“This house you’re staying in,” Liz says, “is the original construction built by our town’s founder, William Phillips Preston, in 1897.” You can tell she’s said it a hundred thousand times, but there’s still a pride in her tone.
“God, I’d give my eyelashes to live here.” Candace takes off her sunglasses and turns to Jim. “Can you imagine one couple had this whole mansion to themselves?”
“Preston and his wife did have servants,” Liz reminds her, a few fibers of disapproval woven into her silky voice as if to say, Servants are people too. It’s the first sign of independent thinking I’ve ever seen from her, and it makes me like her more.
While Liz shows them to their separate rooms, I retreat to the kitchen.
Dark-Eyed Boy is leaning against the marble counter. “Sounds like my cover’s blown.” He stares at the cookie jar. “Think your mother’s going to call the sheriff or just kick me out?”
“I don’t know her well enough to guess.”
“I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
I don’t want to stay here alone. “Who cares if she calls the sheriff?” I say. “We can run away together. Skip town.”
“And go where?” It’s weird to hear him sound so hopeless. Earlier in the day, I’d poked holes in his cloudless optimism, just to vent my own frustration. Now I miss it.
“We’ll go wherever we have to go.” I put my hand over his. “Maybe find a big city, where there’s a real hospital. And we’ll just keep moving till we get help or our memories come back on their own. We have money now—”
“Some money, and that’s your safety net. I’m not touching it.”
I try not to feel insulted that he’s turning down my offer to share what I have. “It’s ours, really,” I say. “I never even would have found it if it wasn’t for you. Don’t be such a hero. Let me help you for once.”
“All right.” Liz wanders in, looking dazed. “If that was Jim I just led into the Country Sun Suite, then who exactly are you?”
“He’s my friend,” I say. “He’s been there for me and he really needs a place to stay for a while. And if you don’t let him crash here when we have plenty of room . . . then I’m leaving too.”
“Elyse—”
“No, it’s true. If you can’t take both of us, you can’t have either of us.”
Liz looks from me to him and back. “Well, there’s no need to be so dramatic.” She sounds exasperated. “A friend of my daughter is a friend of the family,” she says, patting his knee. “For now you can stay in the Rustic’s Cottage.”
“Seriously?” From the way his eyes are shining I can tell that her generosity’s making him feel ashamed of lying to her before.
“It’s in the backyard,” she warns, “and you’ll have to be all right with taking a bath instead of a shower since the curtain rod broke last week.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You just did.” She pulls a key ring from her pocket and removes one key.
“Hey, who’s renting the Cottage?” says a hearty voice. A big, tall man strides into the kitchen.
“Honey!” Liz runs over to kiss his cheek. “Did you order the new shower rod?”
“They’ll have it in day after tomorrow.” He thrusts out his hand amiably at Dark-Eyed Boy, who shakes it. “Don’t believe we’ve met, sir. I’m Jeffry Alton.” Even though he’s being friendly and polite, I can pick up subtle hints of suspicion in his voice. “So, you a student? Staying in that Cottage all alone?”
“He doesn’t speak much English,” I say quickly. “He’s from . . . Brazil.”
Whoa, did I just lie?
I spontaneously lied to my own father—just to keep him from asking Dark-Eyed Boy too many questions. How could I do that, after my whole song and dance earlier about how Lying Is Bad and Wrong? What a hypocrite. Sure, I don’t want to do anything to risk Dark-Eyed Boy getting to stay here. Still, this is my father we’re all deceiving, I think, and guilt nags at me. Then I notice several white dots on his chin and pick up on a familiar medicinal smell. Good god, is that . . . pimple cream? My father’s face is covered in pimple cream? I hope his acne isn’t hereditary. Jeffry Alton’s blue eyes, set deep in his ruddy square face, meet mine and I look away.
“Full house, and a rich foreigner to boot.” Jeffry smiles broadly and rubs his hands together. “Looks like the season’s heating up.”
