turned to the clock sitting beside the Kleenex on my nightstand. Three forty three.

  “What’s so important that you thought it was a good idea to break into my house at four in the morning?” I scooted toward the center of the bed and folded my legs.

  “So we’re just gonna pretend I didn’t get a key made for the house too?”

  “Casper,” I growled. “It’s been a rough night.”

  “Okay, okay,” he plopped down on the bed next to me.

  “Easy,” I said. “You’re going to wake my mom.”

  Casper or not, if my mom found a guy in my bedroom in the dead of night, she’d kill me twice before I hit the ground.

  “So, I was in your car earlier, cause my dad is being an el grande super absorbent tampon, and I saw the black car pull up to Mrs. Goolsby’s. And Cress, this time I got a look at the guy as he walked inside. You’ll never guess who it was.”

  My heart skipped at least three beats as the name escaped from my lips.

  “Owen.”

  Casper’s face scrunched into a freckled question mark. “Okay, so maybe you would guess. Can you believe-“

  I grabbed Casper’s hand as I jumped up from my bed, pulling him up like a ragdoll.

  “Cress, what-“

  “We’re going,” I said flatly.

  “We’re going—to Disneyworld?” Casper asked hopefully as I yanked him down the stairs.

  This had been going on long enough. If Owen didn’t want to be with me, that was fine. But I WAS going to find out what was going on with him.

  “We’re going to Goolsby. “

  “Dude, I don’t wanna watch Owen bang old Mrs. Goolsby,” Casper whined, though he was quiet enough about it that I didn’t need to worry about waking Mom.

  “He’s not a prostitute,” I said, opening the door, pulling Casper through it, and closing it quietly behind me.

  At least, I hoped he wasn’t.

  As soon as we got outside, whatever gripe Casper had seemed to melt away, because he kept up with me pretty easily and I didn’t even have to pull him anymore. It wasn’t until we got outside and I felt the squish of the grass between my bare toes that I realized I was still in my night clothes; oversized flannel pajamas, Avengers t-shirt, and all. It didn’t matter how I looked though. I could be wearing one of those barrels with the shoulder straps you always see on homeless guys in cartoons and I was still going through with this.

  “Cress, wait,” Casper said, but kept running alongside me. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, is it any of our business?”

  “It was our business just fine when you were spying on him,” I reminded him.

  We settled behind a row of bushes in Mr. Colburn’s yard, which was right across the street from Mrs. Goolsby and gave us a clear look at the black Sedan sitting in front of her house. It was four in the morning, which meant that most of Crestview’s farmers, Mr. Colburn included, were already up and at J’s General store where they were probably drinking coffee and talking about how great it is to be up at the butt crack of dawn. A
nd since Mr. Colburn lived by himself, at least we wouldn’t have to worry about anybody seeing us.

  “Yeah, but it was just fun and games then. What if-“

  “He might be in trouble Casper,” I turned to him. In the dark, his bright red hair shone like a beacon. “After I saw him get into the Sedan, I went by his house. There was no furniture, Cass. Like, none at all. And then, when he came over for dinner tonight-“

  “Dinner?” Casper balked, “Why didn’t I get an invite?”

  “Focus!” I thumped his freckly arm. He squirmed, rustling the bushes a little, but stopped talking. “At dinner, he said some things.”

  One of those being that he wasn’t interested in me, but there’s no point in telling you that.

  “What sort of things?” Casper inched closer, his mouth gaping open.

  “He said his life wasn’t his own; like he couldn’t make his own decisions or something. I thought he was talking about Merrin, but now, piecing it all together- What if he’s in trouble? What if he’s involved in something he shouldn’t be and is in over his head?”

  I twisted my locket around my fingers.

  “What sort of stuff Cresta? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  “That’s what I need to find out,” I answered, looking back at Mrs. Goolsby’s house. “I just- I need to make sure he’s okay.” I remembered what he told me earlier before he ran out. “He’s my friend.”

  “It could be dangerous,” Casper said.

  “I know,” I answered.

  “That’s not gonna stop you, is it?”

  “Not even a little,” I answered.

  “And you expect me to go with you into the perilous unknown?” He crinkled his nose.

  “You don’t have to. Like you said, it could be dangerous,” I answered.

  “Is that gonna stop me?” He asked.

  “Not even a little,” I answered.

  “Cars drive on roads,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  The black Sedan wasn’t idling tonight, but the windows were so dark that we couldn’t tell if anybody was in it. Not wanting to get caught, we snuck around the back and climbed the small white fence surrounding Mrs. Goolsby’s backyard. We tiptoed past the in ground pool, though why a geriatric window needed Olympic sized pool and neighboring hot tub was beyond me.

  I’ll add that to my list of questions.

  Luckily, Casper had spent last summer doing odd jobs for Mrs. Goolsby. Though, since she tended to pay him in nickels and always asked for ‘backrubs’, he’d probably debate you on how lucky he actually was. Still, he knew the layout of her house; including where she kept the key to the backdoor.

  “Here it is, under the stupid plaster elf,” he said, lifting a creepy gnome stature and grabbing the key from underneath. He slid it in the backdoor, and opened it slowly.

  We crept in to find something totally surprising.

  I hadn’t been in Mrs. Goolsby’s house since last Fourth of July, when the church sponsored a street wide bb-q. But it seemed like a pretty standard ‘old lady’ house. There was furniture wrapped in plastic to preserve it’s ‘newness’, generic sunflower paintings on the walls, and pictures of family members that never seemed to actually visit in picture frames on the mantle. But now, making our way through the house, all of that seemed to be gone. In fact, everything was gone.

