Eric held up his backpack. “I’m Bedazzled.” He and Nathan shook hands.
I turned to Nathan. “Why did you come? I mean, I know the traitor called you,” I said, gesturing to Eric. “But why did you come?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay. Last time I saw you, you were flat on your back in bed.”
Eric turned to me, his wide-eyed silence louder than words.
“I’m fine.” I shook myself free from the spell Nathan’s smile had cast. Eric and I had things to do. Potentially embarrassing things. And I was not about to let Nathan find out what those things were. “Anyhow,” I said, “it was nice of you to come all this way, but—”
“Oh, I wasn’t far. A few blocks from here. Getting my hair cut.”
“Regardless. We’re running a little bit late right now, so we should probably go.”
“Where are you off to?”
Eric spoke up. “We’re tracking down some of the places Tyler might have gone in DC.”
I gave him the dirtiest look I could muster, forbidding him with my eyeballs to say a single word about superheroes. “Yes, that’s right. And we should get going.” I tugged on Eric’s door handle. He took the hint and unlocked the car.
I got into the passenger seat, and Nathan climbed into the seat behind me.
I turned around to look at him. “What are you doing?”
He made himself comfortable in the backseat, propping one foot up on the center console. “I’m coming with you.”
“You so aren’t.”
“I so am,” he said. “Fine by you, Sparky?”
“Fine by me,” Eric said, starting the car.
I turned to Eric. “Exactly whose side are you on?”
“Yours,” he said. “You need all the help you can get.” Eric put the car in gear. “Buckle up, Nathan. We’re going to a party.”
The address Detective Johnson had shown me was less than a mile away from the restaurant. As we drove, residential streets gave way to faded, peeling commercial buildings. Next to a shop that rented heavy equipment, we found the place we were looking for. I had expected a house, but this was an abandoned industrial building, with a whole wall of rolling metal doors that locked shut at the bottom.
The three of us got out of the car and walked down to where the street dead-ended in a low concrete wall, brightly marked with graffiti, stickers, and wheat-paste posters. Pretty damn cool wheat-paste posters too: laughing faces in graphic black-and-white, an Asian girl with a machine gun, a few different ads for bands. Beyond the wall was a stretch of dirt, and beyond that, railroad tracks. We watched a Metro train clatter by.
“This party sucks,” Eric said.
“It was weeks ago,” I replied. “But it was here.” I turned to Nathan, who was intently studying some graffiti on the side of the building. “Were you here? At the party?”
“No.” Nathan pulled down his sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes. “Not that night.”
“Well,” Eric said, looking around, “if you could get into that building, and you opened all those doors, and you added some music and alcohol . . . it would be crankin’. Party in the cut, you know?”
Nathan and I both turned to look at him.
“What? I googled ‘DC slang’ back at the McDonald’s.”
Nathan shook his head. “Just . . . no.”
“So these underground parties. How long have they been going on?” I asked.
“Maybe six months?” Nathan shrugged. “The story is that Cedric Williams—he goes to Trinidad High—went to this thing last summer, like a model United Nations, and there were high school students from the whole area there. Not only DC, but Maryland and Virginia too.”
“Model UN?” I said. “Fascinating.”
“While he was there, he met this guy who lives in McLean. They . . . well, I guess you could say they hit it off, and they got this idea to swap parties every month: one in DC, one in Virginia. It’s kind of like an exchange program. A United Nations . . .” Nathan paused for effect. “Of fun.”
I rolled my eyes, pressing my lips together so I wouldn’t smile.
He was getting into it now. “They send delegates to our parties, we send delegates to their parties, and together, we make a better DMV for everyone.”
“DMV?” Eric asked.
“DC, Maryland, Virginia,” Nathan explained. “You should know these things, Slim.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” I said, twirling a finger. “Move on.”
Nathan’s phone rang, and he reached into his pocket to check it. “Give me a second, you guys.” He walked back toward the car, laughing as he answered the phone.