Chapter 12
DARK-EYED BOY
“So, what was that guy Jim talking about?” Elyse presses her mom when Jeffry’s headed down to the basement to watch TV. “What’s ‘the drop’?”
“Just a silly slogan.” Liz gestures toward a framed poster on the kitchen door depicting a powerful waterfall. “Summer Falls, 1,600 feet.” And below that: “Feel your tensions drop away.”
“Is it true?” I ask. “Do people really relax that much when they come here?”
Liz shakes her head. “Only because they expect to. It’s a good sales technique, and with the mill closing we need the revenue from tourism.”
Same thing the sheriff said. “Why did the mill close?” I ask.
Liz preheats the oven to 350 degrees. “Some machines malfunctioned,” she says vaguely. Either she had no idea what happened or there was a grisly disaster with tons of casualties. Either way she’s not talking about it.
Elyse and I decide to head downtown. On the walk we catch each other up. She tells me about the missing photos in the album, and Liz’s weird reaction to seeing pics of her own mother, Elyse’s grandmother. I tell her about the fainting, fighting couple—her eyes widen—and my theory that I can turn invisible just by not speaking when I first enter a room.
“You’re not invisible.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re just good at blending in. Besides I saw you, this morning in—um, in bed. You definitely hadn’t said anything. You were asleep.”
“That doesn’t fit the pattern,” I admit. “But I think it’s more likely that there’s something weird about you.” I tell her about the ghost description of Tomoko. “You were right, okay?”
“So that’s who she was.” She stares at the surface of the lake, thoughtful. “So weird that you couldn’t see her.”
“You think that’s the weird part? How about the fact that ghosts exist and haunt your hometown?”
She tilts her head toward me in surprise. “The idea of ghosts is perfectly natural. They’re just spirits of the dead.”
“Right,” I deadpan, “spirits of the dead. It’s all so very natural and normal. Not like crazy, crazy magic, which you don’t believe in.” She shoves me playfully, and I grab her hand before she can pull it back. She gasps.
“I just want to know, how come you’re down with ghosts but not magic?”
She fixes her eyes on me. “How come you’re down with magic but not ghosts?”
I let go of her hand. I don’t have an answer.
“Maybe I’m used to ghosts,” she says, shrugging. “Growing up in a haunted town and all.”
“Maybe,” I say, “except . . . that brochure was very hokey. Like whoever wrote it didn’t seriously believe in ghosts but just thought it would be cheesy, good fun for the tourists. A sales technique, like your mother was saying. Elyse, don’t tell anybody else what you saw. Not even your parents.”
She shudders. “You’re worried they’d put me in the asylum, aren’t you?”
“They would literally have to kill me first.” But yes.
—
When we hit Main Street we decide to split up, checking out stores on opposite ends of the street and meeting at the fair in an hour, in time for the picnic.
I cross the street to Hinklebeck’s Antiques and note the smaller writing under the main signage. “Thousands of Secondhand Goods and Antiques Within . . . and One Relic.”
I’d been expecting a bell to announce every customer, but the door makes no sound as I open it. Maybe the door sensed my broke status and knew I wasn’t important enough to warrant a staff welcome.
From behind the counter, an older woman is talking to a slightly built young man.
“And what do we have here, Bette?” The man has a British accent. “A fresh catch from the sea of eBay?”
“1923,” Bette brags. She plays with her wooden beaded necklace and grins, the over-sixty version of the hair-flip-giggle combo. “That there’s an original Dorian Coffer, seller’s great-grandma had it down in her basement . . . souvenir from her honeymoon.”
I tiptoe forward and lean closer to see what they’re looking at. The woman still doesn’t notice my existence—I’m getting used to that treatment around here—but the man turns his head and winks at me. Weird. He stands directly in front of the poster, as if he wants to become one with it, but I can still see a smiling white couple in the foreground. When I say white, I mean really white: the woman blond with a bright white face, the man with his blindingly white arm around hers. I read enough of the words at the bottom to guess that it says something like: “Turn your frown upside down with a holiday in Summer Falls!”