  It was just like Owen’s house; no furniture in the living room, no beds in the bedrooms, no facilities in the kitchen or bathrooms. The house was completely empty, as though no one lived here at all.

  “Cresta, “Casper whispered, his eyes wide. “What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. I was half expecting the door to slam shut behind us and some phantom security system to start shouting intruder like in Owen’s house. But that was not the sound I heard.

  As we passed a door on our second round through the kitchen, I heard the light sounds of conversation. I froze.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  Casper just nodded. “Can you make it out?” He asked.

  “I’ll be able to in a minute,” I answered, and grabbed the handle.

  His eyes got wide with alert, but before he could say anything I had already pushed the door open. It opened into a long wooden staircase winding down into what was presumably a basement.

  Though he looked like he wanted to stop me, Casper just followed as I stepped onto the stairs. Mercifully, they made no noise. As I inched further down, with Casper’s hands digging into my shoulders, the voices grew clearer. There were more than two and, surprisingly, all male. Where was Mrs. Goolsby?

  The walls around the staircase were stone and looked much older than the rest of the house, like the house had been built around it or something. To top it off, the path was lit by torches that hung in casings carved into the stone; adding to the old world feel.

  Casper’s breathing got heavier and the voices grew clearer as we neared the mouth of the staircase. One of them was Owen’s, but I didn’t recognize the rest. As we settled at the end of the stairs, I noticed a few things about the room. Though we still couldn’t see Owen or whoever he was talking to, I could see the area was at least partially filled with computer screens. One of them showcased binary information that shot by in lighting rounds of 011011011011.

  The others showed similar numbers as well as surveillance shots of Crestview. There was Main Street, with the street lamps still shining. There was J’s General and Mr. Colburn with his coffee. And there, on the far one, was a darkened office was a bright red couch and a diploma on the wall. Was that Dr. Conyers’ office?

  “You’re being dramatic,” one of the voices said.

  Casper tensed behind me and I put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down.

  “I am not,” Owen’s voice said. He seemed tense. I pictured him pacing around the room. “It changed. I watched it change.”

  “Maybe it didn’t,” a third voice added. “Maybe you were always reading it wrong.”

  “I’m not some youngling,” Owen spit out. I could practically hear his teeth grinding. “I know what I’m doing. I can read just fine. Besides, it wasn’t stagnant like that. The lines moved. I held her hand and they moved!”

  Her hand? Was he talking about Mrs. Goolsby?

  “You need to calm down,” the first voice said. “We’re at a very sensitive point in things right now. You know that.”

  “I will not calm down, Jiqui. She was in the house. She got into my phone, my encrypted phone. She’s asking questions and now, because things aren’t crappy enough already, her lines are changing,”

  In his house, into his phone; he was talking about me. But what lines? I didn’t have any lines. And what did he mean by changing?

  “Lines don’t just change,” Jiqui answered impatiently. “It takes time, effort, and a hell of a lot more energy than any of us are capable of expending at the present moment. You know that. Now do your job. Follow your instructions.”

  “It’s hard to do that when the rules are changing,” Owen answered. “I did what you asked. For two years, I have sat here wasting away, and for what; to befriend her, to be some placeholder? I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  I looked at the stone wall hard, like maybe if I looked hard enough I might be able to see through it, to see him. Had Owen just said that he had been involved in whatever this was for two years, that the only reason he had ever looked twice at me in the first place was because of some stupid mission?

  Casper noticed it too, because he tightened his grip on my shoulders, letting me know he was there. I pulled away. I didn’t need to be comforted right now. I needed to hear this.

  “You are told what you need to know in order to complete your mission. That has always been the way of it. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the Masons.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m saying,” Owen answered. “It’s just. I feel like I’m wasting time here. I’m supposed to be at my peak right now. Do you have any idea how o
ut of practice I am? I had trouble convincing my teacher that a sheet of paper was my math homework yesterday. How am I supposed to be of any use in that condition?”

  I flashed back to yesterday, to Owen handing that smiley face over and pretending it was homework. Had Mr. Jacobs actually believed that?

  “And this girl,” Owen continued.

  “Cresta,” Jiqui commended.

  “Cresta,” Owen said, though the tone in his voice made me think he’d rather not say my name. “I don’t see anything special about her.”

  His words threw daggers into my heart. Not only did he not want to be with me, but he thought I was nothing; that I was ordinary.

  “I mean, if she was really-“

  “Stop,” Jiqui said. “She’s here.”

  “What?” Owen answered.

  Casper grabbed at me. “Come on!” He whispered. “We gotta-“

  The door at the top of the stairs flew shut, the bolt locking it closed.

  I turned up to look, but Casper didn’t. His eyes were fixed forward.

  “Cress . . . ”

  I turned. Owen was standing in front of me. Beside him were two men. One was older with a buzz cut that made him look like he was in the military and long scar along his right cheek. The other was a little older than me with shaggy brown hair and kind eyes. Looking down though, I noticed that both his legs ended in stumps right past the knees. He had no prosthetics, but he was standing. Or, more aptly, he was floating. He was floating in midair in front of us.

  “Owen,” I choked out. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s okay Cress,” he said, and stretched his hand out in front of me. “It’ll be alright.”

  He twisted his hand so that his fingers contorted in strange shapes, and then everything went dark.

  Chapter 6

  Killing Shirley Temple

  The day our house blew up, I woke up in my own bed, though I had no idea how I got there. The last thing I remembered, I was crouched on the steps of Mrs. Goolsby’s basement with Casper, listening to Owen argue about me with an old military guy and kid who could fly. You know the usual. But that was- How long ago was that? I must have passed out or fell asleep because one minute I was there and it was the middle of the night, and now I was back in my room with sunlight streaming through my blinds.