While I was trying to piece together Nathan’s conversation from the bits that I could overhear, Eric leaned over to me and whispered loudly. “As long as we’re here, do you wanna try a training exercise?”
“So now you’re Professor Magneto all of a sudden?”
“Okay, that is just . . . wrong. But never mind.” An assortment of trash had gathered along the Jersey barrier at the end of the street. Eric bent down and picked up an old shoe, handing it out to me. “Take it. See what you see.”
I recoiled. “Shouldn’t you use a glove with that?”
“I’ve got hand sanitizer in my bag. Come on.”
I scrunched up my face and touched the tip of the shoe with my fingers. Then I reluctantly curled my hand around the whole thing. Nothing. I shook my head.
“Okay,” Eric said. “Let’s keep trying. Maybe there’s something here that will work.”
I poked at random trash for a minute or two, getting nothing but dirty. I was about to give up when Eric jogged over with a muddy baseball cap in his hand.
“The only interesting thing I found was this.” He held the cap out toward me, and I saw our school logo—the Westside Wildcats—on the front.
Excitement pinged through me. I took the cap from Eric, and all the lights went out.
In the darkness, I heard the squeal of car tires. I tried to keep a firm hold on the cap, afraid that if I dropped it, whatever secrets it held would be gone forever.
A flash of light cut through the blackness: a streetlight reflecting off a car windshield. I squinted through the blinding glare, trying to see something, anything, even as the light burned my eyes and splotches of purple and yellow obscured my vision. Finally I could make out the car, speeding around the corner and screeching to a halt—it was Tyler’s dark-blue Audi. The hazy figure of a boy stood in front of the car, waving for it to stop. He yelled and slammed a hand down onto the hood, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. His voice was distorted, like it had been run through an audio filter. He clutched the baseball cap in his fist, shaking it furiously.
I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, and for an instant, the guy’s face became perfectly clear. He was a few years older than me, with blond hair buzzed short against freckled skin. He reached up to wipe blood from a cut above his eyebrow; his face was red and one eye looked swollen.
Then the light throbbed and pulsed, and I lost sight of him, but the wah-wah-wah of his voice continued. I concentrated on what he was saying, and it sounded like: “Give it back. Give it back.”
I caught a glimpse of Tyler behind the wheel of the car, clearly upset. Bobby sat beside him in the passenger seat, a fierce scowl twisting his face. On the dashboard in front of them lay the Lincoln cigar box. From the lid, Honest Abe watched the proceedings with disapproval. Tyler got out of the car and came around to talk to the guy. He reached out a calming hand, but the guy slapped it away. Bobby joined them, and I thought I heard the guy say something about his dad. He was seriously pissed off. And maybe a little terrified.
Then the light began to fade. The last thing I saw was the guy standing in the road, alone. The car was nowhere to be seen. He tried to straighten his arm, but it looked seriously painful, like it might be broken. He bent over, breathing hard, and then he started to cry. He just stood there, his hands on his knees, sobbing.
> I closed my eyes, swamped by a wall of pain that swept up from the back of my head. When I opened them again, the scene was gone. I sagged against Eric, who supported me with one arm as I sat down hard on the asphalt. Nathan saw the commotion, put his phone away, and came running over.
“It happened again, didn’t it?” Eric asked. “You got all glazed over for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure if I should try to snap you out of it, or leave you alone. What did you see?”
“Please.” I looked up at Eric, tears filling my eyes. “Not in front of him.” I jerked my thumb toward Nathan.
“Hold the hell on,” Nathan said. “What happened?” He squatted down beside me and rested a warm hand on my arm.
“Nothing.” I shrugged it off.
“She saw something,” Eric said.
Nathan turned to me. “You saw something? Like what something?” When I didn’t respond, he turned to Eric with a bite in his voice. “Tell me.”