The British guy whistles. “Pristine condition too. Hundred bucks is a steal.” He pulls out a brown battered wallet. I have a sudden sad feeling for him. How much of his paycheck does that hundred dollars represent?
“I’m surprised you’d want it, Mr.—”
“Joe, please.”
“Why, your people aren’t even from here, yet you care so much about our history.”
“History’s my one true love, Bette. Or maybe just my longest successful relationship.”
Bette clucks with pity. “I know how you feel, but don’t sell yourself short. You could meet a lovely girl right here in Summer F—” She gasps, and I see why. Right in front of her, the man started rolling up the poster, calmly and deliberately, a smile on his face. The antique poster he hasn’t yet paid for. “Mr. English. Oh dear.”
He reaches over and pats her sloped shoulder. “Bette Hinklebeck, you’re the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen, and you talk too much. That’s why Floyd Johnston dropped you for Myrtle Kessler in 1946.”
WTF? Talk about cruel, telling a sweet old lady she’s ugly and talks too much? Worse, did he just throw an ancient breakup—one she must have told him about in confidence—in her face?
“Oh dear, oh dear.” Poor Bette’s hand flies to her heart, and her eyes flutter. Her mouth opens, and she clatters to the ground behind the counter, shaking every hundred-year-old plate and glass on her shelves. Another heatnap?
He’s just finished stuffing the poster in his briefcase when she groans and stands up again. “Oh, hello, Mr. English—”
“Joe,” he says again, with perfect patience. “Please, keep the change.”
“Change?” She glances over at the cash register, confused. “So sorry, I must have had a moment. Thank you.”
“Pleasure’s mine.”
Whoa. This guy has some nerve. On top of insulting her, not that she seems to remember—just like the Bishops after their heatnap—he just shoplifted a poster from her by pretending he’d already paid.
And it worked too.
When did he first figure out he could do that? Does he pay for anything in this town?
I hustle out the door, but he catches up with me on the street.
“Hey, where were you yesterday?”
Yesterday. This guy knew me yesterday. I turn to face him, not wanting to waste this opportunity to learn more. But at the same time, I don’t want to let on how helpless I am. Especially not to this sadist. “Sorry.” I stall. “I wasn’t feeling well?” I say, hoping it’ll work as a catchall excuse.
“Please, I’m not talking about your missing the history test.” He snorts. “Like I’d ever fail you. Do me a favor and don’t start giving a damn about school all of a sudden—it’s unnerving.” Whoa, he’s my teacher? A teacher who doesn’t want me to care about school? Why won’t he fail me . . . are we friends?
“You know, you can tell me if you’ve changed your mind,” he says, leaning in. Behind his Coke-bottle glasses, his owl eyes sparkle with concern. “I’d understand.”
I can’t fake my way through this. “Understand about what?”
“What do you mean about what?” He lowers his voice. “Your mother’s work, what else? Her notes.”
“Right.” Mentally I’m taking down his every word, because all of it’s new information. New and intriguing too.
“Do you have them?”
“Not . . . not with me.” Technically not a lie.
“Meet me tomorrow after school at Mollie’s,” Joe says.
Chapter 13
ELYSE
Fresh white paint gleams on the faux-Greek columns of the Summer Falls Public Library, making the building look new even though, from the style, I can tell it must be old. Very old.
Back when I had my memory, though, I probably took its well-preserved beauty for granted.
I try to picture my pre-amnesia self racing over here every day after school. Browsing the new books shelf, loading my backpack with hardcovers. If I came in here all the time, the librarians must know me pretty well . . . that thought gives me some trepidation. What if one of them guesses there’s something wrong with me?
Feeling a tingle of apprehension, I bound up the three marble steps and pull open the heavy door. A narrow shaft of sunlight disappears behind me as the door snaps shut, leaving me in a cool, dimly lit hallway.
Through a glass window, I can see into the library proper: metal browsing shelves, long wooden tables where patrons sit studying or reading, and the librarian’s desk.
The walls in this entryway are lined with cork bulletin boards sprouting colorful flyers announcing summer fair events, from town softball games to pie-baking contests.