“She’s been seeing things, since Tyler died,” Eric said. I slumped down in defeat, putting my face in my hands. “She’s been having . . . visions. Or something. Like when she touches things that belonged to Tyler, she can see a memory of where he’d been or when he touched them last.” His eyes lit up. “Oh! It’s like a Pensieve. Except the memories are attached to objects. So it’s like a Pensieve crossed with a Portkey.”
Nathan stared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about right now.”
I looked out from behind my hands. “First you give me comic books, now Harry Potter?”
“The secrets of life are in Harry Potter,” Eric said. “Gryffindor for the win.”
“Wait.” Nathan held up his hands, his face confused. “You’re serious?” He sat down on the ground next to me. “You’re totally serious right now? You’re having, like, visions? About Red?”
I nodded.
“Visions that are real? You’re not having a nervous breakdown?”
I shrugged. “Jury’s still out on that one.”
“Is that why you’ve been having those headaches?”
“Or the other way around.”
Nathan studied me hard for a moment, his total focus on me. Then he spoke. “Okay, so, I think . . .” He stopped himself, then started again, haltingly. “Maybe you should go back to the doctor.”
I closed my eyes so he wouldn’t see the tears welling up in them.
“After what you’ve been through? Anyone would be stressed. Anyone might . . .” He paused. “Lose touch with reality a little bit.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
I kept my eyes on my shoes, not willing to look Nathan in the face. He stood, and I felt the distance between us open up. Very practical of you, Nathan, I thought. Stay away from targets.
I reached for Eric’s hand. I hadn’t visited all the places in DC where I knew Tyler had gone. At least one remained: the building where his body had been found. But I couldn’t make myself do it. Not today. Maybe not ever. I looked Eric in the eye. “Take me home? Please?”
He tried to help me stand, but I sank down to the asphalt, holding my head.
“In a minute,” I gasped. “I need a minute.”
The three of us stayed there together in silence for a while, watching the Metro trains go by.
“Are you going to tell your mom and dad what’s going on?” Eric asked on the drive home, after I told him what I’d seen.
“I don’t know.” With shaking hands, I brushed at the tears that ran down my face. They wouldn’t stop. I’d cried so much in the last few weeks. If I kept this up, I’d evaporate completely, and there’d be nothing left of me but a pile of salt.
“Well, are you going to the doctor?”
“Apparently I should.” I could hear the hurt in my own voice. We’d dropped Nathan off at the Metro. He’d been all sympathy and kind concern, and I still hadn’t gotten the bitter taste of it out of my mouth.
Eric paused. “That guy who stopped Tyler’s car,” he said. “Did you know who he was?”
I leaned my head against the cool glass of the car window and didn’t say a word. I watched the lights on the Capitol dome come on as the dusk spread. The world always looked melancholy to me at this time of day, and the ache in my chest made me wish I were home. I rolled down the window, and the car filled with the smell of a warm day turned chilly.
Even through all the glare and distortion, it had been a painful joy to see Tyler again. The first time it had happened, in the hallway by his locker, I’d been so overwhelmed by the whole experience that I hadn’t been able to focus on anything specific. But this time, the little details had hit me: that chunk of red hair that always fell down over his left eye. The way he rested one wrist on his steering wheel when he drove—I had already forgotten that. How could I have already forgotten that?
“Damn it.” I sat up straight, caught by a sudden realization. “I didn’t collect anything from the party site. No raw materials. I should have grabbed a gum wrapper. Anything.”
“Oh, right.” Eric took one hand off the wheel and reached into his back pocket. “I got you this.” He held out a ripped but neatly folded piece of paper.
I opened it to see two striking eyes in a dark face—part of one of the street-art posters that had surrounded the site. The man in the stylized black-and-white photograph wore a bowler hat, big round glasses, and a steampunk-looking coat with a high collar that covered his ears.
“Sorry it’s torn,” he said. “The glue on those things is not messing around.”
I looked up at Eric, puzzled. “How did you know?”
“Are you kidding? As long as I’ve known you, you’ve been shoving scraps of paper in your pockets.”