But the main focus is a single exhibit behind glass in the center of the room. It’s a dollhouse-like model of Main Street, it looks like, and the surrounding town. A “You are here” flag hangs from a pin stuck in the library building. The shop window of Mollie’s is painted the exact same shade of orange as it is in real life. Someone’s obsessive about their hobby . . . or is this all just more show for the tourists? Outside the circle representing town is a white-capped plastic mountain.
I read the caption below the model. “The Summer Falls Effect. How come the weather is always warm and sunny here? Many scientists believe our perfect weather is a happy accident caused by Kiowa glacier’s proximity to our town. You might think a glacier would make things colder, but scientists know better!”
I frown at the plastic mountain, wondering how the hell it could make anything hotter.
The librarian doesn’t notice me entering. Her frizzy graying head is bent over a stack of books that she’s vigorously ink-stamping.
My hands feel clammy as I approach her desk. “Hi,” I say, trying to sound casual and upbeat. Will she know me well enough to guess that something’s wrong?
“Heya.” The librarian looks up from her stamping and smiles at me. “Enjoying your stay?”
I blink. Wait . . . she thinks I’m a tourist? “I’m from here,” I say, feeling irked. Just my luck, the normal librarian must be sick today.
“My mistake. I’ve never seen you in the library before.” The woman slips off her reading glasses and lets them hang around her neck from their string of beads. “Of course,” she says, and pops her glasses back onto her nose. “I do recognize you now, from the Sunrays games.” She wiggles her shoulders and waves her arms, mimicking pom-poms. “Go, Rays!” She turns back to her ink-stamping.
“Go, Rays,” I repeat dumbly, trying my best to hide my disappointment. So my bookworm status, the one thing about my former self that sounded right to me, turns out to be bull. I’ve never set foot in the library. I don’t get it. Why would Liz say I had a reading habit if I didn’t? How am I supposed to remember my life if she can’t get her facts straight about her own daughter? Does she have a memory problem too or what?
Is everyone’s memory scrambled in this town?
That thought
makes the hairs on my arms prickle to attention.
I wander into the stacks, still pondering. Clearly there are major problems with memory loss here. That would explain the whole conversation between Kerry and the sheriff. Is there just something in the water here, a chemical that makes people slowly lose their memories? Until . . . until they end up like me? And get shipped off to an asylum?
Not if they don’t find out.
“Excuse me,” I say to the librarian. “Where are the computers?”
“Researching some new cheers?” she says brightly. “Down the hall.”
I don’t bother to tell her there’s more to me than being a cheerleader. First I need to make sure it’s true. I’m planning to Google myself and see if anything comes up.
On my way down the hall, though, I get derailed, distracted by a rich, sweet, female voice in one of the other small rooms. The door’s ajar. I peek in and see about a dozen preschool-aged children sitting in a squirmy horseshoe, their parents hovering at the edges of the room. The girl reading from a rhyming picture book looks about my age, but she’s about as far from my reflection in the mirror as you could get. She looks more the way I imagined I would look—the way I thought I should look.
Tall. With long, slender limbs. Small breasts that barely disturb the clean line of her blue flower-sprigged sundress. You can tell her glossy chestnut hair would never dream of waving without her permission, let alone tangling and falling into her face like mine’s doing right now. Most striking of all is her serene smile, so innocent, so sure, the exact opposite of how I feel inside.
“Time for one last story today,” she announces in her even, hypnotic tone.
Several small voices clamor back, “No! More!” and their parents gently shush them.
She gifts the audience with one more poised smile and holds up another picture book. “The Legend of the Tribe with No Name. ‘Long ago,’” she reads from page one, “‘there lived all over this valley a tribe of Native Americans. They hunted deer and rabbits in our big pine forests. When the deer and rabbits weren’t plentiful or easy to catch, the tribe gathered mushrooms instead. Or fished for trout in our big, calm lake. They lived happy and easy lives, protected by the spirit of the giant waterfall.’”
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