I pulled out my art journal. I meant to tuck the page away for later, but a compulsion seized me. I fished out my scissors and my supply pouch, carefully cut out the man’s hat and glasses, and pasted them onto a clean page of the book. With a black watercolor pencil, I began to sketch Eric’s face in the style of the man from the poster. I put in his long nose, curious eyes, and floppy hair, flattened against his forehead beneath the bowler hat.
“Thanks,” I said.
“For the poster?”
“For the ride.”
Eric gave a half laugh. “You’re welcome.” He was quiet for a minute. “And I have to say, what you did back there? That was pretty frakking cool. I mean, I’m sure it’s scary and overwhelming and all that. But also? Pretty frakking cool.”
“Thanks.”
“Let me know whenever you’re ready to talk superhero names,” Eric said. “I’ve got a whole other binder for that.”
CHAPTER 8
ON MONDAY, AFTER SCHOOL, I SAT AT MY WORKTABLE, sorting collage materials and watching out my bedroom window for Eric’s car to come around the corner. He wasn’t due to pick me up for the appointment with Dr. Brightman for another half hour, but I couldn’t focus on anything else. The tabletop in front of me overflowed with the papers and other objects I’d been collecting for the past few weeks. I kept trying to organize them in the envelopes and cubbies I normally used, but these objects defied me, refusing to be classified and tucked away.
My heart jittered as I picked up a brochure from the auction preview at Ford’s. When Dr. Brightman and I had touched that piece of fabric and had seen Clara Harris, screaming and covered in blood, he hadn’t seemed surprised. He must know how all this worked: the objects, the visions. He might be able to tell me what it meant and why it was happening.
But would I like the answers he gave? And what would happen when we put the Lincoln box in his hands? Was I right about there being something—some memory—attached to the box that I just couldn’t see?
That I didn’t want to see?
I jerked my head up at the sound of voices outside, but it was only a pair of joggers, laughing their way through an ordinary Monday afternoon.
I moved aside the cards and papers from Tyler’s locker, uncovering the program from his funeral. In stark black le
tters, his years of birth and death appeared below the phrase A Celebration of Life. In a poorly reproduced photograph, Tyler smiled at me across time, across the gulf that now separated us, from some forgotten day when he was still with us. I looked for answers in the line of his neck, the curve of his shoulder. I didn’t feel any closer to understanding how he had ended up the way he did, or why. The underground parties might explain what he had been doing in DC, and drugs might explain the money I’d found in his locker, but I still hadn’t seen anything that explained how he had ever gotten involved with drugs.
I picked up the program and stared into Tyler’s eyes. I’d leaned on him so heavily after Elena left. I’d done everything he asked without question. He said he wanted me to be careful, but he had not been careful. He said he was helping me fly under the radar, but maybe that was just code for lying and pretending to be someone you weren’t. And maybe that was something we had both gotten good at.
A blur of movement outside caught my eye, and I stepped to the window. A dark sedan pulled up in front of our house. Not Eric. I took a half step back, then froze when I saw who was getting out of the car: Detective Johnson, briefcase in hand.
I tore out of my room and ran down the stairs, throwing open the door as she rang the bell. She smiled at me, and my stomach twisted. Whatever she was here for, it couldn’t be good.
“Hello,” she said with a nod. “I came to update your parents on some details of the investigation.”
“What details?” I asked.
My mother appeared, removing my hand from the door and opening it all the way. She wore good manners like a suit of armor. “Detective Johnson. Come in.” She turned to me. “Megan, please give us some privacy.” She walked the detective into the living room, and I dogged their heels the entire way.
Johnson took a seat on our couch, her sharp eyes taking in all corners of the room. “Will your husband be joining us?”
Mom sighed when she spotted me lurking in the corner. “No. He’s . . . not available at the moment.”
I looked around too—where was Dad? Mom had picked me up after school, and I hadn’t seen him anywhere. He must have gone out. Good for him. Lately it felt like he never left the house.
The Hidden Memory of Objects Page 9
